“Fuck. Make it stop. It has to...”
She couldn’t hear her own words over the deafening howl sending a tremor through the floorboards and rattling the blank white walls. The black tongues of smoke burst and shot straight up toward the ceiling like bolts released from a crossbow. They stopped inches below the wooden beams overhead, but the state of Jessica’s room was the last thing on her mind.
Leandras’ agony ripped from his throat in a still-endless scream, and then the first whisp of green light emerged from the hole in his abdomen. It slithered convulsively out of him at first, as if trying to fight the one bit of concentrated magic that could draw it away.
It was fighting.
This was the power of the Dalu’Rázj, the dark magic that connected the master to the thrall, and it had been inside Leandras for thousands of years. Of course it didn’t want to let him go.
But slowly, second by terrifying second, the green light moved faster and pulled itself from the fae’s desecrated body.
The green tendrils whipped through the air and jerked toward the bowl of water infused with Leandras’ swirling blood. The second they touched the surface, everything changed.
Leandras, apparently, had stopped fighting. The scream cut out, and now he dangled in place, bent far beyond halfway backward with his knees rooted to the floor. The green light bucked around inside him and swarmed toward the bowl of his blood like flies to a carcass. It wouldn’t stop now.
Gasping chokes escaped him as the glow of his imprisonment surged out of him, drawing away from the runes split into his flesh and sealing the torn skin instantly behind it. Another furious howl came not from the fae but from the bowl, which didn’t seem nearly big enough to contain so much magical energy, even if it had been empty.
Jessica stepped back without thinking, expecting the glass bowl to shatter.
It didn’t.
The green light sucked down into it at terrible speed. When the last of its eerie glow—more nauseating than ever now—disappeared into the bloody water, the black lines smoking on the floor exploded. Jessica jumped but didn’t dare blink as the dark tendrils of the casting circle cracked against each other and fought the spell’s unstoppable completion. Then they too were sucked away into the bowl, the very last whisp disappearing without a sound and turning the watery-red liquid a milky white.
Leandras’ body hit the floor with a thump. Jessica leapt forward but stopped herself just in time.
“Not until it starts smoking,” she whispered.
That hadn’t happened yet. Jesus, how much longer did she have to leave him there?
All traces of his casting circle were gone. Not even a speck of yellow chalk remained. Jessica’s ragged breath was the only sound in her bedroom now, and she held it just to make sure.
Damnit, he wasn’t breathing, either.
“Come on, come on, come on...” She snarled and paced back and forth beside the edge of the nonexistent circle.
Every part of her wanted to go to him and finish this. To save him. To make sure she could actually bring him back. To do something.
The seconds stretched out for an eternity before a soft hiss rose from the bowl of white liquid that darkened quickly into a silty, muddy gray-brown. When the first tendril of glowing green smoke emerged from the disgusting surface, Jessica raced toward the fae lying motionless and naked and completely torn apart on her bedroom floor.
She crashed to her knees beside him, sending the blade skittering away across the wood, and took in the sight of his ravaged body. The raised scars left by the blazing green runes were already starting to fade. There wasn’t any blood, not that she could see, but she almost dropped right there beside him when she saw the gaping hole in his belly.
From sternum to navel. Still no blood, but she couldn’t wait around for it to appear. She had to act. She had to step in and pull him back together again by sealing his fate to hers—his magic to hers, his life to hers.
Tears stung her eyes and blurred her vision, but she quickly blinked them back. Her entire body trembled as she looked him over and tried to listen.
Where was that inner voice of instinct he’d been so sure she’d hear?
Where was her knowing now that they both desperately needed it?
A strangled, croaking groan escaped her, and she focused on the gash in his abdomen again.
“Trading one for another,” she whispered. “I’m just the best awful choice. It’s fine. It’s—”
Her hands burst with black smoke and crackling sparks of light that wasn’t exactly light. Her own magic working all on its own looked too much like the fiery black wrath around everything she’d seen of the Dalu’Rázj’s power, and she cringed away.
How could she do this when she kept being reminded of how similar they were?
Jessica Northwood wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t an Emissary of Light. She certainly wasn’t a benevolent leader who could charge relentlessly into the coming storm with all the faith in everyone else who had faith in her.
Fuck, why had she agreed to this?
The black light flickering around her outstretched, violently trembling fingers lurched toward Leandras’ final wound. Flashes of white light emerged between the rippling black, and an immense swell of her own power bloomed in the center of her chest and burned like liquid fire through every inch of her.
Jessica’s hand moved all on its own when her magic jerked her closer to the Laen’aroth.
Because he still was the Laen’aroth, wasn’t he? Once Jessica did her part, that was all he would be from here on out, sworn to her or not.
And she was a vestrohím with the power to bend life and death to her will whenever the fuck she wanted.
Right now was one of those times.
Sucking in a hissing breath, she leaned toward the motionless fae on her floor—his skin now starting to take on the same muddy gray color as the nauseating liquid behind her—and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Then she let go of all her reservations, all conscious thought, all fear of what would happen if she was wrong and completely failed them both.
