Page 37 of Can't Bite This Feeling
It pulls hard and sudden, sharp as a blade to the sternum, resonating with fear.Not mine.Hers.
A flash of icy panic drenches me, consumes me. I stagger, my hand falling away from the soul I was about to trade. My breath lodges in my throat. My claws flex involuntarily.
Drusilla.
She’s not afraid.She’s terrified.It pours through the bond like a scream with no sound.
Panic surges in my blood like wildfire as I push away from the stall, sending the goblin vendor tumbling. I shove past wraiths, witches, and a startled kelpie wrangler. The Veiled Market erupts in curses and glowing sigils behind me, but I don’t stop.
I lock onto that thread, the beat ofher terror, and follow it like a trail of blood.
It leads me to the edge of Screaming Woods, but this place no longer resembles the rest of the magical town. Black trees claw the sky, rising before me like a warning. The wind howls like a dirge. Dead branches crunch beneath my boots. Charred roots wrap around the stones. Nothing grows here. No bird sings. The air tastes of ruin.
What fuck has happened here? The question hangs unanswered because I don't stop. Ican’t.
I don’t feel the cold or the rot.
I feelher.
She’s not far.
I move faster, talons extended, teeth bared—not for intimidation, but because my body doesn’t know how to be anything butready. Ready to kill. Ready to die. Ready to tear through anything that stands between me and the woman screaming through the bond.
A thin shimmer of old magic slashes across my vision like a veil half-lifted. I step through it and stumble into what might have once been sacred ground. What’s left is a ruin. The bones of a temple. Cracked columns half-swallowed by the earth. Vines strangling archways. Statues with faces worn smooth by time and fury.
But power still vibrates within. Twisting. Brewing. Humming like a live wire stretched too tight.
Drusilla is here, bound at the center of a ritual circle. Silver cords bite into her wrists, and her head is slumped forward, her ebony hair a dark curtain hiding her face.
And standing beyond the chalked runes isCassian.
The man who gave her life.
The man who stole it.
The man I killed once physically and a hundred thousand ways in my imagination.
Pale light pulses around him. Not firelight. Not spelllight.
Bloodlight. Thick and alive. A signature of a corrupted ritual. The kind that consumes, not empowers. The kind meant to kill the soul before the body.
His armor is tarnished and cracked, weeping shadows. His face is a cruel mask of triumph, but his eyes gleam with something deeper than madness.
Conviction.
He lifts a blade etched with blood runes. It hums with sacrificial energy.
“You’re just in time,” he says, voice full of glee. “You can watch her soul burn.”
“Step away from her,” I snarl, moving forward.
“Once, I was a general. A man of God. Ruler of an Empire. I raised her to continue that line.” He turns his eyes on me, hollow with fury. “And then you infected her. You stole her from me. Tainted her. She became something unclean. Somethinglesser.I wept for her soul. I spent centuries inPurgatory, and I felt the ripple, heard the whispers when she was brought back. And then Lucifer offered me the chance to finish what I had begun. To cleanse what remained.”
“No, Lucifer brought you back to level the playing field. He was bored and thought it would amuse him,” I spit, circling the runes. “You’re just another piece on his board, Cassian.”
Cassian's mouth curls into a cruel smile. “Perhaps. But tonight, I carve away the rot.”
His eyes flash toward Drusilla, still bound in silver cords, her head bowed, her body trembling against the bloodlight pressing in on her.
