Page 3

He rains soft kisses up my shoulder to my neck, pleasure easing the cold fear that ensnared me. My head lolls back when he strokes my hair and rests heavily in his palm. He trails kisses along my face, wiping away my tear stains, only to release a new wave of sobs.

His soft whispering soothes the exhaustion that weighs on me. “Did you hurt yourself? Are you bleeding?” He strokes my face softly, coaxingly. “Open your eyes for me, Torment. Let me see them.”

I hadn’t realized they were closed. Slowly, I peel open each lid. His ten rings glow like suns, and their heat blooms along my flesh where they rest. His smile’s warmth echoes in my heart, chasing away that odd, sludgy sensation back to the dark line fracturing my soul.

My brows twitch together. His eyes. His expression is tight, and his sun-starved complexion is ashen.

He exhales slowly, searching my face. He swallows and nods in short, jerking movements. “Good. That’s good. Oh fuck, Tor. I thought I’d lost you.”

I wet my lips. “Were my eyes…”

“Black, like when we were at the Archweaver estate.”

I suck in breath. My heart races and coldness washes away the warmth of his embrace.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m here.” He strokes me again, his thumb collecting the tears that slip from my lashes. “What happened? You were sound asleep last I saw you.”

“I thought I’d lost you,” I whisper in a broken, small sound.

He kisses my forehead softly. “You will never lose me.”

“Where were you? I couldn’t find you.”

“I was in the basement with Jinx, helping her fix the records.”

I frown. “At night?”

“I saw her going down there when I got back from meeting with my Guild contact.”

I swallow. “Did you see the body?”

He stills. “What body?”

My mind spins so chaotically that I can’t tell up from down. I clutch Lucas’ wrists, barely able to comprehend what just happened. What almost happened. I tried to kill Lucas. This terror tries to rob me of my memory. A fuzzy sensation slows my thinking. I push through it and whisper, “Someone is here. There’s a dead body in the foyer.”

His body goes rigid, his honey eyes widening.

My hand on his wrist trembles. “You didn’t see it?”

“I went sprinting into the stacks when I heard you screaming. I didn’t get a look at the foyer with the lights out.”

His gaze darts around the surrounding darkness. That tingling, warm magic of his rings pulses along my cheeks, and I smile at the flood of sensation returning to my nerves. The space around us illuminates as his threads crawl all along the floor, stacks, and ceiling to bring light to the darkness.

The wash of the purifying warmth is so good that I moan softly. I roll forward to go limp.

One of Lucas’ large hands leaves me to shift the silk along my leg. His fingers touch my calf, where the dried blood sticks, then trail up to where he can now clearly see it coating me.

“Is any of this your blood?” he asks as he fixes my robe so I’m no longer half naked.

I shake my head.

His whisper is low and rough against my ear. “Get behind me.”

He grips my arms and eases me off his lap to then drag me up to stand with him, but my legs aren’t working properly. I nearly crumple back down like a newborn fawn, weak and clumsy, but Lucas doesn’t let me fall. He hauls me back up to pin me against his strong chest. He says something, but the hammering of my heart drowns him out. I blink blearily down at my legs, at the blood that coats me. The trembling begins in my knees and travels up my body until my teeth rattle.

Lucas gently lifts me into his arms, and I cling to him with gasping breaths, my shaking arms tight around his neck. He gently shifts me to keep his right hand free in case of attack. I need to let him go. There’s an intruder and a dead body. It’s not safe for me to be clinging to Lucas like this, and yet, I cannot seem to get my body to obey. I just lived a horrific moment of life without him and my battered heart cannot stand to step away from him. Not yet.

My eyes close while Lucas carries me through the shop, and I revel in the waves of sensation that wash through my body. My soul, once ripped apart to keep me alive when my Entropy and Creation threads attempted to destroy each other, twinges horrifically along where Antonia sewed it together with the four twisted threads of the Archweaver line. I flinch, but the sensation leaves as fast as it comes, and only this building pressure against my sternum is left. My heart pulses against Lucas’ pounding one. Like our souls are meeting.