Merrick fell to his knees on the top step and bent over her, scarcely aware of Danny’s presence as the boy slipped around him to kneel on Adalynn’s other side. Merrick placed his hands on her cheeks, cupping her face. Her skin was cold and clammy.
“I’m sorry, Adalynn, so sorry,” he said. “I did this.”
Her eyes, so filled with pain and tears, met his. Despite her agony, there was awareness in her gaze. She shook her head slightly, the movement so infinitesimal and erratic that he might’ve thought it involuntary if he hadn’t felt her response through their song.
“I’m making it right,” Merrick continued. “Whatever the price, I gladly pay it. You’re mine, Adalynn, and I’m not letting you go.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing out fresh tears, and released a harsh, clipped breath as the tension in her body intensified.
Soul binding.
That was the only option now, the only possibility. There was no more time for research, no more time to fight back her illness; after a thousand damned years, he was out of time.
Reluctantly, he lifted his gaze from Adalynn to Danny. “Daniel, there’s a scroll on my desk, in the study. Fetch it. Quickly.”
The boy nodded rapidly and scrambled to his feet, rushing across the loft. One of Adalynn’s hands caught Merrick’s wrist. Her fingers curled around it with iron strength, digging her nails into his flesh.
Merrick looked down at her again and brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones. “Hold on, Adalynn. Hold on.”
“Merrick?” Danny’s voice quavered with fear and uncertainty.
Lifting his gaze once more, Merrick looked toward Danny—and his heart froze in place. The door to the study was open wide, and the room beyond was a charred mess—his magic from the parlor below had come up through the floor and reduced his desk to ash.
“No, no, no,” he muttered. “No!”
His heart started beating again at an impossibly fast pace, and his rapid, shallow breaths couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs. The scroll was gone. The key to saving her was gone.
Not letting go. Can’t let go. I refuse to let go.
Adalynn released a choked breath. Her back bowed and her eyes opened to slits, displaying only whites, as her body seized.
He didn’t know what to do to help her now. Didn’t know how to proceed. In his arrogance, in his foolishness, he’d both thought himself capable of changing her fate and had ruined his chance of doing so.
Merrick gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her against him. She shuddered, her body rigid rather than pliant and soft like it usually was.
He was losing her.
“I love you, Adalynn,” he rasped. “I cannot lose you.”
As he clung to her, he latched onto her mana song, letting it wash over him, willing it to mingle with his own, to create that beautiful duet he’d come to appreciate so much. Her tension eased, and she went limp in his hold. Her resonance flickered and sputtered…but a hint of it remained. Weak and delicate, it was barely a spark—the sort of spark that lingered briefly as a person died.
He swallowed thickly and forced his eyes open.
I don’t need the scroll.
In that moment, he realized that he knew what to do, that he’d always known—it was an instinct buried deep within him, deep within the primal mana at his core. He’d felt it every time they’d joined their bodies, every time their mana had sung together, every time their souls had spent precious seconds intertwined.
The scroll simply detailed something natural, something he didn’t have to understand to perform—because it was the right thing. Because she was the right one. The only one.
He lifted his head to find Danny, distraught, kneeling on the floor in front of him. “Do you have your knife?”
Eyes wide, Danny shook his head.
“Get it, boy. Now! Hasten, damn you!”
Once again, Danny scrambled away, racing down the hall.
Seed. Blood. Mana.
One of those things had already been shared—he could sense it inside her still. Along with the other two, the binding could be completed.
As gently as he could, Merrick moved up off the stairs and laid her on the floor. He pressed a hand over her chest; her heartbeat was muted, weak, slow.
“No,” he growled, easing magic into her, fanning that little spark inside her. “Just a little longer, Adalynn.”
The darkness surrounding that spark lashed out at him, sinking its tainted claws into his resonance, but he did not relent. He hadn’t allowed himself to be consumed by the ley line, and he would not allow himself to be overcome by any disease—mortal or otherwise. Not while she was at stake.
