Page 107 of Forged in Blood

I drop my hand away from her face, but she continues staring up at me. “To protect you, perhaps. I do not know. It is an ancient practice that is rarely used, partly because it requires powerful magic that is uncommon in today’s times.”

Her expression lights with hope, no doubt elicited from finally learning a little about who she truly is. I try not to let myself wonder if it has anything to do with me. “Was it another elementai?” she asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “That is impossible.”

Her eyelashes flutter against her pink cheeks. “Why?”

I twist my neck from side to side and take a second to gather my thoughts. I cannot imagine how it would feel to be the only one of your kind. For a girl who has been alone her entire life, it is the cruelest of fates. Although perhaps that makes her better equipped to handle it than most. “As far as I am aware, you are the only elementai in existence.”

Her mouth drops open, her beautiful pink lips glistening with her tears. I tip my face up to the ceiling and groan. This must be a test. A punishment for all the evil I have done in my life.

“The only one?” she whispers, drawing my gaze back to hers. “What happened to the others?”

Pain and regret crash over me, threatening to swallow me whole. Or drag me straight to the netherworld, where I belong. “They were all wiped out a long time ago.”

“How? By who? Then how am I one of them? What?—”

“Ophelia!” Her name leaves my mouth on a roar, but it is a plea. A plea for her to stop tearing at the tattered pieces of my soul.

“But I just want to…” Her bottom lip trembles.

I scrub a hand through my hair. “No more questions.”

She jumps up, puffing her chest out and balling her hands into fists at her sides. “No!” she shouts. “You can’t just drop that on me and then tell me no more questions. That’s not fair.”

My hand is around her throat before I can weigh the consequences. “Do not dare speak to me about fairness.” Her throat works beneath my palm, her eyes wide and unblinking. “You need to learn to control your emotions, Ophelia. If you do not, there will be no hiding what or who you are when you tap into your power.”

“Okay,” she croaks, and the way she submits to me has me clinging to my sanity with failing restraint. I need to get away from her. Need to stop touching her. With a surge of herculean effort, I drop my hand to my side.

“You will tell nobody of what I have told you today. You cannot begin to understand the ramifications if anyone were to discover what you are.”

She presses her lips together, and I can practically see a hundred more questions tumbling over each other inside her head. Thankfully, she only asks one for now. “Can I not even talk to the boys?”

“They are already a part of you, Ophelia. They know what you are. They are the only people you can ever trust not to hurt you. Do you understand me?”

“And you too, right?” she whispers, a desperate entreaty in her eyes.

I shake my head. “Not me.”

Her bottom lip trembles, and I swallow down the urge to retract that statement.

I would die for her as surely as I would take my next breath, but she has no need for such knowledge.

Chapter

Fifty-Six

OPHELIA

“Ibrought supplies.” Cadence shakes a bag of Tate’s chocolate chip cookies.

I pull two glass bottles of soda from my backpack and hold them in the air. “Me too.”

Giggling, she drops into the chair beside me. “Girl, we make such a great team.”

A smile lights up my face. Visiting the library has always been one of my favorite ways to pass an afternoon, but with Cadence, it’s become a hundred times more fun. And after everything the professor told me yesterday, I could do with a distraction. There is no way on earth that I’m one of those elementai beings he spoke of. No way at all.

We’re done with the pledges for today, baby. You need any company?Malachi’s voice in my head fills my stomach with a warm flutter.

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