Embrace, Entice, Emblaze (33 page)

Blood poured onto my hands as once again I searched within

myself for an anchor and heard the faintest thrum of a heart. This time, though, I wasn’t sure whose it was that was struggling to beat.

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Perhaps it had always been the sound of my own fading heart that I heard.

Vision abandoned me and the darkness consumed me, a willing

victim.

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chapter
twenty- eight

“What was I once, what have I now become…”

syMeon

My head rolled to one side. To the other.

“Violet. Violet! Wake up!”

Someone was talking. Words. I could hear words. My mind

snickered at me when I strained to hear them again, but I was

lulled back into nothingness, content in the quiet.

Bam!

My head snapped to the side with hard, fast impact.

“Violet, wake up, damn it! Open your eyes!”

Th at voice again. Eyes? My eyes? Oh…I opened them a little.

“It’s me, it’s Phoenix.”

Phoenix?

My hazy vision came into focus and I saw his perfect face and

opal hair looking down on me from above.

“Phoenix, you look like an angel.” My voice sounded gravelly.

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“Are you okay?” He patted me over urgently, looking for wounds.

I ran through the inventory. Legs and arms were still working.

I knew this because I could feel pain through every inch of them.

I also had the pleasure of realizing one half of me was lying on a bitch of a rock, which was digging into my butt.

Phoenix helped me sit up. I took in my surroundings and could

see the mountain I had climbed, with its haunting cliff top towering above me. I was in the valley that lay beneath.

“Are you okay? Did you fall?” He was wiping my hair from

my face. “There’s blood on your hands, your skin— it’s red and

blistered and…you have cuts all over yourself.” He was almost

mothering me and I fought the urge to swat his hands away. It

helped that I wasn’t sure that my arms could move.

Thoughts of Uri and Nox circled my mind. The desert, the lion,

the faceless figure.

“I…I…” I started to say that it wasn’t my blood. Then I remem-

bered: it was. I threw myself into his arms. I was so frightened I couldn’t even cry— I could barely breathe.

He held me tight. “You’re safe, you’re safe. It’ll be okay.” I hoped he was right.

“What time is it?” I asked, suddenly remembering, jerking away

from him and wincing at the price for such abrupt movement.

“Just after sunrise.”

“Oh no! I’ve been gone a whole day and night?” I asked frantically.

“No, you’ve only been gone a couple of hours. Violet, what

happened?”

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Maybe I had fallen? Maybe I had never been anywhere. Had I

just been lying at the bottom of the mountain after miraculously surviving the fall?

“Water?” I asked, increasingly lucid. Phoenix disappeared for a moment and returned with a water bottle. He would only portion

the liquid out to me slowly, despite my protests. I dropped my face into my hands, struggling to grasp all that had happened.

“Your arms,” Phoenix said quietly. I lifted my head and looked

at them. The strange markings had converged to create an intricate weaving, which wrapped around each wrist like a wide bracelet. It looked like a kind of mercury, light bouncing off it in a rainbow of colors.

I marveled at the markings. “Steph is going to freak.”

Phoenix was watching me with trepidation.

“It felt like I was gone for days,” I said, picking up the bloodied dagger that lay in the leaves beside me.

“They can do that— remove reality and make your imagination

control you.”

It was more than that, though. It had to have been.

I tossed the dagger around in my hand a couple of times, spinning the hilt and then catching it again. Phoenix looked at me dubiously.

“What? It’s mine. Trust me, I earned it.”

I started to feel much stronger with each passing moment. I

rubbed my face, which was stinging on one side.

“Did you hit me?”

“Just a tap,” he said, kicking at the red dirt.

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“Then why do you look so guilty?”

“I don’t,” he said defensively, stilling his feet and looking away.

“I think I can walk. We have to go.” I tried to start moving and flinched with pain.

Phoenix sighed. “Stand up. I’ll do the rest.”

————

Phoenix had to catch me from falling when we walked through the door to Lincoln’s warehouse. The dehydration was still affecting me, and though the water helped, it also made me feel sick. Cradled in his arms, I saw him look over me, his worry showing.

“There is something I need to tell you.” His voice sounded grave.

My stomach was flipping out on me. My mouth watered, not

with apple this time. “Does it have to be right now? I think I need a bathroom.”

He bit his lip. “It can wait.”

He carried me to the bathroom, where I threw up all the water

I had managed to swallow.

When I emerged, Griffin and Magda were in the kitchen.

Phoenix was nowhere in sight. They both froze with looks of horror as they took in my appearance.

“Are you…?” Magda started.

“I think so.” I held my wrists in the air. “If this is anything to go by.”

They stared in disbelief until I broke the silence. “How’s Lincoln?” Magda looked down. “Worried about you. He’s dying and all he

wants is to see you.”

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I actually felt a tiny bit bad for her, but I also couldn’t help a brief wave of guilty satisfaction.

Phoenix was sitting beside Lincoln’s bed when I walked into

the room. Lincoln was heaving as he tried to speak to him. I had clearly interrupted something. Phoenix shot up from his seat to help me over to the bed. I looked at him questioningly, but he just shrugged it off.

