Page 147 of A Bond with the Dark

“I don’t know how to be,” he says sadly.

“I hear that,” I reply, my voice shaky and unreliable. “I don’t know what the hell I am now.”

“Well, I would say that you, clearly, are a phoenix.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

It’s not anger I feel for him; it’s anger at the situation that seethes through me. There’s no one to tell me what I’m supposed to do now. I’d risen someone from the dead with my tears. I fucking glow! I have fangs. What the fuck am I?What does this mean? What am I supposed to do now?I am screaming inside.

“I don’t know.”

“I brought your brother back from the dead with a tear! What the hell is that?”

“It was mixed with a little of your blood. I don’t know if that means anything at all. But it would appear—to me—you are magickal now. And your bite kills the warlocks that spell the grimspawns. Bash killed you—” His voice trails off with his eyes, somewhere to the depths of the lake before us. “Why did Bash kill you?”

“Why did your blood rise me?”

His eyes are back on mine. “What?”

“I rose up out of my body when I was burning. I watched the rest of that all go down. You ran over to the ashes of me; you were bleeding. The moment your blood dropped onto my ashes, the fire rose back up, and I was pulled back into them with my body.”

Blinking wildly, he rubs his hands over his face, massaging his eyebrows, furrowing them, and then relaxing them again. “What?”

“Bash put me in the ashes, and you rose me out of them.”

“I have no idea where to begin to figure out what that is.”

“Do you think your mom would know?”

“I doubt it. But we can see.” He hesitates, then his eyes lighten a bit. “What about your aunts?”

Thinking of Hilda, Maggie, and the grimoires they’d said they had at their house, that may be what we need to try to put all of this together.

“I can call them tomorrow. At least we can leave here now, knowing you’re not marked anymore.”

“But my brother is. We have to help him. And find my sister.”

“How can we find Scarlet? And help your brother?”

“I don’t know. But you are the key to breaking the curse. We have to help him.”

It’s a good thing Dom is showing emotions for his brother.

“Okay,” I say tenderly.

Rising up from the ground, he offers me his hand. When I’m at eye level with him, he holds me still, and his eyes taper toward me.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.” As he says this, he moves my hair from my neck where Bash bit me and caresses where the two puncture holes should have been.

“Your bite,” he says, and there’s a questioning in his voice.

“What?”

“The marks, where there should be holes. They’re gone.”

I shake my head, unable to process any more of anything else. “Well, considering I just rose from ashes, it makes sense, in a weird ‘you’re a vampire’ sort of way. Six months ago, and I wouldn’t have believed any of this.”

He kisses me like I’m as fragile as glass, and my heart swells. My feelings for him have not abated after all. These past few days, they’ve been hard to recognize with everything that has happened.

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