Page 79 of The Witch They Crave

I hate it. I hate it instantly and completely, but it's already happening—my skin going hot, my pulse dropping somewhere it has no business being, my mind doing the thing I'd cut it out for doing–putting me in that chair, imagining what it would be to have his mouth at my throat, those hands, that terrible undivided attention. Heat climbs my neck. My breath goes shallow.

And he feels it. He knows it. His expression shifts, the flicker of satisfaction, the corner of his mouth curving against the woman's skin because he can smell what he's doing to me from across the room.

That's what breaks the freeze.

I stagger back a step, my hand flying to my own throat, to the pulse hammering under my flushed skin. He watches me do it. He watches me want it and hate wanting it, and he lets me see that he sees, and then—gift-giver to the last—he returns his mouth to the woman's neck and lets me go.

I don't walk. I don't do the cool, unbothered exit I'd planned. I turn and I go, fast, down the dark hall with my heart slamming and my face burning, and I feel his attention on my spine the whole way, warm as a hand.

I make it back to my room and shut the door and lean against it. My heart won't slow down. My skin's still too hot. I press the backs of my hands to my cheeks and they come away warm, and I hate that, I hate every part of it. I cross to the window and crack it and let the cold night air work on my face until I can breathe like a person again.

It takes a while.

When it's done—when the flush finally drains and I can think in a straight line—I'm left with the sinking realization beneath it.

All this time I'd told myself the marked ones in this house were willing. That there were contracts, compensation, the polite fiction the whole supernatural world runs on. Well, maybe the staff members are. Maybe the feedings are a part of their employment with the Vassard house. How the hell am I supposed to know.

But standing in that doorway, whatever was going on between that woman and Leopold… that wasn’t about a job.

That was something else entirely.

He doesn't need to worry about finding staff who feeds him. That's the terrible genius of him. He makes feeding feel like a gift.

He makes you want it.

I…

No. No, absolutely not.

∞∞∞

Nellie finds me at lunch two days later with a scribbled note and a face I don't like.

"From my mom," she says, sliding onto the bench across from me. She doesn't take her food out. That's how I know it's bad—Nellie always eats. "I asked her about the thing you told me. The—" she drops her voice, glances around the dining hall, "—the feelings. Not-yours feelings. The training thing where you couldn't tell where you stopped and he started."

"And?"

"She knew what it was right away." Nellie turns the note over in her hands. "It's got a name. She called it tethered magic. It happens when two casters' power gets—linked. Usually it's on purpose, part of a working, but it can happen by accident if two people's magic is in close contact enough, often enough, over time."

Close contact. Often enough. Over time.

Shit…

Every training session for two months. His power reaching into mine, mirroring it, helping me contain it, our magic pressed against each other four days a week while he taught me to hold it and wield it.

"Okay," I say, careful. "So what does it do?"

"That's the part—" Nellie looks down at the note, scribbled down while her mom talked her through it on the phone. "Once the tether sets, it stops telling the difference between what's owed and what's felt. Debt and feeling run the same wire. What passes between them will be real. It won't always be theirs."

I sit with that.

It will be real. It will not always be theirs.

"So the feelings I've been getting," I say slowly. "The ones that come from nowhere."

"Might be real feelings," Nellie says. "Just—maybe not yours. Maybe his, coming across the wire. Mom couldn't tell how much or which ones. She said there's no clean way to sort it from the inside. That's the whole problem with a tether. You can't stand outside your own heart and check the labels."

I look down at my hands.