Page 59 of A Bond in Flames

She shrieked the affirmative, then took off through the forest, flying back toward the castle.

I turned back in time to see Death shove Alga’s reforming bones into a sack and carry her away.

CHAPTER18

Zinnia

I woke in bed alone,the sound of the piano drifting up from downstairs. He was back. Blinking up at the ceiling, I fought down the dread inside me. I’d lain awake for hours, waiting for Death to come back, to explain what the hell happened in those woods, to tell me who Alga was and what she was searching for.

Pushing back the covers carefully so I wouldn’t wake Hemlock, I got out of bed and walked out into the hall. Would he even talk to me? I had to try, because right now, my brain was struggling to understand what I saw out there or what any of it meant. I rushed along the hall, the shadows dancing along the walls as if they were swaying to the music. The song was achingly sad; goddess, it was heartbreakingly beautiful.

My footfalls were silent as I made my way down the stairs and across the main hall.

The room beyond it was dark still—only light from an artificial moon filtered in through the tall windows.

Then I saw him.

His bare, tattooed back, head dipped while his strong hands moved over the keys.

Emotion poured from him, so enormous that despite everything, it pierced my soul. I stayed where I was, listening as he played his mournful song, watching as he felt every note. When the song finished, he sat there, utterly still.

“Come here,” he finally said, voice low.

He’d clocked me as soon as I came down the stairs; of course he had. I felt his words in the pit of my stomach, his deep voice rolling through me, pulsing inside me. As soon as the command left his lips, I was moving across the marble floor.

I stopped beside him, and he turned to me, waiting for me to say whatever it was I was going to say, and I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t going to give me the answers I wanted. “One of those things I need to learn on my own?” I said instead of all the things I wanted to say.

He shook his head. “One of the things you never need to know.”

I had no idea who Alga was, but he’d been gentle with her—at least until he tore off her head. He was the God of Death, and she’d most certainly been dead. “She wasn’t a soul. She was… something else.”

“She was,” he said.

“Is she part of some fucked-up skeletal army? I’ve seen the way you look when your cloak is called forth, when the shadows cover you. You change—you are Death. Somehow, she’s part of that, isn’t she?”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, about my world, and a lot you will learn over time. There are other things, though, little witch, I pray you never have reason to learn.” Taking my hand, he tugged me closer and cupped my cheek over the slices I’d cleaned and dressed when I got back. He stood, crowding me. “Where else are you injured?”

“My side and my thigh. I washed and dressed where she clawed me. I have my healing balm with me. It’s fine.”

“Are you in pain?”

“They’re not that bad now. I have a potion that helps with pain, and it kicked in a while ago.”

He studied me, trying to see if I was telling the truth. “You could have been killed,” he rasped.

“I wouldn’t have gone down easy,” I said, now sounding breathless.

He gripped my hips, avoiding the slices on my side, and lifted me, planting my ass on the piano. His hand went to my throat, not gripping it, his open palm pressed to the base, and then he slid it lower, as low as he could go without his skin leaving mine.

I was in a pair of shorts and an old, stretched-out T-shirt, and the neck hung low. His palm sat directly over my heart. “You’re so warm,” he said roughly. “Your heart, it’s beating almost frantically.”

“You tend to have that effect on me.” I lifted my hand, pressing it to his bare chest, right over his heart and the stars tattooed there. It was pounding, hard and fast.

“You have the same effect on me, love.” His other hand gripped my uninjured thigh tight. “You always have.”

“Even when you were stalking around, cloaked and full of rage?”

He licked those gorgeous lips. “Yes.”

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