Page 159 of Shadowblood Souls
And the guardians forced him to act out that curse over and over.
The ache has crept right up my throat, clogging it. I want to reach out to him, but part of me still balks.
Dominic lifts his gaze again to meet mine. “I told you before that the things that are broken, they broke before you came back. It’s true. I think it’s true for all of us. And it’s our own fault forletting our damage get tangled up with what we believed about you. I won’t get mixed up like that again. You’ve always been here for me, andnothingwould make me happier than being here for you too. However you need me. Whatever it does to me.”
Sudden tears prick at the back of my eyes. I blink, grappling with the growing surge of emotion inside me.
I believe him. He’s standing here in an enclosed room with me just a few feet away, talking about things that he has every reason to think would make me angry, and I can’t taste even a hint of fear in the air.
Really, he’s always been the one I was the least angry with anyway. Jacob was horrible, and Andreas manipulated me. Zian snapped at me and berated me more than once.
All Dominic really did was not interfere—and fail to totally hide his discomfort. I completely understand his conflicted feelings about using his powers now.
But there is still one hitch.
“Idon’t like the idea of making things worse for you,” I say, my voice strained.
A little of the tension gripping Dominic’s face fades with the smallest of smiles. “It wouldn’t be worse, in the balance of things. I swear to you, I’d rather know I did everything I could to make sure you’re not in pain than keep these stupid things a tad shorter.”
The lumps of the tentacles twitch under the thin coat.
I wet my lips, still torn. Not least of all because when he looks at me like that, every inch of my body tingles, and definitely not with pain.
But we don’t know what we’re going to face in Miami. It’ll be better if I’m not working around an injury.
And it isn’t as if I really need the constant reminder of how awful my new ability is. My memories have been vivid enough to cover that just fine.
I grasp the hem of my hoodie. “I guess you could take a look at it. There’s nothing in the apartment you could draw energy from anyway.”
As I lift the bottom of the hoodie and the tank top underneath away from the bandage on my waist, Dominic steps closer. He rests his fingers gently at the edge of the bandage, waking up my skin even more.
“Go ahead,” I say, struggling to keep my voice steady.
He peels back the adhesive ever so gently and considers the mostly-scabbed-over cut. His mouth slants downward. “When did this happen?”
“Engel’s house. After the fight. I had an unfortunate encounter with a shard of glass in the window frame.”
“It’s barely healed. You’ve been prodding it so it won’t totally seal up on its own?”
I grimace. “I… I wanted the pain to remind me of the kinds of pain I’m tryingnotto inflict unless I absolutely have to.”
Dominic looks up at me with so much compassion in his eyes that I forget how to breathe. He’s less than a foot away now, and the familiar urge tugs at me to bring him even closer.
“I can heal it by myself,” he says. “It’ll only take a little out of me—the same amount of hurt spread out over my whole body. Easy to recover from.”
“Dom…”
He ignores my conflicted protest. “Please, let me?”
It’s the “please” that does me in. I incline my head, not trusting myself to speak.
Dominic rests his palm over the wound, just barely grazing the scab. It only takes a moment before the warmth of his healing energy flows into my waist.
The severed flesh knits together. The scab smooths over. The lingering ache melts away.
And more warmth washes through the whole rest of my body.
It’s less than a minute, and then Dominic lowers his hand. He doesn’t look any worse for wear.
