Page 7 of Cursed Heirs

I shifted in the bed and managed, through a lot of pain and effort, to pull myself up into a sitting position. “We need to go to them, bring them back, reunite our foursome. Now, more than ever, we need to be together.”

“I get it, for real. I do.Butwe can’t be doing that. We’re gonna have to do what you hate more than most things—wait.”

“The fuck we are.”

He laid his hand on mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Ore, before Abigail left with them, she put up another ward, another dome. Like an uber dome, really. All angel magic. No one can bring that down or even make a hole in it to get through. Only her.”

“Or Alena.”

“Who isn’t here,” he pointed out. “So, we’re stuck here without them for now, all right?”

“So we just really wait?”

“Notjustwait. We go to classes, do our thing, you know, the usual.”

“I can’t do that. My father is missing. No, scratch that, he’s been kidnapped. Constantine confirmed to me that he’s responsible. I can’t go about my collegiate life knowing that. I can’t just wait onExemplarto get their act together and find him for me.”

“You’re gonna have to. You’re in no condition to go anywhere. We can run down leads from afar, all right? But nothing more involved or dangerous than that.”

“Tal—”

He slammed his fist into the bed, and thundered, “Stop! Just stop! You don’t know what it was like seeing you take those blows from that maniac! Seeing you hit the ground and stopmoving! You could’ve died! You could’ve been lost to me forever, Ore! For fucking ever!”

His anguish cut at me and into my stubborn determination not to be basically benched, even for a little while.

Seeing this from him now, though, it seemed that was exactly what he needed from me.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m okay.” I patted the bed and managed to inch over enough to make a space for him.

He climbed on and slid into the covers beside me.

“Come here,” I said, lifting my arm.

He did, nuzzling against me. “I can’t lose you. I can’t, Orpheus.”

“I’m not going anywhere, baby bird.”

I’d make fucking sure of it.

The only way to do that from what I’d now seen of Constantine in action was to take it all the way when it came to the dark.

I’d held back and he’d seen that, taken full advantage of it, then used that in it had given him to hit me with black fucking magic.

Tal didn’t know, no one did, but I had a magical wall up against black magic.

If it had hit my father, he would’ve been able to absorb it, but I’d spelled myself so that I’d hate the feel of it, so that it would hurt me. It was why it had hit me so hard and managed to put me out of the fight. It hadn’t been the blunt force trauma of hitting that tree. I remembered losing consciousness as I’d hurtled through the air, before even making contact with it.

I’d been worried about crossing over to the fucked-up side of things like my father had long ago. And that would have been detrimental to my plan to rule differently from him, to turn things around once it was time for me to take power over the Dark Fae Realm. It would have fucked up everything.

Because I wasn’t afraid to feel the dark. Not like Alena was, where she didn’t think she could handle it.

I was afraid that I’d like it too much, that I’d be able to handle it far too well, and become addicted to the usage.

I hadn’t told her that. And maybe I should have, especially when we’d been discussing her issues with it.

But I didn’t like to speak about it. I didn’t like to even admit it to myself.

And up until now it had been different, my denial hadn’t impacted me or anything else.

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