Page 33 of Eternal Light (Fated in the Stars #5)

Rowan rests his chin on her thigh, encouraging her to rub his ears.

“You said Ansel got sick shortly before your dad died?”

“Yeah, he was seven. One day he was running around playing with the neighbor kids, and the next day, he was pale, throwing up, and sad. I was young too, but thought it was maybe Dad’s influence—always gone, and when he was home…well, it wasn’t fun.”

“I’m sorry. Was your dad always that way?”

“Not really. He was a gambler at heart, always looking for the next big win. Risk taker and magic maker, he’d say. Whatever the fuck that meant. It didn’t put food in Annie’s mouth or clothes on his back,” she says, her tone reeking of disgust.

“Why do you ask? Do you think my dad had something to do with how sick Ansel is?”

He does, but he wisely keeps his mouth shut this time.

Grayson closes his eyes so he can see the miasma of black again. It can’t be a coincidence, could it?

It pulses with hunger, oily tendrils tightening like a noose, drawn to the bright pinpricks of Ansel’s soul.

Sliding a magical fingertip along the outer edge, Grayson pumps a tiny bit of magic into the light.

The miasma surges at the direct attack on its food source and tries to gobble Grayson’s rose-colored light instead of actively avoiding it like before. It can’t touch him, but the attempt still provokes it into swirling at a higher speed, as if it’s threatened by the brighter magic.

He can’t get it to come away, no matter how he tries, so instead, Grayson plants mental tiki torches around the perimeter of the piece of Ansel’s light he pinned down earlier.

He adds more and more torches until there’s a broad circle of rainbow light around the outside of the dark mass.

He’s thinking about how he might tighten the web and possibly contain the blackness—or even force it to back off when he feels a sharp bite to the inside of his thigh.

When he opens his eyes, Winnie, Finn, and Nimue are standing over him…while Rowan has his sharp teeth embedded in the fabric of his pants.

“Holy shit,” Finn swears, jamming his hands into his hair, pulling on the strands until they’re even more of a mess.

“Good thinking, Rowan,” Nimue adds, running her hand over the top of his mate’s furry head.

No one seems to care that he’s a man under there, or that he looks like a wild animal. Rowan’s good heart must shine through.

“You were gone quite a while, Grayson. Your mates were quite concerned.”

“You zoned out mid-conversation, dude. And then you wouldn’t come around. Plus, there was all the…” Winnie waves her hands around her head to signify some kind of swirling motion, which makes no sense to him. Maybe that’s the sedative?

“Thirty minutes,” Finn says.

“Long enough for me to get here and for my friend to join us.”

A short man in a cobalt velour tracksuit appears from behind her, the kind that screams eccentricity. His gold chain is thick and unapologetic, and his bald head shines like a blessing.

“This is Sasha Lekarev. He’s the Florida Guild’s foremost Healer. He’s devoted to his calling, and he lives close to the hospital.”

He doesn’t respond, just rests his hand gently on Ansel’s head. Grayson watches as a cooling blue light flows from Sasha into Ansel.

Grayson wants to watch the Healer work, but Rowan nips his leg again.

The ache from the BBS, compounded by the sedative Finn added to his IV, makes it nearly impossible to resist the ever-present lure of The Plain. Sasha’s healing blue light is mesmerizing.

It takes so much energy to keep himself on this side—to protect Nix—and when his defenses are down, it’s hard not to simply release the valve and follow The Plain’s flow straight to Nix, straight to their soul.

It seemed like forever that Nimue had shown him how to control the flow with a visual manifestation of the clamp; she’d wanted him to place it between Nix and Grayson, with The Plain on Grayson’s side.

But that wasn’t right. He and Nix are one soul. So if he needed to slow the flow, it would have to be with The Plain on the other side of the clamp.

It meant that sometimes he couldn’t feel it very well.

But now…he needs it. Feels it calling. So this time, he lets go.

Releasing the clamp, Grayson lets the magic fill him until it overflows every cell. It connects him to Nix, even over the distance.

Suddenly, he can feel Nix’s relief at being with Jay, how they are on their way to the hospital.

His soulmate is surprised to feel the heavy flow of magic, but he’s not hurting.

The power forces back the worst of Grayson’s Broken Bond Syndrome — had he exacerbated the symptoms by clamping himself off from The Plain?

He hadn’t known how incomplete he’d felt before, but now…Grayson can feel him, truly feel him, and for the first time in days, Grayson feels whole.

“Holy shitballs!” Winnie shouts, her hair lifting in weightless strands around her face.

The curtains snap against the windows, and the wind tears through the room like a living thing, tugging at sleeves and kicking papers into the air.

