For all of them.
“Allow me to prove you wrong,” Jasyn says. “I believe his love for you goes deeper than he will admit. Which means, when it comes down to it, he will not be able to send the Void inside you. An Ever’s blood heals, yet their emotions are their downfall. I could stab Aidan’s son one hundred times over, and he still would not die. But if I so much as break your skin, he weakens, folds like a poorly played hand of cards.”
Oh, crowe. Where’s he going with this?
Lips curled back, he reveals two straight rows of pearly whites. “Except now I have another weapon, something far more interesting than splicing your pretty little neck, my own flesh and blood.”
I’m dizzy and I can’t feel my hands or feet. I glance from Ky to Joshua to Ky and back again. This is bad.
Jasyn grabs Ky’s chin with his free hand, forces his face skyward. “I am able to keep my enemy weak simply by doing this.” He plunges the needle into Ky’s neck, pulls it out in rapid succession.
I feel it. Like a string connecting my soul to his, I sense the darkness pulling, yanking, drawing me in. I cry out. Clutch my chest. Fall to my knees.
Ky collapses, too, but he makes no sound. His veins are doing that thing again, crawling and darkening and . . . retracting just as quickly.
Three, two, one. It’s over. The tightness above my ribs relents. The intangible connection between us loosens. I look over my shoulder at Joshua. His questioning expression says he felt it, too, the Void trying to take Ky’s soul. The soul I saved with a kiss, linking the three of us for seven more days.
With a look of sheer disgust, Jasyn kicks Ky in the side.
Grunting, Ky doubles over.
“Please.” I can barely get the word out. I close my eyes. “Don’t hurt him.”
“What was that, granddaughter? Speak up so all in attendance may hear.”
I blow a breath through my nose, grind my teeth, and fume, “I said don’t hurt him. This isn’t his fight. You have what you want. Me. The Verity’s vessel. But let Ky go.”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” Jasyn says. “It is very much Kyaphus’s fight. You made it so when you bound your soul to his with a Kiss of Infinity.”
“El, no.” Joshua’s voice is drenched in grief.
As if in slow motion, I turn toward him.
Fresh blood dampens the bandage around his middle, but it’s the agony in his compressed expression that acts as my personal wound.
My chin quivers. I can’t look at him, envisioning what I might find. Anger. Grief.
“How sweet,” Jasyn blusters. “The Ever who would do anything for his beloved, and the girl who kissed a traitor. Which leaves us with the Shield who, despite his shady past, allowed himself to fall in love. This is quite the complicated triangle, indeed.”
“You’re wrong,” Ky grunts, speaking for the first time in what seems like hours. He rises, rolling his shoulders, taking on the same manner he had the night we met. Cold. Cruel. “I am not in love with her. As always, I remain loyal to you, my liege.”
My body goes rigid.
He faces my grandfather and—bows?
No. Flippin’. Way.
“Master,” Ky appeals.
It’s a ruse. Has to be.
Jasyn lists his head. Amused? Suspicious? I can’t tell. “What can you offer as a token of your loyalty?”
Ky lifts his head. “What did you have in mind?” A smile lilts his voice, and a slant of his head oozes cunning. Well, well, the boy from the party returns.
Jasyn’s eyes glint. “I am sure you can come up with something.” He clasps Ky’s shoulder in a fatherly gesture.
Rounding on me, Ky pauses a sniff away. The contours of his face harden further, if possible.
I shut my eyes. Oh no you don’t—you’re not using your Calling on me.
He leans down, places his lips next to my ear. “Would you rather it be me or Haman?”
Eyes narrowed, I face him.
His regard snatches mine with ferocity, and I can’t look away. Numbness travels through my veins, my organs, rendering every part below my neck immovable.
Snap!
No feeling, no pain, but the deafening note triggers an awareness. I glance down. My hand hangs limply from my wrist. Contorted. Swelling. Broken.
Ky scoops me into his arms and carries me away as Jasyn steps up beside Joshua, leers down at him.
Joshua’s face contorts. He clasps his wrist. Unlike me, he is not numb to the ache Ky caused.
But there’s a greater ache there, something that splices me open, emotions bleeding onto the pristine floor. The broken wrist is trivial compared to the true agony he endures, far worse than any broken bone.
If he feels what I feel, it’s not the physical pain that renders him immovable. It’s the knowledge that I was able to give Ky a Kiss of Infinity. I still don’t understand it, but one question rises to the surface above all the others.
If I’m linked to Ky, heart and soul, what does that mean for him if I become the Void’s new prison?
THIRTY-FOUR
Before We Part
Ky hasn’t said a word since we left the throne room.
My head throbs, a headache setting up camp between my eyebrows. I glance up.
Ky’s face is a portcullis. He has yet to meet my gaze. Away from the tiered balconies, down enclosed halls and corridors he carries me. Ignores me.
I stare at the ceiling. Cradled. Helpless.
When we’re some distance from the throne room, he sidesteps into an alcove. Peeks over his shoulder. Then his face lowers, a mere hair away from mine. When his lips part, I inhale his breath, stare at him, will my concentration not to falter and find his mouth. Our kiss was so fleeting. Why can’t I expel it from my mind?
“Why did you do it?” he asks.
He doesn’t have to elaborate. I know what he means. I don’t have an explanation. I kissed him because I wanted to. Because I thought I was saying good-bye.
When I give no answer, he continues, “You do know even when your link with David breaks, you are still bound to me. Forever. I’m over eighteen. You chose me. And I—”
My insides mush. “You what?”
“Never mind.” He straightens, steps into the hall, and continues in silence.
Two more corridors and a spiraling stairwell later, Ky enters a circular room—a sort of attic-slash-tower. The accommodations are modest. A low cot with a hay mattress and faded quilt. A single wooden chair, a matching bowl resting on its seat and bucket beneath it. Straight ahead, a barred window emits the meager moonlight. Better than the stinky dungeon, at least.
He lays me on the cot. The hay rustles beneath my weight. “This is the Captive’s Tower. Nobody will bother you here.” He brushes my bangs from my eyes, then crouches and begins digging through his pack. His shoulder muscles flex against his taut jacket.
I find a cobweb hanging from the coned ceiling and ogle it.
A long while passes before either of us speaks again. I don’t feel a thing, but I assume he’s tending the bone he broke, something he learned from his Physic mother, no doubt.
“I’m done.” His low, throaty tone further contorts my dilemma.
When I look at my wrist, it’s splinted, wrapped in a bandage. I almost thank him but refrain. He only fixed what he fractured in the first place.
In slow motion, as if making sure I’m watching, he leans down and kisses the top of my dressed hand.
Again, I don’t feel it, but the action sets off a siren in my brain’s warning station. The heat between us is undeniable, energizing the atmosphere like a twister waiting to funnel. The slightest shift in the air and whoosh! Ky is a tornado—exciting and unpredictable. If I don’t ground myself, he’ll carry me away.