Danny’s feet thumped along the hallway as he sprinted back to Merrick. The boy fell to his knees, catching himself on one hand, and handed over his sheathed bowie knife.
Merrick tugged the knife out of its sheath. “Whatever you see, boy, whatever you hear or feel, do not interfere. Stay back.”
He didn’t allow Danny time to respond; he could only keep Adalynn’s spark alight for a short while, and he couldn’t waste even a fraction of a second. He lifted her hands one-by-one and cut her palms. Blood oozed from the wounds. Once he was done, he cut his own palms and dropped the knife onto the floor beside him.
Shifting to straddle Adalynn, he hurriedly twined his fingers with hers. A soft, rasping exhalation escaped her; she drew in a shallow, labored breath afterward.
Their blood mingled, and Merrick felt the first hints of her mana song in his veins. He latched onto that sensation, clenched his jaw, and pulled.
He acted purely on instinct, with little conscious understanding of what he was doing. The air between him and Adalynn glowed as snaking tendrils of glimmering magic flowed out of him—and out of her. Merrick’s mana was a familiar blue—strong and bright, building rapidly in front of him. Adalynn’s was a muted green, thinner, weaker, and slower to form, but no less real.
The still flowing magicks met in the air between their chests and swirled around each other. They moved sluggishly at first, but as Merrick tensed his muscles and poured his concentration toward it, the tendrils of magic sped until they were so fast they could no longer be distinguished from one another. The two mana sources coalesced in a vibrant teal orb. Adalynn’s mana song rose to match Merrick’s, becoming louder and stronger than he’d ever sensed it, taking its place not just as a piece of his own but as its equal.
A sense of euphoria spread through Merrick as he stared at that wispy, pulsating orb—at their combined essence. There was nothing more intimate than this. No way to be closer.
The magic split in half. One piece flowed into Merrick’s chest, the other into Adalynn’s. It rocketed his euphoria into unbearable ecstasy, making him shudder and growl as though he’d just reached a climax.
Adalynn’s back arched. She sucked in a deep, gasping breath, eyes suddenly opened wide, only to sag back down once the glow of magic had faded. Her eyes fluttered closed and her head lolled to the side as Merrick fell forward, catching himself on his elbows without releasing her hands.
Panting, Merrick stared at Adalynn’s face. It was relaxed, free of strain and pain; for one fleeting moment, he feared he’d lost her, that it hadn’t worked.
But he could feel her, could feel her inside himself, suffusing his every cell, singing within his mana—their mana.
He knew she was alive just as certainly as he knew he was.
And she was his. She’d always been his. Though he’d not understood what that meant at the time, he’d known it from the first moment he’d seen her.
“M-Merrick?” Danny asked. “Is she…is Addy…”
“She’s alive,” Merrick replied, his voice hoarse. “She’s alive.”
Danny crawled closer, placed a hand on the side of Adalynn’s face, and kissed her forehead. When he pulled away, he wiped the tears from his cheeks, sniffled, and looked up at Merrick. His eyes were red from crying, but there
was immense relief and gratitude within them. “Thank you.”
Merrick slipped off Adalynn and gently gathered her in his arms, drawing her close to his chest so that her head lay on his shoulder. He stood up and carried her toward his bedroom. His heart only gradually slowed, and his breath remained ragged as he walked.
She was alive, but was she all right? Her mana song was stronger than ever…but he could sense that her body still wasn’t well, that her illness still lingered. Had he only extended her suffering?
No, he sensed that dark taint weakening, receding; he sensed her body healing. Relief flooded him.
Danny hurried ahead to open the door to Merrick’s bedroom, and Merrick stepped inside. He crossed to the bed and laid Adalynn atop it. Blood continued to ooze from the cuts on her hands.
“Bandages,” Merrick said.
“Okay.” Danny’s hurried footsteps faded down the hall.
