Page 4 of Sustaining
“It’s powerful magic. That’s why I couldn’t make that ring for you. The same chaotic power that burst into that crystal in such a beautiful, damaging way is what’s scarring Arrie’s injury. She’ll always have that scar. But…maybe I can try again. Not try to heal her but try something else. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’ll work.”
My gaze lifts and meets those intense, determined crimson eyes.
“Okay, let’s do this.” Chaos claps like this is the only thing important to him in his life.
All the death, the destruction, all of the mess I’ve made of his life.
And he still loves me completely.
Three
Dark Seduction
For Chaos being so damn excitedto see the house I grew up in, Rime was right; he really did just want to get in my bed. His snores are soft as his big body consumes every inch of the small mattress. They’ve all lost a lot of sleep. Since the moment they met me really. Sinister and I pass each other a small smirk before we peer up at the man sleeping on his stomach in the bed above us. Kain plots going back to the village to clear my name in long and overly adamant details while Rime nods along here and there, but mostly the ice dragon just stares out my window that overlooks the sloshing sea.
The room is soft colors of lavender and lime. My mother and I decorated it when I was a teenager. The shades of purples lining the bed and the window are accented with the light-green rug that I remember my mother picked out for me. It’s centered perfectly beneath my bedframe. It’s sweet. This entire room feels youthful. Innocent. And naïve.
It was a short walk here. The house is about a half mile from my mother’s bakery. It was her bakery attic that I’d woken up in after I’d used my magic to steal us away from the shifter’s village. It makes me smile to myself that my instinct wasn’t to go home. There are all these gentle memories I have of growing up in that store. As a little girl, I’d go in early with my mother before school. She’d prepare the daily loaves of bread that always sold the most, dozens and dozens of delicious, soft, buttery bread that I’d help her kneed and pan up. But then, just before I’d have to leave, she’d pull a hot cookie from a tray. Double chocolate chip. Just one. She’d make a single cookie for me every morning.
That’s what stays in the back of my mind. Among all the negative memories I carry around with me, that one’s still there. It’s strange the things we don’t realize we loved until it’s the only thing we have left to look back on in life.
And that’s exactly what drew me home, I guess.
“Do you feel that?” Sinister’s gaze catches mine, pulling me away from all my thoughts as he holds my hand in both of his. His fingers drift so slowly up the length of my scar and so slowly back down.
I shake my head at him. The two of us have been at this for hours with no luck. We sit on the floor, leaning against the bed. His body is turned toward mine, putting all of his serious attention into the pink flesh marring my right hand. Circles glide across my skin; he massages my hand with such slowness I wish I really could feel it. It looks deliciously wonderful.
Maybe he can do my left hand next.
His palm poises above my hand, just at the cruel end of the jagged line, and his magic claws and then sinks gradually into my body. It’s a tingling thing that makes me sit up straighter, makes me inch closer, makes me want to climb right into his lap until my lips are against his.
But the numbness is still there. He peers up at me with sweet, hope-filled eyes, like he’s asking if that amazing feeling fixed me. I shake my head at him, and he sighs with disappointment.
A quiet beat slips by before he speaks.
“I could extract it,” he says it so quietly it sounds suspicious.
“Extract it?”
“Have you ever heard of Dark Seduction?”
Once more, I shake my head at that and try my best to pretend like it doesn’t sound like complete sensual bliss in my mind. Tell me more about this Dark Seduction, Sinister.
“Kreedence always wanted me to learn to steal power. Weaken others. Devour and kill them slowly.”
Well. That’s not entirely what I was visualizing. Maybe next time he should lead with that ‘kill them slowly’ bit.
“That sounds kind of…extreme.”
“Demons strengthen by feeding like this. It strengthens the dark parts of our magic.” His hands lift a little wildly as he explains, and my eyes only widen the more he talks. “It wouldn’t kill you unless I fed off of you daily. This would just tire you out while I took the strongest power that fills your body. The worst that could happen to you is you’d have to wake Chaos up and ask him to scoot over for a nap.”
The dimples of his smile make me trust him. If only I knew that smile wasn’t hiding something else. He’s glazing the worry in his eyes over with the sexy, distracting smile.
It isn’t working.
He’s hiding something.
“What does it do to you, Sin?”
