Page 187 of The Stolen Throne
Aftermath
At Reven’s snarled curse, my heart rate jacks up, then up another notch when I look down. Curls of shadows are lifting out of me like mist being blown by the wind, all wispy. It’s also clinging to me like it doesn’t want to let go. But as it draws away from the outside, new skin appears, pink and puckered.
What the hells?
Reven puts his hands over the spot. “The king’s power. It’s trying to heal you.”
No. I don’t want to be healed. I don’t want to lose the part of Reven that’s inside me. Despite now being soulbound, that scar is my link to him.
“No,” I groan. “Why?”
“My scars are made of me.” He holds up a hand, and his wrists are untouched. “But yours aren’t made of you. They’re made of…me.”
“No. No. No.” The word takes up a chant in my head.
I strain to keep the pain from distracting me, but it’s like the power manifested as razor-sharp talons shredding my insides, extracting the “sickness” with precision. Forcing myself not to double over, I reach for the shadows being forced out of me, trying to scoop them up and put them back inside.
Reven grabs my hands. “Don’t, Meren. This is good—”
I jerk out of his grip and groan at the way the movement sends more shards of pain shooting through my stomach. “Don’t let him take you out of me,” I beg him. “Please.”
His face spasms, expression tightening to something stricken, and I know he’s battling with a thousand different reasons why he should just let me heal. So I grab his wrist hard enough that he winces. I know I must look wild-eyed right now. I know it makes no sense. But I also know I need this. Need him inside me. I know it.
“Please.” My voice cracks on the word. I’m panting, trying to not let the pain take me over.
Reven’s chest rises and falls once, twice, his gaze locked with mine.
I feel when he gives in, his reluctant acceptance feeding a surge of my own panic-edged relief. “Okay,” he whispers back.
“Hurry.” I claw at his hands, trying to raise them for him.
The violet glow of his power fills the room, making it almost peaceful if I wasn’t in agony, and I watch as he tries to force the shadows back inside. But it’s not working. It’s not working, and the scar is shrinking.
“No!” I must mouth it, because no sound comes out. And I’m coming undone again, but not in a good way.
Reven is shaking with the effort. Forget our connection—I can see in his face that he doesn’t think this is going to work.
But I won’t give up. I earned this scar, damn it. And I won’t let him go. A well of resolve forms a core as strong as the metals forged in Mariana’s ironworks. “No!”
I take all that desperation and anger and fear and longing and close my eyes, picturing our bond. I picture it seared into my very skin and try to follow it. Follow the design of it. I picture Reven’s power being drawn to it. Then I picture the darkness. The curse. I picture the way it saved me in the Whirlpool.
I have his darkness inside me. I draw it in tighter and tighter. Like I’m drawing in the line we used to dry our laundry that hung between the hovel and one of the establishments next door. Hand over hand.
A choking noise from Reven has me snapping my eyes open to find him staring at me.
“Meren? Are you doing that?”
I look down, and the shadow in my scar is no longer dragging away. Instead, it’s pulling inward, creating a roiling cauldron of darkness in my skin. The scar now looks like a tiny version of the Whirlpool I escaped, and the force of that vortex is drawing more shadow from Reven, feathery wisps of darkness feeding this part of me.
Am I? Am I doing this? My amulet is cold and dull against my chest. This isn’t the goddess helping me, and I don’t think she could. This is not her power.
Is it the curse? Or the bond?
As abruptly as the Tropikan king’s energy passed through me, everything stops. Like a horse whose rider has reined it in from a headlong gallop. All the sensation disappears, and my body settles back to normal. My scar, as we both watch, returns to the way it has been.
I flop back on the bedding, chest heaving, waiting for another shard of pain to pierce me, grate over me, but that’s gone, too.
It’s over.
