Page 186 of Bitten & Burned
I frowned. “What?”
“She has five of you, right? I’ve only met Vael. Well, to be fair, when I met Vael, there was only Vael, and I only just heard about you all in one of the letters she sent, so, I mean…”
“Who are you, again?” I asked again.
“Sorry, I’m Thalia. Wyrmwood. Old friend of Rowena’s?”
“Right, right. Thalia. You sent her letters.”
“Right… um… is she here?”
“Thalia?” came a groggy voice from behind me.
“Vael! There you are. Tell me Rowena’s with you!”
“She should be…” I glanced back in, Fig meowing over and over, running to his empty food dish and back again, no Rowena in sight. “Shit, no… she must still be at Blackthorn. She said she was going there today.”
“I was just there, and she was gone. They said she hadn’t been there since before lunch.”
“What?” I blinked and stood back. “Come in… I…”
“She had these books on her desk, do you think these had anything to do with?—”
She handed over the stack of metallurgy books in her hands. I recognized them from the list her father had given her. “No, I don’t think so, these are just books her dad wanted her to read…” I rubbed my hands over my face. “You said she hadn’t been there since lunch?”
“Before… she sent a Pulse and asked me to meet her there for lunch. I got there at one, and her assistant said she was gone.”
I shook my head, slumping into a chair, head in my hands. “This makes no sense… I?—”
It hit me like I’d been shot. Arrow through my eye. Pain and wrongness. Electric charge. Something was off with the bond.
“Fuck…”
“By Camarae’s shadow…” Vael gasped. “Rowena!”
Heart pounding. Mouth dry. Blood roaring in my ears so loud it drowned everything else.
Something was wrong.
Not wrong—gone.
The bond wasn’t gone, not exactly. But it had dulled. Muted. Like a candle about to be snuffed under glass.
I stood up too fast and nearly fell, tripping over the coffee table. My chest ached. My hands were shaking.
“What? What is it?” Thalia was still here. Looking at me like I’d gone nuts. Maybe I had.
Vael tried to explain, but the feeling was affecting both of us. “It’s… something wrong with the bond.”
“You can… feel that?”
“Yes, in vampiric blood bonds, there are—I don’t have time to explain, but yes. I can tell. Something’s wrong. Something happened… she’s faint… she’s…”Vael trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
“No,” I said, breath catching. “No, no, no, come on, sweetheart. Don’t do this.”
I closed my eyes, and that’s when I felt it. Just a flicker. A spark of her pain. Not her voice, not a word. Just raw need. A thread of it. Thin and strangled and buried so deep I could barely touch it.
But it was her.
