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Sola chuckles, throws one leg over the other and turns to Eli. “True, yet somehow we’re more loyal to you than the Centress. You want to have a Hollow as a pet? We’re here for you.”

Eli narrows his gaze to me, licking his lips with a particularly red tongue. “I have my reasons.”

I can’t pull my eyes away even as I speak, slow and listless. “You don’t get to choose who you love?” I finally get the bottle open and pour bubbles down my throat as I try to wrap my head around the concept of linking. Eli glares at me, his breathing heavier by the second.

“It’s not about love,” Sola says, smoothing her black dress. “The link has nothing to do with that. Maturation is so intense and full of ramped up emotions and sex drive that it’s hardnotto be together. It has to be strong enough to trigger our gifts.”

I swallow more red liquid, the lust constant now. Strong emotion—exactly what Eli’s trying to force from me—so I can take the magic they wait years to be gifted. It doesn’t make sense, and his friends go along with it, not caring. Whatever he trulyneedsfrom me can’t be simply about stealing magic.

I slide my toasty body into a deep slouch, my legs outstretched and heavy in front of me, and a perfect view of Eli sipping at his bottle, his lips dyed red.

Chapter

Twenty-Four

Sola and Coen giggle next to me, hands wandering over each other. I scoot away, noting Sypher passed out on Eli, his head a deadweight on his shoulder. Eli lets him stay, as though he’s not standoffish and unforgiving. Maybe he saves that for me.

My body sinks deeper into the lumpy couch, and Eli’s eyes meet mine, devious and focused with every measured sip of scarlet soda, looking right past my lowered walls. I want to look away. I do. But this drink…it’s breaking me down. And heating me up. The angles of his face. The muscles trapped by his shirt. The memory of his hands on me, his words—they have an inexplicable pull.

I go for another sip, and Eli moves in a flash of black. He breaks our locked eyes, slowing only to lower Sypher’s sleepingbody to the floor, then jumps to his feet. “Sola, put her back when you’re done.”

She slings her arm over my shoulders and tips me into her and Coen’s embrace. “I will. I promise.” Her hand slips to my neck, stroking my throat. “I’ll be done with her soon.”

“And don’t touch what’s mine,” Eli snaps. Sola’s hand falls from me in an instant.

Eli twists his mouth into a crooked frown, snatches the bottle from my hand and gives me one last unreadable look over his shoulder before turning down the hallway.

Coen pulls Sola closer, and I move away again. Their tangled tongues barely reach my awareness until their frantic hands and hips go searching despite their clothes, their soft breaths turning to moans of pleasure from the passionate kiss. A red, bubbly tingle fizzes its way through me, passing my abdomen, down to my inner thighs and all the way to my toes.

Whether it’s the scarlet soda or their link that has them so distracted by each other, I have to get away. I unstick myself from the couch and stand. It takes the last rational bit of me to resist that pull and walk in the opposite direction from where Eli disappeared down the hallway. I sit on the bottom step, letting the lust pound through my system. The steady pitter-patter of rain surrounds me.

Even with my rising temperature, my thoughts are slow, entering like a gentle breeze instead of a hurricane, soft and flexible instead of urgent and jarring. I welcome the break. I never realized how wound up I’ve always been, every muscle flexed at the ready, every thought on a precipice.

I flop back onto the stairs, too relaxed to find it uncomfortable. My fingers land on something metal—a red marbled ring hanging from a strip of satiny blue fabric. I push it into the cup of my bra. Mine now. The moonlight shines throughthe crevice between the hatchway doors where rain trickles down toward the top step.

The hatchway.

A wave of dizziness hits me. Nothing stands between me and that hatchway, nobody watching, holding me back from finding Kelt. From going home.

I can leave.

The calming, red tingle in my body fights the urgency thundering through me. Then, as if in response to my noisy heart, it reaches my ears—a fast beat with a hard edge. I know that sound. I dreamed of it. It comes from down the hall. I look back at the hatchway. It blurs together. Handle into door, door into wall. Wall into stairs, stairs into me. But the sound is clear and crisp, skating through the folds of my mind and coaxing me to my feet.

I follow it.

Past the rhythmic embrace of Coen and Sola’s kiss. Past the broken glass and red puddle. Down the hallway. Farther and farther from the hatchway. Toward the beat.

I stand outside the last door, looking in.

Eli’s inside, his back to me. I count five walls, all angled inward as if the room were falling in upon itself. Four dim light stones on the floor brighten the windowless space. He sits on a little stool across from a bed and shambly nightstand, holding a smooth stick in each hand—barely visible at the speed with which they hit the drums before him. Drums that seem to be crafted straight from nature, veiny plants stretched tight around wooden frames and tied with vines.

His whole body moves, every muscle of his back and arms rippling at once and sending waves of darkness across the room—invisible darkness that brings blood to my lips, my tongue. His head bangs up and down, his feet thumping along. One with the summoning beat.

What I’d give to let go like that…

An unscratchable itch works its way through my body from head to toe, and I forget to breathe. My heart beats along with the chaotic tempo. That damn drink. My body has a mind of its own, reacting, wanting—no,needing.

And then—fuck this beautiful man—he sings, his voice like the horizon turned upside down, walking on air with the weight of the world above him. I hug the icy stone doorframe to tame the heat that consumes me.