Fate Forsaken Read Online Free Page B

but walking every moment right by her side. And he wanted her every bit as much as she wanted him. She’d know. She’d been inside his head and could hear his thoughts.
    They stood there for a moment before he pulled away and lifted his hand.
    Damn. She’d thought he’d been proposing a reprieve when really he’d only been offering a distraction. And a tiny bit of warmth.
    Back to business.
    “Ugh, fine. You win.” She lifted her hand, positioning it only an inch from his.
    Eldon gave her a tiny smile. “Come on. You’re not a quitter. You can do this.”
    Damn right she wasn’t a quitter. She’d stand out here in the freezing cold wind all night if that was what it took. Didn’t hurt to have such a motivated—and sexy—coach, either. Eldon’s rugged good looks and unrelenting support were the only things that made this process bearable.
    Squinting against the gusts of winter air, she fixed her gaze on their nearly joined hands and tried to focus her thoughts.
    The problem was, she wasn’t sure what she was focusing on. The night she’d called on the ley line fire, she hadn’t been in her right mind. Eldon had been struck by death magick, and she’d just…snapped. Something had happened inside of her, more of a reaction than a determined effort.
    “Think about what you felt that night,” Eldon said, his voice low. “Trace the magick back to that moment.”
    That moment had scared the shit out of her. She’d denied her tie to Eldon from the very beginning, chalking their telepathic connection up to nothing more than some crossed mental wires. Now she knew it to be so much more. They’d been soul struck.
    It shouldn’t have been possible, really, considering only vampires could be soul struck and Eldon was far from undead. Then again, Rho shouldn’t have been able to spit green fire from her fingertips, either, so who knew what defined normal anymore.
    Rho stifled a shudder. “I don’t want to remember.”
    “You have to.”
    Her brows furrowed as she tried to tap into her memories. The ball of green fire had been laced with black fog, the telltale sign of death magick. It had torn across the sky and into Eldon’s chest before she could stop it. All for some relics she and her teammates had been commissioned to locate and return to the Council.
    That whole night had been her fault.
    If she’d never broken Eldon’s protection circle, he wouldn’t have gotten hit with a death mark—the one she now bore on the inside of her right forearm. When he’d struggled under the weight of that poisonous spell, she’d convinced Jess, his little sister, to perform the translocation and transfer the mark to her instead. So far, the mark hadn’t hurt her.
    But according to Jess, the pin in the grenade had been pulled, and it was only a matter of time before the mark would come to claim her life. Eldon and his sisters had been hunting for a way to remove it ever since she’d absorbed it a week ago, but they hadn’t found a thing.
    She glared at her hand, willing the fire into her palm. Still nothing. Could the death magick interfere with her ability to call on her gift? She knew so little about her aptitude, there was no way to tell.
    Minutes passed before he asked, “What are you thinking about?”
    “That night.”
    “Are you sure?” Eldon’s eyes narrowed as he tilted his head.
    “Of course I’m sure.” Rho shot him a nasty look. “Would you like to relive the night I almost died? Because this sucks.”
    When the fae had attacked the first time, Rho had taken a silver dagger to the chest. Ordinarily, her vampire healing abilities should have made recovery a snap—but the silver had nearly done her in. Boiling her blood on contact, she’d almost died in his arms. Jess had saved her.
    His warm hand settled on her cheek. “I know it’s hard. I’m just trying to help.” He brushed his thumb along her bottom lip, and she stifled a shudder. Damn him, he knew how much she liked it when he did