Page 41 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

I know I’m awake again because I hurt. Everything hurts.

Hurt barely covers it.

I feel foggy and strange. It seems to take an enormous, Herculean effort to open my eyes. When I do, I rub them as if that might make what I’m looking at begin to make sense.

But it doesn’t, no matter how much I rub, so I stop.

When I look at my hands, I see blood. Then I remember that woman—and I’m pretty sure I just rubbed her blood all over me.

I start to turn, maybe a little wildly. I wonder what happened to her, and to me, and to all those terrible cloaked figures—

“Settle down,” says a voice close beside me, and I recognize it immediately.

I do as I’m told. I settle, and only then look to see Maddox there beside me. It seems to take me much too long to process the fact that her arm is around me—a lot like she was cradling my form while I ... lay about unconscious?

Because I’m pretty sure I passed out. I’m actually a little shocked I’m not dead.

It’s an incredibly disconcerting thing to consider—the image of me, entirely defenseless and unaware, just ... laid out for any of the dark and terrible things here to do whatever they want with.

It’s more than disconcerting. It makes my back curl where I sit, or would, if that sort of movement didn’t make everything hurt more . It also makes my stomach start to act up again when, surely, there can be nothing left inside me to throw up.

I try not to think about it. I look back to the center of the clearing, past the choking black smoke and a charred, sweet scent I opt not to think about too closely.

There are cloaked bodies lying all around, many of them ravaged and in pieces.

I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies in the past three years, and I’m weirdly glad about it now, because otherwise I think I would simply lapse off into shock at what I’m seeing.

Instead, I know to let my gaze skim right over the details without letting them land. I do that, and find myself squinting at the two upright figures in the center of the clearing, surrounded by bodies.

One is Ty, as expected.

The other one is Ariel. This is not expected at all.

And they are not having a quiet, civil conversation.

“How could you risk her?” Ariel is shouting, and he’s angrier and scarier than I’ve ever seen him. For one thing, there’s the shouting when I think of him as still and quietly terrifying. For another, I can see his fangs. For yet another thing, the silver of his eyes has gone dark and mean.

He also has his hands spread in a way that makes me wonder if he might sprout claws at any second. He looks like he’s considering it.

This is the moment when I should find him repulsive. This is the moment when I should remind myself that these little fantasies I’ve been toying with will be the death of me. The actual death of me.

It will look like this. Like this monster most reasonable people have nightmares about.

Yet ... I do not find him repulsive at all.

Even now, when I’m not entirely convinced my internal organs are in the right place.

“Now you’re concerned about risking her?” Ty grits back, and I’m fascinated. “That’s fucking hilarious. You’re so concerned that you send her off to wander around the valley with your mark all over her but no protection?”

Ariel seems to expand, silver gone dark. “My mark is, by definition, protection.”

“It’s only protection against those who give a shit if they piss you off.” Ty belts that at him like a punch from one of his massive fists. “It’s stupid as fuck. What it’s not is concern .”

Ariel’s eyes seem to glow a dark, tarnished, scary sort of silver now. “At the very least you should have called in reinforcements the moment you knew what was happening here. We all made these agreements for a reason.”

“I’ve never much believed in oracles, asshole,” Ty shoots back. “It’s you undead fuckers who like messages and signs. Werewolves don’t need magic. We don’t get our paws read. We have teeth and claws, and we take care of ourselves.”

Ariel leans in, looking more like a walking, talking nightmare than ever. And I can’t seem to look away. “And when you say you take care of yourselves, is that how you would describe installing your lover in the oracle’s yard?”

Ty growls. They close in on each other. Two night terrors in a field of blood and broken bodies who look a lot like they’re about to start tearing each other into pieces.

“My fated mate ,” Ty corrects him in a deadly tone, “is not installed anywhere. She makes her own choices and her own rules. I know you bloodsuckers hate that shit. You like them messed up on blood, too fucked in the head to do anything but worship at your feet.”

Beside me, I feel Maddox stiffen, but I can’t tell if it’s because she liked what Ty said ... or didn’t.

Then I don’t wonder about anything. I think maybe I pass out. Everything seems to swirl around and around in a drunken sort of narrow circle, and then there’s nothing.

Until there is again.

Mostly pain.

Through the haze of that, I remember where I am. And who’s talking.

