Page 36

I T WAS HEAT AND PAIN and a white-hot agony, and her scream broke off in a gasping cry. Briony kicked her feet and tried to push the fox off, but her muscles were still too weak from starving herself.

The fox unlatched its teeth and snarled at her again, its jaw glistening red in the moonlight. It reared back to attack again, and Briony cast up her arms, protecting her face.

Teeth slashed at her forearm.

“Vesper.”

The room shook with the word that sounded like a command, and Briony peeked through her arms to see Toven in the center of the room in only his pajama bottoms. His eyes were wild but concentrated on the fox that had turned over its shoulder to growl at him.

“Vesper,” he repeated. “No.”

Briony momentarily forgot the gashes to her neck and the hot sensation of life leaving her. She could only watch as Toven stood perfectly still, commanding the animal as if he was its master.

Was he its master?

The gray fox huffed, and Briony saw her blood fly from its jaw, speckling her sheets.

It turned its head back to her, baring its teeth.

And then it lifted its paw from her chest, and Briony rolled to the side as quickly as she could.

The room spun as she tumbled off the bed and pushed herself flat against the wall, watching in anticipation as the gray fox turned to face Toven again.

His hands were at his side, as if he wasn’t afraid for his own safety at all. They stared each other down, Toven standing half-naked in the moonlight, and the bloody fox on the bed.

And without knowing what passed between them, Briony watched the fox hop from the bed and trot out the door.

Adrenaline drained from her body, and her vision spotted black. She tried to put pressure on the bite, but the collar was in the way. She felt the wall behind her moving sideways. She braced for hitting the ground, but it never came.

“Rosewood.”

She opened her eyes, finding herself horizontal and staring up into Toven Hearst’s gaze.

Her consciousness dripped in and out of the present. There was a burning in her neck. Maybe less a burning than a humming.

She faded into the blackness again, and when she came out of it, Toven’s mouth was pressed into a tense line.

She stared up at his lips, pondering the poison that could drip from them.

She felt her neck stitch back together as his fingers twisted through difficult patterns, skimming gently over her skin, pulling the edges of her wound together.

It had been so long since she’d been touched in anything other than force or imprisonment, and she tried to stop her whole body shuddering with pleasure. A sugary thumb brushing over her lip burst across her memory, but she was too weak to place it.

Her body was draped over his lap, her limbs twisted at odd angles and her head against his thigh.

His torso gleamed in the moonlight. She ached to trace her fingers over his chest, to feel the softness of his skin against the firm muscle.

She imagined her hand floating up, her fingertips slowly placed over his heart, and the shivers that would follow her movements—the gooseflesh she could incite in him. As in their race to the willow tree.

One of his hands moved to cradle her skull, and the firm pressure of his fingers sent a soft sigh cascading from her lips. His other hand reached for hers where it was trailing over his ribs, and he turned her forearm to work on the bites dripping blood down her elbow.

Her neck was sticky with dried blood, but she could feel herself getting stronger.

She tried memorizing his face, his tight jaw, the pale skin of his collarbones that was brushed with color. She lifted her eyes and found him looking down on her.

Briony was vulnerable in only a nightgown. He made no motion to move her, so she still lay across his thighs, with one arm supporting her and the other resting softly over her heart.

His gaze traveled over her throat and chest, and she wondered how soaked with blood the cotton was.

See? My blood isn’t gold , she wanted to say.

The cool air over her skin and his attention made her nipples pebble, but she didn’t have the energy to cover herself. She could tell the moment he saw the peaks of her breasts calling for attention under her nightgown.

“The bleeding stopped,” he said perfunctorily, gaze coming back to her face. “We’ll get you some elixirs for the blood loss. You should bathe and rest.”

He didn’t move. She felt the warmth of his fingertips on her collarbones, his heavy palm over her sternum, as if he was counting her heartbeats.

“Sleep here?” she croaked. “After this?”

“She won’t be back,” he said.

She watched his face, waiting for an explanation, and finally her addled mind found one.

“She’s your familiar,” Briony whispered.

