Page 49 of Threaded

Love is weakness.

Yeah, yeah.

She smiled up at him softly. “Thank you.”

Sebastian tilted his own lips up in answer. Still holding her hand, he led her to the blanket in the center of the candles, pulling her so they were again standing face to face. He then tugged her down, kneeling with her on the blanket. Soon they both sat there, knees touching, the gleaming steel knife lying beside Mariah’s right thigh. She felt warm fingers grip her chin just as her gaze snagged on the blade, her attention pulled back to honeyed hazel eyes.

“Remember, Mariah. With me.” She nodded slowly, just once, and then the smooth leather hilt of a blade was pressed into her palm. She held his gaze just as the corner of her mouth quirked up into a half-smirk.

“Sebastian, I know we’re still getting to know each other, and I’m into a lot … but I’m not sure knife-play falls into that category.”

Sebastian looked at her. Tilted his head. Blinked once. And thenrolled his eyes.

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not either.”

Mariah couldn’t hold back her snicker.

He chuckled once. “By the Goddess, Mariah. You’re already making this difficult enough as it is.” He drew in a deep breath, and Mariah schooled her face back into seriousness. “Ignore the knife for a second. I need you to draw out your magic. Not all of it, just … a tendril. A thread.” He met her gaze again, a slightly sheepish smile on his lips. “At least, that’s what Ryenne told me it would feel like to you.”

Mariah grinned back at him, but also kicked herself internally.Is that something I should have told them all about this past week? The nature of my magic?“Ryenne sure does like to talk, doesn’t she?”

Sebastian shrugged. “She’s been a queen for over three hundred years. I’m sure she has gotten quite used to having a hand in everyone’s business, and I imagine it’s hard to suddenly stop. She means well, though.”

Mariah agreed, and then turned her attention to that dark well within her, calling forth a single thread of golden light. The silver magic, she noticed, had no interest in her in that moment, at total odds to the coiling gold power. The shimmering aureate tendril whispered its way through her soul, her skin, until it filled her very being. She saw her skin begin to glow, the hint of gold pulling out the matching color in Sebastian’s gaze, his expression morphing to one of awe.

“Sebastian. What now?”

He shook his head slightly, as if snapping from a trance, the short strands of his dark hair falling across his forehead. “Sorry. You’re just … incredible.” He took a deep, steadying breath, then reached to grab the wrist of the hand holding the curved knife, drawing it up so it gleamed in the air between them.

“On the Mark, do you see that solid black line running through the center of the circle?” Mariah nodded. Sebastian held her stare. “You’ll need to make a cut right over it, deep enough to draw blood. It won’t hurt me, I promise.” He paused. “And then you’ll make a similar cut on your own palm. Next, you’ll focus that thread of magic into your hand, right into the cut, and press that hand to my Mark. The magic should take things over from there.”

Mariah could only stare at him, blade still in her hand.

“That’swhat no one would tell me before now? A bunch of prudes, all of you.”

Sebastian grinned at her, but said nothing.

He dropped his grip from her wrist, and without hesitation she leaned forward, pressing the cold steel of the blade to Sebastian’s chest, right over the line in his Mark. Bright red blood immediately welled from the wound, spilling down the planes of his chest and stomach. She caught her eyes before they could follow that ruby trail any further.

Focus, Mariah.

She inhaled once, her hand surprisingly steady as she withdrew the blade from Sebastian’s chest. Switching the knife to her left hand, she looked down at her open right palm and pressed the sharp edge down into her skin. She winced slightly at the sting as she dragged the blade across her calloused hand, watching her own blood well up and drip onto her bare thighs. She tossed the knife off to the side, skidding slightly across the blanket and then the marble, the only sound besides the wind and their heaving breath.

Mariah returned her gaze to Sebastian, his stare wide and watching. With a breath, she focused that tendril of golden light on her skin into the cut on her hand, the glow on her body fading as the blood that dropped from the wound began to glitter with shimmering power. Looking back at Sebastian, he smiled again at her, nodding once, clear devotion in his hazel eyes.

And when she pressed her glowing, bleeding palm to the Mark on his chest, her mind exploded with light and every emotion imaginable.

* * *

She floated through time and space, unsure of where she was or where to land.

The tidal wave of light that had swept her away faded rapidly, replaced by thick, inky blackness. Suddenly, out of the darkness, she became aware of a shimmering golden thread, its twisting and beckoning through the void like a call from home. She latched onto it, following it without a second thought as the world around her began to solidify, the darkness retreating just enough for her to see a great chasm yawning open before her.

A chasm where a bridge of golden thread began to weave itself into existence, forming out of the nothingness around her.

She drifted forward, onto the shimmering bridge of light. It wasn’t complete, still forming over the pit, but she wasn’t afraid. No, even in that vacuum of existence spanning beneath her, she felt nothing but safety here. She drifted further and further along that glittering arch, and soon the light had raced so far ahead of her that she could see the other side, the world there also growing more solid and real.

And there, waiting on the other side of the chasm, was a figure, a shroud of soft gray, golden hazel, and the warm brown of fresh-tilled earth. It was solid, comforting, steady.Familiar.

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