Page 108 of A Hunt Bound in Blood
With their demon commander dead, the surviving creatures were fleeing, and only Cammon and I existed in the mass of devastation.
I sucked in breath after breath, fighting to gain control of my magic now that the threat was gone. It struggled against me, not wanting to be tamped down after tasting freedom, but I closed my eyes and imagined it settling in my blood along with my vampirism. It was there. It was reachable. It was closer than I’d let it be in thirteen years.
As my power ebbed, the storm let up. The rain eased to a gentle patter, and the clouds lightened to a soft grey, coating the blood-soaked valley in an oddly cozy light. The water rolled back towards the sea, but the rest of the damage I’d caused remained. So many fallen trees, gaping fissures, flooded alcoves. The wall where Cammon had left me had crumbled in places, no longer a protective guardian around the harbour beyond.
I turned again to face Cammon, to sound our victory, but my heart cracked when I found him on his back staring up at me. Blood pumped from a deep wound in his abdomen with every ebb and flow of his pulse. It bubbled from his lips and spilled from dozens of other injuries across his battered form. His leather breeches were in tatters, and his battered wings stretched out beneath him. I fell to his side and grabbed his hand.
“Buttons,” he rasped, and a sob broke through my attempt at restraint. When had his name for me come to mean so much more than the taunt it had started as? Now I couldn’t imagine never hearing it again. “You need to leave.”
“I won’t,” I argued. “I’m not going anywhere without you. You have to know that by now. Don’t you?”
My tears spattered on his chest, and he raised his hand to cup my face. His thumb rolled across my cheek, and despite the agony he had to be in, his lips curled with smugness. “I knew I’d grow on you.”
“And you did,” I agreed. “Like a fungus. Like one of those parasites that consumes its host, and without you…”
I couldn’t consider it. My gaze jumped from one injury to the next, seeking some solution, some way to fix this. I didn’t have healing magic, had never wanted it because it would mean I’d need to get too close to people, but now I resented the limits of my massive power. I could control nature, create storms and wash away entire valleys, but I couldn’t save the demon I loved.
Another sob choked me. I bowed my head to hide my face from him, not wanting him to see that, like him, I understood the end was here. As I leaned over him, the amulet slipped from my shirt, the chain striking my chin.
My body stilled, my heartbeat skipped, and I wrapped my fingers around it.
I might not have the magic required to save him, but the amulet did. One last use, that’s what Tersey had said. The ship had already left. We had already failed.
Cammon’s gaze travelled to my hand and his eyes widened. “Glory, you can’t.” More blood pooled in the corner of his mouth, and his body tensed with pain. “You have to get home. One way or another—you have to make it back. If Evaniel found out…”
He wasn’t wrong. Even if I’d missed the ship, there were other ways to reach the city. I could use the messaging crystal—if I could find it—and let the king know what had happened. Maybe he could delay the war, give me a few extra days to get home. If I returned to Golth with a useless amulet and Evaniel discovered what I’d done, my life would be forfeit even if the secret of my vampirism remained hidden.
“I don’t care.” It was shockingly easy to admit what I’d worked so hard to deny these past few days. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you alive. I’ll risk anything. Accept any consequence.”
He blurred behind my tears, and I wrapped his weak hand around the amulet.
“Wait.” He sucked in a choking breath, pulled his hand free from the gold setting, and looped his fingers through mine. “You say ‘anything.’ Do you mean that?”
What was that look in his eyes and the emotion running through our bond? Not pain. Not regret, or fear, or remorse. If anything, I recognized it as hope.
“Can you doubt it? After everything, do you not know how much you mean to me?”
If he wouldn’t do it, I would do it for him. I lifted the amulet and set it against his chest, but he gripped my wrist with more strength than I’d believed was left in him.
“Not like that,” he said.
“There is no other way, Cammon. Even if I found a dozen healing kits, they wouldn’t be enough.” Could I use my blood somehow? I would open my veins if I thought it would save him. But the healing properties of my vampiric heritage would only draw him so far from the brink of death. It might be potent enough to close some of the minor injuries, but that fatal wound would never seal before his heart beat its last.
“Would bonding with me be the worst choice?”
His question, hoarse and tentative, jerked me out of my thoughts and left me speechless. I sat back on my heels to stare at him. Incredulous. Dazed.
It was an echo of what he’d asked when I’d suffered my bloodlust, and at that time, I’d had no doubts about my answer. In fact, my greatest disappointment was that the bond would be one-sided. What he was suggesting now…
His lungs wheezed with the strain of another breath, and I blinked away the tears obscuring my vision.
“Would that save you?”
He nodded. “You would—” A cough. More blood sprayed from between his lips. “It might—it might hurt you. But we’d both be able to get out of here.”
I looked around the empty landscape. I wasn’t sure where he thought we’d go, but we could deal with that later. If…
I dropped my gaze back to his. “You can’t really want this. We have the amulet. You want your freedom. We’re already bound through my bloodlust. If you bonded with me… You told me it would mean shared power. Shared lives.”