Delicately, Merrick brushed Adalynn’s sweat-dampened hair out of her face, tucking the strands behind her ears.
“Come back to us, Adalynn. Come back to me.”
Danny returned a short time later with a wet cloth and his backpack, which he dropped heavily onto the floor next to the bed. A moment later, he produced a packaged disinfectant wipe and a roll of gauze, handing them—along with the cloth—to Merrick.
Merrick quickly cleaned her palms and bound her wounds, gently settling her hands atop the bedding when he was done. Adalynn remained unmoving but for the steady rise and fall of her chest.
“She’s going to be okay, right?” Danny asked anxiously.
“She doesn’t have a choice but to be okay,” Merrick replied.
Chapter Seventeen
“When do you think she’ll wake up?” Danny asked. He was seated at the foot of the bed, just beyond Adalynn’s feet.
“I cannot guess,” Merrick replied.
Danny had slept sporadically over the last three days, usually on the bed beside his sister, unwilling to leave her when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. He’d only eaten because Merrick had forced him to, often protesting by pointing out that Merrick wasn’t taking time to sleep or eat, so he didn’t see why he should have to.
The boy looked exhausted. Though his skin was tanned, it had taken on a pale, almost sickly undertone, and he had deep bags beneath his eyes. Whenever Adalynn did wake up, she was likely to have a few things to say about Danny not taking care of himself while she was out—and some choice words for Merrick for not taking care of Danny well enough.
And those would be amongst the sweetest words Merrick had ever heard.
Merrick himself hadn’t slept or eaten since he’d bound their souls together. He couldn’t. Even though he sensed that everything within her was fine, she’d shown no signs of waking. Her mana song, still inexorably twined with his, had only strengthened, and he couldn’t detect even a hint of that darkness in her anymore. Merrick had tended to her at every moment—he’d bathed her, dressed her in more comfortable clothing, had trickled droplets of water into her mouth to ensure she’d had something to drink.
She was the same Adalynn as always, but she was more now, too. He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but it didn’t alarm him. It might even have been comforting were it not for his worry; it would’ve been comforting if she’d already woken.
“When was the last time you ate, Daniel?” Merrick asked as he turned his attention back to Adalynn. Her face was so serene, so beautiful…but her peaceful expression now couldn’t compare to the brightness of her smile, which he missed more and more with each passing hour.
“I’m okay,” Danny said.
“When, boy?”
“Uh…yesterday, I think.”
“Go eat. Then you will take a shower and get some sleep.”
“I’m fine, Merrick. I don’t want to leave in case she wakes up.”
Merrick turned his head to glance at Danny. “If she wakes, I will alert you. But if she wakes while you are sitting there, looking—and smelling—more like one of those undead creatures beyond our walls than her younger brother, how do you think she will react?”
Danny slouched, his eyebrows falling low and his mouth turning down in a deep frown. “You promise you’ll call me?”
“I promise.”
The boy sighed heavily. He glanced at Adalynn for a moment before standing. “Fine.”
“If we don’t keep ourselves healthy for her, Daniel…what was the point of all this?”
“Okay, I get it.” Danny walked toward the door, stopped, turned his head, and narrowed his eyes on Merrick. “I mean it. Call me.”
“If you’re still here in three seconds, I’m going to throw you in your room and magically seal the door.”
“All right, all right!” Danny’s steps were heavy as he finally exited the room and walked down the hallway.
Merrick shifted his full attention to Adalynn. One of her arms lay outside the blankets that were draped over the rest of her body; he took that hand in his, lacing their fingers together. The bandages were gone—the cuts on her hands had vanished by the second day—allowing their palms to meet skin-to-skin. He gently stroked her cheek with the fingertips of his other hand.
“If this is even the barest hint of what things would be like were you gone, neither Daniel nor myself would last long, Adalynn,” he whispered. “Your brother needs you. I need you. I never realized how empty my life was before you came into it.”
