A bone-breaking tension rose in me—a tingling that pulled every muscle more taut and made every thought more fleeting.
With every thrust she let out another cry, each one more breathless than the last, her tits bouncing. The sight of her stole the air from my lungs, the sanity from my mind, and my fingers dug into her as she screwed her eyes shut and lost herself in another writhing climax.
“Fuck. Fuck!” I followed her, balls tightening as electricity exploded inside me and the world disappeared, leaving just the image of her, the feel of her, the sound of her moans.
Just her.
There was only her.
I barely caught myself on the table instead of collapsing on her, my muscles melting into blissful ease. Shadows ebbed around us as if exhausted. Freed, she draped her arms over my shoulders and murmured my name. I kissed her throat, still inside her and yet needing more points of connection as I tried to gather myself.
As I caught my breath, I pressed my forehead to hers and met her sleepy gaze. Her green eyes were the colour of forests and grass and the leaves of the roses she adored so much. She was a thing of life—a goddess of it—and it felt like she’d finally started to live.
With a half smile, she touched my cheek, fingertips brushing my earlobe, sending a ripple of pleasure down my spine.
“Love,” I managed to say, foolishly—not a complete sentence.
But she destroyed me. In the best possible way, she destroyed and re-created me.
Shaking my head, I nuzzled her nose. “I love you, my beautiful genius—I fucking love you.”
80
Kat
Without the prospect of Kaliban to take my memories, I went to the Hall of Healing the next day with a sickly feeling in my stomach. My nerves hummed, the magic around me too, and if not for numerous chances to let go recently, my hands would’ve been covered in my purple stain. I might even have hazed.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Rose stood beside me at the bottom of the stairs. “I can come in with you.”
“I…” I blinked up at the marble building. “I was about to say I’d started this journey alone, but… that isn’t true. Bastian was here when I woke. And you’ve been with me almost every day since.” I gave her a sidelong look. “Would you?”
“I offered, didn’t I? And it wasn’t out of politeness, but… if she really does have a cure for you, I want to be there to support you. I’m sure Ella would come, but…”
“But she isn’t the best with blood.” I scoffed, the tightness in my stomach easing to know I had Rose.
“Gods willing there is no blood, but…” She shrugged, then nodded towards the doors. “Shall we?”
I squared my shoulders and offered a silent prayer to the gods I’d told to fuck themselves more times than I cared to admit.
Please, please let this be the last time I have to do this.
Elthea gave Rose an evaluative glance, but otherwise gave no reaction to her sitting at my side.
“Well.” She clutched the notebook, fingers tapping an agitated rhythm on its cover, but said nothing more.
“You said you’d made progress with my cure?”
She drew a long breath, chin rising. “I think I have. In fact, I’m sure I have.” A fleeting smile lit her face, and I had to bite back a laugh.
Elthea, the woman who remained calm and deadpan ninety-nine percent of the time, was excited.
“I realise my mistake now. I was attempting to cure all of your ‘affliction,’ but”—she shook her head and sighed—“magic is not an affliction or an illness or anything bad at all.” She raised her hand. “It’s not good, either, to be clear—it just is. Like fire—it can be used for good or ill, but in its own right it’s a neutral state.”
I blinked at her speeding sentences, barely keeping up.
“But your having magic isn’t bad for your body. Only the poison attacking your system is. My work has shown me there are two separate things going on in you. Magic and poison. The poison lingering in your bloodstream is one element. But your ability to draw on magic—your gift, which manifests in a poisoned touch in your case—that is a separate matter entirely. And they’re not as closely intertwined as I thought.”
She gave a breathless little laugh. “It’s so obvious. I should’ve realised sooner, but there’s never been anything quite like this before. The poison you took is what’s trying to kill you each day. All the attempts to save you are what gave you magic.”
She opened the notebook and pointed, but she pulled it away again before I had a chance to read any of the spidery text. I only glimpsed a sketch of what might’ve been branching veins or a tree.
“All right. And what does this all mean? Separate cures for the two elements?” I bit my lip.
She waved her hand. “That’s not the really interesting part. It’s what he put in the poison.” She went on, words tripping over each other like mine had when I’d explained to Bastian about the Crown of Ashes. “Not only aconite. I knew there was some magical element, but without a sample, I couldn’t deduce what that was, exactly. The fact I couldn’t heal you said it was powerful. But now I’ve taken a good look at you and gone over all my findings, I understand why.”
Avoiding my question. Did that mean there was no way to get rid of my magic?
I exchanged a glance with Rose, who widened her eyes to say she understood as much of this as I did.
“Where is this all going?” She folded her arms, head canting to one side.
Elthea huffed. “Sun and Stars, I make the most exciting medical-magical discovery in centuries and the only people I get to explain it to are a pair of humans.” She spread her arms and took a deep breath. “In order to strengthen the poison and make it incurable, thus ensuring the Serpent could not be saved by the antidote, he used a great power source.” She spoke slowly and loudly, like we were particularly stupid humans. “He used part of the Great Yew.”
I fell stock still. Rose gasped.
My eyelids fluttered. “Dusk Court’s Great Yew?”
“Do you know of another one?” Elthea clicked her tongue. “Bark or leaves from it, perhaps. But if I was a gambling woman, I’d bet everything I own that he used a berry—after all, they’re poisonous. At least now it makes sense why it resets each evening—the trees, the Great Bargain, the change between king and queen… they’re all connected.”
“What does this mean?” My thoughts raced, finally catching up. A bow made from the Great Yew’s wood had chosen me. Had it felt the tree’s power? Like reaches for like, or so I’d read in my research. “The Great Yew is… it’s tied to the magic of Elfhame—that’s what I was told.” With the Oak, it was a marker of great power. If that had fuelled the poison I’d taken, it didn’t sound like the sort of thing that could be stopped.
I swallowed my rising disappointment. “You said you had a cure. How could anything counter that level of magic?”
She straightened and smiled like I’d asked exactly what she’d hoped. “Only its equal and opposite—an acorn from the Great Oak.” Gaze flitting to the door, she cleared her throat and pulled a small vial from her inside pocket.