It wasn’t going to fade away. It was a part of me.
Whatever I’d taken from Darek and bound to me, it lived inside me now, rooted at the heart of my soul.
Crowe fed a puffed-up story to the media, blaming Killian’s and Darek’s deaths on the collapse of the mill—which had no doubt actually been brought about by Lori and Boone and their terra magic. There’d been a party, he claimed. A bit too much revelry. No one questioned it. The building was now just a pile of rubble.
I still wondered what Crowe would have done if I hadn’t woken when I did. He was somehow more distant than before, but closer, too. He didn’t say much to me, but he wouldn’t leave my side, either, and his hands were constantly on me.
In the quiet moments, I could almost hear his thoughts.
Something is wrong with her.
She’s different.
I couldn’t keep her safe.
I’d died and I’d come back to life thanks to the blood magic brought about by him. He’d mixed his own blood with Old Lady Jane’s, and together they’d created the kind of magic that could bring a dead person back to life, the kind that could tear me out of the hypnotic pull of the Undercurrent, the kind that could make whatever had embraced me in that river… let me go. But some part of the old Jemmie had stayed dead, and something new was birthed in the aftermath.
“How are you feeling today?” Crowe asked.
We lay in the bed in the big, bright room in the back of a Devil’s safe house. I’d asked Crowe if I could stay there just until I felt better, and he had quickly said yes. Of course I’d meant I’d stay there alone, but he’d moved in with me.
“I’m okay.”
He stared at my eyes, unsure if I was staring back.
I was.
“It’ll go away,” he said.
“I know.”
It wouldn’t, though.
“Your mom and dad want to stop by this afternoon. See how you are. Your dad texted me early this morning. He’s worried about you.”
Everyone was. I could see it written on their faces. It was why I wanted to be alone.
“Old Lady Jane wants to stop by, too. I think you should see her.”
I nodded and rolled into him, my finger tracing along his arm. He was shirtless, in nothing but black pajama pants.
He shivered beneath my touch.
“Jem,” he said, his voice reedy.
“Yeah?”
“You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“I feel like you’re lying.”
I was. But he wanted to fix me, and I didn’t want to be fixed.
My body was still buzzing with magic. Even though the spell hadn’t really been completed, even though all the kindled who Darek had kidnapped were still alive and slowly regaining their strength, something of their blood and power had stayed with me and embedded itself in my marrow.
The kindled world didn’t deal in money; it dealt in power. And I now had power in spades.
I could sense that Crowe felt the shifting sands beneath us, the hierarchy reshuffling, with me at the top.
“Could you make me some breakfast?” I asked, and looked up at him. I needed him to leave.
He shivered again, but this time it wasn’t from my touch, it was from the blackness in my eyes. I’d told him I was his, but I think we both knew that wasn’t completely true, not anymore. I had left a part of myself in the Undercurrent, and it’d been replaced with something else, something bigger. Something more. Something that was not his, and never would be.
I was still trying to figure out what it all meant, who I had left behind and who I had become. Just a few days ago, I’d felt like I didn’t belong, not good enough for someone as powerful as Crowe. Now everything was different. Crowe Medici bowed to no one, but he was no longer the most powerful person in the room, and he never would be when standing next to me.
“Sure. What do you want?”
“Cheese omelet.”
He climbed out of bed. I watched him as he walked toward the door, muscles and bones dimpling in his back beneath the skull tattoo nestled between his shoulder blades. I was ravenous for him. I wanted his hands on me and his lips on mine. I wanted his body wrapped around me. But I couldn’t tell him that. I was afraid I’d devour him whole. Distance was what we needed. I needed to put distance between us again, for his own protection.
Just because I didn’t belong to him didn’t mean I had stopped loving him.
When he was gone, I slipped from the bed, set my feet to the hardwood floor. Scorch marks appeared beneath me as I crossed to the small bathroom. Electricity ran up and down my arms, bolts of it webbing between my fingers. Wild magic permeated the air, smelling of ash and dirt and charred wood and the musk of a wolf’s pelt. The hair on my arms rose on end.
I flicked on the light and looked at the girl in the mirror.
She grinned a devilish grin, black eyes glinting in the fluorescent light.
But I wasn’t smiling.
Whoever that was in the mirror, she wasn’t me.
I flicked the light off, letting the darkness bleed back in.