Page 99 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
“Be serious, Quinnevere. We don’t have the time for our usual and oh-so-pleasurable banter right now. You’re dying.” He clasped her face in his hands. “Do you want me to save your life? To mark you?”
“Yes. I—” She couldn't quite get the word to spill from her lips, but it didn’t matter.
Emrys cut open his wrist and shoved it into her mouth, forcing her to drink his blood. It tasted of iron and strawberries. Oh, she was going a bit mad. Blood did not taste like strawberries.
The world danced a pas de deux filled with endless pirouettes, promenades, and piques. A melody of sickness and frailty sang in her body.
While she drank, voices swirled around her.
“What did you do?” Emrys seethed, his voice an abyss of darkness and rage, but it wasn’t directed at her. “She’s dying, Francois."
“We were doing our job. You asked us to find the mirror—”
“I didn’t ask you to hurt—”
“What?Your girl?” There was a long pause between the words. “We had nothing to do with this.”
“Then why were you here?”
“Because we had Hadleigh’s familiars follow her.”
Quinn was pretty sure Emrys growled at that, or maybe she hallucinated . . . The world flipped sideways as she couldn’t hold her head up, and it slid down Emrys's arm. His steadying fingers gently held the nape of her neck and stabilized her, allowing her to see the hazy scene the right way up.
“Look on the bright side, she’s incredibly talented. She managed to kill a vampire.” A placating charm swirled from Francois’s tongue.
Emrys grunted and shifted, but she was unable to see the message he conveyed with his expression. “That vampire is not dead. He’s just incapacitated,” Emrys said.
“Yes, well, I know—”
“You will need to bind him with silver and trap him. I want to havesome wordswith him.” The way Emrys saidsome words,it sounded like he would rip the vampire’s throat out.
“Yes, we can do that.”
The next thing Quinn heard was footsteps. Many, many footsteps.
“I’ll also be having words with you, Francois.”
“I would expect so.”
Emrys made her drink for a long time. Possibly too long because by the end, Emrys had to clutch the wall for support. “This is weird, but I need to drink some of your blood. I can’t get you to safety if I am too weakened. But I need your permission.”
It was a weird request, but so was everything else that happened in the past week. “Yes, you can.” It was all the words she managed to speak. Although she didn’t think she would die, exhaustion tore at her and begged her to sleep.
“I should have listened to you,” he said.
A small laugh escaped her lips. “Always.”
“You’re definitely not ginger. You taste like copper and cinnamon,Quinnevere.”
She meant to respond, but instead, she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt him lift her and carry her half-conscious body. She nestled into his shoulder, drifting in and out of sleep. What had to be a door slamming jolted her awake. But she was still far too exhausted to open her eyes.
“I see you brought the ballerina from the papers,” a woman said with a regal lilt that commanded respect. A voice frigid and unyielding.
Quinn managed to raise a heavy eyelid a crack. The queen stood at the palace entrance, oozing authority, and vampiric grace.
“Grandmother.” Emrys used his arrogant, roguish voice. The one that either got him out of a lot of trouble orintoa lot of trouble.
“Grandson.” The queen smirked, her crimson hair streaked with grey, slightly bouncing with her movement. The interaction was tense and rang with falsities. “Why did you bring the barely conscious ballerina to Castle Hill?”
