“It should not have taken him long to do what needed to be done. The fact that he has not returned is cause for concern, at best.” He didn’t bother filling in the ‘at worst’, but I didn't need him to. My head was already spinning with creative ways my mother could have killed him. “If Liam is indeed gone, then our options have narrowed even further.”
“Then let me send my magic there to be sure!” I urged. “What would we have to lose?”
His expression hardened at my words, and he took a step closer. Strong hands landed on my waist and pulled me across the bed on my knees to his nearly naked body.
“What would we have to lose?” he whispered into my hair. “Everything.” His fingertips dug into my skin, and my heart quickened. “You are my source of joy and life, Piper. Without you, this world is a noose around my neck drawing tighter by the second. I would not survive your loss.”
“Merc—”
“I don’t say this to be dramatic, Piper. I say it because it’s the truth. Because I need you to understand how severely your loss would wound me.” He hooked his finger under my chin and lifted my face to his. “The blow would be fatal, one way or another. Your end would mean my own, blood bond or not.”
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes at the thought of a world without Merc.
“No pressure,” I said, smiling through the sadness threatening to drag me down.
He returned the expression. “I can’t lie to you, Piper.”
“I kinda wish you could right about now…”
“I’ve upset you.”
“I mean…you didn’t cheer me up.”
“Then I shall make it up to you,” he said, his voice a whisper in my ear as his lips brushed against it. “We don’t have much time.”
I leaned against the strength of his body and let it steady me. I was so tired—so desperately weary—that, even in my dreams, it was too much to do it alone.
“Will we ever?” I asked softly. “Will we ever have time? Will we ever know a moment’s peace? Because I don‘t feel like we will…”
“With Larken and Phineas dead, we will know that and more.”
His lips grazed my neck, and for a moment, I believed the illusion. That we were alone. That the fey royals were not plotting our deaths. In our shared dream, it was possible to forget all that plagued us in the waking hours—in the world of the conscious—if I let go.
It was hardly an incentive to wake up.
Merc’s hands sliding up my sides to my breasts weren’t much better.
I looked up at him, and it drew a soft smile from the vampire king that I loved. The one I couldn’t bear to lose.
“Is this why you needed to see me?” I asked, looking up at him through my lashes.
His nose brushed my cheek. “Possibly…it is the only time I can share with you alone, so to speak…” His fingers toyed with the hem of my shirt, and it was all I could do to focus. To think. Which was a good thing, right? “Tell me how to ease your stress, Piper,” he whispered in my ear as he pushed the fabric higher and higher. “Tell me what you need…”
Piper…Piper…
A distant voice like the haunting call from the bridge echoed in my ears, and I pulled away from Merc, searching our dream for the ghostly being stalking me.
“What is it?” Merc asked.
Piper…come to me…
“The voice,” I replied as I spun in a circle. “The one from the bridge…I thought I heard it.”
“We’re in a dream, Piper. It cannot reach you here.”
But it had, and every part of my body was on edge as a result, despite Merc’s efforts to reassure me that all was well—which was very unlike him.
“I have to find it,” I said absentmindedly as I walked toward his bedroom door. His hand caught my wrist, and I turned to find him staring at me with a very different look in his eyes. Concern flashed in their depths.
“You must stay here,” he said, his grip tight but not punishing. But even in his dream, he could not hold on tight enough.
“I don’t think I can,” I replied as my arm pulled free of his grasp, though he did all he could to stop me. His press on my mind was slipping, and I felt myself escaping our connection, even though part of my brain screamed at me to stay. To not listen to the being that called to me.
But it was in vain.
Instead of waking up in Knox’s room, breathing hard with sweat on my brow, my eyes shot open to find myself standing in the middle of that fucking bridge again in the pitch black of night, staring down into the foggy abyss below.
“This isn’t a dream,” I muttered under my breath.
No, the darkness replied, it isn’t.
Chapter Nine
“What the…”
Piper, it whispered to me on the wind as the fog bathed in moonlight swirled below. Its mesmerizing dance was hypnotic, and I found myself leaning over the rickety railing to see it more clearly. To be closer to it however I could. Piper…you must come…
“Where?” I called back, my voice echoing in the gorge beyond the misty veil below.
Faerie…
“I can’t just go there,” I argued with the voice. “The king and queen…they’re waiting to kill me.”
Come to me… it replied, as though that were something altogether different.
“Listen, if you know some secret way to get in that won’t trigger alarms and get me killed, I’d love for you to show me, but—”
My voice cut short as the dancing fog slowly took the shape of a face so hauntingly beautiful that it nearly brought tears to my eyes. It shot up toward me from the darkness so fast that I staggered back a step out of reflex.
Follow me, it whispered, the ghostly lips of the smoky apparition disturbingly human.
I leaned forward and reached toward the face glowing faintly in the moonlight. My fingers stretched to touch the beauty of this ethereal being. But just as they were about to graze its cheek, the sound of my name rent the air. The being twisted toward the source and snarled before dropping back into the gorge, its visage disappearing in a swirl of dissipating fog.
Seconds later, Merc broke through the tree line with a small entourage behind him, including a very pissed-off looking grizzly bear and an alpha wolf ready to commit any number of heinous crimes in the name of keeping me safe. The others didn’t look too pleased either, but I guessed I couldn’t blame them. God only knew what Merc had told them as he no doubt tore the mansion apart looking for me after I escaped our dream.
Shame heated my cheeks. I should have thought of that before that moment. But that voice…
“Piper!” he shouted as he darted toward me on the bridge.
“I’m fine,” I said, putting my hands up to ward off his panic, not that it helped. “I’m sorry I scared you—”
“I came to find you after—” he cut himself off when Knox shot him a dubious look. “I wanted to see if you were well, given how you left our dream. When you weren’t with Knox—”
“He sounded the motherfucking alarm,” the alpha finished for him.
“Ugh,” I groaned, “yeah, I just realized that probably happened.”