Page 46 of Summer of Sacrifice
Pointing to the tray of floating spiced biscuits, she snorted. “I’m not the only treat you desired this evening, now am I?”
Gliding to press his body atop hers, he grinned against her lips. He kissed her, and the tray settled itself on a side table. “No, you are not. But you are more delectable.” He darted between her legs again, and she stifled a gasp.
Agatha couldn’t breathe. “Déesse. Je ne peux pas supporter ça.” Another memory came and she swayed. “I can’t.” She couldn’t handle the memories. She could hardly even speak Seagovian, her mind was so addled.
“What would you have me do!” Thanasim’s voice boomed through the great room. The glass panes rattled in the windows, shielding them from the fog as far as the eye could see. “She’s making a fucking mess of that realm. I have lost my patience with her, Asteria.”
She came forward, resting a hand on his chest. Instinctively, his came up to rest on her belly, just beginning to swell with the life of their fourth child. “Would you not manipulate wars to keep me safe, were you the one in her place?”
Thanasim sighed, backing away to take up pacing. “This was her choice, to give up everything for a mortal general.”
“Talk with her again. Just help her to see that. Though she is helping Igor and Orford, she is harming the balance of the realm.”
The memories were coming in quick succession. She couldn’t choose them, couldn’t select which to entertain. Couldn’t breathe. They were ripping her asunder.
“We can do it, Mother. I swear it.”
Belfry stood before her, just on the cusp of being a woman. Asteria was so utterly proud of this spitfire—proud of all her daughters.
“Sweetheart, it is not your battle to fight?—”
“Like Hades!” Belfry shouted, every bit the temper of her mother and father. “You’ve seen what she’s done to mortals! To us! And you know what she could further do.”
“Enough.” The word came out sharper than she intended, but Belfry stood her ground.
“It’s the only way.”
“No, it’s not.”
“So you’ll just leave us here without you, then?” Tears were building in Belfry’s eyes, threatening to spill every time she raised her voice.
“It’s the only way to keep you safe. You and your Sisters are not immortal?—”
“Can’t you see! None of us are safe if she makes it back here!”
Here…here…
“Ici.”
Everything spun.
“Grimm, please,” Agatha begged. “Faites-les arrêter. It’s too fast. Make them stop. Make them stop.”
He scooped her up just like he had in one of the memories, rushing out a back door and into a gnarled, decrepit garden. The moment his feet touched the cobbles, he sucked in a great, pained breath, nearly dropping her.
“Grimm!”
Using her magic to aid her, Agatha leapt from his arms just before he collapsed to his knees. With the heels of his palms against his eyes, Grimm cried out in agony.
GRIMM
Fuck. Too many memories. Agatha was right, it was too much. He couldn’t even fucking see.
He was trapped in his mind again—times, worlds, realms warring.
“I told you,” he growled, stalking toward Athania, “that I would not have mercy on you again.”
She had the audacity to simper, looking up at him from where she sat at a bistro along Aureland’s Viridian Bay. “What have I done this time, dearest Lord Night?”
