Red Blood (Series of Blood Book 2) by Emma Hamm (rm book recommendations .txt) 📗

his touch. “Why won’t you tell me what is happening?”

“Because you will not like it.”

“I don’t have to like it. I just need you to trust me. I won’t run if we are doing something I disagree with, but I have to know what we are doing.”

He sighed.

Wolfgang stepped forward, and both of his hands tunneled into the hair at the nape of her neck. He pulled her close to him then. They were a picture of oddities. An unusually beautiful woman wrapped in the arms of a man constantly on the verge of death. Each breath they shared transferred nightmares as they exhaled.

His hands tightened upon her skull the instant before he began to speak. “We’re going to see Bones.”

Her heart stopped. Her breathing stopped. Everything that was Lyra, that made her living, stopped. She became nothing more than a still fragile object he held caged with a skeletal hand.

“Why?” The whispered question burned against her tongue and tasted like ashes.

“He’s the only one who can help.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“He will not take you from me.”

Lyra shook her head. “There’s no way for you to promise that.”

“I need another Lord. I need another creature with enough power to do what I ask them to do. This is something that no Lord has ever done. That no human has ever done.”

The worry undulated in her stomach until she feared she would vomit upon him. Lyra worried what those words meant. Surely he wouldn’t be considering more Blood Magic?

“Are you making more golems?” she asked.

“No.”

“Are you setting up protection wards?”

“No.”

“Shields?”

“Lyra,” he angrily interrupted her. “There comes a time in a Magician’s life when he has to make a choice. Continue with petty earthen magic or choose a darker path. Blood Magic has its price, you know that. I tried to destroy my soul for power many years ago, and I was content with the small amount of humanity I had left until I met you.”

Her eyes pricked. Breathing once more became a battle as every breath sawed through her throat. Her ribs ached. The words were difficult to hear as they hit too close to home. How long had it been since she had sold herself?

“Are you telling me you regret losing your soul?” Lyra asked him.

“No, I’m telling you there was a piece of it left. I failed to complete the ritual. After all this darkness, I thought it was gone forever.” He laughed. “I had no idea that some piece of me had survived until I saw you, and I could suddenly feel it again. I cannot describe to you the feeling of losing one’s soul. It is an emptiness that I was content with until you offered me another option.”

“Don’t tell me this now.” She fisted her hand in the lapels of his shirt and shook him. “I don’t want to hear this when we might not wake up after this next battle. I don’t want these words, Wolfgang.”

“Why?” he demanded.

His arms curled around her, and she felt the thrum of magic. Her hands curled harder against him as she squeezed her eyes shut. A single tear rolled down her cheek to meld with the water freely dripping out of her ears.

She couldn’t handle this. Suddenly, she remembered clearly why she did not do relationships. Emotions were messy. They tore at her very being until she was nothing more than the raw and tattered edges of what she used to be. She couldn’t hear him speak to her like this.

She would break if he told her more.

Wildly, she wrenched away from him. Her hair whipped around her and droplets of water splattered against his cheek. He did not follow her nor did he force her to stay within the safe circle of his arms. Perhaps, deep down, he knew she would not stray far from his side.

They were two wretched things. She despised what she had become. This creature inside her that was more Siren than human had discovered it liked what had blossomed between Wolfgang and her. Though the Siren was not a separate entity, Lyra knew she would go back to him.

Not because she needed him. Not because he offered her any substance to her own glorious being. But because she wanted to.

Her arms wrapped around her waist as she stared off into the darkness at the edge of the Black Market. A few people milled from store to store, but none even glanced their way. The words in her mouth stuck against the wall of her lips. She did not wish to speak the poison into the air.

But she did. “My heart hurts, Wolfgang. Why do I have such a bad feeling about what we are going to do?”

“It was not my intention to hurt you—” he began.

“What do you want Bones to do, Wolfgang?”

She heard him sigh and tightened her arms. Her ribs creaked against the pressure.

“I need him to take away the rest of my soul.”

“What will that do to you?”

“It will make me something else entirely.”

A sob bent her body forwards. She was not an emotional person until her walls suddenly cracked. Lyra always kept herself tightly bound so that she was the bright beacon of light for her team and family. She was the jokester. The one who was always happy and could make anyone smile.

She so rarely got to be the person who was hurt. She sobbed through clenched teeth because she no longer knew how to cry correctly. Her eyes hurt as more tears than any human could have cried poured from her body.

Her throat contracted as the sobs turned towards the angry sound of a Siren. Her eyes flashed black, and her hair soaked through in wet tangles that wrapped around her body like seaweed. Her fingers slowly curled into claws.

“Enough,” Wolfgang chided.

“I will say when it is enough.” Her voice had deepened to a croak as she angrily turned all her wrath towards him. “You will explain yourself. What other being will you become?”

“Frankly, we were surprised