Page 68 of Taste of Fate

“Are you going to feed on us?” one of the humans called.

“No,” I snarled in annoyance. “The agreement between us remains intact. Now where is Octavia?”

Robin moved to the side of the narrow ladder leading down into the cramped storage room. “She’s in the very back. Let him through.” She gestured for others to move aside as well.

I climbed down into the cramped, musty space, angling my head to not bump it against the ceiling. “Thank you,” I remembered to say to Robin. She was important to Tavi, so I’d make sure to show respect.

I didn’t have to walk far to find Tavi, sitting on the dirt floor next to a cot where a pale human girl lay eerily still. Only one human heartbeat registered in my senses, Tavi’s.

The sight of her made my heart break for my blood mate. Her pain, her loss, was my own. It clamped around my chest and squeezed with a terrible ache. I didn’t know if it was seeing her that caused it, or her blood circulating through me, creating an intangible but direct line straight into the core of her.

Tavi didn’t seem to know that I was there. She stroked her dead friend’s hair and wiped blood and dirt from Amy’s face.

“Tavi.” Her name left my throat on a strangled choke. I knew her loss too well, even if I hadn’t had her blood in me. Kalix may not have been dead, but he was ripped away from me all the same.

“Cyan.” Her head lifted, hope brimming in her tear-filled, stormy eyes. “You’re here. You can fix her, can’t you?”

A knot formed in my throat. “I’m not sure what—oh fuck, Tavi. You’re bleeding.”

I knelt on the floor next to her, carefully examining one of the seams of her leg injury that had reopened. Wetting two fingers on my tongue, I rubbed the two digits over the split in her skin. Like magic, the two sides restitched together. I would have loved to lick her directly, get a little more of her blood in me, but this moment was not about what I wanted.

“Yes, that!” Tavi grabbed my hand, an excited, but not fully present smile spreading on her face. “Use your mouth to heal Amy.”

Fuck me, she was breaking my heart. “Tavi.” I caressed her hand, knowing I needed to take the utmost care in what I said next. “I’m so sorry, love. It won’t work.”

“It might! You have to try. Just please try, Cyan.” Her smile went away, bottom lip wobbling as tears filled her eyes. “Please.”

I shook my head slowly. “It doesn’t work if…if she’s already gone.”

Tavi’s eyes widened as if in shock. “She’s not gone, she’s right here!”

The full weight of reality seemed to hit her as soon as the words left her mouth. She drew in a shuddering breath, and then a sob wracked her whole torso as she looked at her friend again, this time knowing Amy was dead. I pulled her into my arms as she cried soul-choking sobs with fat tears spilling down her face. It was too fucking much. She had loved this girl so much and her pain was too great to bear.

The unfairness of it all pissed me off. Tavi asked for nothing. She literally placed herself in the path of danger to protect the friend she was now crying next to. She turned herself over to my clan, to me, fully believing she would die so that Amy had a chance to live.

Tavi sacrificed herself over and over again. And in return for all that selflessness, her best friend was ripped away from her. It felt like a cruel joke.

This brave, beautiful human in my arms deserved the world because she would never think to ask for it. Never for herself, anyway. And that was exactly why I wished I could give it to her. If only I could pluck a planet or a star from the sky and place it in the palm of her hand.

Not because I wanted her to be mine. But simply because she deserved an extraordinary gift, an extraordinary life full of all her wishes granted. All her desires fulfilled.

I would never be worthy of her. But if I could give Tavi a fraction of what she deserved, I’d be content with it.

“Tavi,” I whispered into her hair, barely audible over her sobs. “I…might be able to try something.”

She lifted her head and looked up at me, her eyes red and filled with so much sorrow. “Yes.”

“I need you to listen, love.” It was the second time the endearment had slipped out and I cursed my own weakness for her. Especially now when she needed me for strength.

“Yes, yes. I don’t care what it is.” Tavi swallowed and sniffled. “Try anything. Just bring her back, Cy.”

Her faith in me was the twist of a silver knife in my gut, especially after I’d been so fucking cruel to her just this morning.

I smoothed her hair away from her face and cupped her cheeks in my hands. “It might not work. That is a real possibility you need to be aware of. But I can…” my throat tightened with the realization of how much this affected me too. “I can try to turn her into a brusang. Do you understand?”

Tavi blinked and fresh tears spilled down her face. I caught them with my thumbs. Despite the pain in them, her eyes were bright and aware.

“A brusang. Like Bea?”

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