Page 59 of Claimed

So that’s something. Maybe.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit there, palms braced on the mattress, letting the silence settle around me. However I ended up back here, I’m secretly grateful for the reprieve.

Valentin is asleep. The kind of sleep ancient vampire kings apparently fall into after saying things like ‘I yet endure’, as if he’s a dramatic inscription on a tomb.

The thought should make me snort and cackle.

It’s the last thing I feel like doing. Because he keeps… falling.

That’s the word my mind has chosen, and it will not let go. Falling. Down into something. Away from himself. Each time, he comes back altered. Stronger for a while. Sharper, sure. More volatile. Then the strength cracks, and the dark under it shows its teeth.

And he still refuses to summon Rowan.

Well, refuses might be too clean a word for his near-homicidal reaction when someone thought ‘witch’ through the bond.

Fine.

Wonderful.

Very healthy.

And by the way, where the hell is Ciaran O’Rourke’s witch? Valentin’s bargaining chip. The woman who might be able to read curse-work through bone and blood and whatever supernatural nonsense everyone else keeps pretending I’m supposed to understand by osmosis.

Laying low somewhere in this Tower, apparently.

And then there’s me. And this wild and bewildering as hell craving for blood.

More specifically, Valentin’s blood.

The way my body reacts to it like it’s been waiting for him, my very bones humming after I drink. Gods, I’m certain if I stopped long enough to think it through, I would completely freak out with the way my hunger has started separating itself from my mind and making decisions I want no part of.

Because taken in isolation, every observation probably has a rational explanation.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t born yesterday or raised by anyone kind enough to let me believe convenience and truth are the same thing.

Selphine’s warning keeps crawling up the back of my mind at the worst moments.

He might like it too much. So might you.

And that’s the part I can’t afford to ignore. Because my end game hasn’t changed. Self-protection.

Because if I’m Lyra Hannigan, I stop being only Eira Cross the second I confess it. I become his answer. His cure. His missing piece in a curse old enough to eat kings.

And while Valentin might make me melt like a friggin’ sundae in July, while he might even give me a choice, can I stake my life on coming second to the threat to his immortality?

Fate has never once asked my permission before rearranging my life, and I’m not handing it a knife just because the man holding the handle has started looking at me like I matter.

But the more I think about Selphine’s words, the more it resembles a trap wrapped in velvet.

Which hurts.

Because Selphine saved me. Hid me. Fed me knowledge in small, careful doses and taught me how to survive a world full of monsters. I wanted to believe she gave me Bride’s Mercy because she knew exactly what I was running from and wanted me to stay free.

Now my own name locks in my mind and behind my teeth, my blood may be making Valentin better, worse, addicted or all three, and every time I try to drag Lyra Hannigan into the light, my throat closes like a fist.

A smart woman might throw her luck in with the witch already inside the Tower. A smarter one might find a new witch altogether.

I’m apparently neither woman.