Page 16 of A Study of Blood and Ichor

“Hello again, mellilla.”

The sound of Vain’s crooning voice had me shooting back into my consciousness. It was too soon for her to be back. She never returned more than once in a day.

I watched through Vain’s eyes as Ava approached the edge of the pentagram, her long coppery hair swishing across her back. His desire flared inside us, hot and bright and impossible to ignore.

Sometimes it felt as if there was no true separation between us at all anymore. Vain’s emotions only seemed to fuel mine no matter how small they were. He could spur my irritation into rage in a millisecond or turn dislike into malice. And despite the little interest I had in Ava, Vain drove me to lust after her.

“Let me speak to him,” she said to Vain.

“Skipping the niceties now, are we?”

She set her jaw in the way she did whenever Vain irritated her and she struggled not to show it. “I won’t ask again, Vain.”

The demon only raked his fingers through my hair and stared back at the witch, a challenge set in his gaze, and one that Ava took the opportunity to match.

Her lips parted, and the magic in her damned words threaded around my consciousness like a rope until they seized me and tugged. Tighter and tighter they wound, and soon each tug turned into a sharp yank pulling me forward.

Vain struggled against her, but he didn’t hold out for very long. He was weak. Too long in this cage had drained his power, so much so that even I noticed his well had run significantly low.

The final pull yanked me forward, and I bounced back into the driver’s seat. Every sensation ran over me like a tidal wave. My wrists and ankles ached, bruised and raw from the iron manacles that dug into my skin. The scent of smoke from the braziers coated my nostrils and throat, accompanied by traces of Ava’s faint eucalyptus scent. Cool droplets of sweat clung to my brow and dripped from the ends of my hair.

It was all so overwhelming that I thought I might be sick.

Vain, I called out to him.

No answer. His presence was there, but significantly dimmed.

My eardrums buzzed as I prodded at him mentally until I became faintly aware that Ava was speaking to me.

“Rory? Rory, can you hear me?”

I glared at her, my jaw clenched tight. “I told you not to pull me out.”

“Rory,” Ava said again, this time with so much pity it was nearly unbearable.

“What do you want?” I winced when my voice broke, the words sounding raw as they tumbled out of me.

When she didn’t answer right away, I looked at her—really looked—and that was a fucking mistake. God, it was a sin how gorgeous she was. How fuck-able her mouth looked with her lips slightly parted as she stared at me with those amber eyes that filled my head with sinful thoughts. And it didn’t matter to me whether it was Vain’s lust, my own, or some perverted combination of both that was driving me to want her. I craved every part of her. There was an ache to claim her. She was driving me fucking crazy, and I doubted she knew how much.

“Why don’t you fight it?” she asked with a gentleness I did not deserve.

“Fight Vain?” I asked. She blinked in response. “Why should I?”

Ava looked at me as if she were trying to piece together an impossible puzzle, some unsolvable riddle where the answer sat just out of reach. Like I was nothing but an anomaly to her.

“Is that the lie Vain has been feeding you? That you’re nothing without him?”

I scoffed and caught my hands moving over my arms subconsciously. “Contrary to popular belief, not all demons lie.”

Her brows scrunched in a mix of confusion and anger, and I felt Vain begin to stir, his attention falling to parts of her he wanted to taste and devour. He squirmed within me like a ravenous dog waiting to be unleashed, and it took everything I had to get him to ease up, since his twisted desires were beginning to make my dick twitch and harden to an embarrassing point.

“Careful. If you keep making faces like that, you’ll only get Vain more excited than he already is. He loves it when you get riled up.”

“You can remind Vain that I have other ways of getting its attention.” Her eyes flicked to the wards at my feet, the ones I knew she could manipulate to cause Vain a world of hurt. She liked to use them when he got too mouthy with her or when she needed to display some sense of control of the situation.

“Is that why you wore a low-cut top today?” I challenged with a quirked eyebrow.

Ava’s attention dipped to the curves of her breasts peeking over the scooped collar of her tight light-blue shirt before snapping back to me, her eyes flaring a fiery gold. She was so easy to rile up—too easy.

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