Page 45 of Illusory

“I know.”

“I thought you were dead,” he said, his voice low and choked with emotion.

“So did I,” I admitted lowly and then glanced back up at him, my gaze magnetizing to the worried line between his brows before dropping back down to my wrists. My bandaged wrist. “Something tells me I have you to thank for that. For not being dead, I mean.”

“We can thank the bond for that.”

My head popped back up at his words. “Oh. So…you feltme through the bond again?” I wasn’t sure why that had surprised me. Wewerestill bloodbonded after all.

His nod was curt but telling. “I could feel your panic and distress almost as though it were my own, and then suddenly, there was nothing at all. Not even an echo of it. I knew something was wrong. Had I come down there even a minute later, I’m not sure we’d be having this conversation right now, or any conversationat all.”

I swallowed against the thickness in my throat, remembering how close to death I’d felt in those moments. Trace had lost complete control over himself, and I’d never felt more distant and disconnected from him than I did in that basement with him.

“Is he okay?” I asked, because despite his total loss of control and regard for me, I knew this still wasn’t his fault. He was only in this position because of me and my asshole Alt.

He eyed me briefly as though considering how best to answer my question. “It hit him pretty hard once the bloodlust wore off and he realized what he’d done.”

My own guilt—part torpor, part nausea—descended over me like a dense fog rolling in over the coastline and smothered all the air from my lungs. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with right now. As if I hadn’t caused him enough pain. Now he hadthisto contend with.

I buried my face in my hands. “Why do I keep hurting him?”

“Jemma, you aren’t in control of what other people do.Heisn’t even in control of himself right now. This isn’t anyone’s fault. It was an accident that was bound to happen with all of us living under the same roof.”

I tried to absorb his words, to allow them to make me feel better, but I still couldn’t shake the guilt I felt or the worry I had that Trace was down there right that momentstill blaming himself. “I need to apologize to him,” I said and threw the covers off myself. “This is all my fault, and he needs to know that.”

Gabriel grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back down before I could make it off the bed. “I will take care of that. Right now, the only thingyouneed to do is rest. In fact, I’m going to insist on it.”

An overwhelming feeling of distress washed over me just then, spreading over my skin like a thick coat of paint. It took me a few beats to realize it wasn’tmyemotion. It was Gabriel’s.

I tilted my head to meet his eyes again, noting that his frown had deepened. “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, immediately nervous and suspicious.

He swallowed noisily, his throat bobbing as he searched my eyes fruitlessly, possibly trying to buy himself some time. Possibly trying to come up with a lie.

“Gabriel.Tell me.”

“I don’t want to worry you, but it took a lot more blood than usual to heal you today,” he informed, his voice sounding nearly as distressed as his face looked. “It was almost like your body was fighting against me—fighting to stop me from bringing you back.”

A cold shiver pricked the back of my neck. “Why the hell would my body do that?”

“That’s exactly what I was wondering.”

I shook my head, hating the way I could see the fear brimming in his eyes when he looked at me. I didn’t like when he worried about me. “It’s probably just because I was already in bad shape before Trace bit me,” I offered, searching his face to see if that eased his concern.

His brows furrowed. “Bad shape?”

“I invoked fire earlier today with Caleb and got hit with abad case of the bends,” I explained, forcing out an easy smile. “That’s probably what you were feeling.”

He considered it for what felt like a long while before finally nodding. “Yeah. That’s probably what it was.”

Phew. Crisis averted.

I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to shove the entire conversation out of my mind…except the weighty feeling of unease never left me, and this time, I wasn’t sure if it was his emotion I was feeling, or my own.

* * *

For possibly the first time ever in my short Slayer life, I’d done what I was told and spent the next hourrestingin my bed. Granted, I’d spent it combing through the Macarthur family codices, but at least I was still technicallyin bed.

Unfortunately, even though the grimoires were written in plain English, I hadn’t gotten any closer to my end goal of porting myself into Temple. The more I read through them, the more I realized Jaqueline had been right. Teaching myself to port wasn’t going to be an easy task. Mostly because the whole porting thing read like stereo instructions and by the end of my session, I’d gained nothing but a throbbing migraine.

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