Page 46 of Toadstools and Vampire Kisses

He reigns over it all, a dark prince who is the axis of everything I want. There is only him in this room among the shadows, and for a moment I can see the magic that connects us, the beautiful cords that we have already forged together glowing in my mind’s eye as all illusions of that which I perceive and depend on to be reality fall away, and this suddenly feels more real than anything else ever has. Knowing that he will be the one being who will always be there, and with whom I will always feel that I belong.

I don’t belong to the coven. I never have. I have been here to take up whatever duty I thought I must to please my mother and to do what I thought was expected as I went through the motions. With Reynard, however, I feel like I’ve finally come home and made sense of my place within my coven so that I can step back and be something else for my family.

The darkness and sifting autumnal lights spin around us faster, and I catch glimpses of ghostly faces peering from the darkness through the masks as heads that turn toward us and then fade back into the darkness only to be replaced by more. An awareness prickles over my skin as hands seem to reach toward me, brushing over me as they pass in the swirls of dancing shadows. Each touch feels like a parting and a farewell for the common mortal grace that I will not share with them in completion of my claiming, as much as it does a greeting and acknowledgment. The ghostly shadows spin faster and faster, hands forever reaching and touching with icy fingers, their features distorted beyond what is capable from living human flesh.

“Reynard,” I whisper, my voice strained with emotion as my gaze rises to meet his, uncertainty filling me as the shadows around us become more frenzied. “Is this real?”

His inhuman gaze slides over the specters as he continues to turn me around and around over the floor. Despite the speed of our movement, his perusal seems to be infinite, his eyes barely shifting as they slide over the beings whirling around us. He lowers his face, his breath fanning my cheek.

“As real as you and I,” he rasps. “This ritual of yours is to connect you with your dead as you say, to be one among them so that they know and recognize you for when your time comes to take their place with them. They are seeing that this day will not come, for even when we depart this world as all living things eventually must, your place with them is now gone.”

“This feels so right, more right than anything I’ve ever had… but I’m afraid,” I confess. “Afraid that none of this—including what I am feeling—is real and that these shades are merely ghosts within my dreams mocking me for reaching for something I can’t have. Afraid that I’m about to fall into the unknown and that if we stop, all of this, and you, will disappear like the shadows and I will be lost between worlds, alone.”

The inhuman sheen to Reynard’s eyes glows brighter as his wings curl around me, yet his expression is serene. “It will never happen. Can you not feel it? We are as one now as we can ever be without completing the bloodbond. There is no me without you. Even if this whole world were pulled asunder, you could not possibly lose me. I will not allow it,” His lips brush mine in the sweetest, briefest kiss. “I have you, Fran. You may let go.”

“What if we’re wrong?” I ask, panic bubbling inside of me. “This has happened so fast… we could be mistaken.”

Reynard peers down at me, his lips parting, and… he laughs.

“My sweet Fran, it could be days, years, decades or even centuries and it doesn’t matter. I will love you regardless. Time is different for my kind. I love you now and will always love you, regardless.”

I blink up at him, my breath whooshing out of my body so fast that I’m forced to drag a ragged gulp of air back into my starving lungs. “You love me?”

“Forever,” he replies, his eyes glowing bright.

That one word vibrates so deeply through me that it feels as if it is unlocking the deepest, most hidden part of me—and of my heart. Emotion rushes forth, everything that I’ve battled to keep locked within me where it can’t be hurt.

“Will you say your goodbyes and leap into the dark with me?”

His words tickle my skin and my eyes flutter closed as still we move together in between the worlds. I can still feel the touches upon me, and I can now hear the whispers of my ancestors and my family as they await my decision.

My eyes open to meet the gaze of the one being I want forever with. “Yes. I’m ready. Because I can’t imagine my life without you… without this feeling,” I reply, watching the joy rise into his eyes, and my heart warms in response as it fills with love. “Because, as crazy as it still feels to happen so quickly, I love you too. I want to see what the next thousand tomorrows bring us.”

“Thousands upon thousands, my mate,” he whispers against my skin as his lips trail down to my neck.

Oh, we’re doing this here? I suppose we are.

I sigh, melting into him at the graze of his double fangs over my pulse, his tongue gliding over the spot as I wiggle closer. We have finally stopped dancing, and the shadows billow higher around us, swirling. An eerie chant seems to rise, a cloud of faces passing through the dark, circling around us, drawing closer. Hundreds of masked faces and shades pressing close, their whispers as one, growing quicker.

Reynard’s fangs press in, and from somewhere there’s a shout of alarm from a booming growly voice followed by a human cry of surprise. It snaps us both out of the moment as the shadows skitter. A ghostly fox bounds through with a warning snarl, his tail tufted out and hackles raised as he leaps away. Reynard’s head jerks up just as the doors bursting open and a cold voice descends over us.

“Do not think I would allow that, Reynard Bell. Even here in this place, you are very much mine, and so now is this coven. Step back from the witch.”

An icy hatred floods my mate’s eyes, and he turns to face the voice, his wings tucking me behind him but not before I catch sight of a statuesque woman with some sort of bone gauntlet like the enormous clawed hand of a dragon attached to a coiled chain wrapped around her arm, terminating in a band around her bicep. Her black eyes don’t even look to me, her entire attention on my mate as her lips twist with cruelty seconds before his wings obscure everything as they fold down around me, hiding me away.

The snarl that rumbles up from him is unlike anything I’ve ever heard, sending up red flags in my mind. And then she laughs and an icy sensation creeps over my heart, chilling me to the soul at its sound. But it’s the sickeningly sweet smell mingled with the distinct scent of decay that slowly seeps into the room that makes me want to wretch, and I now know that whoever this is, she’s the necromancer responsible for the abomination. The fox had warned us but, for whatever reason not soon enough.

ChapterTwenty-Seven

REYNARD

“Reynard, who is that?” Fran’s voice is muffled by my wings, but I can hear as clearly as if she shouted it, the fear lacing her words stabbing into my heart.

I shake my head in disbelief as I stare at the one being that I was certain that I would never lay eyes on again. The cruel tilt of the vampire queen’s scarlet lip mocks me.

“Come, Reynard. Tell your little human witch who I am.”

“Titania. The queen… former queen,” I correct myself, “of the Talendreight coven.” I glare at the vampiress surrounded by her elite guard, my entire body quivering with fury and the desperate need to protect my mate. It does not make sense, but with her suddenly returning from the dead, of course she would want Fran dead. “What trickery is this? I was told of your passing when I was awoken from the sleep to which you sentenced me.”

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