Toven seemed to glare at the doorway. “We’re still … working it out.”

A hollow laugh burst out of her chest. It was such a casual sentence. Something couples would say. He turned his glare down to her.

“Shouldn’t familiars do the magician’s bidding?”

He pursed his lips. “I suppose I’ve never sought anyone who obeys easily.”

His eyes turned to her, as if he just realized what he’d said. Briony felt another shiver crest over her skin. And his eyes dropped to her breasts again.

“Why did she want to kill me?” she asked. “Doesn’t she know I’m here by your wishes?”

“She’s … a jealous creature. We both can be.”

Briony watched his throat bob as he swallowed. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to call his attention away from her body. She’d felt his gaze on her body before, but never when she was so exposed, so undressed.

The way Toven’s arms held her, the way his palm was inches from the swell of her breast, the way his eyes lingered in all the places she’d dreamed of his mouth kissing …

Did he want to touch her? Would he touch her? All he had to do was shift his hand and he’d be cupping her breast. Did he know she was aching for it?

His eyes were so soft and his arms warm, and she didn’t know how to reconcile the man who had hunted her with the man who now held her so tenderly.

“Jealous of what?” she whispered.

His eyes slid up to hers again. “She understands that you are the new magic source.”

Her mind was foggy with blood loss and the torture of his touch, but she tried to make sense of his words. “But heart magicians can have a familiar and a heartspring, can’t they? Multiple sources?”

Toven nodded. “They can, but because of your power, your Rosewood blood, I wouldn’t have need for more.” He swallowed, his eyes flicking over her clavicles and lower. “She would become obsolete if I were to use you as a heartspring.”

If I were …

Her eyes drifted across his face, wondering if he was aware of his admission.

He hadn’t bonded to her yet. She assumed something had been done already without her knowledge, but Katrina had said it was a ceremony of sorts. Whatever that bonding ceremony entailed, they hadn’t completed it, and Mallow had requested it over a week ago.

“Very jealous, then,” Briony said, trying to think of anything else to keep him, but she was too slow.

His muscles moved under her, his hand lifted off her sternum, and before she could help by sitting up herself, he had unfolded himself to standing, with her in his arms.

She instinctively draped an arm around his neck, and he moved with her to her bathroom. He flicked his fingers and turned on the hot water in the tub.

When he set her on her feet, she looked up at his mouth, his eyes—but his expression was firm and cold again. The open gaze over her body had disappeared. Her arms unwound from him, and her fingers trailed over his stomach one last time as he stood from bending.

“Clean yourself up. Get some rest,” he said.

He didn’t look at her again as he left.

Briony watched the tub fill, wondering at how he’d come so quickly when she screamed.

And wondering at the heat she felt behind his eyes as she lay in his lap in thin, blood-wetted cotton.

***

Briony woke the next morning feeling completely wrung out.

She stared off for hours, reliving the fox’s breath on her face, the sound of her skin tearing.

And then piecing together what she remembered of Toven.

Seemingly appearing from nowhere, still as stone as his familiar left the room, and then suddenly holding her, healing her.

And the most perplexing thing of all: Toven Hearst was not using her as a heartspring. Her mind drifted through all the possible reasons why not, but she couldn’t come to a clear conclusion.

Elixirs appeared with her breakfast, and she didn’t hesitate to take them. The pain in her neck and forearm was unbearable.

She slept on and off throughout the day, letting her dreams alternate between snapping, blood-wet jaws and bare skin and hungry eyes.

***

Toven did not come back to check on her. Briony was too exhausted with her injuries to try another hunger strike, but even with the door locked again, she had Mind Barriers for Beginners to read.

Three days after the attack, Briony was on her sixth reread and finding it very difficult to memorize theories and techniques without the practical application. There were certain meditation techniques that could be practiced without magic, however, that were interesting enough.

Meditate on a cool blue lake with still waters, stretching out past the horizon. There are depths below, but a still and tranquil surface.

Briony imagined the lake at the Eversun school and her favorite willow tree kissing the water.