Page 60 of Immortal Burden

I frowned in thought as I fought to dissect the situation. “The blood, the state of you… you’re trying to channel the supernatural energy to create magic. You’re tapped out? From your run-in with Cornelius?”

He turned his palms up and strained, brief puffs of green smoke emanating from them, but nothing more. “He fucked with my magic! Neutralized it, stole it, I don’t know. All I know is it’s gone and I can’t get it back. It’s been days now!”

“Oh my God,” I breathed. “Ry.”

Taking a magic-wielder’s power was a form of torture, something that could break them if it continued on without respite. Our magic was such an integral part of our being, that taking it was like slicing out a part of us, a huge part.

I reached out for him, to comfort him, but he shrugged me off. “Go. Let me figure this out.”

“You can’t use a being’s supernatural blood to do it. It’s not just the blood that you need, you need whoever donated. Both things make up the supernatural energy flowing through a being. But, even then, it’s a one-shot deal. You can’t store that energy. It’s not of your essence, not meant to be held within your body.”

He stared at me for a long time, looking absolutely crestfallen.

I couldn’t stand seeing him like this. “Ry—”

“I’ll find another way,” he cut in. He flicked his hand at the blue glow of my magic holding the door open, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t do a thing about it. It was so instinctual for us to use magic, that I was sure that’d been happening a lot, making the loss all the more brutal.

“Fuck!” he roared, turning and kicking a chair across the room.

“Stop!” I called out, before he did some serious damage. “I know how to help you, Ryker! Just calm down for a moment.”

He spun back to me. “How?”

“What I’m seeing is exactly what happens to lawbreakers in the Void, the prison that Cornelius created.”

“So? Unless you know the spell he used to create it—”

“I do,” I admitted.

He cocked an eyebrow in astonishment. “You’re telling me that you have the power to release the prisoners there?”

I looked away.

He stomped toward me, yelling, “We’ve talked about that place and I’ve told you that there are people there who don’t deserve to be trapped in that hell-space, Mia! You agreed with me. And all the time you knew you could release them?”

“We might not agree, but we also don’t have access to the big picture view of things like Cornelius does. They are there for a reason, reasons we cannot see, Ryker.”

He scoffed. “The two of you make me sick. This whole situation does. All that soul-deep connection bullshit. Our Covenant against Draco. All of it!”

A shudder ran down my spine. “He told you?”

“Yeah. He came to me and commanded me to do it. He gave me my marching orders. When I told him I needed time to think on it, he lost his shit and tried to choke me to death. Thank fuck Lucian showed up when he did.”

“I’m so sorry, I told him to leave you be. He promised.”

He frowned in thought. “This, figuring he’d come at me like that, it’s why you left me, wasn’t it?”

We locked eyes.

Intensity flared between us, the pain of our separation, unwanted on both ends, so many unsaid things struggling to come to the surface.

I could see the need in his eyes, the desperation to know the whole truth.

I’d thought keeping it from him would be better. If he’d known there was an actual obstacle standing in the way of us, keeping us apart, he would never have allowed it. He would’ve gone off half-cocked in a bid to destroy it, regardless of the consequences, or his own wellbeing.

When Ryker loved, he loved hard, and he was rarely able to see reason through it.

But I’d been wrong to deny him the truth. He needed the closure. He needed it so badly.

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