Sucking in a deep breath, I let the truth I'd kept to myself for far too long spill from my mouth. "Irma was having an affair with Gratian and I caught them out."

Tabitha gaped in astonishment. Her lax hand slipped away to the silken pleats at her side.

I blustered onward, throwing up a hand. "I wasn't thinking. I took off into the Hemmlok Forest and he followed. I went too deep, too close to the Heart of the Forest."

"Where the Horned Gods reside," she whispered.

"Yeah," I said, my voice breaking.

"What kind of beast killed your brother?"

The muscles in my shoulders knotted as I rubbed a hand over my chest where the phantom impression of her touch still warmed my flesh.

Hells, I didn't even know what it was, not for sure.

I shifted with unease, widening my stance. "Something makes me think it was more than a lesser creature." A creature I'd never encountered before. "Yet it wasn't like Sirro either. It didn't have the same kind of full might that radiates off a Horned God." I swallowed, shielding my deep shame by dropping my line of sight to my boots with dried mud buried in their creases. "I didn't realize that it was hunting us. It came out of nowhere, from above—"

"Above?" she gasped. My gaze whipped upward to meet horrified eyes. This time it was Tabitha who couldn't hold my gaze. Darkened eyelashes grazed the top of her pale cheeks as she hid herself from me. She anxiously kneaded her curled fingers. The silk draped over her cleavage rose and fell with her quick, shallow breaths. "What did it look like?"

I closed my eyes and I was back there in an instant.

I was going to kill him!

Gratian swayed sluggishly on his feet, knuckles scuffed and swollen. His wild hair was clumped with sweat. Blood dripped from a split lip and a purple bruise petaled beneath his eye. And I wanted more. I wanted to cave his fucking face in. Keep punching, keep striking, until I'd driven him right into the earth six feet under.

Panic outshone the guilt in his violet eyes, gone an otherworldly silver in the gloominess of the forest. "She's pregnant with my child!"

I reeled back, crushing waterlogged leaves beneath my leather shoes, as shock crashed into me.

Disbelief clashed with the devastating agony of betrayal, as fat raindrops knocked into my face. A discordant pattern composed by the dense canopy overhead.

Pregnant? With his child?

The fuck!

Thick fog whirled, sliding up against my trembling body, obscuring the surroundings of black vines strangling trees cloaked in sickly moss.

My fists shook. Anger blistered beneath my skin. Rage burned the air from my lungs. "She's my life, Gratian! I love her!"

"I'm sorry!"

It happened so slowly as if time crawled, and yet so swiftly everything was a blur.

It took a long moment, too long for my mind to catch up with what was before me. A glint of mottled white amongst liquid darkness emerged from the forest's ceiling. Fangs and talons flashed in the black inkiness before I realized something horrific dangled from the high bough, right above my brother's head.

A grotesque face, enormous, appeared upside-down as the murky shroud fell away. Its mouth yawned obscenely wide, revealing vicious slivered teeth as big as my fingers. Frail light spun away from a cloud of glowing pix and glistened on saliva stretched in long, ropey strands and dripped onto the crown of my brother's head.

Gratian blinked in bewilderment. His jaw slackened as slimy stickiness rolled down his forehead and slid along the length of his nose.

Say something!—my mind roared.

Do something!—I urged myself.

Don't! Let it fucking take him!—my wrath hissed.

And I froze.

One heartbeat—Gratian felt the eerie power crackling through the rainfall.

A second beat—His horrified gaze snapped to mine.

A third—Warmth splattered across my face.

The coppery tang of my brother's death stung my tongue as his blood splashed inside my open mouth. Then came a jarring sound of a thud rocking inside my ears as his decapitated body crumpled and struck the leafy forest floor.

"Fangs. Talons," I rasped, opening my eyes. "It reminded me of a deformed spider with its cluster of many-eyes in a misshapen face."

Tabitha clapped a hand to her mouth and barely muffled the anguished sob. "He died in front of you?"

"It bit his head off. Ate it down in one bite."

She flung herself at me. I caught her and held onto her willowy body just as tightly as she did mine. She wound her arms around me, and I buried my face into the crook of her neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she choked out again and again.

And like the dishonest coward I was, I couldn't admit the truth, that I'd hesitated and wanted Gratian to die for stealing Irma from me in such a permanent way by getting her with child.

Tabitha and I stood amongst the wreckage of the choice I'd made that night, embraced in desolation, while shadows and filmy light shifted along the papered walls and glided along our entwined figures as the waning moon crawled across the horizon.

