Page 105 of Demon's Bride

“Eren?” I croak.

With a half-strangled sound, he grabs my face so he can look at me. When he sees I’m alright, he crushes me back to him, though his shaking continues.

“You were gone,” he says. “You went limp, and your magick… your scent… I couldn’t sense any of it.”

A tremor passes through me. Remembering the unsettling magick of that strange, nowhere place, thinking that I could have beentrappedthere, makes my stomach turn over on itself. It turns so violently that I stagger to my feet and barely make it to the washbasin at the side of the room before I’m heaving up whatever’s left of my lunch.

Eren’s behind me a second later, pulling my hair out of my face and rubbing circles over my back as I hunch over and heave. When I’m at least semi-confident that nothing else is coming back up, I stumble over and collapse onto a stool. Elbows braced on the table, I rest my forehead in my upturned palms and focus on dragging deep breaths in and out.

Eren hovers behind me. He keeps his hands on me, touching lightly, brushing soothing caresses over my arms and back like he’s still trying to convince himself I’m not going anywhere. I lean backwards into him and let him take all the comfort he needs.

And truthfully, it’s a comfort for me as well to have someone to lean on.

No, not just someone. I’m thankful to have my demon here, standing behind me, lending me some of his iron-steady strength. With each inhale, I take the sharp, clean spice of him into my lungs and with each passing moment I feel my heartbeat slow to match his.

“I was with her,” I say after collecting myself for another minute. “With the first witch. Well, kind of. I’m not sure what it was—a vision, maybe, or a memory. Or maybe just some spell she put on the book while she was still alive.”

“Did she speak to you?” Eren’s hands drift to my shoulders, massaging lightly.

“Sort of?” I say. “The words weren’t quite like speech, but they came from her.”

“And what did she say?”

I can’t answer him right away. Instead, I spin around on the stool until I’m facing him. Still without speaking, I lean in and nuzzle my face against the bare skin beneath his jacket, taking more of his delicious scent into my lungs.

When he places a finger under my chin and turns my face up to look at him, his eyes widen at the tears pooling in my own.

“Allie—”

“Soul magick,” I interrupt him, giving him a brief explanation of what I know about it. It’s not much, truthfully, but the gist comes across well enough.

Power. A witch’s pure power.

“I don’t know if I’ll have it in me to fix this,” I tell him, pressing a damp cheek back to his chest and letting him pull me close again.

When a small sob of exhaustion and frustration and fear slips out, Eren’s entire body tenses against mine.

“Enough,” he says, voice hoarse and raw. “Enough of this for today. You’ve done enough.”

He doesn’t have to tell me twice, and I don’t offer any protest as he scoops me into his arms and portals us back upstairs.

Chapter 37

Eren

Back in our chamber, I settle Allie into one of the chairs before the hearth and fall onto my knees in front of her. She seemed alright when she first came out of her vision, or wherever the grimoire took her, but now she’s fading fast.

“What can I do?” I ask her. “What do you need?”

She closes her eyes for a few long moments, tears still sliding down her cheeks, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so helpless.

Soul magick, she said to me back in the workroom, is what’s needed to repair the bargain. Soul magick used by the first witch to bind herself in to this realm and soul magick that’s lasted hundreds of years.

Until now. Until it’s fallen on my Allie to fix it.

I’m terrified. For her, first and foremost, but also for both our realms, for the implications of a broken bargain. Allie still doesn’t believe in her own power or in her ability to make this work, and I don’t know what I can say to comfort her. I barely understand it, truthfully, and as much as I believe with my entire soul that she is enough, more than enough, I don’t know if there’s anything I can say right now to improve the situation in the slightest.

In the bond between us, I can feel everything she does. Fear, sorrow, exhaustion, it all pulses through me. I’d take it all from her if I could.

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