“There are treaties in place,” Ariel is saying, his voice a whole dark, cold winter. “Are you declaring them null and void with this stunt? You know what will happen.”

Ty only laughs. “You want to go back to how it used to be? I was under the impression your creepy little leech boys like their heads on their necks, but I can always—”

“Hey.”

Both of them look over at Maddox, as if surprised to find she’s still there. Ariel’s dark gaze finds me, and holds, and I really should question why I have the urge to run toward him—

Though I can’t do any such thing. The pain is like a tide, the waves are getting higher, and I have the terrible suspicion that I am not okay.

Like . . . really not okay.

“If you two want to burn down the valley tonight, be my guest,” Maddox is saying in her best bored tone.

Like they’re nothing but dumb boys in the high school parking lot, pretending they’re fighters.

Clearly, neither one of them enjoys her tone, but that doesn’t stop her.

“But please remember that the treaties you’re talking about don’t mean just the two of you and your cute little bromance.

You want to change things up? You know who else needs to be here. ”

“I fucking hate sorcery,” Ty growls.

Ariel looks like he agrees, but he only inclines his head at Maddox. His eyes flash silver, and I realize that what I’m watching is that vampire magic. Or vampire tricks. Whatever you call it, he’s doing it.

I struggle to sit up again, shaking Maddox’s hand off me when she tries to keep me from doing it, but I only manage to move a little. It’s enough to make me wheeze in agony, as everything inside me seems to revolt.

The night goes gray around me. My ears ring, loud.

“You’re very weak,” Maddox tells me, her gaze smoky and direct.

“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, though even my lips feel weird and my voice sounds like a death rattle. “Humanity is fragile, inside and out. Tell me something I don’t know.”

But she doesn’t seem to find me funny.

“Here’s something you don’t know,” she says, and there’s more wolf in her glare now. “That bitch did something to you. I don’t know what. She took you down and knocked you out, flat. All tied up to a stone slab in the middle of her own sacrifice. So, I don’t know, maybe take a breather?”

I don’t have time to think about whether or not I’m deeply chastened—or maybe a little bit scared—by that.

All around us, suddenly, there’s a kind of humming that seems to come from the earth itself. It sounds oddly familiar, though I can’t quite place it. I hear scraps of voices in the breeze, up so high on this mountain that I never forget is a volcano.

Then, out of nowhere, there is a column of light.

It beams down into the clearing, blinding gold, and when the brightness dims enough so we can look at it directly ... she’s there.

I can see who it is, but my brain refuses to make sense of it.

It’s like I can’t accept what I’m seeing.

I feel my teeth chattering, that’s how wild and total my reaction is. The nearly dying part didn’t send me into shock, or not yet, but this is making it happen.

“I’m so sorry,” the figure drenched in light says. “This is not how I expected to reveal myself.”

I expect her to smile at me in that serene, calming way, but her gaze stays on me too long. She frowns, and the sound I thought I recognized gets louder. It’s chanting, I realize. The same chanting I hear almost every night from her cottage.

I have to accept that this really is Savi.

“Why are you letting her bleed out internally?” she asks, but I don’t think she’s speaking to me. I think she’s speaking to Ariel and Ty and maybe even Maddox, but once again, everything is dimming to that worrying gray around me.

I don’t want to fade away. Instead, I try to concentrate on Savi, who I last saw in my kitchen, and the fact that she is standing on a mountaintop bathed in a light of her own making.

I watch as she moves her hand through the air in a gesture that feels ancient and timeless, graceful and powerful, and murmurs words I don’t pretend to understand as she does it.

More of that chanting fills the air.

As she speaks, the tight, harsh grip of the cold seeping into me ... eases.

Even my headache dissipates enough so that I can take what feels like the first deep breath I’ve had since the moon rose.

Only then, only after she’s looked me over with a critical eye and exchanged one of those too-long looks with Maddox, does she deign to turn her notice to the two men standing before her.

She is not scared of either of them. She makes this very clear.

“I don’t like being summoned,” she informs Ariel. “You are too free and easy with your demands, vampire.”

And whether or not I can comprehend that Savi is the sorceress I’ve already heard about, the way she says that makes it inarguable that whatever else she is, she is a creature of intense power.

Sorceress fits.