Flamebound A Lone Star Witch No(34)

“Yeah. You’re a freaking riot,” I deadpan. “How much farther does this thing stretch?”

“I don’t think it’s much farther,” Declan says, wrapping one large, warm hand around my upper arm and pulling me to a stop. “Let me go in front.”

There’s a part of me that still wants to argue with him. While I understand his fear, even sympathize with it, I’m still annoyed with how he left me. He seduced me into sleep and then took off to do goddess knows what. I don’t care that he had something to do on his own—it’s not like I want to be joined at the hip with him. But what he did smacks of secrecy and that I don’t like. All he had to do was be honest with me and everything would have been fine.

“I’ve got it,” I answer, and even I recognize the snap in my voice.

“You don’t know what you’re going to be dealing with when you get to the bottom.”

“And you do?”

“I have a pretty good idea, yes.”

“And why is that? I wonder,” I demand archly. “Are you leading an entire secret life that I’m not aware of?”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Maybe. But you’re hiding something and I don’t like it.”

He grinds his teeth. “Get behind me, Xandra, or I will pick you up and put you there.”

The threat rubs me the completely wrong way. “I’d like to see you try.”

“You sure you want to go there, baby?” he asks, one brow lifted in that ridiculously hot way he has. He looks like a complete badass standing there, an impression that is backed up by everything I know about him and every action he’s ever made in front of me.

Despite the anger that still seethes inside me, a shiver of awareness sparks. I can’t help it—he’s looking at me the way he does in bed, right before he does something completely delicious to me.

Right now he looks like he wants nothing more than to push me up against the wall and prove to me and everyone else that I belong to him, that he can keep me safe. And under normal circumstances, I might have been willing to let him. But the timing couldn’t be more inappropriate for this—on both our parts. We don’t know what awaits us in the depths of this place. Besides, Lily’s right here, her eyes wide as saucers as she takes in the exchange between us. Guess my BFF didn’t realize just how volatile Declan is—or how volatile I am when I’m around him.

I send her a reassuring smile along with a bunch of this-is-no-big-deal vibes, then turn and start heading down the staircase once more. The second I’d stopped, the compulsion started burning hotter and hotter, until every breath became an agony.

And still I can’t let my conversation with Declan go. Not if our relationship—excluding the whole soulbound thing—has any hope of working. “And don’t call me baby,” I toss over my shoulder. “I’m not a child.”

“Then stop acting like one.” He’s seething at the challenge, something that makes me aware of just how often I’ve let him have his way in our partnership. Normally, it makes sense—he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, not to mention that he has more magic in one flick of his hand than I can imagine possessing in my whole lifetime. But not this time. I’m the one who knows where we’re going. I’m the one who—

I freeze as I circle around what turns out to be the last bend in the staircase. Lying on the ground right in front of me are two wizards. I note two things about them immediately.

One, they’re obviously security for the Council.

And two, they are obviously dead.





Eleven





“Well, it looks like you’ve found your bodies,” Lily tells me so flippantly that I know she’s fighting her gag reflex with everything she’s got. The more she’s upset by something, the less she lets it show.

“Looks like it,” I answer, but I’m not so sure. The compulsion, while it’s let up a little, doesn’t seem ready to release me quite yet. It’s pushing me to pass these two men who are lying in pools of their own blood, eyes staring sightlessly, throats cut. Normally, I’d be down there, checking for pulses, reliving their deaths whether I wanted to or not. But while I feel a small tug toward them, a need to do just that, most of the pull I feel is for somewhere else. For someone else.

“You okay?” Declan asks, rubbing a hand down my spine, a gesture that is both soothing and supportive. Our spat, if you can call it that, is completely forgotten in the face of what we now have to deal with.

“I don’t . . . This isn’t . . .” I shake my head, at a loss to put into words the feelings ricocheting around inside me.