Page 24 of Veinblood
The wordsI spoke aloud against her skin while buried inside her return with uncomfortable clarity. It isn’t that I didn’t mean them, it’s because I did … Last night I gave her words I’ve never spoken to another soul. Even in the light of day after passion has been spent, they remain true. I’ve given her a part of myself that no one has ever been granted before.
I reach across the bed, already knowing she isn’t there. The awareness is more than just a lack of her body beside mine. It’s deeper. A connection that has engraved itself into my bones, my shadows, my consciousness. It’s something I never expected to find for myself. Intimacy and affection are for other people, not the Vareth’el, especially one who is fighting a war he can never win. One who has to put duty to his people before anything else.
And yet …
I cutoff that thought. It serves no useful purpose. My focus must be on returning to Meridian as soon as I can, before Sereven destroys Stonehaven and the remaining Veinwardens.
But I don’t move, other than to roll onto my back and open my eyes. Movement in the corner catches my eye, and I turn my head to find my raven perched on the small table beside the bed.
“You should not be out.”
Its head tilts, eyes gleaming.
“How long were you watching her before you brought her to Meridian?” I don’t expect an answer, not really, but its beak opens on a silent sound, and images flood my mind.
Chicago, two winters past.
I don’t know how I know that, just that I do.
The familiar circles high above the strange city, driven there by the summoning spell that has been seeking a compatible person for twenty-five years. Below, millions of humans move through their lives, unaware of the magic searching among them.
The raven’s sight pierces through glass and metal, hunting for something that holds the resonance it needs. The spell demands someone capable of breaking binding magic, someone with latent power. It couldn’t find anyone in Meridian and had to search farther. A search that took it to other worlds. Most of the creatures registered as empty. They held no spark, no potential for magic. But then …
A flash of silver catches its attention. It isn’t a visible light, but something that can only be seen by something that looks deeper than the surface.
A young woman emerges from one of the tall structures, pulling a dark coat tight around her body to ward off the cold. She moves differently than the others. There’s something in theway she holds herself that suggests she doesn’t quite belong, even among her own kind.
The raven descends, landing on a metal pole near where she passes beneath. When she does, the silver flare intensifies. The sense of power reaches it. Raw and untapped, buried so deep she doesn’t know it exists. But it calls to the spell like metal to a lodestone.
Satisfaction floods through the familiar.
Perfect.
But the raven doesn’t act right away. Something holds it back. An instinct that this choice must be timed precisely. And so it watches, and it learns about the woman who caught its eye.
She has friends—a small group she meets regularly—but even among them, there’s distance. The raven watches her laugh with them, yet sees how she looks away when they speak of families, of futures, of belonging somewhere. She participates but doesn’t quite connect. She’s present, but not entirely there.
The power inside her pulses stronger when she’s alone in her dwelling, surrounded by the life she’s built. Sometimes, when the loneliness grows too heavy, objects around her develop hairline cracks. Lights flicker. Sparks jump from her fingertips. Small manifestations of the magic she doesn’t know she carries. When it gets strong enough to break something, or cause a shock, she explains it away.
Winter deepens. The raven watches as she attends parties with her friends, then returns to her empty home, staring out of windows, eyes filled with a longing for something she can’t identify, but knows is missing.
For two years, it watches her. Here is someone already caught between worlds. Living in one while unknowingly belonging to another. Someonewhose strongest ties are fragile enough that severing them wouldn’t destroy her, but whose power grows more accessible to the binding spell with each month that passes.
Finally, the moment arrives. The raven watches from its perch as she crosses a street, thinking about home, and warmth, and friends who care for her but don’t truly know her.
It blinks, spreads its wings, and opens its mouth. The spell releases, flying toward her, sure as an arrow. The world tears open around her. Light floods the space between realms.
And Ellie Bennet vanishes from Chicago to appear in the Sunfire Dunes of Meridian, carrying her coat and confusion, and all that untapped power the familiar spent years confirming was exactly what the summoning sought.
It releases me from the memories and I stare at my familiar with new understanding.
“You watched her for two years before bringing her to me.”
The raven tilts its head again, eyes glinting with what I’m sure is satisfaction.
Two years of the raven’s instincts working with the spell to confirm she was the right choice. That she was powerful enough to break the binding that held me to the tower. That she was lonely enough, despite her friendships, to be searching for something more.
All of it leading to the moment when the summoning could finally claim what it had been seeking all along.
