Page 30 of Taken By the Blood God

I smiled back, batting my eyelashes at him. “Because I wouldn’t bother with something so trivial. I’d probably make all the hair on your body fall out before I cast a spell to seal your lips shut.”

His smirk turned into a wide, white smile. That smile made him look younger. Softer. And all too human.

I growled at him. There was no other word for the sound that rumbled in the back of my throat. By the goddess, I wasspending too much time around shifters if I was resorting to their habits.

“Vicious. I like that trait in a woman.”

Oh, how I wanted to wipe that smile off his face.

My fingertips itched as they turned cold. I glanced down and saw pale blue light emitting from them and a thin coat of ice appeared, coating the pads and nails of my fingers as though I’d dipped them in water and they’d flash-frozen.

“What on earth?” I breathed.

“There it is,” he murmured.

He came over to me, stopping a few inches away. I was holding my hand up in front of my face, examining the ice. He reached out and cupped it, turning my palm toward him so he could see.

“There’s what?” I asked, trying to ignore how hot his palm felt against the back of my hand, and how my body and my magic reacted to the warmth of his power. I would have expected our magic to clash and spark since they were so opposed. He was fire, and I seemed to be ice.

Instead, his heat flowed through me, and I felt the chill of my skin seep into him. For a moment, our power wove together, tangling intimately. It was almost like a dance, his fire and my ice in sync as it moved. Like two lovers who had been parted for too long and were finally coming together again. I gasped, and the sensation stopped. My magic pulled away from him, settling within me again.

“You accessed your Conduit powers,” he explained. “The goddess whose magic flows through you—she was like a cool breeze, calming and fresh. But, when you angered her, she could chill you to the bone.”

He released my hand and stepped back. “But she was compassionate and gentle so that type of anger was rare.”

I might be compassionate, but I’d never been accused of gentleness. Except with Ally. Curious about the goddess whose powers I’d inherited, I asked, “How rare?”

His face went blank, his eyes losing their burnished bronze color and becoming a bleak brown. “Only once.”

He’d said he loved her. And the way he shut down told me that whatever happened between them—it was bad. I didn’t know how to handle that expression on his face or the wall he’d retreated behind, so I did what I always did when things became tense or awkward. I changed the subject.

“We should probably go,” I murmured, keeping my voice soft. “Your brother is waiting.”

Talant stared down at me. I could tell by the way his eyes searched my face that he was thinking hard about something. But he kept it to himself. Thank the goddess. I wasn’t sure I could deal with any more of his raw confessions today.

It might have been barely past lunchtime in Texas, but in England (which I’d found out based on the map’s labeling), it was six hours ahead. Which meant the sun would set in two or three hours. I preferred to find our stake-out spot in the daylight.

After a few tense moments, he nodded. “Let’s go.”

Chapter

Fourteen

Talant

Patience had never been one of my strengths.

I was more patient than I’d once been, before my time beneath the mountain, but this “stakeout” (as Minerva called it) was proving that I had still had trouble waiting.

After I found Davian’s prison, I created a portal that spat us out a half mile from the place on the map. We landed in the middle of a field.

As soon as Minerva realized we were exposed, she cast a spell to camouflage us and looked up at me. “Where do we go next?” she asked since I still had possession of the map.

I took a moment to orient myself, opening my senses. I didn’t need the map now that we were so close. There was a smudge of dark magic hovering east of us.

“We’re going this way,” I said, gesturing in that direction.

Minerva and I walked to the edge of the field, silent. The closer we got to the smudge of dark magic, the paler Minerva became. She inched closer to me, and I felt a shiver go through her.

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