Page 124 of The Bond That Burns

The thought of his mouth on my neck suddenly sent a tingle of anticipation running over my skin. I wasn’t sure if I could go back to the way we’d done things in the past. Maybe we could find a middle ground where we’d both stay clothed, but he could feed more freely—and less painfully for me.

“Of course,” Florence was saying with a doubtful expression. “Neville can be a handful as a roommate.”

I laughed. “Neville. Of course. How could I have forgotten about that unruly little creature? Just tell me our third roommate won’t wake us up every night.”

“Well, he’s with Blake almost half the time. But he does tend to get rambunctious some nights.” She giggled. “He likes to jump on me in my sleep. I’ve screamed more than once. But then he snuggles in and usually falls asleep. Like an extra pillow made of fur.”

I grinned and lay back against the headboard, thinking of my two new roommates.

Florence...and a fluffin.

BOOK 3

Blake & Medra, Art by Pangolin2B

CHAPTER 31 - BLAKE

Wintermark Term

The cold weather had arrived with a vengeance. The icy wind whipped at the windows of the Black Keep, howling like a tormented ghost. I pulled my black cloak more closely around me, suddenly wondering whether I should have come.

Every logical part of me screamed to turn back. But logic had lost its grip on me long ago.

Pendragon wasn’t just slipping away. She was being pulled into something that would destroy her, and I couldn’t just stand by and watch. I couldn’t lose her. Not like this. Not to them.

Maybe it was insane. But insanity and resolve had started to feel like the same thing.

So, I had a plan. And this—breaking into the Black Keep in the dead of the night and sneaking through my uncle’s office into the House Drakharrow archives—was all part of it.

It wasn’t a good plan. Hell, it might not even have qualified as a plan. But I’d see it through.

I’d been watching the Keep for weeks, memorizing the guard rotation, arriving unannounced for “visits” so I could check the times when the corridors were the least patrolled.

I wasn’t even sure all the subterfuge was necessary. Maybe Viktor would have let me take a peek into the archives if I’d simply asked. But I couldn’t risk it. Firstly, because he could say no. Secondly, because there was no way in hell I wanted to tell him what I was looking for.

And thirdly...because of Theo.

My jaw tightened. Theo was finally out of the infirmary. He’d agreed to feed from Vaughn, but it had taken hours of both myself and the blightborn boy working to convince him with everything we had. The healers said it could be weeks before he was back at full strength—if he didn’t catch some other sickness first. Apparently, being drained to the brink of death had a way of leaving your body vulnerable to just about everything.

The guilt ate at me. Every time I thought of Theo and of what Aenia had done to him, I felt the edge of my control fraying.

Aenia had been a part of my family longer than she’d been part of her own blightborn one. I wasn’t just her older brother. In a terrible sense, I was her maker, too. The weight of responsibility that came with that knowledge was crushing.

She was out of control. Losing herself more and more every day. And the worst part was knowing there was a way to end her misery and make sure she never hurt anyone ever again–and knowing it was probably inevitable.

I just couldn’t bear to face it yet.

As for Theo, it wasn’t his poor health that Viktor would care about. It was the fact he was once again associating with Vaughn Sabino. I knew it was only a matter of time before my uncle found out. And what then?

This couldn’t go on forever. Rebellion was slowly taking hold of my heart. Viktor had led our family long enough. Maybe it was time for a change. I didn’t know how I could overthrow him—just that at some point recently, the seed of the idea had become a sprout and now the sprout was becoming a tree taking root.

I would bring Viktor down. Marcus, too, if that was what it took. House Drakharrow didn’t have to become what Viktor wanted it to be. We could rise again like a phoenix from the ash—led not by a man like Viktor but by someone else.

Me? I’d been raised to lead, yet in some ways that made me the least suitable candidate. What we needed was someone more like Theo. Someone who wouldn’t be so easily consumed by power and greed.

Speaking of greed, here I was–creeping through the halls like a thief breaking into a dragon’s den.

I was playing with fire. Viktor probably wouldn’t kill me for sneaking into the archives. But if he wanted to punish me, I could think of many possibilities that would be almost as bad.

---