Crimson Truth (Onyx Assassins 4)

The beats of her heart steadied over the next minute. Her blood pressure rose.

I wavered, my balance shifting uncontrollably.

“That’s enough,” Alek said softly.

“Just a little more,” I whispered.

“Enough, or you’ll both be dead,” Gabriel added. “Imagine what she’ll think if she wakes up to find that she’s killed you.”

It would devastate her. She might not want me as her mate, but she’d never wish ill on me, I knew that much.

I lifted my wrist and sealed the final cut, then staggered back slightly.

Gabriel examined her, listening to her heart and lungs, then testing the tissue of the faint pink scar that bisected her chest. “That’s all we can do for her, now. It’s up to her body to accept the conversion or reject it.”

“She’ll accept it,” I whispered, brushing her bloodied hair from her face. “There’s enough of her own magic in it. She’ll accept it,” I ended with a whisper, trying to convince myself it was true.

I lifted her into my arms and cradled her against my chest. “If there’s nothing more to do here, I’ll take her to my room.”

“We’ll send up the bagged blood you hate,” Ransom said with a weak, forced smile.

Alek nodded. “Stay by her side.”

“Always,” I responded. Then, with the very last ounces of my power, I wended us up four stories to my bedchamber and placed her upon my bed as my head spun with the blood loss.

I needed to bathe her so she didn’t wake up to see the dried blood caked on her skin. I needed to wash the evidence of the battle from her hair and face. She wouldn’t want to see that, either. Because she’d live. There was no other possibility than for her to live.

The bond between us was faint, but still there, still shimmering as it tethered our souls to each other.

My vision blurred at the edges, and I fell onto the bed next to my mate.

Later.

I’d do it later.

She’d live. Even if it had cost me my own life, she would live.

16

Jocelyn

Someone had split open my chest and dumped hot lava inside the wound. I tried to raise my arms to fight them off, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even open my eyes.

Nothing sounded inside my head beyond pain.

Pain, betrayal, torture.

Loss. I’d lost something, someone, but I couldn’t remember anything beyond the excruciating pain.

Darkness draped over me like a weighted blanket, slowing my breathing so much I nearly forgot how.

There, little witch. All clean. You’re so fucking beautiful, Jocelyn. You’re so fucking strong.

That voice.

It called to me in the deepest parts of my aching soul. Almost demanded me to open my eyes.

So I did.

The weight of the simple action felt like trying to lift a car without magic, but I managed to pry them open, just a sliver.

Enough to see him.

Benedict. Kneeling over me, his crystal blue eyes drained of almost all their color.

My mate.

“You found me.” The words were a rasp on an exhale of breath, and my eyes slammed shut again. I fell backward down a long tunnel, losing all sense of my surroundings, of my body.

But it felt fucking good to be rid of that broken thing.

Here, in this bubbling darkness, there was no pain, no broken bones, no heart-wrenching sense of betrayal.

There was nothing but a swarm of tingling coolness caressing my bones, my muscles, my very soul, with delicate fingers.

“She should be awake by now,” Benedict said from somewhere across the vast darkness.

“Her vitals are stable,” an unfamiliar voice said. “You said yourself the bond is fully healed. It could be any minute now.”

“Leave us,” Benedict’s voice was pure command, and every nerve ending in my body responded to that tenor. To the scent now swarming my senses. His scent. My mate.

Why was I wasting time in this ridiculous darkness when he waited for me on the other side of it? I was a witch, for goddess’s sake, I could surely find my way to the other side. Especially when I had so much I needed to tell him.

My mother’s betrayal.

The lie I’d told him.

Memories crashed into me at a rapid speed, my mind assaulted with images, my body flinching from the phantom pain of my mother’s attack. Goddess, that could’ve been Benedict, could’ve been his family, if I hadn’t lied. If I hadn’t forced him away.

I mentally strained against those memories, focusing instead on the darkness, the thickness to it. And I clawed and kicked and tugged myself up and up, my soul feeling stronger, my body awakening in a way I couldn’t describe. And when I was certain there was no end to that vastness, when I was ready to give up—

My eyes snapped open, the room bursting into focus with a crystal-clear clarity I couldn’t explain.

Benedict’s room.

His bed a soft support beneath me.

And there he was, his head hanging between his hands as he sat in the chair across the room.