Page 54

A mbrose slammed back into his own body, coming awake on the kitchen floor at the same time Emery did.

“No.” Already, Emery was moving as if possessed.

Indeed, possession was perhaps the best descriptor, his body an unwilling host to a portion of Morcant’s soul in a dark twinning of Ambrose’s experience with the witch king.

“No.” He wrestled out of his shirt and clutched the rune over his chest. “No, no.” His nails left red welts as he scratched.

Ambrose seized his hands. “Stop.”

“Get it out.”

“You’re hurting yourself.”

“I can’t have that twisted bastard’s soul inside me. You need to get it out.” He took Ambrose’s hand and placed it, palm flat, against the rune. Ambrose cringed when he understood what Emery meant.

“It’s made him immortal.” Emery had one hand over Ambrose’s, the other holding his wrist, keeping his palm over the place where his heart thundered and, presumably, a fragment of Morcant’s spirit resided in its spell jar.

“All this time I’ve been trying to kill him, but I’ve been keeping him alive.

I can’t. I hate him. He’s wrecked my life, and—Please. I need it out.”

“I can’t.”

“You can pull out hearts, you can pull this out of me.”

Emery’s chest already had red hatches from his fingernails. Ambrose didn’t want to envision it with his heart carved out. To make matters worse, the witch king’s magic, which had felt like a hollow, aching starvation for weeks, renewed with the prospect of feeding.

“I’m afraid of hurting you.”

“When you took that book out of a locked chest for me, the chest was unharmed, wasn’t it?” Emery pressed Ambrose’s hand tighter against him. “Why not my chest? Is it any different?”

Ambrose shuddered, but Emery’s tone made him pause. He sounded terrified, panicked, but also … revolted. Sick. Violated.

Ambrose would feel the same in his stead.

The magic imbuing him with his abilities often felt like pollution in his blood.

Not for the first time, it struck him how similar their situations were: two powerful immortals had infested their lives.

Deep down, he believed it was too late to excise the witch king from his heart without cutting into something vital.

How did you heal from a corruption that rotted through whole parts of who you were?

The idealistic youth who’d dreamed of being a hero had long since been devoured by the Grim Wolf of Bellgrave.

But it might not be too late for Emery.

In theory, Ambrose could do this. He’d used his abilities before without causing lasting harm.

If he kept his hand non-corporeal, he could feasibly transmute the spell jar and extract it.

It had been inserted without pain or a scar beyond the rune used as an anchor point, so why should removing it be any different?

Still, the idea of using his abilities on Emery frightened him more than anything they’d done thus far. What if the hunger tried to gorge itself? What if Ambrose couldn’t stop it from feasting? What if a scrap of the witch king hid inside him and used this as an opportunity to kill Emery?

He’d been staring down at the floor, but Emery lifted his chin with a gentle touch. His fingers spread to cup the edge of Ambrose’s jaw.

“Please, Ambrose.”

Emery had such wide, deep brown eyes—the color of black coffee, dark chocolate, comforting things Ambrose had only come to taste in this era. He looked completely trusting. Ambrose had yearned for that trust, but now he had it, he wasn’t sure he trusted himself.

Emery’s face was steely. Determined. He squeezed Ambrose’s hand tightly.

“Please.”

“You’d trust me to do this?” Ambrose asked.

“Yes,” Emery said. “I trust you.”

If there was anything he could have said to convince Ambrose, that was it.

“All right.”

Emery looked relieved. “Thank you. Where should we—?”

“Perhaps you should make yourself comfortable.”

“Bed, then.”

Emery led the way through the twisting stacks of books making a labyrinth of his bedroom. He lit a cedar-scented candle and turned on the lamp with the stained-glass shade. He swept a hand over the coverlet until it was flat, then laid himself on top of it.

Ambrose’s pulse thumped seeing him like that. It looked too medical. Too much like he was attending to someone who’d taken fatally ill. Too much like the pose in which the spell jar had been inserted in the first place.

“Hey,” Emery said.

He turned onto his side and patted the bed. Ambrose sat on its edge, taking a ragged breath. Emery took his hand. Just the ends of his fingers, so Ambrose didn’t feel chained, could break away, but could let Emery tether him to solid ground if he so wished.

“You’ll tell me if I hurt you?” Ambrose asked.

“Right away,” Emery promised.

“You’ll stop me if anything feels wrong?”

“Of course.”

Ambrose believed him, but somehow it did little to comfort him. The thing about reaching into someone’s heart was that it going wrong often meant fatally , and he’d come to care for Emery a great deal. Enough to defy a king.

His memory strayed to their kiss—the soft way Emery had opened his mouth and let Ambrose in. If only they could make this as easy and gentle.

“Okay,” Ambrose said to signal he was ready.

Emery lay back with his head against the pillow. A stray lock of hair tumbled over his forehead, and if Ambrose couldn’t do this now, then when?

He twisted the lock loosely around a finger before tucking it behind Emery’s ear, his cheeks flushing as their eyes met.

