Page 38 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)

He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Even now, when he’d weakened enough to be forced back into this realm of ink and darkness, all he could think about was her face when she finished cleaning that wall.

The message she’d written was dangerous.

If Leon found out too soon that she was alive, she’d miss her chance to unravel what had happened.

But Jessamine’s expression had been worth the risk.

She looked alive in that moment, in a way he’d never seen before.

He hadn’t realized how dead she looked all the time.

Those haunted eyes were always so dark, and the scar around her neck rolled with every single swallow like it was a struggle for her to sustain herself.

Instead, horribly, wonderfully, in that moment, she came alive again.

Here he was thinking he had given her life. But she had done that herself.

She’d worn a wild grin that he’d only ever seen on an avenging witch who had destroyed a kingdom.

She stood before him like a goddess who would shatter the fools who had tried to crush her beneath their heel.

And he’d been struck dumb, tongue-tied at the realization that she could be dangerous to him.

Because he’d forgotten what it meant to be alive. He had forgotten the nuances and the emotions that came with living. He had forgotten that it felt like the world was coming apart sometimes, especially when he saw happiness on the features of a woman like her.

A nightmare become flesh.

Shaking his head, Elric wandered through the dark by himself, wondering when she would summon him again. She had gotten better at asking for an audience. He was able to appear before her much faster than he had when they’d first met, and he’d gotten better at staying in the living realm.

But of course, that didn’t eliminate this moment. When he had to return and wait. For her.

He’d gotten used to waiting for her. And still, it never got easier.

Even now, he stood in the darkness and listened in the hopes that he might hear her words whispering in the air. The inky hands that plucked at his legs remained calmer than usual. Even they knew he would not remain for very long. Not when there was a gravesinger waiting for him.

He strode forward again—it was easier to keep moving than to stay in one place. He conjured up the image of when he’d first found her. Lying in a puddle of dark water that filled the hollows of her eyes so prettily.

Even now, he could see her. A bundle of light in the darkness. But the closer he got to the mirage, the more he realized it seemed as though she was actually here. With him looming in the darkness like he was the one who had summoned her.

Frowning, he blinked a few times to clear the vision from his mind.

When the bundle didn’t move, he had to assume that it was another trick of this realm to drag him deeper into the painful memories.

Still, something in him said to seek it out.

To look at the bundle and hope that maybe, again, he had found himself in this realm with her.

Elric’s boots sloshed through the water, which was only ankle deep these days, and he approached the small bundle on the ground.

It was her. Impossibly so, because this was the realm between life and death.

He’d left her safely hidden in that alley.

No one would notice that the bundle of fabric in the corner was a person, he was certain of it.

Had she been robbed? Murdered? Had yet another person put their hands on her while thinking they had a right to do so?

Baring his teeth in a snarl, he tried to control the fear slicing through his body as he crouched and placed a hand on her shoulder.

She was curled in the fetal position, her knees drawn into her chest and her wrists crossed underneath her chin.

She looked so peaceful, but it was hard to focus on that when the fear for her safety made his heart skip a beat.

He didn’t want her to be in pain anymore. He didn’t want her to suffer.

Old memories filtered through his mind, and dark hands wrapped around his ankles. Another dark hand came out of the ink beneath her pitch-black hair and wrapped around his wrist, forcing him to freeze where he was, crouched above her like a bird of prey.

This was why he’d become a deathless god. He remembered now. He had found a witch just like this, curled up and frozen to death on the wrong side of a door. She was steps away from warmth, if only someone had allowed her in. But they hadn’t. Witches were never welcome.

He remembered the rage. He felt it, even now. He had wanted to end the world but had known that wouldn’t help, and so he went to the woman’s coven with her frozen body held in his arms. Holding her against his still-beating heart, and he had shown them how to create a god.

He remembered the altar. He remembered the flash of a ritual knife. But what had happened afterward was lost to him. Only that the witches had absorbed his power and that they worshipped him. Perhaps that worship was the key to his survival. He did not know.

The hands released him. The water lapped around her, moving from where he’d crouched and gently brushing against the back of her neck, her cheek, her lovely pale lips.

“Jessamine,” he murmured, brushing her wet hair off her cheeks so he could get a good look at her. “Nightmare, wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered, then blinked. She looked up at him, rolling onto her back. “What are you doing in my dream?”

A dream. She was asleep. Apparently, his gravesinger could enter the realm between life and death while she was sleeping—but of course she could. She was tied to him like no other witch, and this was his realm, after all.

Breathing out a sigh of relief, he cupped his hand behind her neck and lifted her just enough so that she wasn’t in the cold water and he could hope that some of his own heat bled into her. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“You’re in my dream, aren’t you?” A small crease appeared between her eyes as she realized perhaps that wasn’t correct. “I can feel you more than I thought I would.”

“That’s because this isn’t a dream.”

Surely she realized no one would dream about this cold, desolate place. But then the ink moved away from her. A pulse of magic pulled out of his chest, surging from him to her, and a miraculous thing happened.

A wet plop of ink dripped out of her hair and hit the ground. But it didn’t stay dark. It spread in an oily sheen, with colors dancing around the shimmer until then… Oh, then it burst into life.

A rainbow of color and texture spread out from her body like she’d pooled paint and let it drip from her fingers. It continued to move like lava, infusing his realm with color and light and… sound?

From her body, a meadow sprouted. Green grass dotted with tiny yellow dandelions.