He leaned forward and raised her hand to his lips, letting his soft kiss on her knuckles linger for a long while. “Come back to me, love. Please. As foolish as it may sound after so short a while…I don’t know how to live without you anymore. There’s nothing for me without you.”
Just like every other time he’d spoken to her over the last three days, Adalynn offered no response, made no indication that she’d heard him. But she was in there; he could feel it, could sense her consciousness.
“If you don’t wake up soon, Adalynn, I swear I will find some way to go in there after you and drag you back out.”
He’d been tempted many, many times to use his magic to latch onto her mana song and force her awake…but he’d learned his lesson by now. He understood that such things exacted prices far too high, caused more damage than he was willing to knowingly inflict.
Merrick squeezed her hand a little tighter. “Please.”
Her finger twitched. Merrick’s heart skipped a beat.
“Adalynn?”
Her fingers twitched again, and her eyelids fluttered.
Merrick sat on the edge of the chair he’d pulled beside the bed, cupping her cheek in his palm. “Yes, wake up. Pull yourself out of it. Waking up is the easiest thing you’ve had to do since you arrived here.”
Her resonance flared—both within her and within Merrick—and he sensed her struggling, fighting, clawing her way up from unconsciousness.
“Wake up, Adalynn,” he growled. His magic crackled to life on his skin, thrumming along his limbs, and he rose, knocking the chair back as he did so. “Come back to me. Fight. You are not to waste another moment, do you hear me?”
Excitement and desperation swirled in a chaotic storm within his chest, which felt like it would burst if the pressure continued growing. She needed a jolt, a push, but he dared not use magic. He dared not risk harming her.
Merrick leaned forward and slammed his lips over hers. Their mana song surged, sweeping through him to set his body ablaze with heat, lust, and need and forcing his eyes closed. Her lips were warm and pliant beneath his, and he ravished them, claimed them, devoured them. And she…parted them.
Something touched the side of his face—her free hand.
He drew in a startled breath and began to pull away, but the air was flavored with her taste, with her essence, and the rightness of it lured him back in. He shifted his hand into her hair and deepened their kiss, slipping his tongue between her parted lips.
Every moment he’d spent with her was dear to him, each bit of intimacy they’d sh
ared was powerful, special, and memorable, but that kiss was the sweetest he’d ever experienced by far.
It took all his willpower to break that kiss after several euphoric seconds; he had to see her face, had to look into her eyes, had to know she was okay. He opened his eyes and met her gaze.
Merrick’s breath hitched; Adalynn’s eyes were glowing a soft teal, the same color that had been produced by their combined mana songs, the same color his own magic had taken on since the soul binding.
She smiled up at him, her thumb brushing over his cheek and rasping through his beard. “I’m alive.”
He couldn’t stop himself from laughing, and it felt so, so good. “Glad you finally noticed, Adalynn. We’ve been waiting awhile.”
Her smile slipped as fast as it came, and the glow faded from her eyes, returning them to their normal beautiful brown. “Did you…did you do it again? Did you push it back?”
He would gladly stand here and stare into those eyes for three whole days after being denied them that long. “No. No, I didn’t push it back. But it is gone now.”
Her brow furrowed. “How?”
“I bound our mana songs together. Our souls. They are now one. We are one.”
Her features smoothed out with blossoming wonder as she searched his eyes “I hear it. I feel it. I mean, I’ve always felt it before, coming from you, but now…it’s in me.”
“As it was always meant to be. Your song was a part of mine before I even met you, Adalynn.” He released a shaky breath and tucked a rogue lock of her hair behind her ear. “You were meant to be mine.”
She raised her other hand and slipped her fingers into his hair, tugging him into another kiss. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. I…I don’t just want a physical relationship.”
He tipped his forehead against hers, shaking his head slightly. “And I told you it was never just that. It never could’ve been just that. I love you, Adalynn. That’s what it was always meant to be.”
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