Page 66 of Bite of Passage
“The crystal.Somehow they figured out the girl in the prophecy is tied to the crystal.”Cade chinned toward Gemma.“Does she still have it?”
With one hand, he touched around her neck and nodded.“How did Petra find out about the prophecy and your assignment?Do you think VanFliet told her?”
“Probably.It makes no sense.We are blood brothers.Mingling with witches like Petra and that weird business with bugs… I don’t understand him at all anymore.He may have been extreme before, but it’s as if he’s lost his mind.I’m sure he’ll be my next assignment.”Cade blew out a breath.“My best guess is they have an oracle.How else would they know about our father’s crystal?”
“Petra showed up at my place two months ago.She’d communicated with our father’s dead spirit.”
Cade chuckled.“Would’ve loved to see that.”
“Based on her attitude, it didn’t go well.I took a commission south to deal with a problem and forgot about Petra’s visit.”
Gemma tensed against him and gasped.Awake.
Her whole body trembled.Her teeth chattered so hard it made speaking difficult.“So cold.Got to get off the horse.Hurts.”
He reined the horse to a stop; the animal was too happy to comply.As he dismounted, Skarde kept her tight to his chest.Cade stopped but didn’t dismount.
“We need to keep moving.”A line etched between Cade’s brows before he twisted in his saddle to study the gravel road they’d already traveled.Their pursuers might be twenty or thirty minutes behind them.Time off the horses ate up their lead.
“Hold onto me for a second,” Skarde ordered Gemma.
Her shaky hands managed a weak grip while he pulled off his coat to put it on the damp ground and laid her down on top of it.
“She stabbed me,” she wheezed out.“Why?I helped her.”
Staring into Gemma’s wide, shell-shocked eyes, he pushed hair off her face.“Witches are a dishonorable lot.”
“Said something about a blood vow and the future happening now.I’m losing too much blood.”Tears shimmered in her gaze.“I don’t want to die here.”
He hadn’t protected her.He’d known the moment she entered his realm today.If he’d tried harder, he could’ve freed himself and gotten to her in time.His hesitation had killed her.
Or forced him to consider turning her into an undead vampire like him.Damn it.
“I’m not going to make it, not here, without a blood transfusion and surgery.”She strained to sit up and probed her wound.Breathing hard, she fell back.“Even if I got into surgery in the next hour, there’s a low chance I’d survive.”
“Serish can help.”
“I’m not going to live that long.”Her lower lip quivered as she touched his face, the effort to lift her hand so great that once her soft fingers briefly caressed his skin they dropped hard to the ground.“I thought I’d handle dying better.This is embarrassing.”
“You have to hang on longer.”
Her lips managed a weak smile.“You know what I’ll regret?”
He shook his head.
“All the things I didn’t do with you.I had such dreams…”
Skarde lost his voice—or he would have spoken back to her, echoed her thought of regrets.Lacking words, he touched her hair.She turned her face into his palm and kissed it.
“It’s okay to say goodbye,” she whispered.“That way you don’t… no prophecy baloney to mess up your mind and your life.”
Her heart struggled to pump with her diminished blood supply.Its rate slowed.
“For fuck’s sake, Skarde, bite her before we lose her,” Cade snapped.“If you don’t, I’ll do it myself.”
“We don’t know if you could.”He closed his eyes in surrender.“Gemma, can you hear me?I’m not going to let you die.”
Her lashes fluttered open.“You have to.Time to raise your middle finger to the destiny gods.”