Lincoln looked like death, but when his eyes found me, he

smiled. I clenched my jaw and my heart squeezed with restraint.

His brilliant green eyes were dull and tired, but there was no arguing they were still the most exceptional eyes mine had ever taken in.

“Vi, you okay? They t- t- told me you were going to embrace,” he said, struggling with his words.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” I said, trying to reassure both of us as best I could.

“I didn’t want…Not like this. I’m sorry.” He was in so much

pain. With every word, he grimaced, and I knew he would be

trying to hide as much of it as he could from me.

“I know. So…let’s see if this healing thing works.”

I looked toward Phoenix. “Can you ask Griffin to come in?”

He left the room without responding. Something had upset him.

“Vi, there’s some…something you need to…I can see…” He

was straining himself too much, looking toward the doorway,

making sure we were alone.

“Tell me later. When you’re better.”

“I…I’m s- sor…”

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“I know.”

Griffin explained how the healing was supposed to work. In theory, I should have been able to just channel my will to heal Lincoln. As he was my destined partner, it would happen naturally. It all came through the power of the angelic qualities I should now have had and the wristbands— or in my case, the markings on my wrists.

“Okay, so I just take his hands or something?” I asked.

“You need to find your own way to connect with him and open

yourself,” Griffin explained. He sounded nervous and I could see Magda fidgeting. They weren’t as sure as they were trying to make out. They stood at the back of the room, giving us space. Phoenix hovered in the doorway.

Lincoln was drifting in and out of consciousness. He took

shallow breaths and his lips were almost blue. Connecting with

him had been something that I had been trying very hard
not
to do of late. How could I
open
myself to him? My mind drifted to the dream I’d had, to the stranger who said he was me. Was he my angel maker? With all I now knew, it seemed more plausible that the dream had really meant something. I remembered the painting, the colors. And I remembered the question:
What
are
we
to
become?

I didn’t realize I had spoken aloud until Lincoln whispered,

“Everything we can.”

I took his hands, closed my eyes, and tried to center myself and concentrate on my will, directing it all toward healing Lincoln.

After a few minutes, I couldn’t stand it. “Nothing’s happening!” I snapped at Griffin.

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He was calm, like a Zen master, which only irritated me more.

“You have to find your own way to connect. Maybe you need

to try a different tactic. Remember when Lincoln helped you the other night, he focused your senses, brought them through you

and out. Maybe…”

I cut him off. “You
are
kidding me. You want me to kiss him?” Griffin just gave me a look of pity, but I could swear there was a touch of amusement mixed in. I caught Magda rolling her eyes to the ceiling. Phoenix, on the other hand, stepped forward.

“No. You can find another way; you just have to tap into it. You need to rest.”

But we both knew there was no time for rest.

“He’s barely conscious now,” I replied. “We can’t risk it.

Otherwise this has all been for nothing.”

Phoenix slammed the wall with his fist and I flinched in shock.

I waited for his emotions to bleed into me. They didn’t. After he composed himself, he turned to me, his hands clenched tight.

“Fine, but this is the last time.”

It was fair enough given all that had happened, but the way he

said it was frightening. I looked down, avoiding his eyes. “Maybe you should wait in the living room.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I didn’t dare challenge him, but he did step back to the doorway.

“Lincoln.” I stroked his hair, trying to get him to come round.

“Linc.”

His eyes fluttered. “Hey,” he said, as if I had just appeared.

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I smiled. “I can’t heal you like this. I have to try something else.

I’m going to kiss you, okay?”

He smiled like he was drunk and took hold of one of my hands,

even though it must have hurt him. “I…You don’t ever need to…ask.

We…loong…gether.”

I looked to Griffin, who couldn’t hide his concern. Lincoln was deteriorating. Fast.

“It’s the painkillers,” Magda said flatly.

I ignored her comment, though I could feel Phoenix shifting

uncomfortably behind me. Again, I half expected to feel his

emotions overflow into me. Surprisingly, I felt nothing.

I placed my free hand on Lincoln’s face and took a moment.

This would be the first time I had actually been the one to kiss him, to instigate it. Somehow it made it seem different, more intimate.

Phoenix huffed behind me. He was reading me. Crap. I just had to pretend he wasn’t there.

Before I could think about it anymore, I leaned down and kissed Lincoln’s cool lips. My whole body relaxed and contracted at the same time. I could feel the death that was so close to him, hovering eagerly. Stirrings of power came from within me and I hunted it down, searching for its source so I could draw it up. I grabbed hold of it and steered it from me, into Lincoln, as if channeling a river, willing it to flow.

His lips parted, allowing the connection between us to open,

and I poured my power into him and he…kissed me back. Lips

that were cool became warm. The hand that had held mine limply

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tightened and pulled me in. He was healing, I could feel it, and it seemed to give me strength too.

The kiss intensified and together we grew strong. Power thrived through my whole being. My connection to Lincoln was like a

living thing I could almost touch. His free hand reached out and curled around my waist as he brought his whole upper body to

meet me and pulled us together.

We were like one person, giving life to each other. I felt a tear slip from my eye. I wanted to give this to him so much, but I