He could hear birds floating overhead on the wind that suddenly brushed his cheeks.

A warm wind. A late spring day that smelled like life and green things growing.

Her dark hair slid through his fingers, a stark shadow of ebony against the sudden illumination of color.

Her hand reached up and gripped his wrist. “This is a dream, Elric. See? I can control it.”

He was speechless again. She had a habit of doing that, his witch. He was a creature made of ink and blackness, of madness and nightmares, and his realm was one of darkness and shadow. And yet all it took to change that was a single gravesinger who wished it to change.

“You fascinate me,” he said, lifting her even more off the ground. Still kneeling, he settled her against his thigh, running his fingers through the inky locks of her hair.

“Why?”

“I do not know how you do half the things you do.”

Heat pulsed through his body. He couldn’t stop himself from running his thumb along her jaw, down her full bottom lip, and watching as she allowed him to part her lips.

Again, that heat pulsed between the two of them.

Elric couldn’t rip his gaze away from the sight of that mouth and the way she so prettily allowed his thumb to rest against it.

A black charcoal smudge remained everywhere he touched. He wasn’t certain if that was her doing or his. He certainly knew he liked it. Elric enjoyed seeing a mark everywhere he had touched her. A map of all the places he wished to linger.

Her breath caught, and he could see her eyes on his lips. Elric found himself suddenly tangled in the same moment they had been at that statue. The moment that had never really released either of them.

He didn’t know if she leaned up or if he leaned down. All he knew was the sudden pressure of her hand on his neck as she lifted herself closer.

“You choose to give your kingdom hope that you are alive, even knowing it will bring suspicion upon us,” he murmured, his lips so close to hers. “It’s such a foolish decision.”

“Of course I do. I always will.”

“Why?”

“Because I am theirs as much as they are mine. This is my kingdom, and its people are suffering. That means I am suffering. So why would I not help them?” She licked her lips, and his eyes followed the movement.

“You are a witch. You should have been an outcast your entire life, and still somehow you find love for them.”

Jessamine smiled, and the expression nearly blinded him with its brilliance. “I’m not a witch, Elric.”

“Oh, but you are.” He felt the words breathe over her lips. “Because you have certainly bewitched me.”

Then he kissed her.

He kissed her like he’d been wanting to kiss her for ages. It felt like he’d been waiting centuries for this moment, for this woman to be here in his arms.

The moment her lips touched his, he fractured into a thousand pieces. A mirror dropped onto the floor, the shards of every bit of him suddenly reflecting… her.

She smelled like a death lily and she tasted like life itself. Chai tea, a heaping dose of honey that coated his suddenly raw throat, and the aftermath of heat that blanketed every inch of him. She seared through him, scorching his tongue with hers as he nipped at her lips.

He’d thought she would be timid, unpracticed. A princess who had been taught how to kiss like a lady, because surely she was just as repressed as all those other stuffy nobles.

But no, she kissed like a vixen and devoured him whole.

Jessamine sucked his lower lip into her mouth, biting slightly at one of his old scars before laving it with her tongue.

She didn’t shy away from any mark on him.

No, she read them with her fingers, holding on to his jaw with a surprisingly strong grip as she turned the kiss into something she controlled.

Jessamine consumed him. Her fingers dug into his biceps, digging into the old scar tissue there. She kissed him as though she wanted him to crawl inside her.

And fuck, he wanted to. He wanted to lay her down in this meadow that smelled like crushed grass and far-off lavender fields. He wanted to cover her body with his, and then he wanted to discover how she tasted in every place that made her gasp with pleasure.

He’d forgotten this, too. The way that pleasure could be so addicting and how the little mewls that a woman let out in the back of her throat could captivate a man.

Sliding his free hand down her side, he moved it up to feel the delicate flutters of her ribs as she breathed in and out, ragged lungs dragging in air with every breath.

He palmed her breast, feeling the hard bead of her nipple beneath his thumb as he gently squeezed the globe in his grip. He wanted more. So much more.

“Summon me,” he breathed against her lips. “Summon me now, Jessamine. Let me lie you down on a bed and not a dream.”

As soon as the words were pressed against those pillow-soft lips, she froze. He felt her stiffen in his arms, as though he had broken some spell and suddenly, she realized what they were doing.

She slowly pulled away, her lips clinging to his until the very last moment. And he let her go. He had to let her go, because she couldn’t find it in her to summon him even now.

Even when she had gifted him with a taste of her passion, she still didn’t trust him. Or perhaps it was merely that she was frightened of what he would do.

Or what she saw in his eyes.

Jessamine stared up into his gaze, and then she slowly shook her head. “I think I should wake up now.”

“Jessamine.” He drew out the sound of her name, not knowing if he was groaning it or begging her to stay. Words he wanted to say pressed against his tongue.

Don’t leave me here alone.

I don’t want to suffer without you.

The taste of your kisses is worth days of pain.

But he said nothing else as her shaking hand rose to trace his lips one last time. Then she faded out of his arms, disappearing back into the realm where her body waited for her mind.

She took all the color with her. All of it fled bit by bit, fading into shades of gray before the ink claimed it.

He sank to the ground in a puddle of black ink, villainous hands reaching for him already. All he could see was that bitter darkness and the memories that called out for him, because oh, he had done this before.

He had fallen for a witch, only to realize that he was nothing to her but a tool to be used and a pawn to die by her hand. He knew what it was to be discarded.

The speed with which he’d fallen for this one would surely lead him to ruin.