Page 112 of Lies of the Wicked
“I went back tohauntMina and Mora again.” Thessa wiggled her fingers for ghostly emphasis. “They’re absurd and it’s too easy. I just wanted to practice.”
“Tell me next time. I don’t particularly enjoy finding you unconscious with bloodied breasts. Well, the former—the latter is markedly attractive. It almost pleases me as much as my blood on your lips.”
The sight of his half-smile was enough to make her blood simmer, like that pounding silence between lightning and thunder.
But that fanged grin she loved so much disappeared as realization struck his features. “Please don’t tell me you were unclothed?”
She pressed up to her hands. “And if I was?”
Growling was the answer to her question.
She rolled her eyes. “No. It all works the same way. So I could be wearing whatever I picture, wherever I can picture it. But it can’t be anything or anywhere. The spell says a memory of each must already be held.”
He handed her a damp cloth, as well as her tunic. “Brilliant.”
“She was, wasn’t she?”
Soren sat beside her, keeping his hands busy by cleaning up her mess. “Eiliana was a master of many forbidden spells. Her father would’ve locked her in their library if it weren’t for her determination to be outside. Christof was just as sick as my father.”
“If only he noticed how much she loved the woods. And to sketch. And ravens. It seems like those things pleased her very much.”
“You’re right.”
“Is her father still alive?”
“Christof leads the northern rebellion.”
Thessa went quiet. She hadn’t realized Christof was her father—the husband of the Forgone One. She knew Jussal had approved of whatever it was going on between them but what if?—
“Who cares what he thinks,” Soren answered the question she’d not spoken.
She frowned. “When will this mind-blood-bond thing wear off?”
“When your body recycles my blood and replenishes yours.”
“But that could take months.”
Soren grinned. “I quite like hearing your broody thoughts.”
Thessa backhanded his chest. “Anyways. We need to talkabout the Supremes.”
“Right. Tell me what you’ll say.”
“I’ll tell them the truth, of course. That the lies they’ve spread will not be buried like our fallen. That we refuse to be forgotten, and we deserve a place in the world we helped create.”
“And where is this discussion going to take place?”
“In the Trial Room, I think.”
“And what if they’re not in the Trial Room.”
“Then I’ll walk through walls until I find them, making every guard in the Central Divinity wish they never met the ghost of Thessa’s past.”
“The who?”
“Never mind, it’s a mortal saying that my friends use.”
“What?”