Grayson remains pinned in the chair, Rowan’s jaws locked on his pants, anchoring him against the invisible gale surging from his body.

“Grayson!” Nimue shouts as his IV stand blows over. “You have to slow the flow. It’s too much all at once!”

Again, Grayson catches sight of the Healer’s cool blue magic flowing into Ansel, undisturbed by the storm he’s causing in the small room.

Drawn like a lure, he follows that healing blue light straight into the core of the miasma.

A toxic tentacle snaps out, latching onto Grayson’s magic in retribution—cold, dead malevolence seeping through the connection.

It burns, scorching at the light, making Grayson startlingly aware that within the black, there’s another presence.

A resonant signature.

Not Ansel’s soul, and not the Healer’s magic.

Leaving Sasha to his work of untangling those tentacles, Grayson traces the oily conduit all the way to the end—across miles of dark, barren earth, straight into the heart of the beast.

And he recognizes it instantly.

The heart of that Devil: Aleksander Withers.

Grayson wants to expend every strand of energy in their soul, every grain of magic to obliterate this evil. Gathering himself he pulls, and pulls, and pulls until—

There are strong arms around his neck, and a cool, small hand on his neck calling him back, grounding him in the present, with the sweet scent of vanilla, baking bread, and pine.

Nix.

Grayson can’t get back to his body fast enough, clamping down on The Plain until it’s his usual minuscule trickle—just as he opens his eyes.

The Healer has been lifted clean off the floor, his feet flying behind him while he holds Ansel to the bed to continue his work.

Nimue and the others are on the other side of a wavering sheet of air, behind her erected shield, protecting themselves from Grayson’s storm.

Nix must have breached her barrier and launched himself onto Grayson from across the room.

As Grayson’s feet land on the floor, he holds his soulmate close to his chest.

“Holy shitballs,” Winnie mutters again.

“I’ll see your ‘holy shitballs’ and raise you a ‘what the fuck,’” Leo adds.

“I concur,” Nimue says, smoothing her hair.

Grayson can’t find words to explain and wouldn’t even if he could.

Nix’s mouth is on his, soft nibbles to his lower lip and tongue licking at it as he eases the renewed ache in their soul now cut off from the overflowing tide with the last vestiges of their magic.

“Gray, you scared me,” Nix mutters against his lips. “You were drawing so much…”

“Fuck, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’m really good, weirdly. Better, now that we’re all here—and alive.” He throws the last over his shoulder at Jay, who’s being propped up by Leo in the doorway.

Their alpha blanches at the not-so-subtle jab.

“That was way more than you’ve ever drawn before.”

“Sorry,” Grayson says again. “The sedative made it hard to hold the clamp, and I missed you…”

Nimue looks surprised. “The clamp is what you use between you and Nix to control The Plain’s flow?”

“Between me and The Plain. Nothing can go between me and Nix. Never,” Grayson groans, finally settling back into his chair.

“Between you and The Plain? That’s not maintainable, nor good for you. No wonder it manifested this way.” Nimue shakes her head, adding a tsk- ing sound under her breath.

He’s insistent, clutching Nix to him more tightly. “I won’t do it any other way if it means something comes between Nix and me.”

“Grayson—” Jay starts, but he’s interrupted by Ansel’s monitors’ beep—a staccato, high-pitched whine.

The Healer falls to his knees, the shorter man sweating out a cloud of patchouli that quickly overflows the small room.

Rowan-wolf sneezes twice, as Winnie throws herself on the bed, checking for her brother’s pulse through tears and a low moan of hope as the machine settles back into a steady beep.

“Sasha! My Goddess,” Nimue says, crouching down to check on her colleague.

“Da. I’m fine.”

“What about the boy?” Gideon asks what they’re all thinking from the doorway.

“Alive. Better,” Sasha grunts, climbing gingerly to his feet.

Grayson exhales shakily, his heart finally catching up, offering the man his chair.

The only sound in the room is Winnie crying softly, and maybe it’s wishful thinking that his face looks less pale.

“What was wrong with him?” Luca asks, curious as ever—and not at all shy.

“It’s soul magic—performed on a minor, no less. He’s no more than twelve and did not consent…voluntarily. I could tell that much. This has been forced upon him. Bartered, maybe? Sold, to whoever this devil is.”

“Withers,” Grayson says through clenched teeth, his magic pushing hard against the clamp.

“You know who would do this?” Sasha sounds horrified. “This is the ultimate evil. Children have autonomy over their souls, and only a person in a position of trust could convince a child to give his soul over in such a bargain. Who would do such a thing?”

Ansel begins to cough, and Finn immediately stumbles over, working to remove the breathing apparatus.