Page 34 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)

In the days to come, Jessamine would try not to think about that moment. She staggered out of her room, got herself clean for the first time in what must have been a week. She had to scrub so hard that her skin turned bright red, but once she was done, she felt a little more like herself.

Sybil had been helpful. The moment she saw Jessamine walk into the kitchen, the other witch went into full damage control. Food appeared wherever Jessamine was, and they continued with their magical lessons, although they were becoming much easier.

For the most part, Sybil just handed Jessamine a book in the morning to read about the magical properties of plants or what particular spells were supposed to do.

No magic was cast for the week that passed after Jessamine had hugged a god.

What the hells had she been thinking?

Even now, sitting with her back against the crumbled statue that had once been the Wizened Crone, an ancient goddess known for gifting knowledge to her priestesses, she could think about the memory.

What had possessed her to hug the man who held her life in his hands?

He was a dangerous god who wanted nothing more than to unleash chaos on her entire kingdom, and she had hugged him!

Shaking her head, she tried to focus on the book in her lap and not the one that she had taken to carrying around with her. The black book that the Deathless One had her grab from Benji was a curiosity that she wasn’t sure she wanted to explore just yet. It was a book that didn’t open.

That much she knew. She had tried repeatedly when they returned from the Owl’s Nest, hoping to make the Deathless One as angry as she was. But the book refused to open. It wasn’t locked. There was no clasp that held it closed.

It just… didn’t open.

She wasn’t sure if that was by mechanical or magical design. All she knew was that a thrum of dark power emanating from between the covers made her want to open it, and thus it was very frustrating not to be able to open it at all.

Grumbling under her breath, she sighed dramatically and closed the book that did open in her lap.

“Jessamine, you have to focus,” she muttered to herself. “You cannot be thinking about these things.”

“And just what things are bothering you?” The voice came from behind her.

She was so used to him appearing out of nowhere that she no longer even flinched when she heard his voice. It came from all manner of places, and she supposed she expected him to always be around now.

It was exhausting.

She looked behind her to see a dark shadow leaning against the side of the Crone’s statue. He had his hands in his pockets, his ankles crossed over each other, and she felt her cheeks blush.

“I can see more of you today,” she said.

“Can you now?”

“You’re not so much a charcoal sketch. You even have pockets.”

He hopped down from the statue and strode around to face her. The Deathless One looked very much like a man trying hard to seem nonchalant. He looked at her expectantly.

“Well?” he said, impatience sharpening his words.

“Well what?”

“How much can you see?”

She blinked. It was like parts of him had shifted back into place.

“A sharp jaw,” she murmured, her eyes tracing these new features as though they were her fingertips.

“You have the faintest hint of stubble on your cheeks and chin. I can’t see anything else, though, just the outer edges of your face. ”

Should she continue?

Some part of her whispered that she was playing with fire right now. Dangerous to keep going when all she wanted to do was touch him and see if that stubble had texture.

He swallowed, and she could see his throat working. “How interesting that I keep changing the longer I am around you.”

“Why is that?”

“I do not know, nightmare. Perhaps it is because you are the one who can resurrect me.”

She licked her lips, and it felt as though he was staring at them, but she wished she could see his features to know for certain that he was. “But I haven’t yet.”

“No, and that’s even more curious, isn’t it? I’m becoming more and more real, and here you are, defying me every step of the way.”

He took a step closer to her, standing in between her parted legs.

Her borrowed trousers suddenly felt a little too tight.

Or maybe that was her entire body, too hot because he was right in front of her again.

Just like he had been when she wound her arms around him and clung to him like the only rock in the middle of a hurricane.

She’d been able to feel how strong he was. How every breath expanded those wide ribs and how much power was barely leashed inside a body that was so much larger than her own.

He stepped a little closer again, and a beam of light played along his strong jaw and the muscle ticking inside it. But for the first time, his form didn’t shatter in the brightness. “Jessamine,” he rasped.

“Yes?” Did that word sound as breathless as it had felt?

“You still have the book I told you to gather. Don’t you?”

She blinked, the words settling in before she realized what he was asking.

“Oh.” Bursting into movement, she awkwardly pulled the book out of the bag next to her. “Yes, yes, of course. I still have it. I don’t know why you wanted it. It won’t open.”

“It will open for me.” He stared down at it, and she could almost feel the intensity coming out of his gaze. It was like a warm touch spilling over her hands and pooling in her lap where the book rested. “It is mine, after all.”

She looked down at the book, and it all made sense.

Of course it was his. The black pages and black binding would only be for the Deathless One himself.

It was a book dedicated to him, or perhaps written by him?

She had no way of guessing what was inside the pages, but she suddenly saw them flutter against her fingertips.

The book unlocked. That easily. It stopped being so stubborn simply because he was glaring at it.

She opened the first page, feathering a light touch over the illuminated pages, which were meticulously designed.

Demons ran along every page, twisting creatures with horns and tails that merged into dark shadows.

Borders of ink stains were clearly intentional, as though trying to mimic the power he possessed.

The writing was in a language she couldn’t understand, but the loops and swirls were hypnotic.

And then, at her touch, all the ink disappeared.

She flipped through the pages, watching as words continued to disappear until it was entirely empty.

A journal now, no longer a grimoire. With a small gasp, she closed it and opened it again, hoping the words would come back.

But they didn’t. They were gone, like it was intended for them to disappear the moment her eyes started reading the words.

Closing it, she turned the book over and traced her fingers over the sigil on the back that had captivated her attention since the start. Its strange markings and harsh lines were not a sigil she recognized—Sybil had given her countless books on witch marks, but none of them looked like this.

