Page 6 of Rogue's Possession (Covenant of Thorns 2)

“I did not.” Not that I’d admit. “Now answer my question.”

“Which? You asked three questions.”

I stopped myself from growling at him. “What was that ‘tick-tock’ shit? What will she take into her own hands? Give me a straight answer.”

“What will you give me in return?”

That white-cold feeling rose up again, a flash of silver claws raking my heart. The anger welled, cold and precise, a razor edge of rage. For Dragonfly’s wasted life, for Titania’s cruelty, for the fact that I had missed him and that I desperately feared he’d been with Titania, plotting about me, laughing with her about the ignorant human.

Abruptly, Rogue’s head snapped around. He turned in a wary circle, searching for something I couldn’t see. His cautious gaze finally settled on me. Was that a glimmer of fear? Surely not. He feared nothing. Except perhaps the Dog’s power over him. Not that he’d admit it.

“Gwynn.” He held palms out toward me, as if warming them at a flame. “What is that? What are you doing?”

“I—I don’t know.” I shifted, unsteady on the sand. His uncertainty put me off balance. Always he knew more than I did.

“What does it feel like? No games. This is deadly important.” He’d moved into his professorial mode. “Describe it in the best detail you can.”

“It’s white. Kind of a ghost. And chill with it. It has curved claws, very sharp. Feline.” I thought of the things I’d seen in his mind, images I associated with his feral brand of magic. And the Black Dog. “What is it, Rogue? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He dug his hands through his hair, scrubbing over his scalp in thought. In near desperation. Then he threw back his head and laughed at the sky, a bitter sound, throwing his arms out as if daring a bolt from above. Or from Titania. “Of course. How could it have been any other way?”

“What? Tell me.” I fisted a hand in the wet black velvet of his shirt, demanding his attention, which he settled on me with such full intensity I had to steel myself not to flinch. “Is it the Black Dog? What is in me, Rogue? I have to know.”

He laid his hand over mine, soothing, flattening it out to rest on his lean chest. The three-four beat of his heart thumped under my hand. Regret softened the fierce lines of his lips. “It may be best that you don’t know. You cannot stop it.”

“Knowledge is power,” I insisted.

He shook his head, slowly. “Not always, my Gwynn. Sometimes it’s just the wound that never heals, the ongoing torment of knowing there is part of you that defies containment. I did not wish this for you.”

“It’s not the Dog. It’s…something else.”

His fingers stroked my hand. “Yes. Feline, you said. It will find its way out of you and you will come to know it through the way the world reacts to it. It’s stronger than you can ever be.”

“Where did it come from?”

His mouth quirked. “From you, magical Gwynn. All from you. You carried the seeds already. Now they grow, a vine twisting in your soul. She’s still a ghost to you now. She will eventually take flesh from yours.”

I shuddered. I’d seen the Black Dog erupt from Rogue’s body in a fountain of blood, leaving an empty skin behind. He must have suffered it many times. Floundering, I tried to understand how this could be possible. “But I am not immortal as you are. How can I survive such a thing?”

“I doubt you can.” Though his words were blunt, even cruel, his voice, his face held a kind of compassion. His twisted, unfeeling brand of it. “I will help you. But this makes it even more crucial that you be by my side at all times. That you learn what I can teach you. Your very life and sanity may depend on it.”

He poured it on just a titch too thick.Tick-tock. I pulled away again. “This is just another manipulation. You’ll tell me whatever you think will get you your way.”

He raised one silky eyebrow, on the left side, where the twining pattern of black lines, thorns and fangs shifted with the movement.A vine twisting in your soul. The hiss of white claws whispered through me. I touched my face, wet with cold rain. Would I soon bear a similar mark?

“You are not stupid, Gwynn.” Rogue made the observation quietly. “It ill behooves you to play the fool.”

Fear crept through me, ice riming a window with slow curlicues of frost. And I had no one to turn to for comfort. Only the offer of help from the man whose greatest desire was to lock me up so he could exploit me for his nefarious purposes and pleasures—or, it now appeared, for Titania’s.

He stroked my cheek, gaze melting blue now. “Never would I lock you up. I swear that to you. I can taste your fear. Don’t be afraid of me.”

“I won’t ever wear a leash again, Rogue.”

“We all wear leashes—some are just more visible than others.”

I took a deep shuddering breath. “This changes nothing. It’s as if I found out I have cancer or something. I can’t let it stop me from living. And you won’t distract me with this. What does the Queen Bitch want from you and what does it have to do with me? Is she why you want me to have your baby? Tell me the truth.”

He studied me, still stroking my cheek. I took an obscure comfort in it. Sometimes I longed to stop fighting him and just let him take me over. It would be so much easier in so many ways. But then, slavery always was. The Romans defeated the Britons not with warfare, but with steady food and hot baths.

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