Easing away, I straightened to my full height. Misery streaked down her blotchy face in liquid ribbons. She lifted puffy, red-rimmed eyes, and sniffed, black mascara smeared across the top of her cheeks. Oh gods, it cut deeper, much worse, seeing her so small and sorrowful, utterly devastated over something I'd done. "Don't cry, please don't cry," I urged, cupping her tear-soaked chin.

"There's nothing you could have done, Varen," she wailed, trembling and hiccuping with emotion.

"I shouldn't..."—have given into a dark desire to see it end him—"I should have fought."

"It would have killed you."

My gravelly voice sharpened and my gaze hardened when I spoke the truth. "I'm going to find it and kill it."

She stiffened in my arms.

"A truth for a truth," I reminded her. "Why did you come here tonight?"

She broke free of my embrace, taking a couple of steps back, swiping a shaky hand over the droplets running down her cheeks. Glancing briefly down to the shag-pile carpet, she shifted from foot to foot, the dress pooling around her heels shivering with the uneasy movement. She raised her gaze, and though she squared her shoulders, steeling herself, I met luminous eyes swimming with worry. "I came to see you because I need your blood."

My surprise trembled through the air.

My blood?

I frowned, cocking my head. What was so special about my blood? And why the hells did she want it?

And it hit me, an awakening as powerful as an ocean wave pounding the shore.

"Wyrmblood, right?" I answered.

I dragged a hand down my face. Fuck. That's why she'd been so spaced out in the hot pools with the colorful clouds of willwips swirling above us. As soon as I'd spoken about my family's affinity to wyrms, how a trace of it flowed through my blood, she'd gone introspective, and then she'd smiled at me, a radiant smile as if she'd wanted to kiss me. Kiss me because I'd saved her—not that I'd recognized it at the time.

A nervous flick of her tongue across her lips, before she nodded.

Taking a step toward her, I erased the distance. A snap of porcelain under my boots had her eyes flaring wide. Her papery-thin voice was threaded with an apology as the words spilled from her mouth. "I need it for my friend."

"Your friend in Ascendria who's not well?"

"Yes." She held herself rigid as if she were bracing herself for the anger she was positive was coming. It was on the tip of my tongue, a demand to know who this friend of hers was. But I could read the tension in her limbs, the reluctance to say anything further, and it sank into me that she might be withholding the truth but so was I.

"I don't know if I should," I replied, carefully.

Maybe whatever she was mixed up in would end if I didn't give her any.

But maybe if she didn't get wyrmblood she'd be in more trouble.

Tabitha sucked in a sharp breath, all the color draining from her face. "I'm asking if you'll give me a vial of blood, willingly," she pleaded.

"No." It came out recklessly, with a touch of spitefulness I couldn't reign in.

Hurt washed across her features.

She opened up her hand and resting on her palm was a small slender vial, almost empty. She hitched a shoulder, her bottom lip wobbling. "I'll be taking it anyway."

My gaze bounced from the vial to her. It clicked quickly. "A sleeping potion, right?"

She'd spiked the glass of water I'd drunk. My body sagged in defeat and I pinched the bridge of my nose. "How long do I have?"

Her fingers folded over the sleeping potion, hiding it away in her fist. "You're bigger than me, so maybe an hour, maybe longer."

I shifted my hand to brace it on a hip as my gaze snapped to hers. The strangeness of her answer made a horrible sort of sense. Anger quickly surfaced. "What the hells, Tabitha? You tried to spike my drink at the Stag Party?" That's why she'd been so off at the rooftop bar, so pissy when she learned that I'd switched our drinks back. It had been all there right in front of my face and I hadn't seen it.

Gods, I'd been a fool.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"Trick me? Use me?" A terrible thought took hold. I drew back. "Is this the reason why you're with me?"

"No, no," she cried, reaching for me. "It's not like that. I'm desperate. And you're the only one who can help."

Desperate. The word inspired a thousand different thoughts, a thousand different fears to surge through my chest, to spike my pulse, to make it race. "What have you gotten yourself involved in?" I demanded curtly.

"Nothing," she said in a hurry, shaking her head. The corners of her mouth curled downward in despair. "Nothing like you're thinking. These things, we're hoping, will heal my friend. Please, I just need a vial of your blood."

I was shaking my head, no, but I was already unzipping my jacket and shrugging it off. Tossing it over the end of my waterbed I stood bare-chested before Tabitha.

