“Doesn’t matter,” he cuts me off. “Ask the most important question.”
I hum. “Why wouldn’t I be able to kill her?”
“There you go. It’s because you have been Damned.”
My heart stutters. “What…”
“Good, now we are getting somewhere. I am going to ask you a question, and I need you to understand it isn’t meant to bring up any… trauma.” I hate how cautious he is when speaking to me, as if I’m some fragile porcelain doll in need of constant coddling. He could drop me—I might shatter—but I’ll pick myself back up, just as I have time and time again.
“Ask,” I demand.
“Was Tali able to control you?”
“Yes, completely. I had no will of my own.”
He rolls his lips and begins pacing. “What else?”
“Be more fucking specific.” I find myself wanting to pace too, but I stay resolute in my stance beside Kairhyse.
“Did you feel anything unusual?”
Feeling an arm brush against me, I look up at Kai who says, “I’m lost.”
“Ikilledher Mark.” At first, my words don’t register with him. The confusion still lingering between his dark eyebrows. “My father. I ate his heart…”
“You killed her Mark… shit, she Damned you,” he murmurs, a hollow look filling out his eyes.
“Did you, Xeraphine, feel anything unusual?”
I grit my teeth. “I don’t know, her touching me the way she did was pretty fuckingunusual,Alaric.” My nosetwitches as he pauses his walking. “Be. More.Specific.”
“Was your Amoro dormant? Gone, or otherwise just not there?”
Couldn’t that have been the fucking question? Why did he have to be so cryptic, godsdamn.
“Yes, any time I was around her my Amoro was… not there. I couldn’t feed on any of their lifeforces.” A low, feral sound rumbles from Kai, and his arm snakes over my shoulder. It isn’t a gesture of comfort for me, but for himself. I can smell the fury radiating from his skin.
Brice clears his throat. “So, being Damned, it isn’t exactly being pulled into the Beyond. That was my assumption.”
“I had a theory,” Alaric jumps in. “It’s been proven to be correct it would seem. Succubae and Incubi can breed once with each other, and then a rupture occurs within the Succubus, causing them incapable of reproducing again. They can also breed with their Mark, no matter their species, only once. Now I understand why your kind have avoided doing the latter. Incubi would regenerate their heart. Vampires, maybe, but other Dylox, and obviously Mundane, can’t.”
Nodding, I instinctively lean into Kai. “It’s a damning of their own child.”
“Right, because your kind… cannot control each other. But because you were Damned, she does have that control.” My eyes round into circles, staring at Alaric as he rests against the back of the couch. “You also can’t control the Divine, at least not with your Amoro. You are unique in that yourbloodis what controls your victims.”
“Do they need any bodily fluids?” I ask, and while I still hate this man, he is giving me what I need: information. As I’ve told Kai on so many occasions, all I’ve ever worked for are connections, and this son of a bitch is becoming a valuable one.
“No, but I believe that Succubae connect easier when fluids of any kind are shared. This includes other species. Why do you ask?”
Heat rolls through my body, and as though I’m going through a desert, my throat feels dry. I don’t want to tell them she spit in my mouth and made me swallow it, nor do I want to tell them of the other things of her I had inside me. I can’t tell them she was grinding against my?—
“Hey, hey—” Kai’s hands grab my arms and turn me to him.
“W-What?” My voice shakes, and when I focus, I can feel the unsteady quivering coursing through my body. “Oh.”
The moment I start to close myself off, he pulls me into a silent embrace. My hands tremble as I wrap them around his back, letting my head rest against the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“I’m okay.” My tone is secure in that statement.I’m okay. I am…
