Page 40 of Her Dreadful Will
He swept her hair aside, and the cool night air bathed the nape of her neck. “The one for Energy here, I think.” The smooth glide of the marker over that spot set Soleil’s nerves alight in the most illicit way. She focused on breathing normally.
Achan lowered his voice. “Del and Lindsey are special to me, but they’re not on my level. They don’t have anywhere near my power, so they can’t understand what it’s like. I thought maybe you could.”
“I had one witch friend in college,” she said. “Tarek, a lexical witch. He was—he was like a mentor to me.”
“Hm. More than a mentor?”
He must have picked up on the wistfulness in her tone.Damn his insight.
“I would have liked that, I guess. But he wasn’t attracted to me.”
“How is that possible? You’re charming. And beautiful on a level I didn’t expect—that I can’t really cope with, to be honest.” His fingers brushed against the small of her back as he sketched a circle and two outward-facing half-moons. The symbol for “goddess.”
Soleil could hardly manage a normal breath, but she refused to be derailed from her questions. “So you knew that another witch lived in town. But the Institute would never have given you my name, my photo, or my address. So how did you figure out it was me?”
“Easy.” He caught her hand, lifting it. “Your rings are a dead giveaway to anyone who knows what to look for. That and the fact that you moved to town not long before I did. It didn’t take a genius. And as I said, I read your radiance when you were at my office.”
Stepping around to face her, Achan placed the marker in her palm. “You can do the rest yourself. I’d suggest the symbols for Magic, Power, and Purity. Maybe Moonrise, and also Will, right here.” He touched two fingers to her breastbone; they were gone before she could slap them aside. “Since you went to the Institute, I doubt you’ll even need the book for reference.”
“What about you?” she said before she could think herself out of it. “Should I do your back?”
His eyes flickered with interest and his lips parted for just a second—enough of a crack in his calm facade for her to glimpse the craving underneath before his expression shuttered. She suppressed a smile. So he was only human after all.
“Fine.” He turned his back to her, waiting, his head lowered.
The tattoos she had seen at a distance curved in an arc along one of his shoulder blades—eight of them, about a finger’s breadth apart. A moth, a firefly, a spider, a beetle, a centipede, a mosquito, a wasp, and a praying mantis.
“Hmm, let’s see.” Soleil trailed her fingers halfway down his spine, and his hands curled at his sides. “We’ll start with Perception—not that you need more of it—and Energy.”
He did not speak, so she drew those marks and a few others, slowly and carefully. Achan didn’t move, not even when she finished with him and began sketching more symbols on her own stomach and chest. Hard and immobile as a statue, he watched the coven swirl and dance, bits of black driftwood caught in a whirlpool of moonlight and music.
Lindsey raised his hand, flicking it toward the twinkle lights twined through the branches, and they went out soundlessly, leaving the glade bathed only in moonlight.
“He’s an electromagnetic witch?” Soleil capped the marker and set it on a crate.
“A low-level one,” Achan murmured. “He’s improved since we began these gatherings.”
Soleil moved closer to him and cupped her hand around his clenched right fist, prying the fingers apart, splaying them out. Achan sighed, but he did not protest.
The music beat a low, ominous rhythm as she studied the second row of symbols tattooed across his fingers.
Passion. Pain. Corruption. Illusion. Panic.
Soleil barely breathed—would not let herself think, not yet. The music swelled and thundered in her brain, in her blood, as she took his left hand, the one with a direct line to his heart, and read the symbols.
Darkness, Freedom, and Ascendancy she had already seen; and now she could make out the other two—Horror and Chaos.
“These are not removable enhancements like rings,” she whispered. “These are permanent. You’ve marked yourself with these dark signs forever. Why?”
He lifted his face to the sky, where the moon swam in a lake of blue, the color of bruises and dead lips. “I believe you already used your free question. Before I answer any more, you and I are going to dance.”
16
Achan swept Soleil into the circle of dancers. In the splendor of moon and stars, black skin gleamed with silver highlights, brown limbs shimmered and swayed, and Achan was pale fire, his skin glowing with an intensity that was more than moonlight. The broad mandala on his chest and the symbols on his stomach showed in unnaturally sharp relief.
Soleil danced slowly, lifting her arms and swaying, her mind still circling around the symbols she’d seen on his hands.
Horror and panic.
