Page 23 of Fading Sun

Besides, I don’t have to take Lysandra’s offer. I just want to hear it.

“Okay,” I say simply, and he nods, saying nothing more.

Morgan gives me a small smile, her eyes warm but worried. “Be careful,” she tells me. “Lysandra’s powerful, and she can be very persuasive. But no matter how tempting her offer might be, don’t agree to anything you fear you’ll regret.”

“I won’t,” I say. “I promise.”

I really, truly mean it.

Especially because I can’t imagine anything I’d regret more than jumping straight into the deep end and marrying Damien.

Morgan

Damien and Blaze go their separate ways—Blaze to rest in his room, and Damien to handle matters in the kingdom that need attending—leaving Amber and me on the roof.

We stay up there for hours, chatting until the sun starts to go down.

In those hours, I tell her everything that happened in the past few days.

Meeting Blaze in Zermatt. Our quest to find the quill. Not telling him I’m also a blood witch. The night we spent together in the tent. How angry he was with me—and still is—after I was forced to reveal the truth.

Everything.

Well, almost everything.

I leave out one part.

The wind, and the way it whispered to me, telling me not to trust him.

The way it kept urging me to kill him.

Speaking the words out loud feels too horrible.

I also don’t want Amber to worry that Blaze’s spell will have an adverse effect on her, too. After all, he did the spell on her with the Crimson Quill. The quill strengthens his magic, so he won’t make mistakes like he did with me and his mom.

The spell he did on her was also the only possible way to stop her magic from fading completely.

If she lost her magic, we’d lose our chance against the shadow souls.

Which means the spell is a risk we needed to take.

“You should talk to Blaze again,” Amber eventually says. “Now that he’s had time to cool down, maybe he’ll be ready to listen.”

“I don’t know.” I bite my lip and sit back in my chair, gazing out at Central Park sprawled out ahead.

Everything looks so peaceful out there.

I’m imagining what it must be like to be one of the tourists taking pictures of themselves enjoying sunset in the park when a breeze picks up, moving against my face in a way that instantly sets me on edge.

No, I think, gripping the arms of my chair. This isn’t anything supernatural. After all, we’re up on a roof. It’s perfectly natural for it to get breezy on roofs.

But the wind picks up, brushing against my ear, demanding my attention.

You saw the look in Blaze’s eyes when he used the quill on Amber. The darkness.

This time, the thought isn’t mine.

It belongs to it.

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