Page 29 of Cursed Evermore
Five fucking years I’d been searching for the ring and my father’s killer. I had no doubt that whoever it was would be someone powerful and deceptive.
For all I knew this girl could have been cloaked in innocence to screw with me. Innocence was the best form of manipulation.
Whatever dark forces were working against me may have seen that there were still remnants of my heart. The pieces that clung to goodness in my life before the curse. That was Mother’s fault—the heart thing.
She loved with her heart so fiercely not even death could take it from her.
My heart wouldn’t get in the way here. No matter what little of it was left.
Monsters came in all shapes and forms. Being one myself, I knew that better than anyone, so I’d have no qualms in taking the woman before me.
As if Elariya could sense my ill intentions, she backed away from the window.
Wariness filled her pretty face as she made her way over to her bed and blew out the candle, cloaking the room with darkness and broken streams of moonlight.
She slipped beneath the covers and lay flat on the pillows, her hair sprawled around her in waves of crimson fire.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and I listened to her breathing, to her heart, to her brain trying to quiet her troubled mind.
Restlessness became her, but then, eventually, she drifted into a deep sleep.
Good.It was time to make my move.
I slipped through the door, letting the shadows hollow me just enough to pass through solid wood—one of the many tricks I’d inherited as a Deathwalker. The shadows knew me, molded me, let me pass through solid matter like it wasn’t there at all.
The scent of her filled my senses as I entered. Lavender, wild honey, and something else. Something uniquely her own.
I moved over to her bed and stared down at the sleeping beauty, unaware of what danger lurked in her midst.
Standing over her, I studied the curve of her jaw, the sweep of her lashes against pale cheeks, the soft swells of her breasts, the pulse beating steadily at her throat.
Beautiful. But deadly.
With a flick of my fingers, I cast a basic Galdrlore spell meant to put her into a deeper sleep. But the magic bounced off something unseen, like stones skipping across the surface of a river.
I narrowed my eyes.
What the fuck was this?
I tried again, this time muttering the incantation under my breath to weave in more power.
Same result. Same shimmer. Same goddamn rejection.
Fuck.
I watched the sleeping girl, my gaze sweeping her bed in search of the threads of resistance that might betray a hidden ward.
There it was.
A fucking shield.
Cleverly hidden in the very air around her, woven with elemental wards and psychic barriers, barely visible unlessyou knew how to look. The threads shimmered softly in the moonlight, like veins of light embedded in the atmosphere.
It wastwilight shielding.
Ancient warding magic, used by mages from the Ravenwood Realm to protect their kin during sleep, when the body rests but the soul is exposed.
Sleep.The most vulnerable state a being can enter.
