Page 11
Gods, she smelled delicious. A sweet and spicy perfume that made my mouth water and my skin tighten with need. Her neck was a delicate porcelain column, thrumming with the quick pulse of her heartbeat. I only needed a taste.
Just a small nibble—
No!
I shoved the monster back in its cage. I hadn’t truly bitten anyone in a long time and had no intention of starting back down that path. But still, what was she? I’d never smelled anything like her, and the call of her blood had my head spinning. I absently dragged my tongue over my sharp teeth again. Being a hybrid vampire, I didn’t need blood to survive—but I sure got high on it. I could only imagine the buzz that hers would give me.
And now I was staring at her neck again.
“Lucian.” Bellamy wrapped a hand around my shoulder like he could sense the unhinged direction of my thoughts. The shade in me wanted to tear him apart for interfering. The gryphon knew better, and I’d spent the last several years learning how to trust that beast—the one I was born with instead of the one I was burdened with. I straightened, taking in the girl as a whole again, and not just the blood coursing through her veins.
“You don’t even have to sing for us, do you?”
Her intensely blue eyes widened. She twisted her fingers together in front of her chest, almost like she was trying to hold herself back. I saw the conflict in her as she spoke to Bellamy right before I joined them. She was fighting something. Hard. Some unbearable instinct, and it was tormenting her.
I could recognize the fear because I’d lived it. Was still living it.
“Let’s go, Luce.” Bellamy firmly tugged me away from the counter, and I tossed a wink at the girl. I wouldn’t cause a scene, not in front of her. So I let myself be corralled to the door. As soon as it shut behind us, the pain charged in like a freight train. My skin itched, and my muscles burned.
“Fuck, that hurts.” I stumbled as he led us away, but the distance only amplified the agony until it felt like razors shredding my soul. “Stop. I have to go back.”
Bellamy jerked me forward. “No.” The word was sharp but not cruel, tinted with empathy. “You have to deal with it. For her.”
Choking down the pain, I forced myself to take one step and then another. Slowly, the writhing in my chest lessened, but my fangs still ached for her. I was barely aware as he dragged us into a diner and pushed me into a booth.
I clenched my hands into fists to stop their shaking, but my knee continued to bounce with frenetic energy under the table. Bellamy was talking, but I couldn’t understand the words. It was just muffled noise. My eyes stayed glued to the scratched tabletop while I fought the urge to claw my own skin off.
It could have been ten minutes that passed. It could have been two hours. Eventually, a plate was set down in front of me, and my focus shifted when the smell hit my nose. I tore into the burger like a starving man. Like a wild animal. It was cooked rare, and while the red juices coating my tongue weren’t a substitute, they were a distraction. By the time I was halfway through it, I was starting to feel back in control. Bellamy raised his eyebrows at me, and I tipped my head in a nod.
“Safe to say you get a sense about her, too?” He took a pull from his pint of pale beer. He’d ordered one for me too, and I grabbed at it, drinking half in one go. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the back of my hands, elbows propped on the table, while the smooth flow of alcohol calmed my frayed nerves a little further.
Feeling more myself, I sat up straighter and noticed that we were seated in the back corner of a dingy college dive bar. “She’s not human.”
Bel laughed under his breath at my obvious conclusion. “No, she’s not.”
“She knows it.” I dropped what was left of my soggy burger bun on the plate and grabbed a fry instead. “There’s a darkness around her, and she’s fighting it. Being close to her felt like…”
It felt magnetic, like a gravitational pull. The connection was undeniable and excruciating. Now I was just spinning wildly in her orbit, waiting for her to pull me in. Terrified she might cut me loose. There was a flicker in my brother’s golden eyes that told me I wasn’t alone.
We sat in silence for a few more minutes, chewing on cold fries and draining our beers until Bel said, “It was stronger this time. There was a little pull when I met her a few days ago, but with you around it was stronger.”
I frowned, fighting the impulse to rub my chest right where the ache still lingered. “I think she feels it too. But didn’t you see her face? She has no idea what’s happening. It’s scaring the shit out of her.”
Another jag of silence until he asked the question I couldn’t bring myself to consider yet. “What if—” He cut himself off, glancing around us before plowing on. “Luce, what if it’s her?”
Her. The one that the Fates promised us and then never delivered. The one that would have bound the drift together and settled our gifts. I may be the youngest of our group, but I was feeling the pain of being Heartless just as keenly as my brothers.
Bellamy tore at his paper napkin a moment before pinning me with a pained look. “I don’t know what to do. Should we tell the others?”
I could only exhale in stunned camaraderie—I didn’t know what to do either. Alaric and Rami had been Heartless the longest of any of us. And Quinn, well, that was an entirely different bag of trauma. If we gave them a flicker of hope now, it would destroy them if the shadows snuffed it out. They wouldn’t survive it.
I wasn’t sure any of us would.
8
CORDELIA
I took another deep breath and willed my nerves to settle a little more. In with the calm, out with the chaos. Even so, my heart insisted on jackhammering against my ribs. I gave myself a quick shake and reminded my lizard brain that this was important. That I needed this. We could be rational adults.
