Cool touch zaps through my fingertips as she touches me. Like a shot of ice shooting through my veins, she cools the fire burning through me with a single touch.
I look at her. I don’t know if she even realizes what she’s doing when she touches me.Does she realize that she’s using her magic to help dampen my curse? That it’s more than whatever physical connection we share?
It’s her.
She’s doing this to me. She alone can help me keep the curse from taking over me.
I feel her pushing Ambrose toward me. I feel her guiding him to pry in my head again, but I put up the dark, shadowy wall that prevents them from communicating with me.
I don’t want her protecting me. I’m not her mate. I’m her villain. And the sooner she realizes it and lets me go, the better. I don’t want to give her any hope.
There’s a pounding at my mental wall. Ambrose yelling at me; Lumi pleading with me. Neither of them will get me to let them in, though. Because I know what I must do tonight. I know what will save them. And they are all that matters in this.
The only thing I allow is for her to continue holding my hand. It might be the only thing that keeps my bloodlust controlled.
The room clears a little, the edges becoming less blurry as I make out the expansive ballroom we find ourselves in. Rows and rows of tables seem to be placed in a circular rim around us.Food and drink are placed on large platters in front of them, but I dare not take a single breath to determine what I smell.
And we stand in the center of it all. Faces, I should be searching for faces—Amora, Sylara, my pack. But I can’t bring myself to focus on any of them. Too terrified of what I’ll find. And it doesn’t change the single thing I can do to save them. I get one chance at this.
“Welcome, everyone, thank you for coming,” Isolde says, her voice booming at an unnatural volume as if she were speaking into a microphone.
The room is quiet. So quiet that the only sound I hear is heartbeats, inhales, and exhales.
“Tonight, we speak to the gods. Tomorrow, we break the curses,” she continues.
A loud, ominous chuckle breaks the silence of the crowd. One I’d recognize anywhere.
“Not possible. You haven’t found a way to speak to the gods. Whatever you are about to do is nothing more than a fancy parlor trick, witch,” Veltheris, the vampire king, says.
A blast of magic hits me hard in the chest, knocking my hand from Lumi’s. The second it does, the pain floods through me. Heat and fire, like nothing I’ve ever felt before, burn like a racecar through my body. Hunger for blood.
Blood, blood, blood.
I turn to the woman with white hair and crystal blue eyes next to me. Her blood smells the sweetest. I want hers first.
I take a step toward her, baring my fangs, ready to pounce, when that same magic holds me back as liquid is poured down my throat.
I cough, almost choking on the sour liquid. As soon as the liquid hits the back of my throat, I cool. The burning disappears. My eyes focus on the woman in front of me. The woman I love and don’t want to drain.
“A little demonstration of my fancy parlor tricks for your amusement, vampire king,” Isolde says.
Veltheris grins, showing nothing of his true emotion to her. “Impressive, if I were someone who was easily impressed. But that is not summoning a god. Nor truly breaking a vampire curse. You know nothing of the curse that we bear.”
“And yet, you are here. If you want to break the curse, you need me to do it,” Isolde says.
“Are you okay?”Lumi’s voice pops through the bond I share with Ambrose.
“I’m fine,”I pant back.
“Good, don’t shut us out again, asshole,”Ambrose threatens back.
“What’s our plan?”Lumi asks.
I look Ambrose in the eyes, and I know he puts up a tiny wall, one that just keeps her out of our private conversation.
“Protect her?”he asks.
“Always,”I say back.