Page 131 of My Summer Girl

I loosen my grip, wanting to shake some sense into this sorry sod. He’s a clusterfuck waiting to happen. And while Raevar probably wouldn’t approve of me making decisions for him, this is an area I can’t risk.

His life matters to me.

He’s mine, forever.

Just like Dulce and Vera.

Dragging Cin by his collar to my room, I make sure to grab the ceremonial blade I keep in my desk. It’s heavy—an ungodly sight if I’m quite honest.

Letting him go, I grab the ornate blade and dig the tip into my thumb. Cin’s eyes still blaze, but there’s almost a calmness there.

It’s no longer as intense as before, almost like my agreement to give him the information he’s seeking is calming the beast within.

Handing him the dagger, I watch as he repeats my own steps. This will either end in something good or in shambles, but there’s no in-between.

Placing my thumb upward, I wait for his to meet mine. We connect them and then place our other hands over them.

“By this blood we bind,” I vow. Cin repeats after me.

“Raevar Tora is unbound to you. Any pact you made with him ends with this blood rite. If things go south, that’s on you.”

He nods, not seeming to worry about the implications. “I didn’t care to make the deal with him in the first place. He’s just the only Orukna I know. I wanted a one-way trip to Obscura. It was him who forced a time and safety contract to protect me.”

“Well, it’s void now. I won’t allow that on his conscience.”

“You’re a good mate,” he praises, but I narrow my gaze at him. “I didn’t want him to feel me pass from this plane.”

“Does he realize that you can’t possibly make it into that place alive?”

He shakes his head. “He has it in his head that I’ll somehow be able to enter there with a beating heart.”

I scowl at him, knowing he could’ve ruined Raevar’s soul with that kind of attachment. “You’re lucky I don’t end you myself,” I hiss.

“It’d make this easier,” he jokes, the self-deprecation a problem that he should seek therapy for.

I reach inside my desk, opening my safe, and grabbing the port that’s red and glowing. It looks almost like blood nestled in the chamber, but it’s not, it’s death. It’s the force of death from the essence of a sorrow. Something that will inevitably allow him in the realm.

“Good luck, but don’t think for a second I won’t be telling your siblings.”

His eyes widen in fear, but he shakes his head. “They won’t care.”

“You don’t know them very well. You may not be close in age to Arson and Pyro, but they’d burn the world down to save you. And Blaze, he’d risk everything for your happiness.”

He shakes his head. “Save them the trip.”

Before I can offer him sage advice, he snaps his fingers and poofs away. What he doesn’t realize is to use a port-path to Obscura, he’ll have to find a gargoyle that can travel there and guide his soul, or it’ll be lost.

Because even if his heart ceases to beat, only sorrows, grims, gargoyles, and necromancers can go there for their afterlife or as a guide.

Now that’s done, I’ll have to do what I came here for.

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