Ambrose stroked the same hand down Emery’s throat, his magic singing hungrily for the pulse fluttering under his fingertips.

He trailed his hand lower, over the curve of Emery’s clavicle, the central line of his chest. He traced the rune with his index finger, letting his magic seep and attune to Emery’s body, his skin, his blood, his percussive heartbeat.

He’d dreamed of touching Emery, but under circumstances much different from these.

“Ready?” he asked.

Emery’s chest rose and fell shallowly under Ambrose’s hand, but he hardly looked afraid. He sounded breathless when he said, “Yes.”

Ambrose focused his magic, letting it coalesce in the place where they touched. When his fingers sank through an inch, Emery’s chest inflated on a sharp intake of breath.

Ambrose froze. “Does it hurt?”

Emery shook his head fervently. “No, keep going.”

Ambrose waited a second to confirm nothing had gone wrong. Emery’s body was tense with anticipation, but he didn’t shake or flinch when Ambrose pushed farther inside.

He had to keep a tight rein on his magic, which snapped its teeth and begged to unleash every ounce of its insatiable hunger, but Ambrose had spent his life starving for something altogether different, and he knew how to suppress hunger when needed.

He clenched his teeth, concentrated, and as he did, the magic subtly shifted.

It did not necessarily become docile, but when used for violent means, it felt viscous and congealing.

While muzzled like this, he found it silky. Almost amenable.

His hand glided past the vital protection of Emery’s flesh, into the cage of his ribs, where he could cup Emery’s fluttering heart in his hand. Emery, staring down at the place where Ambrose’s wrist protruded from his chest, let out a soft noise.

Ambrose tensed. “Is it too much?”

Emery let his head fall back against the pillow and shook it. “Can you feel it?”

“Not yet. Can you handle more?”

Emery let out a gusty breath that was half a laugh. “Ambrose, trust me, this doesn’t hurt.” The knot in his throat bobbed. “I’m—just hurry up? I’m trying not to be indecent, but—” He let out a little gasp as Ambrose shifted to angle his fingers differently, searching. “Oh, hell .”

Realization made scorching heat rise to Ambrose’s cheeks.

Oh. Oh.

Emery wasn’t gasping because it hurt, he was …

He was enjoying this.

All Ambrose’s worry fled him. Conviction that he could do this without causing harm transformed into curiosity at the prospect he could make it feel good .

He adjusted his position on the bed, devoted now to finding that spell jar, but also keenly interested in Emery’s reactions. The magic still teethed, frustrated, but something felt different about that, too. Like a feral animal shocked silent by the stroke of a kind hand.

Ambrose leaned forward, bracing against the mattress over Emery’s shoulder.

Emery’s eyes flew open, an attractive color high in his cheeks all the way to his ears.

Ambrose kept a tight hold of his magic as he trailed his fingers searchingly through the harpsichord keys of Emery’s ribs.

Deeper, feeling his lungs inflate when Emery’s breath caught, counting the vertebrae when his spine arched.

Then his fingers brushed something sharp and foreign, like a razor stuffed in a soft toy. It was lodged just behind Emery’s heart.

“I think I found it.”

Emery nodded quickly. “Can you remove it?”

“I think so.”

Ambrose tried to be delicate and precise as he judged the length of the spell jar.

It was small, about the size of his first two knuckles, and the magic within prickled like a sea urchin’s spines.

Gently, careful to keep the spell jar and his own hand non-corporeal, he curled two fingers around the loose end and tried to wiggle it free.

Emery’s hand flew up to clutch Ambrose’s arm. His mouth fell open on a stifled whimper.

The spell jar teetered, caught between ventricles. If it had been a corporeal object, it could cause damage, but in Ambrose’s grip it was harmless. “I almost have it.”

“Okay.”

“I think I can pull it out now.”

Emery blew out a breath between pursed lips. “Do it.”

Ambrose focused all his energy on drawing the spell jar to the surface.

It felt a bit like cupping water in his hand and trying not to let it spill between his fingers, but he slowly pulled it through.

Emery’s back arched, his fingers tightening around Ambrose’s arm.

His knees cocked apart as his heels dug into the mattress.

The magic, the spell jar, and his body adhered to one another, and Ambrose was slowly loosening the threads binding them.

He could feel the tension reach a cresting point, a brief slip of it loosening, and then the release as it all unraveled.

Ambrose’s hand burst free, clutching the spell jar in his fist. His magic unspooled, freed from his tight control, but instead of jerking at its leash to be loosed like a hound scenting blood, it seemed only to … to sleep .

Emery was unharmed. The only marks on his chest were the fading scratches he’d left himself.

Ambrose held the spell jar out in his open palm. “It’s out. It’s done.”

He could hardly breathe, but Emery was breathing hard, still holding on to Ambrose and looking from the spell jar in his hand to Ambrose’s eyes. He had the flushed, sweaty look of a man debauched and—

And Ambrose could defy the magic’s hunger, but not his own.

He tossed the spell jar aside, took Emery’s face in his hands, and kissed him.