Page 182 of Taken By Touch and Torment

It felt like I was shouting, but my lips weren’t moving. My eyes weren’t opening.

“She’s possuming,” Snow said.

“She’s fucking—what?” Uriah asked.

I could hear their voices clearly, but my body was completely shut down. My glamour was locked in place, like a thick black film I couldn’t clear.

“I can see her aura,” Snow said. “She’s alive.”

“Sadie?” Uriah asked.

“Auras aren’t in my wheelhouse,” Sadie retorted. “Explain yourself, please, witch.”

“My coven has this ancient text with a chapter on succubi and incubi,” Snow said. “My high priestess allowed me to read it, but I couldn’t take it or replicate any of its contents. It was part of my research, when I first learned what Scarlett was and wanted to help. There was the briefest mention of what they called possuming. You know, like the animal. Because sex demons are so prone to, well, being murdered, some of them develop an ability to fake death when real death is imminent. It’s a defense mechanism, in the hopes that their aggressors relent and they can escape. It’s a death glamour, basically. It can last for hours.”

“Can she hear us?” Uriah asked.

Yes! I yelled, to no avail.

“I’m not sure. I don’t know a lot about it,” Snow admitted.

“Knock it off, Trouble,” Uriah muttered, hope in his voice. “The attention-seeking has gotten out of hand.”

Liquid poured down my throat, and I didn’t have the ability to swallow or cough.

“You’re safe,” Rune said, clutching me tight. “You’re safe.”

My once-faint heart was thunderous now, the potion working instantly. All of my bodily systems were coming back alive, and I could once again feel pain.

Like the stabbing, stinging bundle of nerves that was screaming in my neck. Or the excruciating throb in the wrist Evangeline had snapped.

I finally coughed, and it was violent. I heaved in air, my vision filling with patchy darkness.

“No, no, no,” Mason said, seeming to burst into the room. “She was fucking dead.”

I wasn’t sure if I was hearing laughter or sobs anymore. Maybe a blend of both.

“I’ll get a healer,” Mason said, softer now.

“I can’t see,” I croaked.

“Give it a minute,” Snow said. I felt her hand on my arm, grounding me.

Rune just held me. I could hear the way his heart had started up again in tune with mine, his breathing matching the rise and fall of my own chest.

He gasped. My vision returned, and I locked on his dark eyes, watery and filled with emotion deeper than the sea.

“I thought that had been the end,” I rasped. “I would’ve been so fucking pissed. If Evangeline had been the last thing I saw.”

Rune snorted. “Me too, Little Flame. I don’t think pissed adequately describes what I would have felt. What I—what I did feel.”

He trembled, a muscle in his jaw feathering as a shudder rolled through him. His shadows crawled all over me.

A single tear fell down Rune’s face.

I lifted up even as my entire body protested against it.

I caught the tear on my tongue, following its trail up his cheek.

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