I owed her just as much as Gratian. The least I could do was give her a vial of my blood. I was going to break her heart when I finally confessed where I was going and why.

Not yet, not yet...

The lava lamp cast a neon blue across the planes of my body as I strode to the velvet chaise and sat down. Tabitha hurried to the bathroom and when she returned she was holding her black sequined clutch. She took out a needle and tube, and a bunch of tissues. It was a graceful motion the way Tabitha swept her skirt aside so she could kneel before me. She uncapped the needle, but she was trembling so badly it shook in her hand. In her distress, she struggled to breathe calmly. I took her shaking hand in mine, squeezing gently in reassurance. "It's okay, Tabitha."

Resting my arm on a knee, I exposed the crook of my elbow and clenched my fingers into a fist. A shiver raced across my skin when she brushed a fingertip lightly over my forearm seeking a vein. Drawing in a shuddering breath, she slowly, carefully, inserted the needle. I felt a light burn as it pierced the superficial vein, and both of us watched in morbid fascination as the tube filled with red so dark it was almost black.

She withdrew the needle and placed a folded tissue on the insertion point. I took over, a blunt fingertip pressing down, while she recapped the needle and disconnected the vacutainer. She took another tissue and carefully bundled the wyrmblood amongst its softness before tucking everything inside her clutch and snapping the metal clasps together. She pushed to her feet and stood before me, a slender column of rose gold. "Thank you," she whispered, her gaze cast downward, unable to look me in the eye. "I'm so sorry I broke your trust, Varen."

I felt her torment. The punishing guilt.

But if anyone was guilty, it was me.

I love her. How am I going to give her up?

She retreated a hurried step back, hitching her skirt up, intending to leave. "Don't go," I nearly begged. "Stay with me. Stay with me for as long as you can." She froze, and I reached a beseeching palm upward, reminding her, "I'll be asleep in an hour. We can sit here. We don't even need to speak if you don't want to."

It was a long moment of hesitation before her remorseful gaze slid to mine. She took a step forward, her dress clinging to her figure as she twisted around and sat down beside me. The black clutch made a gentle clatter when she placed it on the low table beside the chaise. A slender hand gripped the rolled edge of its seat, as I did too, the sides of our hands almost touching.

I wanted to remain here with her forever, trapped in a singular moment of time, just to be near her, for as long as I could before sleep claimed me.

The feathered stroke of her fingertip along the back of my battle-scarred hand was an electrical charge, a powerful bolt of awareness. A conduit. Circuitry completing itself, from her to me. We turned to one another at the same time. Our gazes locked. Both of us worried. Both of us trying to hide our shame, our regret. So close I could see the striations of emerald and turquoise dashing up against each like the sea, flecks of dancing sunlight. The dark blue rim encircled her irises like an ocean line at dusk.

"I'm sorry, so sorry, Varen. Please forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive," I whispered back.

Tabitha shifted around and crawled onto my lap. My hands slid around her warm body, drawing her closer. She spread her hand over my bristly jaw and swept her thumb lightly over my bottom lip, leaned forward, and kissed me. She explored my lips with tormenting slowness, so soft, the barest of sensations. Agonizingly intimate. Ruthless in the whispering touch. With a blissful sigh of desire that made my chest ache, she teased me to torturous heights with a feverish need for more. To claim a deeper, hungrier kiss. To nudge those sweet lips apart and drive my tongue inside her mouth. Dark craving twisted through my bloodstream with every light and languid touch. Yet, I was helpless. I gave a soft exhale of submission as I let her take control. Whatever she wanted.

Tabitha broke us apart and tipped her forehead to mine. The delicate scent of roses and quickened breath washed across my cheeks. "What are we doing?" I rasped, my touch trailing down her throat, her pulse fluttering against the rough pad of a finger.

She didn't answer. Instead, she slid off my lap, a flourish of silk against my chest. She curled her fingers around my shoulder, pulling me with her as she eased back to lie along the chaise. I stretched over her like a cat, my eyes squeezing shut briefly as a groan rumbled up my throat at the feel of her satiny skin beneath my own. My skin blazed a hot path as she slid her fingers up my forearms, tracing the coils of wyrmfire. "More," she sighed softly before reclaiming my lips.

She kissed me until I was mindless.

Kept kissing me until I was gone, lost and drifting in a world of sensation, of desire and heat. Of her.

Gone, gone, gone...