Page 156 of The Demon Tide

“I think...maybe you should find another Death Fae to kiss on Xishlon,” she suggests, attempting to sound wry as she staves off his mounting allure.

“Death Fae do not pair with other Death Fae,” he croons, leaning closer, his deep voice a sensual lure. “There is no balance in it.”

“You know what, Viger?” Tierney says, unable to hold herself back from his hypnotic, compelling thrall. “I’m drawn to you. I find that confusing, but...there’s something about you that’s beautiful.”

Viger’s claw tips thread through her hair. He leans in, waiting, so close...

Thisismy night to kiss all the dangerous boys,Tierney marvels as she sighs and gives in, angling her mouth toward Viger.

“Let me show you,” he whispers, his dark lips brushing hers. “Let me show you what we really are.”

“I want you to,” Tierney whispers back.

Her lips meet his in a swirl of darkness, the purple light muting.

Tierney spirals into his embrace, into his delicious darkness. It’s like she’s being pulled to the ocean’s deepest floor and below, down, down, down, his arms wrapped around her, hers around him, clutching tightly to each other as their kiss deepens in hunger and she finds herself pressed against his hard body and swept into the longing to merge completely with his thrall.

And then the world disappears.

Panic overtakes Tierney as she’s suspended in nothingness for a long, breathless moment.

Viger is gone. Everything is gone. No color. No sensation. No sense of anything or anyone at all.

Like she’s been pulled to the very center of Erthia.

And then, she has a sense of Viger’s lips pulling away from hers, his grip on her loosening, and she spirals and spirals back up into the world of sights and smells and kisses and Viger and the purple forest.

Everything.

Pulsing with glorious, overwhelming, spectacular life.

Tierney grasps Viger’s arms, unsteady on her feet, gasping as her gaze darts around.

Viger watches her with deeply serious eyes, his strong embrace supporting her. The purple wash of moonlight on the rustling leaves is so beautiful it’s almost too much to bear. The loamy scent of the Forest. Her intrinsic sense of the network of rivers and streams all over this land, enhanced. And this beautiful, young Fae man standing before her. Waiting. Waiting for her to fullysee. It’s like she’s returned to a whole new world, every sense heightened. Every glorious, living sensation flooding in. Life everywhere. Life fed by natural death.

She meets Viger’s ardent gaze, stunned.

“Now, do you see?” he asks, uncharacteristically emotional.

Tierney nods, overcome. “You’re the pause.” She breathes out. “You’re not the end. You’re the beginning. The seed.”

Viger’s dark eyes are suddenly brimming with tears. “Now you see.”

“The people here...they don’t understand you at all,” she says, impassioned, her senses full of the Forest, of him, of her own heartbeat pulsing in her chest, ofeverything. “You’re the seed for all of it. For the entire balance of the Forest. The decay. The death. The rotted soil. It’s the start of everything.”

“Now go back to the pool,” Viger says as he angles his head toward the shadowed puddle.

Tierney looks toward the lifeless water as trepidation swells. She kneels by the stagnant pool, pushes her hand back into the water, and closes her eyes.

Tendrils of Shadow fly though her lines, and a different sort of pull takes hold, spiraling her down, down, and down. Not into the earth. Not into a deep, dark, pause.

Into an endless void. An abyss.

The end of everything.

Tierney wrests her hand from the water and falls back onto the ground, suddenly terrified as she glares at the puddle with fresh eyes. Trees rustle all around as the flock of ravens descends once more, one perching on Viger’s shoulder and pressing close to his neck. Viger stills and closes his eyes, as if listening carefully to the raven.

When he opens his eyes, there’s a terrifying edge of fear in his gaze.

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