Page 81 of The Blood that Binds Us

It only takes one well-placed bite.

I channel a defensive ward around me, strong enough to deflect any incoming swords or arrows without draining too much of my replenishing magic. Pirouetting around the horde of bodies dripping with sweat and blood, and leaping over the fallen at my feet, I dart towards Sin. I almost reach him when I hear the scream. My lungs turn to ice as recognition of those throaty shrills seeps in.

Ileana.

I whip towards the sound and find her behind Sin on his left, shrieking and howling as she hacks at the men who have hurt her in so many ways, and quickly drawing attention to herself with the sounds of her fury. Now sprinting towards Sin, I thrust what remains of my own magic into his ward, strengthening it. It expands outward, forcing them to put more distance between each other, and I dive through the protective barrier before the two nearest me even notice I’m here. They lower their shoulders and hurl themselves against it, searching for a weak point in our protective casing. We feed our power into the circle, and a few of them wince as the perimeter of our ward singes their fur everywhere it brushes against them. The ward is strong, but not strong enough to put them down on its own when it’s divided between five of them actively shoving against it. Sweat rushes down my face, my neck, and my very bones grow heavier as exhaustion seeps into my every fiber, turning my marrow to sludge.

Sin whips to look behind himself, and I follow his stare to see what his transcendent ears heard that I could not. Behind us, Ileana is quickly becoming more surrounded as her cries of anguish baited them to her like hunters to a wounded wolf. Ileana has never been a predator, but even a lone wolf will attack a few humans if it’s pissed-off and hungry enough. And she is fucking ravenous.

Worry corrupts Sin’s face. He needs to move to her side, break the chokehold they’ve trapped her in, but if he drops his hold on the ward, the weight of the transcendents pushing against it will be too much for me to hold alone. His eyes flicker between us and her, judging how long it would take him to cut down the men around her and be back at my side.

Too long. And he knows it.

It’s her or me. And he’s not moving.

Ileana’s vicious screaming grows louder as she swings her sword almost carelessly now, blinded with unbridled wrath. She stops a blade from piercing her left side with her own, her weapon sliding off his with a blood tingling screech, and she pivots to face the weapon’s handler, ignorant to the bearded man rushing at her from behind. He raises his hammer above him, the Black Hand’s blood glistening in his eyes like midnight stars.

I cannot fail her again.

The memory of Ileana’s pain surges through me as I remember all she endured night after bitterly cold night. I allow that agony to shred me to pieces and consume them all as I rip off the veil separating me fromher. And with a wailing yowl I don’t recognize, she leaps from my very being and sinks her daggered claws into his chest. His hammer clatters to the ground as he arches forward, and I rake mental talons down the front of his leather skins, imprinting the shape of my fingernails swirled in his blood. He heaves over, blood gurgling from his mouth, and he collapses with a thud behind her as his final breath falls from his chest.

My veins swell with the rush of his collective, my blood thickening with power and adrenaline and wrath. His scent flares my nostrils wide, and I lick my lips as I look at the Legion soldiers still surrounding her, their eyes wide with panic now focused entirely on me. I hear that eldritch shriek again, the wild one coming frommylungs, enveloping the air around us as if it might grow spindly limbs of its own and suck the ichor from every pulsing wound. One by one, the men around her contort into unnatural angles with the snapping of bones, falling to their knees and fading from their bodies as I absorb them into mine. My head falls back in laughter as the chaos rushes through my chest, my stomach, my thighs. Ileana spins on her heel to see who is responsible for their deaths, and I lower my glowing eyes into her deep brown ones—eyes I never want to see riddled with fear again.

Behind me, a rumbling orchestra of growls rips from somewhere deep in the five shifters’ throats as they threaten to overwhelm an already exhausted Sin. I reach a hand towards the bearded man now dead at her feet and wrap a phantom fist around his collective. I pull and pull and pull—willing his blood to obey me, forcing it to serve me as its master—and with one final tug, a long spear, created and dripping with his crimson juice, materializes in my palm. I hear as one of them rears up at Sin and snaps at him, its pointed teeth clacking together. They’re breaking down the barrier, each trying to land a bite, and each attempt boiling my blood hotter.

No onetouches my Black Art.

