Page 33

I whip my head toward the sound. Nothing. Only my reflection peering back, wide-eyed and ashen.

And then—

Agony arcs through my arm, white-hot and blinding. A scream claws up my throat and suddenly Kiaran is beside me.

“Bloody hell,” I gasp, clamping my palm over the wound. Sticky heat wells between my fingers.

Kiaran’s eyes flash silver. “Let me see.”

“It’s nothing,” I rasp, angling away. A lie.

He snatches for my arm as I hiss through clenched teeth.

“This is not nothing.” He shoves his wadded-up tunic sleeve against the gash, pressing down hard enough to send stars shivering across my vision.

“It’s a glorified scratch. A flesh wound at most.”

“I don’t recall soliciting your medical assessment.” His hand fists in the soaked fabric, knuckles straining white.

Something clammy unfurls behind my ribs as I track his unblinking stare. As I feel his control cracking, fragments breaking away. All while the Morrigan lurks in the stifling dark, just out of sight.

Hungering.

I scan the black, glassy surface for threats, but there’s only eerie, watchful stillness. Our too-loud breaths rasping in the hush.

Until—

A strange, sinuous thickening of shadows. No current, no disturbance. Just a sudden weight, a density to the darkness.

And then her voice is at my ear, a lover’s caress. “So very fragile, aren’t you? It’s been an age since I’ve broken a mortal.”

I swing out, fingernails snagging in strands of hair that turn to smoke between one blink and the next. Bright sapphire eyes flash in the dark—there and gone as she melts back into the dark.

The Morrigan’s power slams into me, a cresting wave of force that hurls me away from Kiaran. I’m weightless, reeling, my scream swallowed by the rushing silence. And then I collide with the water.

My skull cracks against stone, an explosion of light and agony whiting out the world. I barely wrench my head to the side before water closes over me again.

I break the surface with a ragged gasp, shoving drenched hair from my eyes. Blinking against the swirling stars eating away at my vision.

Kiaran lunges for me, muscles bunching as he slices through the water. His fingertips graze my wrist, close over nothing. Something barrels into him, sends him crashing into the far wall. A growl escapes him, more animal than fae.

Her mocking laughter echoes, crystalline and sharp. A flicker in the periphery. Then she’s at my ear again.

“What do you think, little girl? Does he love you enough to resist his own nature? His blood calls to mine, you know. I made him.” A considering pause, brimming with malice. “And I can unmake him just as easily.”

“MacKay.” When I reach for him, I seize nothing but air.

“Don’t.” His voice seems to come from a great distance, thin and strained. As if each word has been dredged up from some deep, dark place. “Don’t come near me, Kameron. She wants me to lose control. To hurt you.”

The Morrigan laughs. “Oh, my sweet, foolish boy.” Her lips brush the shell of my ear. “He wants to break you. To gorge himself on you.”

She shifts around me, sinuous. I feel the ghosting pressure of phantom nails over the jumping pulse in my throat. The barest suggestion of sharpness.

“He can’t hide his want from me, you know.

I shaped him. Moulded him into a weapon.

” Her voice dips, turns gentle as she croons, “His thoughts are a terrible, beautiful thing. I wonder if you know how often he’s considered tearing your throat out while he’s inside you.

He’ll give in to his basest instinct in the end. Can’t help himself.”

Something white-hot and furious unfurls in my chest, chasing back the fog. The weakness. I twist in her hold, fingernails raking at shadows.

Too slow. She melts away, depriving me of even that small victory.

I whip around toward Kiaran, his name building behind my teeth. And the breath leaves me in a rush, ice crystallising in my veins.

Because the Morrigan stands at his back, one elegant hand draped over his shoulder. Nails tracing idle patterns over the straining tendons of his neck.

And Kiaran—

Kiaran stares at me from under his lashes, gaze empty and opaque. No spark of recognition, no light. As if everything that makes him mine has been hollowed out.

Oh god.

The Morrigan laughs. “Shall I tell you what he’s thinking, little human?” she purrs. “How sweetly you’ll scream as he takes you apart? How prettily you’ll beg before the end?”

My fingernails bite into my palms, small darts of pain that tether me to sanity. To myself.

“Let him go.”

“You’re only prolonging the inevitable.” She traces the sharp line of his cheekbone. Kiaran doesn’t so much as blink. “But that’s what he loves about you, isn’t it? Your fire. Your defiance.”

