Page 45 of WitchCurse

But it wasn’t. Those things brought pain.

Nick sighed and hugged me from behind, his touch light and warm. “If I could strip away the past, I would.”

“What would that gain?” I wondered.

“Your affection?” Nick asked.

But he already had that. Didn’t he know? There was none I trusted or sought more than he.

His arms tightened around me again, rolling me to the side to lie together in the grass. He let me rest my head on his shoulder and I absorbed his warmth. I let out a long sigh, sinking into the heat and wishing it would shatter the ice that had entombed my heart for centuries.

“We’re working on it,” Nick promised, and said nothing else as we lay in the bright space, coexisting.

CHAPTER16

Kiran

The actual movement of the camper jarred the magic Nick had created. Sebastian sat inside with us, his magic pulsing and holding it all together, but our kitsunes waged a silent war with each other. Holding back my change, and the rising hunger, became a constant struggle. A side effect of removing a few of the curses, or merely my weakness rising?

Sebastian’s gaze, a little wild, indicated he felt the same. We were not meant to overlap. If I had bound him rather than Nick, I suspected we’d both be dead, fighting until nothing remained but endless destruction. The drain on my strength returned the moment we crossed the barrier of the new realm. I passed out before we reached our destination.

A strong ward went up, and heat returned to the space, waking me from nightmares of being devoured. Sebastian was gone, and I couldn’t sense him nearby. The space felt more like the sanctuary now, defined, separate, and warded a dozen ways that felt like my magic. I sucked in a bit of air, startled at the lack of conflict fluttering at my magic. Had that been there the whole time? My magic warring with living inside Sebastian’s realm? I’d been numb for so long it was strange to feel the small intricacies of power.

Nick sat in a chair a few feet away, reading. He glanced up at me, gaze settling on my face. “I’m worried about how much rest you need.”

“I am not dead yet,” I said.

“No, and we plan to keep it that way.” Nick set the book aside and got up to kneel on the bed and touch my forehead. “You’re still chilled.” The blight layered the cold, as though somewhere in the many etchings on my flesh, was a binding spell of ice that would always try to regain ground.

“It’s possible,” Nick said. “Most of the symbols are haphazard at best. The fae trying to understand magic that didn’t belong to them. Toby has been studying mortal alchemy since Sebastian’s arrival in Liam’s pack, and finds more similarities there than with any fae magic I know of.”

“Where has the wolf gone?”

“To retrieve food.”

More food. I sighed.

“You’ve been starved for centuries,” Nick said. “You should want to eat.”

But it would only feed the sidhe, little left to warm me, and too much taken from the little fox.

“No need to be a martyr.”

“I have no desire to be a martyr. I only wish the sidhe would die, and if starving them slowly is the only way I can achieve that, then so be it.”

“Toby is right. I never realized how much you lie to yourself until he pointed it out.” He motioned toward the door to his room. “I’d like you to sleep in my bed,” wasn’t what I expected to hear him say.

I blinked at him, thinking I’d misheard or lost the translation from the mortal English to my old fae tongue. “What?”

“Now that I know you desire me, I want you in my bed when I sleep, and I’m exhausted.” He folded his arms across his broad chest as if ready to fight my protest.

“I can do nothing about any desire,” I reminded him. “You are better to choose the wolf.”

He leaned in close, his lips brushing my cheek, and wrapping my hair up in his fist to keep me from pulling away. “I plan to have you both.”

I sucked in air at his words. No one wanted…it wasn’t…I didn’t know where to begin. His lips danced over my face, not touching mine, but dropping small kisses on my cheeks and brow. Did he have any idea what he was doing?

“I do,” he said. “We spent centuries waiting to die, now I’m learning how to live. It’s eye-opening.”