Aderyn pressed her right hand to his shoulder and leaned over him, and he had the feeling she was doing it to keep him in place. She smiled softly.
“Look at me, Fenix.”
He shifted his gaze to lock with hers, cursed her in his mind when he saw the apology in her pale golden eyes and knew in his heart it wasn’t only because she was about to hurt him.
“Do not,” he croaked, desperation flooding him, making him restless as a need to stop her from doing something so reckless and dangerous seized him.
Her smile wobbled.
Heat blazed across his side, the firelight chasing over the sculpted planes of her face as she gazed down at him, as tears lined her eyelashes.
Fenix tipped his head back and screamed as the scent of burning flesh reached his nostrils, choking him. Every inch of him was on fire, on the verge of turning to ashes.
Darkness rolled up on him and he fought it, desperately clung to consciousness, aware that if he passed out then no one would be here to stop Aderyn from doing something foolish.
But he wasn’t strong enough to hold back the rising inky tide and it swallowed him.
The sound of water dripping in the distance roused him from the dark embrace of sleep.
Fenix groaned as awareness slowly returned, his senses gradually coming back online. His side throbbed at the same tempo as his heartbeat and he swallowed thickly, his mouth as dry as ash.
“Aderyn?” he husked, willing her to respond as the haze of pain and sleep cleared from his mind and he remembered what had happened.
Only the plip-plip-plip of water answered him.
He gritted his teeth and rolled to his right, away from his injured side, and opened his eyes. Everything was blurred. He rubbed at his eyes, clearing the salty grit from them, and tried again. A cave greeted him. Dark. Damp.
Empty, save for him.
“Aderyn?” He tried again, louder this time, hoping she was somewhere nearby and would hear him.
Only he couldn’t sense her.
His connection to her was weak, like a fragile strand of spider silk that could snap with the gentlest of touches.
Fenix got onto his knees, grimacing as small chips of basalt bit into them through his black leathers and jabbed his palms. He scanned the cavern again, aching to see Aderyn, to know that she was safe and hadn’t done something reckless.
Even when he knew in his heart that she had.
She had gone after the mage, still believed he knew the way to open the gateway, that he was the key to succeeding where she had failed so many times before.
He needed to get to her.
He needed to stop her before it was too late.
He pressed his hand to his left side, the hole in his black jerkin so large that he could fit his entire hand in it. The skin beneath his palm was puckered and sore, tender to the touch, but it was healed.
She had saved him.
Now he would save her.
His beautiful mate was headstrong and obsessed, driven by her desire to reunite with her people, and while he couldn’t understand that, he could understand the need that blazed within him—a desire to reunite with her.
He pushed onto his feet, collapsed back to his knees as his legs gave out, and then tried again, refusing to give up. He was healed and that meant he was moving, going after his female. There was no way in this world or the mortal one that he was going to let her face the mage alone.
Drystan would kill her.
Or worse.
He would use her as a source of power, slowly destroying her by stealing her blood to fuel his magic and his immortality.
Fenix couldn’t let that happen.
He made it onto his feet and turned slowly, not trusting his legs. His senses reached out around him but he still felt nothing—no trace of Aderyn—so he focused on himself instead, summoning his strength.
And teleported.
His knees buckled as his boots hit the uneven black ground and his head spun as he tried to look around him, the strange dead garden of the obsidian stone house wobbling in and out of focus.
A scream blasted through the air.
His heart squeezed.
“Aderyn.”
His head whipped to his left, towards the small two-storey house and he teleported inside, stumbled and slammed into a wall. The scent of sulphur and smoke hit him, laced with the tinny smell of magic, and he pushed off, staggering along a wide hallway towards his mate. He could feel her there, ahead of him somewhere. He clenched his jaw as his head turned again, gripped his side and pushed onwards, refusing to let the weakness invading him stop him from reaching her.
His mate needed him.
Another scream cut him to his soul.
“Aderyn!” he bellowed and teleported again, grimaced as he landed on his hands and knees this time and his vision tunnelled.
He was pushing his luck.
He sucked down a breath.
Froze as the scent of blood hit him.
“Aderyn,” he whispered and lifted his head, wanted to roar in fury as he spotted her.
The white-haired mage held her by her throat, colourful glyphs swirling around his hand and her head as she struggled against him, her legs flailing a few feet off the ground. Her boots caught the flowing hem of the black robes the mage wore, each frantic kick knocking the material away from his leathers.
Panic seized Fenix’s lungs as he sensed her weakening. His gaze darted over her and stopped when he found the cut on her neck.
Crimson dripped from it, but rather than flowing down her chest to seep into her violet leather corset, those droplets rose into the air, slowly lifting upwards until they reached a point just above her head, where they gathered into a rippling sphere.
“Let her go.” Fenix pushed onto his feet and grimaced as his right leg gave out and he staggered sideways. He grunted as he hit a heavy wooden bench table and sagged against it. His side blazed as the mage turned cold red eyes on him.
Malice filled them, fury so dark and deep that Fenix swore he could feel the male’s rage.
Drystan slid Aderyn a look.
She screamed, throwing her head back as her body contorted, as another cut appeared on her chest and began to spill more crimson.
“No.” Fenix lunged for her, desperate now. “Let her go. She—”
“She killed my wife,” Drystan snarled, his face blackening as he angled it towards Fenix again. “And now she wishes to kill me.”
Fenix shook his head. “She only wants to open the gateway.”
The mage spat, “Lies. She wants me dead. All her kind do. I lived a peaceful life. I had all I needed… meant to live with my mortal wife for the rest of our days and then pass on as she did.”
His face twisted in vicious lines as he cast a black look at Aderyn where she struggled in his grip, her movements weaker now.
“And she took that life from me.”
Fenix gritted his teeth, anger surging through him too now. “Your wife was luring her into a trap. She meant to gift you with Aderyn’s blood to make you live longer!”
“I will not hear your lies. My sweet Cyra wanted to do no such thing. She was happy as we were.”
Fenix didn’t think she had been. Drystan’s sweet Cyra had spoken of immortality, had seemed desperate and wild when Aderyn had realised what she had intended to do to her and had turned on her.
“Cyra wanted her blood. She wanted to be immortal and she thought you could make it happen.” Fenix growled those words, feeling as desperate and wild as Cyra had been as he looked at Aderyn and saw her fading. She was losing too much blood. If the mage stole much more of it, she wouldn’t be able to resurrect. “Let her go.”