Page 45 of Bright Soul

We exchanged a meaningful look, and she gave me a trusting nod, leaving me with him and my unconscious anam cara. I sighed, seeing this as my opening to ask him for help with something, but only if I could get him to understand me.

I pulled up the other chair across from him. He didn’t pay much attention to me, whispering in his language to Cress before he bent to kiss the back of her hand. Yeah, there was no Myuna there anymore, thank fuck. I snagged Cress’s phone off a bedside table—it was a miracle Geo hadn’t already stolen this—and did some creative searching on the supernatural side of the web. I typed in something on a translation website and handed the phone to him.

His eyes retracted to slits, and he squinted at the bright screen, but a moment later, he hissed a laugh at my joke. His big thumb claw loomed over the glass, and I gestured for the phone back urgently before he poked a hole through it. Shooting me a confused look, he handed it back. I dimmed the display for him and came over to his side to show him how to type on the screen with all the swirlies and dots that popped up for the Soiluirian language’s keyboard.

“See, fingertips,” I said.

His forked tongue tasted the air, and he watched me without blinking. Okay, I had to get used to the dimensional weirdness or whatever, but he was starting to creep me out.

He carefully typed with one thumb, the very picture of a tech-illiterate grandpa struggling to text for the first time. Eventually he passed the phone back. The translation read, “I understand I have you to thank for breaking a few bones in my tail. So, thank you. Glad to see you haven’t changed, even in a tiny glowing box.”

Well, damn, that was a proper English translation; what a good website. I starred it for Cress and sat back down. “You’re welcome, I guess. Only useful thing I did yesterday,” I typed.

He read the message and shook his head. “You may have saved her life. And my actions sent her to this bed. I will never outlive my remorse.”

“Hey, man, it’s not like any of us can say anything. We thought you were a goner for sure.”

“Goner?”

“Dead or worse.”

He read that and grounded himself with a heavy intake of breath and a long blink before typing a response. “I have no business being alive. But Cress willed that I survive, so I have.”

“You’re kind of fucked up, huh?” I typed, then thought that was too rude and deleted it. Still, he caught a glimpse of the screen and breathed a humorless laugh, nodding an affirmative. I passed him this message: “Could you come with me and take a look at my brother?”

He read the question and cast a reluctant sideways glance at Cress before nodding again. My heart leapt up to the vicinity of my throat when he tucked her hand and stood after me, silent as a shadow as we left her to rest. Now that he was here, I was terrified of what he’d say when he took a peek at Lucas’s soul.

Deep down, I think I already knew what the verdict would be. The Hungering Darkness never left survivors, right? Why would Lucas be any different? Yet I led him to the correct room, and he swept up to my little brother’s bedside to take a good look.

He already had the phone and angled its face away from me as he typed a message one agonizing fall of his thumb at a time. When he passed the device back to me, his free hand landed on my shoulder, giving a firm squeeze of sympathy. “A swift death would be kindest. But there’s a small chance to save him if we open Garroway’s chest cavity in the next few weeks.”

I felt my eyes widen as I read that. Well, damn, I could get behind that. The sooner the better, even. I just wondered what the blood baron had done to earn Phaeron’s bloodthirsty grin.

19

PHAERON

You’re kind of fucked up, huh?Ben had no idea how right he was.

He must’ve alerted someone that I was awake, as a sliver of too-bright light appeared at regular intervals to check in on Cress and me while I sat with her. My body was heavy with fatigue, but I refused to close my eyes for longer than a blink.

Yet I started nodding off anyway and stirred in panic at the sensation too akin to falling backward into Myuna’s control. The last time I’d slept, I’d woken up mid-combat with my mate.

I’d only gleaned what’d happened from observing those around me. Ben cradling a shoulder still healing from a blood rune on our way to the hospital. The uneasy glances from everyone, even the coven of our friends, whose eyes shaded with distrust when Cress fainted and I tried to carry her the rest of the way to a proper healing. Geo had given me a murderous look and pulled her from my arms.

For a few moments, I’d held her slight, battered form clothed in the torn rags of what had once been a beautiful robe. I had harmed her. My hands, Myuna’s will. It was inexcusable.

I paced the fatigue away, eventually changing from the cheery pastel-colored hospital gown I’d woken in back into the heap of scrubbed leather folded at the foot of my bed. The chest piece of my armor, with all its careful inscriptions, was hopelessly battered, and the gloves were gone, so I remained bare from the waist up for now.

I went to splash my face in the adjoining bathroom and inched up the light switch. As soon as the bulbs buzzed to life, I hissed from the pain that flooded my head and flicked them back off. I hated losing my human-like adaptations already. Their world was too bright, and I could not put anyone at ease if they couldn’t understand me.

I had some unpleasant conversations ahead if the magic could be salvaged. It was my duty to share news about Myuna, the presence of the Void around her—blessedly not clinging to me—and worst of all, what I’d seen while under her compulsion.

Cress mumbled something, shifting in the bed. Her hand patted the bare space next to her before she shifted to sit up with a wince. My hands were there the next moment, moving pillows behind her back and holding her shoulder so she didn’t twinge her bruises too much.

“Easy, bright soul,” I said, then muttered a curse. She wouldn’t understand me. Laboriously, I reproduced her name like a human would say it and skimmed my fingertips over her cheek.

Her hand caught mine and held my palm to her face. I imagined she saw a yellow-eyed demon in the dark of the room, as I’d covered the light displays of the machine hooked to her and the light leaking from the window with casual shadow magic. Meanwhile, I saw her sleep-softened face with perfectclarity, down to the ridge of a purple-edged bruise across her jaw.

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