The Morrigan’s drapes herself against the hard line of his body with a sound of satisfaction. “So much delicious conflict,” she murmurs, burying her face in his hair. Inhaling deeply. “This one will be a joy to unravel.”

Her tongue darts out to lick his skin before she opens her mouth and clamps down with her fangs. Blood wells in the deep punctures, vivid and obscene against the stark pallor of his skin. Kiaran goes rigid, hands curling into fists at his sides. But he doesn’t fling her off.

Doesn’t fight.

The Morrigan lifts her head. Her lips and chin are stained scarlet, a slash of colour in the waning light. She smiles at me with blood in her teeth.

“Do you see? How futile it is to love a soulless thing?” she asks, almost gently. Then she’s shoving Kiaran forward. “Kill her.”

Time dilates. Warps. I watch in alarm as Kiaran turns to face me, his expression devoid of recognition.

Only flat, pitiless purpose .

The whole world narrows down to the space between us.

The implacable advance of death, the inevitability of violence.

There is no hesitation. No moment of indecision.

He cuts through the water in long, powerful strokes, his focus absolute.

It’s almost graceful, the way he slices through the glassy surface.

That’s it. I have had it.

“Kiaran MacKay,” I snarl, “if you don’t snap out of this right now, I’m going to march back to that hideous tower of yours and raze it to the ground myself. The bone throne? Kindling. That monstrosity you call a bed? Ashes. I’ll haunt your fae arse for all eternity, mark my words.”

Kiaran doesn’t slow. If anything, he puts on speed, covering the distance between us in great, relentless swallows. The water churns in his wake, frothing white.

He crashes into me in a wave, hands finding my hips.

The breath leaves my lungs on a gasp as his lips crash into mine.

He swallows my whimper, licks the blood from my lips.

The coppery bite is subsumed by scorching heat, the clashing of teeth and tongue.

It’s devouring, a conquering. As if he could crawl inside my skin and suffuse my cells until we’re no longer separate entities. Until I’m unmade.

Every shred of control has been obliterated, stripped away until only the wild, ravenous creature beneath remains.

But the pain is grounding. Clarifying. It chases back the lingering shadows, sharpens the world to knifepoint clarity.

I surrender to the onslaught. The biting sting of his teeth.

He nips at my bottom lip, soothing the hurt with his tongue.

Then he wrenches my head to the side. Just when I think he’ll sink his fangs in, he gentles his hold, nosing against the drum of my pulse. Lips brushing the skin like a benediction, his breathing ragged.

“I can’t believe you threatened me with arson, you lunatic.”

I give a hiccupping laugh, more than slightly hysterical. “You absolute bastard.”

His answering noise of amusement is a sweet rush. “Hush, mo chridhe .” The words are little more than a whisper of breath. “When I move, use your power and unleash hell.”

Somehow, I dredge up a nod. Not trusting myself to speak around the vice of emotion clamped around my throat.

He presses a final biting kiss behind my ear. Then he’s shoving away, putting distance between us with a few powerful strokes.

“ Now, Kameron .”

I close my eyes.

I picture a maelstrom, a hurricane trapped beneath the fragile cage of my skin. I imagine its screaming need, the way it claws for release.

And then I let go.

My power detonates outward in a concussive burst, a tidal wave that slams me back and back. Stone explodes, shrapnel hailing down into the churning water. The roar of it fills my ears, drowns out everything else. I flail and kick, choking on silt and sediment.

But I don’t stop. I pour everything I have into the onslaught until my bones shake and my vision narrows, until the world is reduced to pure energy and the thunderous staccato of my own heartbeat.

And then—

As quickly as it began, it’s over. I slump forward, spent. The water laps gently at my chest, almost a caress after the violence. My ears ring in the sudden hush.

I blink grit from my lashes. Cough the taste of pulverised rock from my lungs.

Kiaran pivots, hands clamping bruisingly on my arms. He heaves me up and out of the churning water, ignoring my yelp.

“Move.” That single word is leashed violence. “The Morrigan isn’t dead, and we won’t get another chance.”

Then we’re swimming. Hurtling over broken stone, shards tearing at my clothes, my skin as Kiaran hauls me through the newly blasted gap in the wall—our only path to escape. To survival.

I don’t look back.