Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

Chapter 38: Marking Territory

The second night I shared Keel's bed, I awoke to the same arm spanning my waist. This time instead of touching him, I watched him sleep, and thought about how he'd said I should use him as my anchor. Another thing I couldn't picture him doing before my near-death. Still, I felt like I was missing something, like my shooting had affected him, but this was a bit too much and the explanation lay somewhere beyond the trajectory of those bullets.

When he joined me in the realm of the conscious, our conversation drifted back to his wounds. There was a certain offness about them too. And since part of our forty-eight-hour limbo included free speech, I wasn't about to restrain myself. "Tell me again why you let me do this to you?"

"Because these are your hours out of time, and while it's something you should have done to your bleeder, you're far too soft-hearted for that, so it had to be me. As I said before, if you want it to mean nothing, it means nothing."

The tightness in his voice contradicted his words, but before I could call him on it, he was slipping out of bed.

"Time to get up," he said. "You have some work to do this evening."

Our hours were running short and the time had come to make Keel's body presentable to the world again.

"We should have never done this before finding out if my magic still worked," I said, pulling the sheets up over my head. Yesterday I'd been ready to give a spell a try, but I'd lost some of my resolve over the last day as more "what ifs" slid in again.

A second later my cocoon was gone. Keel had ripped the sheets clear off the bed. "No more running."

"Fine," I conceded and followed him to one of the couches in the sitting area.

"Are you ready?"

"You should drink first," I reminded him. "Helps the healing magic work."

"Where?"

I shrugged, so anxious over what would happen to us if my magic sputtered and failed that there was little room for anything else in my head.

Keel reached out and placed his hands on my shoulders, turning my body so my back was to him. Then he swept my hair from my neck and wrapped his arms around my waist in the gentlest of embraces. "Relax," he said softly, just before his lips touched down on that expanse of skin where my shoulder met my neck. The bond sent a flare from the spot they landed to where his hands rested in my lap. Neither of us moved. I wondered if his eyes were closed and he was focusing on all the bond sensations oscillating through us just as I was. They were a nicer thing to grasp onto than the fear, and they reminded me of how we'd done this before, a long time ago, when I didn't quite trust him either.

"Is any of that you?" I asked, knowing I didn't need to explain that I meant the sensations and his manipulation of them.

"No. Is any of it you?"

"No."

"So that's just the bond hum?"

I nodded.

He turned his head and rested it on my shoulder. "You can turn it down though," he said.

"I can," I said.

"How?"

"I don't know. I picture my power pressing down on it, forcing it into submission. It never leaves entirely though."

"I can't do that."

I wasn't sure what to say.

"It's like everything with you, Mildred. Out-sized. Extreme. Larger than life. Like in the beginning, when I felt everything you felt."