Page 55 of The Blood that Binds Us

I push her down, down, down. Down to the pit of my stomach, as deep as I can buryher—I push her down where I can’t hear her voice, feel her hunger, see through her eyes. She who would undo me, laugh as I slaughtered my friends, my family, and relished in lapping up their blood as their life force filled me, stretching every organ wide with their fragrant, red liquid.

I am Wren. I am good. I can control it.

Sin raises his stained hand so that it hovers just beneath my nose, an inch from my pointed, lethal teeth, and I force myself to raise my eyes from the bloody meal he offers me to his entrancing stare. A feline smile tugs at his lips as he drops his hand from my neck and wraps it around my arm, pulling me towards him. He presses the cold hilt of the dagger into my palm and wraps my hand closed around it. His own hand comes down on top of mine—guiding me, leading me—to his exposed forearm, inches from his other gaping wound, and I shake my head.

I shake and shake and shake.

I want to—so badlyI want to—to slice into him and hold his arm above my head to drip into my open, waiting mouth. But I won’t.

I am Wren. I am good. I can control it.

I can control it.

Sin pushes down on my hand, and I bury the knife into his arm. His beautiful red sap leaks out of him, and the smell—the sweet, almost floral scent of him like hyacinths in rain—wafts into my nose, and Iburnfor him. I inch closer and slap my palms to his chest, against that white shirt separating my teeth from his pounding, fleshy heart, and hoist myself onto his lap, gentle of his ribs that may or may not be broken. My lips pull back, and I eye the side of his throat, the blood that flows just beneath that thin layer of skin, so easily bitten into.

“Go on then, love.Take a bite.”

The sound of his voice ignites something ancient in me, and I arch my back, my hips inadvertently grinding into his. He’s calling my bluff, but when I look down into his eyes, I want todevourhim, bones and blood and all.

He tilts his head back to look up at me, his beaming eyes now smoldering with his own caster’s high, and the sight of him beneath me, bloodied and broken butwanting, undoes me. Tendrils of sopping hyacinths weave into my nose and to the back of my throat, the smell of his blood encasing me in a euphoric shroud. A moan spills from my lips at the thought of drinking him dry, and a sound of approval rattles from the Black Art’s chest.

I can control it.

“I have to get out of here.” Air hisses through my teeth.

I make it exactly three steps before I collapse into a deep, unyielding sleep.

Panic licks at my nerves when I wake. I’m curled up in the grass like a newborn babe, the ground freezing and unforgiving beneath my spine. My entire body goes rigid as soon as I gain awareness, knowing something isn’t right and trying to decode how I’ve ended up here. I was dueling with Sin and… the memory of the events lashes behind my eyelids like a crack of a riding crop.

Sin had been arguing with me about not holding myself back. Called me afilthy bloodwitch…antagonized me.

Hewantedthis to happen.

The Black Art’s power is strengthened with Adelphia’s blessing—his shield wouldn’t have broken that quickly—not with the goddess of the arcane on his side.

“And the dead awakes,” he murmurs behind me.

The sound of his voice melts the frozen casings on my limbs as I remember the smell of his spilt blood—and my desire to taste him. I wanted toconsumehim so badly. I almost did.

But I didn’t.

I tried torun away.

I would have had he not hit me with the sleep spell. No doubt Sin knocked me out so I would sleep off the blood high before barging back into the castle. Warmth brushes my cheeks at the memory of how I acted—howwildI felt. But it is quickly replaced with rage at his trickery.

“You deceived me.”

“Are you furious with me?” he asks in a low voice.

“Why? Why would you do such astupidthing?”

An extended beat passes before he answers. “You can’t help me win this war if you won’t fight.”

I spin to face him. He’s still sitting against the tree I left him at, but he healed the wounds he—we—inflicted on his hand and arm. The dried blood staining his flowy white shirt is the only evidence the embarrassing incident occurred at all, but he should pay Anika a visit to assess internal damage.

“And I suppose you didn’t care if I failed your ridiculous experiment and tried to kill you? Of course not, because if youhadmanaged to fight me off, it would have provided you cause to kill me. And if youcouldn’tstop me, and I took your life right there against that tree, you still win because then you wouldn’t have to wake up and look at your pathetic self in the mirror another day.”

“You will watch your tongue in my presence,” he snarls, clenching his hands draped over his bent knees. The air between us thickens as tension rolls off him, and I know not to push him further. Not right now.

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