She wouldn’t fail. Jessica knew exactly what she had to do, and it was more than she could have possibly imagined before this moment.
It was all of her.
Thick whisps of black light and crackling, furious smoke surged from her outstretched hands and into the hole splitting Leandras Vilafor’s abdomen nearly in half. She let out a ragged cry of relief when her magic took over completely and she felt that single spark of life inside him—tiny, shivering, almost gone but still there.
It wouldn’t slip away from her this time. She wouldn’t let it.
Her power drew her closer to him, her hands nearly touching him now but not yet. Not until she knew he could respond to her all on his own. That was part of this too.
His choice. Her acceptance.
It should have horrified her to see the thick lines of her snaking magic emerging through his back, seeping through the muscles of his shoulders, flickering from the hollow of his throat and diving back down again to spread through him. But Jessica was already lost to the ecstasy of who she was and what she could do. Horror and self-loathing had nothing to do with it.
She felt Leandras’ life and his magic pulsing around hers. She held it, cradled it, coaxed it back to its strength bit by bit. All the magic flooding through her and into him poured right back where it belonged in one endless stream of mingled power, growing so overwhelmingly intense that she cried out again and wanted to pull away.
It wouldn’t let her.
Then Leandras’ eyes shot open without warning, and he drew in another gasping breath while his blazing silver eyes darted around the room in panic.
“Holy shit.”
Jessica thought she’d whispered it, but her head buzzed with an electrifying hum, and she couldn’t be sure. Her whole body blazed, quivered, wavering in and out of recognizing itself as different from the fae man gaping up at her. Otherwise, within br
ief seconds of intermittent awareness, Jessica honestly couldn’t feel the difference between them.
“Jessica...” His hand burned with black light as he reached toward her face, the rest of her magic still undulating in and out of him though he could clearly move on his own now.
She leaned down and grabbed his hand to press it to her cheek. “It worked. You’re not dead.”
A breathless grunt escaped him, and his lips barely moved. “Finish it. You have to—”
He choked on the last word—maybe even on his last breath, or on a vestrohím’s magic both destructive and restorative surging through each of them in an endless loop—and tried to nod.
Shit.
She couldn’t just save his life. She had to take it too.
“Okay. Okay...”
Jessica hadn’t realized she’d lowered herself to the floor to lay beside him, but she grasped his face with both hands and saw her own terrifying reflection in his glowing silver eyes.
The words flowing out of her next sounded nothing like her. It was her voice and the dark, chiming timbre of so many others that joined her when her magic was unrestrained and the vestrohím had nothing to hide. Not even from her herself. But the actual words belonged to something she could only briefly grasp.
They belonged to the old forces of magic, to the birthplace of this dark power she’d been given, to another world and another time where maybe Jessica once knew all there was to know about how this worked.
“Do you accept this offer?” she whispered.
“Y-yes.” Leandras’ clenched his teeth and grunted again, not once breaking her gaze.
“Do you give yourself to Aspirok and the bonds of its dominion willingly and without doubt?”
His entire body grew rigid, his mouth opening and closing as he fought for each breath coming shallower than the last. “Yes.”
“Then swear yourself to me in my Thon-Rothím.”
It didn’t matter that she had no idea where the words came from or how she knew what the hell to do. It didn’t matter that Leandras whispered his final reply in Xaharí, not a single word spoken in English or any other language of this world, and Jessica understood everything.
“Everything I am is yours to command. So says the Vem-da’án to the Roth’akán, Lilith.”
Hearing her name—her old name, her first name, the one that had marked her as someone else entirely but still no different than who she was now—drove a shuddering gasp through her.
Then the world fragmented in blistering heat and light and more power than she thought she could bear. Jessica shuddered on the floor, overwhelmed by the desire to consume everything around her and make it hers despite knowing it came only from herself and the fae man slowly lowering his head back onto the floor with a long, whispering sigh.
If she acted on her urges now, she’d still kill them both.
A vestrohím couldn’t devour herself, and everything she longed to seize by unleashing the burning hunger inside her was already hers.
So why did she feel such an agonizing need to take more?
Leandras’ cool hand brushed against her cheek, but he stared unblinkingly at the ceiling as they both gasped for breath and fought to resist the force of an ancient rite in its last moments. “Say it...”
Jessica closed her eyes, and the tears blooming with agonizing slowness beneath her lashes felt like hot pokers running down her skin. “You are mine.”
That was it. The final words to the rite of binding two souls in darkness before bringing them together into...something else. A rite most would say should never have existed, and for good reason.
But Jessica knew the second the last word left her lips, the second her magic withdrew itself in a blinding surge from the Laen’aroth’s being, that even the darkest ritual she could imagine had done the impossible.
Her skin blazed with fire and yearning and the kind of power she never knew she could control. Leandras’ cool fingers fell away from her face as Jessica desperately drew in another breath that almost hadn’t come.
Then his arms were around her, hauling her up from the floor, pulling her closer.
