Page 148 of His Darkest Desire

“I’m okay,” Kinsley said, squeezing her eyes shut and resting her head against her aunt’s.

You’re a liar.

Their love flowed into her, warm and soothing, but it could only swirl around the gaping hole in her chest. It couldn’t fill that void; nothing ever could. Nothing but Vex.

Fabric whispered behind her aunt and mother. They pulled away from Kinsley as her father took off his coat and settled it around her shoulders, blanketing her in heat. She looked up at him. His blue eyes were reddened by his tears, which rolled down his cheeks to disappear in his thick beard.

A soft cry broke past Kinsley’s lips. “Daddy.”

He drew her into a crushing embrace, cupping the back of her head in his big hand. “I thought we lost you, baby girl.”

She wrapped her arms around him. “You didn’t.”

“You’re safe now.”

I was already safe. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

I was happy.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

It mattered not how tightly Vex had held on, how fiercely he’d desired or how deeply he’d hoped. Naught could have changed this.

He told himself that over and over as he stared down at his empty arms, still curved as though around her body, as he stared at his open hands, his splayed fingers. As he beheld this…wrongness.

Each time he repeated those frantic insistences, those pathetic, fraught self-assurances, he knew they were holding something else back. Something far larger, darker, and hungrier. They were the gates defending against a titanic, rampaging monster.

And the gates were splintering.

“I chose her,” he rasped.

His voice echoed off the stone walls, twisting in the chamber’s oppressive silence to become a taunting rumble from the dark. His own voice distorted, reflected, stripped and raw, tearing apart his intent, his words, his already tattered heart.

When the echoes died, silence reclaimed mastery of the space. It pressed in around him, squeezing, crushing, demanding he curl his arms inward.

But to do that would…

Would prove his arms were empty, would prove this was no illusion.

It would prove his Kinsley was…gone.

My mate is gone.

Vex’s fingers twitched, and his arms trembled. He needed but blink, and all would be right again. Needed but squeeze his arms a little tighter and he would feel her again. He would know she was still right here.

Clenching his jaw, he drew in a deep, shaky breath. It caught in his lungs, laden with the tang of magic and the cloying scents of earth and root. But it yet bore a hint of perfume. A hint of her.

He moved his arms closer to his chest. They encountered no resistance until they touched the breast of his tunic.

Nothingness. He’d been cradling nothingness in his arms, and now it flooded his heart. Now it permeated his being.

Kinsley shouted from another world. Vex held his breath and listened as her voice swept through him, the words lost but the emotions unmistakable. Her anguish and anger, her grief.

Vex balled his fists. He welcomed the bite of his claws against his palms, though it could not shield him, could not distract him.

“What did I expect?” he growled.

He’d known what he was doing, had understood his aim. The spell had worked. Vex had succeeded.

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