Page 6 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

“Not quite true,” I said bitterly. Evie was absolutely my responsibility. My most cherished, in fact.

We were all channeling Princeton now, Harmony’s words serving as proof. I felt him in the room with us. I could almost see him out of the corner of my eye.

Or perhaps the lingering poison in my veins was making me hallucinate.

An inappropriate smile curved my lips. “She stabbed me with a poisoned bone needle.” I rubbed my chest, moving the grief around as it continued to engulf my spirit.

Blade grinned. “Sexy.”

I glared at him lightheartedly. “Far from it.”

I rubbed my eyes. Visions of Idris’s corpse assailed me, and I could hear Evie’s inhuman wail as if she were still screaming.

“How long?” a raspy voice jolted me from these torturous visions.

All heads swiveled to face the bed. Evie was staring at the rubber tubes delivering fluids and healing tinctures into her veins with an expression on her face I clocked immediately.

“Nope,” I said, rushing to her and grabbing her hands before she could rip out the needles.

Her gaze followed the tubes up to the glass bottles of faintly pink liquid next to her, no doubt assessing their magickal properties.

Her eyes locked on mine with indignant fire. “How long were you dead before Princeton turned you into vampires?”

3

EVIE

My arm fucking hurt. But unlike before I lost consciousness, I could move it. Someone must’ve mended my bones.

Which was perfect, because I needed all of my limbs in working order for magick of this magnitude.

Kylo, Harmony, and Blade merely stared at me, no one answering my incredibly simple question. Kylo let go of my hands.

This time when my eyes returned to Kylo’s, I actually saw him. The unending pools of pain in his blue irises, the grief I’d been searching for since Princeton’s death. The sorrow he’d been carefully concealing poured through every crack in his mental shields. His face was slightly flushed, his lips turned down. He’d been crying—crying for my brother. Crying forme.

I swallowed and looked away. “How. Long,” I repeated.

“It wasn’t like that,” Blade said, earning a glare from both Harmony and Kylo. “Wait, how do you know we had to die first?”

I was back to staring angrily at the tubes in my arms, the bondage currently keeping me from my brother.

“From Princeton, in the spirit realm,” I said, my words coming out quickly and impatiently.

Blade glanced from Kylo to Harmony. He scratched his head. “Right…”

“Congrats, you’re all getting exactly what you’ve always wanted from me,” I spat. “You should be very pleased with yourselves.”

Blade and Harmony feigned confusion, tilting their heads. All eyes moved to Kylo, who was uncharacteristically silent.

I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to see his pain, the pain that contradicted all of my most paranoid thoughts. I had neither the time nor the energy to overthink or overanalyze.

Idris was all that mattered.

“Princeton will help me,” I said. “As will Hekate.”

I bluffed more confidence than I truly held, as my time with Princeton before regaining consciousness was brief, mostly wordless.

Death is not the end. It’s just another beginning.