Page 41 of Too Dangerous To Die

Memories from the past comes flashing. Swirling images that keeps dancing in my head. Sometimes I catch it, sometimes I don’t.

That tomb was meant to be my end. Not my beginning. And yet here I am, watching the one who sealed me beneath it stumble across the sands, her face pale with shock, her scent drenched in magic and fear.

Fear of me.

I taste it in the air like blood.

I feel it under my skin like fire.

The hunger is clawing at my insides again. I can feel it rising, wild and primal. It isn’t just the need to feed, it’s the bond. Her magic calls to mine like a wound refusing to scab over. And I’m not whole without it.

Without her.

But this isn’t hunger anymore.

It’s craving. Maddening. Consuming.

I stumble slightly, bracing one hand against a jagged outcrop of stone to steady myself. My claws scrape against the rock. I try to breathe through it, to ground myself, but the smell of her is too close. Her emotions are a symphony that plays too loudly in my head. Pain, confusion, rage, guilt. They thread through me like a drug I can’t refuse.

And I want to drink it.

I want to press my mouth to her throat and draw her magic into me until I’m solid again. Until I’m whole. Until I forget what it means to be cursed and carved and hollow.

She stops walking.

I blink and realize I’ve closed the distance between us without meaning to.

Her voice is sharp. “Don’t come any closer.”

I freeze. She’s turned halfway toward me now, her hair windswept, her eyes too bright. Her aura pulses visibly, her magic bristling like a storm around her skin. She’s scared. Of what I am. Of what I want.

“You’re losing control,” she says, barely above a whisper.

She’s right.

And still, my feet move.

One step, another.

“Rhaegar,” she warns, her voice cracking.

I feel it before I realize what I’m doing—my hands tremble, my body seizing, muscles flexing in pain as the bond pulls taut. I reach for her before I can stop myself, fingertips grazing her wrist, skin to skin.

It’s like lightning.

A jolt that cracks through my chest, straight to the hollow where my heart should be.

I feel her magic rush through me in a dizzying, beautiful burn—and my fangs lengthen. My breath hitches. She gasps, pulling back, but I follow, my other hand catching her waist.

“Rhaegar—don’t?—”

My lips graze the hollow of her throat.

Gods, her pulse. Her heat. Her essence.

One taste. Just one.

“Stop!” she shouts.

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