She clutched at him, her entire being blazing from the inside out, and there was nothing else.
The floor beneath them was gone. The circular walls of her room disappeared. The bank, the city, this entire world, the world behind the door and the looming threat of what would come for them ceased to exist.
There was nothing but Leandras’ lips on hers, her breath against his face, hands clawing at Jessica’s shirt to strip away the last evidence of who she used to be before who she’d just become.
She couldn’t even tell which one of them flung her clothing aside before her bare back pressed against the cold wooden floor and the deliciously agonizing heat of Leandras’ body bore down on her. Jessica could hardly tell where she ended and he began.
Nothing separated them now.
The Laen’aroth belonged to her alone, just as the darkness that made her who she was had always belonged to Jessica alone.
To Lilith.
She embraced them both and hoped it was enough.
Chapter 27
Everything hurt.
It shouldn’t have, because if Jessica had been injured enough to feel this much pain, she would have healed by now.
Then consciousness fully seeped back into her, and she recognized the pain for what it was—the only thing that didn’t heal itself in minutes.
Whatever she’d done, this was what it felt like when she used every ounce of her magic in one massive surge without drawing from someone or something else to fuel it.
Jessica groaned and blinked at the strikingly brilliant grain of the polished wood beneath her face. Then the memories all came rushing back at once, and she froze to let them hurtle through her mind before she tried anything else.
They’d done it. Jessica and Leandras had completed the Thon-Rothím, had ripped him from the Dalu’Rázj’s grasp, and then they’d...
“Oh.” She slowly pushed herself up off the floor, grimacing at the giant ache her entire body had become, and rubbed the back of her neck.
Leandras lay on his back a foot away, his arms splayed at his sides and one leg thrown over the other to turn his hips away from her.
And this was what a fae looked like when the party got too real and didn’t stop until they’d both passed out.
“Leandras?”
He inhaled deeply and enjoyed a massive stretch on the floor from fingers to toes before blinking and finally opening his eyes. He gazed around the room, quickly propped himself up on his forearms, and found Jessica sitting there beside him, just as naked as he was. His eyes grew incredibly wide, and he puffed out his cheeks. “That was...”
“Yep.” Jessica cleared her throat.
She’d expected something to feel different, but the only thing she felt was the ache of having spent her magic. To bind his soul to her, sure, but it felt like she’d just been thrown off a moving train.
“Jessica, I’m...” Leandras smirked and didn’t bother to hide a leisurely moment of looking over every inch of her.
“Speechless, huh?”
“It would seem so.” His smile widened into a dazzling grin. “Well done.”
She laughed and ran a hand through her hair, pushing past the stiff ache in her arm and shoulder and everywhere. “With the Thon-Rothím or...everything after we almost died.”
“Would it offend you if I said both?”
“Not...really.” They stared at each other, and Jessica almost leapt to her feet just to end the awkward moment.
At least, it was supposed to feel awkward, right? Somehow, against all ridiculously slim odds, it didn’t.
“What we just did...”
The fae raised an eyebrow. “Which part?”
“All of it.” Jessica shook her head. “I’m not a hundred-percent sure what that was.”
Leandras chuckled and sat fully upright to reach for her. She didn’t try to pull
away from his embrace, because it didn’t quite feel the same as before.
It felt like they’d been doing this forever, and forever wasn’t exactly a part of Jessica’s personal experience. Definitely not with a fae who’d been around for thousands of years.
He pulled her in for a long kiss and left her breathless all over again when it was over. As he pulled away, his eyes flashed with silver light, and that grin of his just wouldn’t let up. “You are... I cannot express—”
“It worked.” Jessica brushed her fingers across his cheek, then ran them down the side of his neck and over the top of his chest, smirking when his skin broke out in goosebumps.
Goosebumps were a hell of a lot better than green runes splitting him apart. The faint, barely visible lines of those awful markings still remained, but they would be hard to see unless someone else was sitting this close, wrapped in his arms with all his clothes lying on the floor across the room.
Not very likely at this point.
Leandras dipped his head. “Yes. We were successful. And something else is bothering you.”
Jessica removed her fingers from the thin scars that would probably always be there on his flesh and met his gaze. “We had to go through all that...”
“Mm.” He nodded. “Far from a small sacrifice, I know. On both our parts.”
“No, you’re the one who had to cut himself down the middle.”
“Yes, a rather unpleasant memory I prefer to forget.” The fae’s smile faded as he studied her face and tucked her tangled hair behind one ear. “And you had to watch.”
Jessica swallowed.
On second thought, bearing witness to the worst spell in history could definitely be considered a sacrifice.
“Even then, you did what was necessary when it was your time. And if I wasn’t already literally indebted to you, I’d offer that now as a thank you.”
“Yeah...” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure there’s been enough time between now and the whole swearing-to-serve-me part for jokes like that.”
“Hmm. If you say so.” His gaze flickered around her face again before settling with a lingering desire on her lips. “I see no reason to discuss it further. Or to talk at all.”
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 28
