Page 66

What Is Mine

I wake slowly, eyes still closed but able to see the sunlight behind my lids, and everything about last night comes back to me. We made love several more times—until we were tangled in sheets and each other and I finally fell into a perfect, peaceful sleep in his arms.

I give a luxurious stretch only to pause midway through as it sinks in that I’m not in his arms anymore.

Jagged fear shears through me like a bolt of lightning.

I jerk upright on a gasp, and sure enough, the bed beside me is empty.

“Reven?” I whip around, searching the room only to go dead still at the sight of Reven on the side of the bed, sitting in the same straight-backed chair as before.

Fear is like a thousand bugs crawling through me. “Not again—”

“Hells.” He’s out of his chair and kneeling by the bed, hands wrapped around mine. “I’m still yours. Sorry for scaring you.”

The fear doesn’t entirely go away on the whoosh of relief that leaves my body. “Then why were you sitting there like that?”

His hands tighten around mine, but he meets my gaze. “Because the Shadows wouldn’t let me stay in the bed with you. They kept coming to the surface if I stayed.”

My ribs tighten down like a cinch, and my stomach flips as the joy that should be surging crawls back under a rock. “The hells you say.”

He just looks at me, and I know he means it.

“Did you try to take them?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you while you’re sleeping.”

I believe him. “Then why—”

“I don’t know.” He takes a breath. “But now might be a good time to try having you give them back again.”

Just one morning. One hour. Even one minute, at this point. A speck of time where I didn’t have to wake up to this nightmare. Why can’t I ever have that? I rub at my eyes, which are feeling grittier by the second. “Fine.”

Reven’s eyebrows wing high. “Fine?”

“If I have to say it again,” I growl, starting to sound like the grumpy version of him, “then the answer is no.”

He holds up both hands. “I just wasn’t expecting you to give in so easily.”

I shift uncomfortably in the bed, though I don’t look away. “If I tried to keep them, everyone would only be more wary and suspicious around me.”

That sounded better in my head.

“True.” He says it softly, but it still hurts. “But I get to kiss you, so there’s that.”

A fluttering blooms in my stomach that has nothing to do with Shadows.

Reven scoots me over to sit close, then takes my chin between his fingers. Humor lights his eyes. “Don’t bite me,” he murmurs.

“I make no promises.”

“Hmmm. On second thought, go ahead.”

The fluttering turns to warmth. Reven urges me forward as he leans closer and closer, drawing the moment out into a thousand little heartbeats as the endless ocean of his eyes brightens and heat flares across my cheeks.

All he needs is to suck darkness and evil out of me. The logical part of me knows that. I shouldn’t be excited by the mouth-to-mouth part since it has nothing to do with feelings.

Reven puts his mouth over mine, and my eyes flutter closed. I breathe in the fresh scent of him that always reminds me of home. I feel his warmth.

Then he starts to draw the Shadows out, and in the next instant, all I am is agony.

In my head, I scream for forever, but it’s probably only seconds before Reven jerks back. “Meren?”

“They don’t want to go to you,” I tell him, breathing hard as the slivers of pain slowly fade to nothing. I swallow hard and shoot him a smile. “I think they like me better.”

His grip on my chin tightens uncomfortably. “Like you better?”

I roll my eyes. “Calm down. It’s a joke.”

“Uh-huh.”

With a sigh, I drop my head forward so that I’m leaning against his shoulder. “Can’t a girl be funny and potentially evil’s puppet at the same time?”

“We’ll try again later,” he says.

“What’s the point?”

He rubs his cheek against my hair, his morning beard rasping. “You haven’t seen your face lately, Meren. They—”

“I’ve been in control.”

“You haven’t.”

I don’t even bother to ask if it’s truth. I know it is. I know that I can’t always hear them or feel them.

He pulls away to look me in the eyes, his gaze turning pointed. “Just now you were the one fighting it. You were holding them inside.”

But I didn’t even know it was happening. What if next time, I don’t know and I don’t fight it?

Blast the fates.

The way he’s tense against me, bracing in case I attack him, might scare me even more because it means he’s afraid of that, too.

I tuck my head under his chin and hold on tight. “When Eidolon comes, if we haven’t got them out of me by then—”

“When he comes, I’m going to kill that bastard.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “But if anything goes wrong, you have to remember your promise.”

To kill me if he has to.

He holds me closer. “I know.”