Page 70 of The Warlock's Kiss

Once he’d finished, she helped him don the suit jacket and a pair of white gloves, then pulled on a long pair of lady’s gloves herself. They stood side-by-side before the mirror.

“Check us out!” Danny said. “It’s like we went back in time.” He curled a finger beneath his nose like a moustache and pursed his lips, deepening his voice. “Hello, m’lady.”

Adalynn curtsied. “Hello, kind sir.”

Peals of laughter flowed freely from Adalynn and Danny as they posed and acted out the parts of fancy, well-to-do people from some vague, bygone era.

It was times like these during which Adalynn could forget about her illness, forget about the Sundering, forget about how broken, terrifying, and dangerous the world had become, if only for a little while. She was simply living in the moment, having fun with her brother. Nothing else mattered. Seeing his smile, hearing his laughter, and knowing he washappyfilled her with joy.

Her only goal now that Danny had a safe place to live was to fill every second she had left with this joy, this happiness.

Merrick claspedhis hands behind his back and stared at the scorched patch on the back lawn through one of the rear windows of his study. Though everything else had been cleaned up, he’d made no attempt to regenerate the grass—the land would heal on its own, given time. But for the last four days, that spot had bothered him, and he found himself looking at it more and more often.

It was a reminder of his near failure.

Even with his property warded, even with the forewarning of approaching danger, he’d come close to failing to keep Adalynn and Danny safe. If he’d been more prepared, if he’d been more decisive, moreaggressive, he might’ve been able to prevent any harm from befalling them. Only luck had saved Danny from serious injury. Only seconds had saved Adalynn from being violated by that beast.

But he’d spent little time in bolstering the estate’s defenses. He wasn’t entirely surehowto do that without extensive research into the proper magic-shaping techniques, and his research was spent on something even more important lately—searching for a permanent cure for Adalynn.

He knew the measures he’d taken were only temporary, and they’d proven quite taxing—on himself in the short term, and on Adalynn in the long term. Days had passed; her second relapse loomed ahead of them, potentially only minutes away. Would he be able to save her this time?

Even if he could, it would eventually prove too much for one of them; it was unsustainable. But today, he’d made his first breakthrough, had found the first real possibility.

Merrick glanced down at the yellowed scroll laid on the windowsill before him. Though it was preserved by his magic—as was most everything in his home—it had already been quite old when he’d obtained it. In all likeliness, it had already been old before he was born. But this seemed to be the key. The best chance of saving her. The only option he’d found so far.

And it came without even a modicum of certainty.

Soul binding.That’s what it all came down to—the interweaving of two lives, of two souls, forever. The text was vague on what exactly that entailed, but it gave hope in the mention of mortal being made immortal. If he could share his immortality with her…would that be enough? Could that overcome the ailment that was killing her, or would it simply spread her illness to him and make him susceptible to its ravages?

Would it prevent her from being killed by her cancer but allow that illness to continue worsening, thus lengthening her suffering into eternity?

There were no answers to find here.

“Written in a different era,” he muttered to himself.

And it had been. Even in his youth, there’d been more of his kind than now—and that was after millennia of decline forallsupernatural beings. In the centuries before his time, there’d been more still, and they’d maintained a collective knowledge of their magic and its uses that, unfortunately, only existed in fragments today. Twelve hundred years ago, there would’ve been someone alive who could explain thissoul bindingto him, who could tell him what it would and would not accomplish, who could guide him through all this.

Merrick shook his head and growled in frustration. “To be a thousand years old and still know so little…”

Something about the information on the scroll, something about the magic it described, spoke to him on a deep level. It was familiar, though he knew he’d not given it more than a cursory glance since obtaining it a great many years before. But he couldn’t placewhyit was familiar, and his mind was too preoccupied to determine the reason.

The spell wassomething, which meant it was a great deal more than he’d had a day ago. And if nothing else came up before her next relapse—which could well be herlastrelapse—he would take the risk. He knew already that he could not continue on without her. The world, his own life, would be too empty with no Adalynn. It seemed mad that she should mean so much to him in so short a time, but it was the truth of his heart.

Helovedher. That was more than he’d felt for anyone in his entire life—there’d been love between himself and his blood kin, of course, but that had been far more muted, and they’d all been taken from him by the time he could’ve been considered a grown man.

Nothingwould take Adalynn from him.

With great care, he rolled up the scroll and returned it to its case. He’d spent enough time pondering it, enough time fretting over how jarring the werewolf attack had been, enough time brooding. Each moment of research was a moment apart from Adalynn, and he didn’t want to waste any more of those than was necessary to save her.

He set the scroll case on his desk and strode out of his study without allowing himself another moment to pause in contemplation.

Once he was in the hallway, he followed the muffled sound of laughter to the attic staircase. The door leading to the staircase was open, and he could clearly hear Adalynn and Danny above. His steps were silent as he ascended, and the lightness of their laughter, the joy, eased Merrick’s worries along the short journey.

He’d only taken a few steps away from the stairs before the siblings came into view. They were dressed in some of the old clothing that had been stored up here—a blue dress for Adalynn and a slightly over-sized suit with a double-breasted vest for Danny, the boy’s outfit capped by a top hat. It was clothing that had already been here when Merrick purchased the property, slightly outdated even then, and he’d not given it a second thought in over a hundred years.

Adalynn and Danny were standing in front of a tall mirror, posing, speaking in silly voices—using terms and accents they must’ve thought old-fashioned—and giggling. It was endearing. Adalynn was beautiful all the time, but now, with that dress on—which fit like it was made for her—and all the worry smoothed from her face by laughter, she was utterly radiant.

The things I’d do to her right here, right now, if her brother weren’t nearby…

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