It felt important. “This mark on the back. What is it?”

He leaned even closer, and she swore there was almost a hint of a lock of hair that fell in front of the shadowy visage of his face. “It’s a sigil. It depicts my name.”

“You have a name?” she asked, her voice incredulous. “What is it?”

“I have a name, Jessamine Harmsworth. There are many interpretations of it, many meanings. But in this realm and this time, I suppose it would be… Elric Hellebore.”

He moved away from her then, rounding the statue until he appeared again. He’d picked something up from the dirt at the foot of the statue, and tossed it back and forth between his hands.

Almost as though he was now ignoring her.

“Why haven’t you told me before?”

“I forgot I had one.”

“That seems unlikely. You’re a person, so of course you have a name. I just…” She shook her head again, stunned at this realization. “I didn’t think gods had names. I thought you were the Deathless One, and that was the end of it.”

He opened his hand and revealed an emerald-green gemstone in his palm.

It had cracked in half at some point, ruined by time or perhaps a careless bootheel.

But he gently placed both pieces in the eyes of the Crone.

“We were all people once. A hard lesson for humans to learn, because to you we have always been gods. But there was a time when we weren’t. ”

“What were you?” she asked.

“I’m not sure there’s a name for what we were. Not entirely human, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t think any mortal could survive what we did to become what we are now. But not a god either.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t ever thought about what they were before they were gods. “Even the Crone?”

“Even her. We were close once. But power, greed, and madness can tear a family apart.”

That hadn’t been her experience. Her mother had always been the only person there for her. But then she remembered what she had seen in Benji’s memories, and she realized that perhaps she was wrong. Maybe her family had been torn apart from the inside out.

There was a darkness in this world. A darkness that she couldn’t fix, and the only person who had ever honestly seen it was this dangerous god in front of her.

She made up her mind and stood. The base of the statue was uneven, with cracks down almost every side. But she stood in front of him, gazing up into the shadows of his face, and she wanted to touch him. She wanted him to feel real.

So she didn’t think about it. She just reached out and cupped his jaw in her hand.

Bristles scratched her palm, and she swore she felt the faintest hint of a scar around his neck. One that matched hers, if she could look closely enough. She felt the ripple of another scar on his jaw under her fingers as he ground his teeth together at her touch.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s nice to meet you, Elric Hellebore.” She didn’t know why saying it felt so important; she just knew she wanted someone to say his name. She wanted him to know that his name existed beyond the strange markings on a book that the world had long forgotten.

And then it was like a fog lifted. She watched the shadows obscuring his face slowly peel away from the bottom.

Without a thought, she ghosted her thumb over his revealed lips.

Almost too full for a man, but now she could see the way they twisted with a sneer that was strangely attractive.

A scar bisected his top lip, and then the shadows revealed a long, hawkish nose that had been broken many times and dark eyes with slashes of black brows, each one with a scar on either side.

Bone-white scars that nearly glowed on his face.

He was devastatingly handsome. His eyes saw straight into her soul, like some kind of bird of prey. A single curl escaped his tamed hair, just as she thought it would.

And she stood there, staring into those harsh features with her breath caught in her lungs.

Because her thumb was still pressed against his lips.

Because he stared at her with eyes that saw too much.

And because his tongue gently licked her finger, and suddenly she could think of nothing else but that warm, slick touch.

Those lips.

Those eyes that flashed with something more than just a deep power inside him, but a power that she suddenly wanted to feel inside… her.

The front door opened and closed, the slam shuddering through her body even though she was stuck in this position. She couldn’t move. She wanted to see what he would do if she pushed her thumb through those plush lips.

It was a wicked thought. A thought that never would have occurred to her before she met this man, this monster who made her want to be something wild and free.

His lips shifted, and that tongue flicked against her thumb one more time before she felt his hand move around her waist. He dragged her closer, and she knew she should stop him. She should end all this madness before the two of them did something they couldn’t come back from.

But she didn’t want to stop him. She didn’t even struggle when his scarred hand scooped beneath her hair to clasp the back of her neck. Her hand trembled against his lips and jaw as he dragged her so close she could feel his breath play across her cheek.

“Elric,” she whispered.

And oh, it felt like she’d uttered a curse into the world. Like she’d summoned a demon and released him out into the wild. She knew this wasn’t how to free him, but to her, it felt like he was suddenly real.

So much more real than he had been moments before.

The hard planes of his chest pressed against her. He slid his thigh between her legs and something—someone—woke deep inside her. A woman she didn’t recognize, but who knew exactly what she wanted and screamed that she would claim it.

Just an inch. That was all that separated her from the knowledge of what a god tasted like.

But then the door to this room opened, the statues of dead gods suddenly felt like nosy onlookers, and she felt him fade from her grasp.

Gone was the god in her embrace, and all she was left with was a sense of emptiness in her arms.

“Jessamine?” Sybil asked, a laugh at the end of the word. “Are you practicing for some prince who’s coming to sweep you off your feet, darling?”

She let out a breath, her arms falling to her sides. “No, no, I suppose I was just… daydreaming. That’s all.”

“Daydreaming. Right.” Sybil clearly didn’t believe her.

“Do you mind helping me bring all this in? I was lucky enough to come across a few chickens that had gotten out of a garden. I don’t think the farmer will mind all that much if they’re missing, but it is a rather suspicious amount of blood on our doorstep.

I had forgotten how much I adore having a coven, even if it’s just you. ”

“Of course, I’m happy to help.” She barely even registered the words that she was saying.

Her mind was still lingering on moments ago, when she’d almost kissed a deathless god.