Page 94 of The Blood Rites

Like he’s just realised something dangerous.

His fingers tighten slightly over mine, then loosen, like he’s about to step back.

But he doesn’t.

He mutters something I don't catch.

Then he leans in and kisses me.

It is not a gentle kiss. There is nothing gentle about Kael. It is urgent and confused and hungry, like a starving thing that has found food after famine.

For a second I forget how to breathe. Then I kiss him back.

When he pulls away, his face is flushed, his hair wild, his lips swollen and parted in surprise. He stares at me like he’s never seen me before.

“That was a mistake,” he says quietly.

He pauses, but his breathing is uneven. “You shouldn’t trust me like that.”

He looks like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t.

Before I can speak, he leaves.

Fast.

Like he’s escaping the scene of a crime.

The air crackles with leftover shock. I stand there, alone in his room, stunned, fingers tracing the outline of my lips.

For a moment, his heartbeat still echoes beneath my palms.

My Mana flickers in response.

But I force it down.

It doesn't go quietly.

Thirteen

There is no beginning.

No edges.

No up and no down.

There is no intake of breath to mark a start.

I am suspended in an endless ocean that does not move, does not ripple. There is only weight—absolute and crushing—the weight of being at the deepest part of the world.

The water around me is black. Not like ink, but the kind of black that leaves no room for light. Like Kael’s eyes when he is taken by whatever force rules his emotions.

The only thing that proves it is water is the way it clings to my skin and squeezes my lungs when I open my mouth to scream.

But I do not drown.

I wait for the pain of suffocation, but it never comes. The world is silent except for the throb of blood in my ears and the faint, echoing murmur of a voice. The words are impossible to make out at first, but I know the source: the Mother Shard, or some spectre of her, hidden from view, concealed in the darkness that surrounds me.

Something pulses in the distance. It vibrates, blurring the boundary between sound and touch. Each beat crushes me more, my will to fight buckling under the increased pressure.