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His hand at my waist tightens. ‘Not tonight.’
I lift my head. ‘No. Absolutely not. You don’t give me occult rooms, Five Blood heirs, mysterious maker women and then shut the door when I ask for a name.’
The thinnest silver whirls in his black eyes. ‘You are very bold for a woman with my bite still on her throat.’
‘You like me bold.’
His eyes darken with craving, and satisfaction. ‘Hmm. More than is wise.’
‘Then answer.’
At first, I think he won’t. When he exhales, the sound weighs eons. ‘Morrighan.’
The name moves through the room like a blade drawn slowly from velvet. My stomach drops because I conjure black water, dead sky and red wounds overhead. Cruel laughter threaded through dark hair. ‘The voice,’ I whisper. ‘In that place when you fell. That was her.’
Valentin goes utterly still. ‘What did you see?’
‘Barely anything. I don’t think I was really there.’ I swallow. ‘A voice. Cruelty. Hair like darkness and blood. Something laughing because it knew exactly where to cut.’
His eyes burn nearly all black now. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That was Morrighan.’
Cold moves over my skin. ‘Your Maker.’
‘She prefers to call herself Creator. The first hunger. The Crimson Mother. She made the Five Blood and cursed us when we refused to remain her obedient sons.’
I ease back, the sheet sliding higher over my chest though modesty is a joke at this point. ‘So you imprisoned her?’
He nods.
‘Where?’
‘In a Blood Chrysalis. Crystallised blood and void-iron, hidden through a resonance only the Five can access together.’
‘Yet she’s still reaching you?’
His silence is answer enough. The room feels less like shelter now and more like a locked box at the bottom of an ocean.
‘What does she want?’
Valentin’s mouth hardens. ‘Everything she made returned to her hand.’
‘And me?’
His gaze returns to my throat. ‘She senses you matter, little hunter. We share a blood bond which is reacting… uniquely inside me. And I may have unhinged a little when she threatened you.’
The stark words settle between us, terrible and profound. For once, I have no snark handy. My heart thumps double-fast as I stare at him. As he gives me his raw emotions. ‘Gods. Valentin.’
He lifts a hand and touches my cheek with a gentleness that makes the fear worse. ‘She will not have you, little hunter. I will tear this world apart to prevent it.’
I want to believe him. Gods help me, I do. He saved me from demon venom and from his Creator’s threat. But I’ve already sent my blood away to a witch I thought I could trust. So she can prove to me that the consequences I feel coming won’t get me killed.
I say none of that, of course. Instead, I let Valentin draw me back against him, and for a while neither of us speaks.
Eventually, exhaustion wins.
His arm locks around me, and mine rests over the mark at his throat.
And when sleep takes me, I dream of red glass cracking under a dead sky.
