Page 78 of Body of Echoes

“I don’t care. That’s enough,” he ordered as he moved, reaching for my arms.

“No!” I screamed. The effort sent my head falling to the left as my head filled with a heat so light in weight that I thought it would fly away. “Your magic hasn’t appeared in my palm yet. That’s when I’ll stop.”

His hand hesitated before he dropped it back to my thigh. “Ripley, you are wrecked. I can feel it. Please. I can’t stand seeing you like this. And the berries aren’t balancing you out fast enough. You have to stop for them to be effective.”

My mouth was so dry that it took a minute for me to gather enough saliva to swallow and wet my vocal cords. “Five more minutes.”

He huffed, moving his hand to my icy cold ones hanging off my chair’s arm rests.

In a fast spurt of motion, Fletcher stood and turned, making himself a protective wall between me and something that had just entered the room.

“What the hell is happening here?” a familiar voice spoke, but with my woozy head, I was unable to place it. “I can feel she’s not okay.”

“Graff,” Fletcher gritted out. There was a beat of silence before he took a short step to his right, blocking my body even more.

“Oh my god, Ripley!” Graff called. “What the hell are you doing to her?” Graff’s heavy footstepscharged, but there was a flash of bright aqua and violet smoke colliding together.

The conflict urged me to lift my head and see what was happening. But my stiff muscles weren’t reacting correctly, and I couldn’t get them to respond.

“This is what she wants,” Fletcher asserted before the light of their magic petered out.

“Like hell it is, you thief. What are you doing? Stealing her blood? To give to the Cidris?”

“Tell him,” I breathed out to Fletcher while my head drifted to the left.

“Ripley.”

Graff’s voice ground out a loud, “Tell me what?”

“Tell him,” I repeated.

Fletcher’s body twisted to mine, hand gently supporting my head and securing it against his hip. “Fine. She’s giving her blood because we plan on taking down the Cidris.”

“With her blood?”

Fletcher took control of the conversation as he got on his haunches and undid my needles.

“No,” I protested.

“You’re done,” Fletcher insisted with a disapproving hardness in his tone that I didn’t appreciate.

While he freed me, he did a marvelous job at persuading Graff to join our mission and expressed how it was of the utmost importance to keep it a secret. It was a much more serious tone than the one I had used with Rosaanne. Should I have been as elaborate about explaining this to her?

Fletcher scooped me in his arms and sat on the couch, holding me while speaking to Graff.

Graff brought over the bowl of ocaberries, and when he tried to feed me, Fletcher growled at him, snatching the food from his hands so he could do it himself.

Within the hour, I had started to stabilize, and I could see the excitement in Graff’s eyes over taking down the Cidris.

I sat with my feet on Mirin’s couch, watching Graff and Rosaanne take sips of my blood. My aqua magic spiraled down their arms as each of them held onto a glass tile and tried different things to get it to be indestructible.

“Good gracious, your magic is kickass,” Rosaanne said with a large smile, golden eyes darting to me. “This shit is addicting.”

Immediately, Fletcher’s words crawled to the front of my mind.Your blood can be addictive, even to Elizians.He hadn’t explained the repercussions of someone being addicted to my blood, but I could make an educated guess.

Graff growled at her just as I’d imagine Fletcher would. “Don’t get used to it.”

She rolled her eyes as her head fell back briefly. “Geez, sorry. I’m just trying to enjoy the experience. It’s not like I’ll ever get to useroyalmagic again.”

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