Page 60 of The Blood that Binds Us

His slivered eyes widen for a brief moment and then a smirk that is pure devastating pulls up the corner of his lips. “Still thinking about what I taste like, love? I said you could take a bite.”

“If I’m remembering correctly, Blackheart, only one of us has bitten the other.”

His expression twists into something darker, feral even, as he parts his lips and drags the tip of his tongue across the fronts of his teeth. “And if I’m remembering correctly, you tasted divine.”

I capture my bottom lip between my teeth as I mull over his words, distracted by that look he gives me. The one he’s giving me right fucking now.

He’s toying with me. Trying to lighten the mood after I darkened it with my confessions. Fine. I could use a distraction.

“It’s not often I let men that speak of what I taste like live, Your Grace.”

He shrugs a shoulder as if I didn’t just threaten him, facetious or not. “Me either.”

“Excuse me?”

Sin leans forward, his green eyes burning with as much heat as the fire between us, locked on mine. “I also don’t intend to let men live that would dare speak of your… exquisite flavor.”

The warmth on my face isn’t entirely from the flames now, but I don’t dare look away first. I refuse to let him think he’s embarrassed me, even if internally, every part of me is itching to sink into the ground and never reemerge.

“It’s a bit of a stretch to refer to a single bite as tasting me. I’d prefer you didn’t.”

“Didn’t taste you?”

He’sdefinitelytoying with me. “You know what I meant. But yes, that too.”

He licks his lips. “Liar.” His mouth rounds around the word.

“I beg your pardon?” I scoff.

His eyes flicker between both of mine. “I don’t think you minded it at all. In fact, I’d say the scent coming off you right now indicates the opposite.”

Ifeelmy eyes widen as I cross my arms across my chest and curl my legs off to the side. I don’t know if he’s merely teasing me, or if his boosted magic actually has heightened his sense of smell, just as mine is attuned to blood.

Sin laughs softly, then relaxes, leaning back and resting his arms behind his head. I mirror him from across the fire, and a twinge of loneliness pangs in my chest at the sight of the nighttime sky. Cosmina and I lay under the stars so many nights as we chatted about our days and our hopes for the next. A part of me wonders if she’s looking up at the sky now too, wherever she is, and if she thinks of me when she does.

I’m coming for you, sister.Perhaps she will feel my message as she gazes upon the stars shimmering with the vibrancy of a thousand suns.

“Has she told you why she hates me?” I whisper.

He doesn’t need me to specify who. “Ileana said you left without her.”

“I did.”

“Would you have been able to free her with them keeping her so heavily guarded?”

“Not while I was weak from the iron, and there were too many for Cosmina to handle on her own—way too many. With the iron in my blood, I wouldn’t have been able to control the magic well enough to restrain it to wound and not kill. I was too much of a coward to risk it. Cosmina did what she came to do—she rescued me. I don’t blameherfor it at all. I could have gone to Ephraim to report what I knew, but I was afraid he’d be suspicious as to why Legion had taken me in the first place, and I was scared he’d piece it together and learn what I am. Ileana suffered because ofmyfears. She has every right to hate me.”

“Ileana is strong though. She freed herself and fled before they could catch up to her. And knowing my Black Hand, I don’t think she would have been content allowing someone else to rescue her anyway.”

I smile to myself. Ileana is many things, but a coward is not one of them. I envy the fire inside her. “How did she end up at Scarwood?”

“After her escape, she sought refuge at the castle. She didn’t have a home—not one she wanted to return to anyway—and she reported everything to Ephraim and my father who was his Hand at the time. Ephraim offered to shelter her while she recovered. She never left the keep—she barely left the castle—probably too afraid they’d somehow be out there. It really shook her up when Ephraim was killed in Suncove.

“We all assumed my father would be the one to take his place, but as you know, he was refused at the Rite. I performed it next out of obligation. I never thought in a million moons I’d be chosen, but when I began the ritual… it was like my body didn’t belong to me anymore. I could feel my magic getting stronger by the second, it was like my blood was being set on fire. And when I thought it would never stop, it did. In a blink of an eye, I was chosen.

“I would have appointed my father as Hand, but since our law forbids familial ties, I allowed him to choose. He wanted Ileana. I think he just liked that she hated Legion as much as he did, and since she is mundane, it made sense for her to serve as emissary to a mostly mundane land. I wasn’t sure she’d accept, but to my surprise, she was thrilled and accepted immediately. She never mentioned a bloodwitch when we told her to tell us everything she knew about Legion.”

It takes me a moment to make sense of everything he shares. I suppose Ileana wouldn’t have the same reasons to hate the kingdom that I did, but to serve as theBlack Hand.

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