Without a second’s hesitation, I turn and hurl the blood spear into the face of the transcendent closest to Sin. A wicked smile too wide for my face stretches my mouth as it whimpers and slumps to the ground, fresh blood pouring from its face. I restrain myself from pouncing on the dying animal and lapping at the cardinal stream spewing from the hole my spear carved into its giant head.

The four others shift their focus to me, and as if they share a mental thought, they charge me at the same time, promises of death staring me down from within their inhuman, golden eyes. I widen my stance, and with a delicate wave of my hand, I rip the dead transcendent’s blood from its body and send it spiraling into the others like daggered rain. It pelts into three of them, sending them tumbling over as the essence of their fallen friend bleeds their lives from their skins.

I kneel in front of the one closest to me, its fur as white as my hair, and its glowing yellow eyes reflecting my own. I grab its blood-soaked chin, swipe my athame from my side, and slit its furred throat, relishing in the cardinal droplets splattering my face. The fourth one charges at my rear, and gripping the dagger in my hand, I spin around, ready to drive the blade into its fleshy heart.

The beast vomits blood on me as Sin plunges his sword into its gut, its juice sputtering from its mouth as it crashes to the ground before me. He yanks his weapon from the shifter’s side, his blade coated in its thick, scarlet syrup. Sin meets my eyes with his yellow-green ones, so vivid from the magic expulsion, and extends his hand to me.

The last of my control I’ve been clinging to rushes out of me at the sight of him. His hair is slick with sweat and blood, loose pieces stuck to his copper cheeks, concern for me apparent in his brightened eyes.

Iwanthim.

With every nerve in my body and every breath in my lungs, I want him. I want to let the caster’s high consume me, ravage me, as we give in to the carnal desires we’ve both been fighting. Resisting because what would it mean if the man sworn to protect the realm from my kindwantedme? And worst—what would it say of me if I wanted him back? The man who threatened my family, my freedom, my life…

But tapped into this part of myself, the visceral hunger I’ve buried so deep in my core, I can admit what I’ve known to be true for a while now. A part of me, some raw, primal piece of myself, is falling in love with the Black Art.

It’s wrong to want him. I know that. He is poison. A tonic promising tangled sheets and stolen kisses and everythingwrongin the world. Maybe it isn’t love. Maybe it’s but a primal need, as much a part of me as the bones in my flesh, but try as I might, I can’t stop drinking him.

And I don’t think I want to.

I grab his hand and let him pull me to my feet. His eyes sweep over me, assessing me for damage, and my core blooms with desire at the sight of his concern. I act without thought… logic has no place mingling with feelings like these. Sin is poison, and I’m going to willingly swallow him whole, even if it kills me.

Slamming my chest into his, I wrap both hands around his neck and pull his mouth to mine. For a moment, as I press my lips to his, he goes rigid beneath me. His mouth has greedily tasted my neck, my shoulders, even the skin between my breasts, but never my lips. Because sharing a kiss is beyond just acting out of carnal need… a kiss is intimate. Deep. Soulful.

Just the night before, I widened my stance and bared myself to him so he could pleasure me at my very core. And even then I didn’t feel as… connected… to him as I do with his mouth against mine. Sweet, delicious poison.

I part his lips with mine, and his body comes alive beneath me, like the taste of me stokes the flames inside him. His hands drop to my waist and pull me against him, our armor awkward and in the way, but it doesn’t stop his mouth from devouring mine, his tongue relishing in the taste of my own. I nibble his bottom lip as I pull away and lick the blood smeared on the corner of his mouth. I hold his stare as I back away, tucking the hungry look on his face away in my memories, then turn and run through the sea of the injured and dying.

I scale a ladder leaning against the side of a storefront and hop onto the roof, throwing out a ward around me to deflect any incoming arrows. I use the height to survey the fighting beneath me, noting how much we outnumber them now. It won’t be much longer until Sin and his men finish picking them off like starving dogs, but from this vantage point, I can accelerate our victory.

With a wave of my hands, I birth fire onto the road beneath me. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, I feed it through the streets and alleys, creating partitions and boxing the soldiers into groups. Ensuring each group contains more of our men than theirs, squashing any chance they had of inflicting more casualties on our side and hastening their demise.

---