Page 80 of The Rogue's Curse

And just for a while, he was someone beyond what he could do, beyond his tactical utility. He was not a ticking time bomb, with a shadow hanging over him. He dared to hope that Paris liked him for who he was.

Paris suddenly broke away, glancing at his watch. “It’ll be sunrise soon,” he said. “I should go, or it will be exponentially harder for me to get out of here.”

As Paris rose and searched for his pants, Misha blurted, “Tell me how the curses were broken. I could figure it out.”

He could see the layers of armor wrapping around Paris again. A battle raged behind those blue eyes. What the hell was he hiding? What was so shameful about the curse that he couldn’t speak of it?

“Perhaps after we’ve dealt with Shea,” he said. Then he stared at his hands, and back to Misha. “Have you seen anything else like the creature at the wall?”

“I’ve heard things,” Misha said.

“If you see anything, I need you to tell me immediately. Or if anything else is off,” Paris said.

“I’ll let you know,” he said.

He smiled as Paris bent to kiss his cheek. “Thank you for this.”

“Same time tomorrow?” Misha quipped.

Paris grinned. “You know where to find me.”

But as he left, Misha couldn’t shake the sensation of that red thread. Paired with the roiling sense of his magic, he was reminded far too keenly of the chaotic sensation of killing Frasier. A blood bond had connected them, Maker to Vessel, and he’d instinctively blown through it. Like lightning through a conduit, he’d unleashed a storm of power directly into Frasier’s blood that killed him almost instantly. There hadn’t been much left of Frasier, but the backlash had been devastating to Misha. It felt as if part of him had broken then, as if he’d ripped out the connection and taken too much with it, like tearing a tree from the ground and leaving a gaping hole.

Something connected him and Paris, too.

The thought crossed his mind; he could force Paris to tell the truth. But whatever they had would surely be shattered, and for what?

No. He would simply mind his own business, even if the burning curiosity threatened to drive him crazy.

* * *

Misha woke from a pleasant dream of hungry lips and happy Frenchmen to the smell of smoke and rot. An inhuman voice hissed in his ear, yanking him into full awareness. He sat bolt upright and found a monster in his bed. Like a massive tiger made of shadow, it loomed over him with massive jaws hanging open.

He shouted in surprise, and the creature let out a discordant shriek as if it was the frightened one. Misha closed his eyes, opened them again, and found it still there. Adrenaline boiled in his veins as he lashed out at it, but his hands passed uselessly through the smoke.

The beast lunged in to bite him. He threw up one arm to protect his face and was stunned when icy teeth sank into his arm. Pain stabbed through him.

This was no dream.

The shadow took on solidity as blood dripped from its stained teeth, just like the creature that had attacked him at the wall. Voices shouted in Misha’s ears, and the world spun beneath him.

“What the hell,” he muttered. He dove out of bed and fumbled under his pants, just in time to realize he wasn’t in his room with all his things. He’d fallen asleep here after his romp with Paris, and his blades were far away.

Backing into the wall, he gritted his teeth and made a circle of blood on the ground, then inscribed a simple rune. Power surged from the completed symbol, up into his body, and out through his palm. A flash of reddish light struck the creature and threw it back.

The voices in his head were deafening now, making it hard to focus. Gritting his teeth, he drew his power in tight, preparing the ‘fireworks’ as he’d explained to Paris, and dove at the feline creature. It swiped at him, catching him across the chest, but he threw it back with another burst of power and hurled it into the wall. As it scrambled away, he pounced on its back.

Attacking it was disorienting; the creature was solid, but it felt more like damp, packed sand in a rubber skin than the muscle and sinew of a living beast. The scent of that curse magic pouring from it was nearly overpowering. Its dissonant shriek scraped at Misha’s sanity.

Misha grabbed either side of its head and let a burst of his power explode through it. Pain lanced up his arms as the blood magic sliced through him, but the creature flattened beneath him. He fell back, then kicked it onto its side.

Ignoring the blood streaming from his arms, he knelt to inspect the creature. When he dared to glimpse it with his arcane sight, it appeared as a roiling mass of curse energy, slithering and dark. And it smelled exactly like Paris.

He recoiled, watching with a mix of horror and fascination as the tiger-like creature melted into a pool of shadow, leaving only a residue of foul-smelling ash in a ring on the tiled floor.

Voices still scraped at his ears, and he bolted out of the room to get a vial from his workshop. When he returned, he scraped some of the ash into the vial and sealed it, staring up at it through the light. The dark particles shifted as if a light breeze was blowing them inside the glass.

What the hell was happening?

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