It’s Declan’s magic; I know it is. Instead of arrowing it into me like he usually does, he’s taking his time, letting it seep in and slowly, slowly, comfort me. My own magic rises up without my bidding, tangles with the shimmering strands of his until the warmth turns to flame.
Instinctively, I shy away—I’ve had enough experience with fire to last a lifetime—but Declan won’t let me go. He wraps his power all around me until I can’t feel anything but safe, anything but loved. Then he uses those feelings to coax my own power back out from behind the hasty barrier I’d slammed into place.
Part of me wants to resist—on some levels, this sharing of our magic is a million times more intimate than sex. And while I’ve felt Declan’s magic inside me before, it’s never been like this. Never been so much a part of me that I feel it in my every nerve ending, my every cell. Never been so overwhelming that I can’t tell where his power leaves off and mine begins.
There’s a part of my brain screaming for me to shut this down. That it’s too intimate, too dangerous. That it will only speed up everything that comes with being soulbound—the bad parts as well as the good.
I ignore the warning. There’s no way I’m giving this up. Not when I have a direct pathway to the fiery beauty of Declan’s soul. For once, the darkness that seethes between us is nowhere around and I’m grateful. I want to relish every second.
Time passes and still he doesn’t withdraw. Neither do I. Instead, I savor the heat rippling through me, touching me in places I never imagined another human being would ever be able to reach.
My headache—nearly blinding in its intensity just a little while ago—is all but gone. My eyes feel much less swollen and gritty. Even the pressure in my chest, partly from crying and partly from grief, feels lighter.
I’m not sure how I feel about that last one—my sorrow over Hannah’s death is an intensely personal thing, one I’m not yet ready to share with anyone else. And yet I can’t deny that I feel more able to see clearly, more capable of moving beyond my own emotions to see the big picture.
Feeling a little drunk on all the power that’s still bouncing around inside me, I open my eyes slowly. And stare in wonder at Declan’s face.
In just the last few minutes, his skin has lost most of the red burns. I glance down at his hands, realize the blisters are gone as well. “Did you . . . ?” My voice trails off, as I don’t even know what it is I want to ask.
“Actually, you did,” he tells me.
“I don’t understand.”
“It works both ways. I can heal you, partly because I have some talent for it and you can heal me—at least partially—because of the binding. The stronger your magic gets, the more you’ll be able to do. It’s how I got out of that inferno with only second-degree burns. Once you started pumping your magic into me, the flames couldn’t do that much damage.”
Astonished, I touch his face with soft fingertips. Trace the wicked curve of his lips and the tiny little dimple to the left of his mouth that few people ever get a chance to see. It took me forever to get a glimpse of that dimple—smiling is not something Declan does on a regular basis—but now that I have, it’s become one of my favorite places to kiss and touch and lick. Partly because it makes him look sexy as hell, but mostly because that dimple means Declan trusts me in a way he trusts almost no one. He opens up to me when normally he goes out of his way to be as closed off as possible.
Because I can’t help myself, I lean forward and press a light kiss directly over that dimple. And think about just how much my life has changed since this man found his way back into it.
Long minutes pass in silence, both of us locked in thought. But eventually the corners of my mind start to crumble in on themselves and I know that I’ve tackled too much. Hannah. Declan. The ACW. A concussion. The pain comes back, as agonizing as ever.
Declan shifts, stretching out on the bed before pulling me into the curve of his arm. His hand tangles in my hair, his fingers massaging my scalp until my eyes drift closed despite myself.
Before I go under completely, I force myself to ask, “What’s our next move?” I need to be prepared.
He kisses my shoulder, lingering on the gold seba tattoo that sprang up a few days ago—and that marks me as his as surely as his new tattoo marks him as mine. Then, in a dark, hard voice I haven’t heard since our first days together, he answers, “We find the people who did this to you and then we set their world on fire.”
Exhausted or not, headache or not, after that revelation, it takes me a long time to fall back asleep.