My cheeks catch fire. “I take it back, then. The kissing train has passed.” Ugh, lame.
He closes the space between us. Takes my hand in his and kisses it. Stormy shields Khloe’s eyes with her hand, and my little sis shoves it down.
I don’t care that they’re watching. His lips are so soft. “Care to try again?” His eyebrows wag.
Khloe and Stormy turn away. “We won’t watch this time,” Stormy says. “Guardian’s honor.” Back turned toward us, she salutes no one.
Oh brother. Or is it sister? Whatever. “Think you can do better?” I tease Tide back, squeezing his hand as I do.
“You bet I do.”
And three, two, one . . . what is it they say? Blastoff.
He kisses me like there’s no yesterday or tomorrow. There is only us and now and him and me. I’ve been kissed before. By Guardians too old for me in the shadowy alcoves of the castle. By Third Reflection guys like Blake Trevor who’ve had way too much to drink, leaving the taste of alcohol on my lips for days after brushing.
But this? I’ve never been kissed like this.
Tide’s lips move against mine with a sort of sweet timidity. There’s no push, no expecting this to go too far. He’s simply kissing me for the kiss itself. He keeps one hand tangled with mine, his body just close enough but not too close. When he draws away, his soft smile breaks into a full grin.
I mirror his expression, but I don’t look away. Don’t push away, though it’s my go-to reaction when things get too close. “What?”
“Oh, nothing.” He winks. “It’s just . . . I told you I could do better.”
No quips or words of defense come to mind. All I can think to say is, “Yes. Yes, you did.” Then I let him kiss me again.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Ky
The Lioness is laughing. She’s gone completely mad. I don’t care. I only care about the girl tossed aside by the feline’s jaws.
“Give me the knife, Crowe. I know you always carry one on you.” I take a fistful of young Jasyn’s shirt. I have a window. Very little time to save her. Can she be saved? Please, let her live through this. She has to live through this. I’ve already lost my brother today. I can’t lose Em too.
The stricken look on Crowe’s face doesn’t make my hold on him any less firm. “Calm down.” He withdraws the old-fashioned pocketknife I knew he’d be packing. “Here.”
Coward. Scum. Pansy. A slew of names I could call him but don’t spins through my mind. He might’ve won Em’s compassion, but his final decision to side with our enemy seals the deal. Once our adversary, always our adversary. Some things can’t be fixed.
I snatch the weapon that will never compare to my mirrorglass blade and fall to my knees beside my brother. My lifeless, will-never-breathe-again brother. His open palm is the most accessible. I make a small, clean incision the way my Physic mother taught me, scrape the blood off with the dull edge of the knife. “Looks like you came in handy after all, David.”
The joke is one he’d laugh at if he were here. In the end he became much more than blood supply. If he had stuck around a bit longer, we may have even become friends.
“You saved her,” I say to him, though he can’t hear me. “Now it’s my turn.”
I go to her. For both of us.
The Lioness’s laughter continues. Would she shut up already?
Keeping Em as covered as possible, I lift her slip and survey the gaping wound in her side. I’ve been around blood enough, the scent doesn’t faze me. No, it’s the stillness that grips my heart. Her nonrising chest. The way her hands lay limp. She’s my mother, Dennielle, lifeless at the bottom of the stairs.
Focus blurs. Shifts. Then zooms in again. Get it together. You’re on your own now. Do it for David. For Em. For Verity’s sake, do it for yourself.
The wound is the worst I’ve seen. Even a Physic’s hands couldn’t heal this. Without David’s blood, Em would be gone for sure. The Ever in her Calling gives her a fighting chance, along with David’s blood already in her veins from the last time he saved her. Still, a little more can’t hurt.
I lower Crowe’s knife over the wound and let David’s blood drip, drip, drip. Then I take off my shirt and do my best to clot the bleeding. Pressure. So much blood. I lean over and kiss her like I’ve done before. The way she kissed me after Jasyn’s Void injection. A miracle worker, right? My lips move against her cold ones. I shake her shoulders. Push her hair away.
Please come to, please. There is no loophole for my brother, but Em? She’s the heroine. She can’t—Oh Verity, she can’t die. This is not that ending. I refuse to—
She gasps. Coughs.
The rigidity in my body I didn’t realize I possessed relaxes. I knew it. No sweat. No problem at all.
That’s when I heave, clutch my stomach, and vomit to the side.
My head swims. Okay, maybe for the tiniest second I thought she really might be dead. I wipe my mouth and gain my bearings. Never smiled bigger in my life.
“Has it happened?” She attempts to look around, then winces.
I knit my brows. I search her thoughts as she reopens her mind to mine.
Ah, so that’s what the hag was up to. Steal the Verity? Doesn’t the immortal know anything? Has history told us nothing about the forces of light and darkness? I glare at Crowe. He did everything in his power to harness the Void. Created an army of Soulless, hoping to spread his power across the Second. Has what he’s witnessed here influenced his bad decisions in the future? He thought he could hold on to the Void and use it for his own gain. In the end, it destroyed him. I watch the Lioness now, cackling as if she’s won.
Joke’s on you, Your Majesty.
I help Em sit. We watch the Lioness revel in her victory.
“She has the Verity now,” Em says in my head. “But she won’t for long.”
I hear my brother’s words replay in her mind. “The Verity cannot be fooled.”
A sudden flash of light. The Lioness screams. Roars. Then the crown falls to the ground, unbreakable due to its nature. “No,” she cries, hind legs shaking. “What have you done?”
A delicious grin spreads across Em’s lips despite her injury. Man, have I mentioned I love this girl?
“You cannot fool the Verity, Isabeau,” she says. “The light knows the difference between a good heart and one made of stone.”
The original vessel of the Verity passes through her myriad transformations. Lioness. Troll. Isabeau. And . . . Dahlia? Whoa. Didn’t see that one coming. Explains where she’s been, at least. Guess it was never about helping us at all. She had her own agenda, though we’ve yet to discover exactly what it is. No wonder her story kept changing. The Rose did this, it didn’t do that. What a bunch of crud. Should’ve smelled bad from a mile away.
“She wanted me,” Em’s thoughts relay. “All this time, it wasn’t about Mom. She wanted the Verity. I thought she cared. I thought she was my friend.”
She was, I think back. As long as the role suited her.
We watch as the woman keeps shifting until, at last, a burst of darkness billows, as if the Void itself has—
A cooling sensation runs through me, replaced by warmth I haven’t known in too long.