Bound By Darkness (Guardians of Eternity #8)(49)
Author: Alexandra Ivy

For a crazed moment Jaelyn returned his ferocious kiss, her hands grasping his shoulders as she went on tiptoe to arch against the addictive heat of his bare chest.

Then reality slammed back into her and she was pushing him away with a low, pained growl.

“No, Ariyal.”

He stiffly stepped backward, his expression once again indecipherable.

“We should go.”

“Did you discover what you needed?”

“The spirit was able to locate Tearloch and the babe.”

“Where?”

He tilted his head toward the north, his hands fisted at his side.

“A series of caverns less than three miles north of here.”

So close?

For no reason at all a chill inched down her spine.

“Why do I sense this is a good-news/bad-news kind of deal?” she asked.

“The good news is the child is currently alone in one of the caves.”

“And the bad news?”

“Besides Tearloch there are half-dozen Sylvermyst as well as the wizard.”

She frowned, studying the arrogant perfection of his face. She could sense the emotions that churned beneath that careful mask, and she hated the knowledge he wanted to keep them hidden from her.

“That was more or less what you expected, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

He silently debated her question before he at last heaved a sigh.

“I don’t know.”

She arched a brow. “Maybe you can be a little more vague?”

“I think you should stay… .”

“ No.”

His eyes blazed with a bronzed fury. “Dammit, Jaelyn, there’s a very good possibility that this is a trap.”

“All the more reason you need me to go with you.”

“You were trained better than that, Hunter,” he rasped. “If I don’t return then you must alert your Oracles that I have failed and that Tearloch will soon use the child to resurrect the Dark Lord.”

He was right.

If her current task was to retrieve the child and save the world from the Dark Lord, then she would have to concede that it was preferable for one of them to sneak into the caverns while the other waited to determine if it was a trap.

But she had been charged with staying near Ariyal and keeping track of his movements.

Which in this moment suited her just fine.

“They aren’t my Oracles,” she denied.

“We aren’t going to argue about this.” He slashed a hand through the air, looking every inch a prince. “The only sensible plan is for me to try and rescue the child while you find a sun-proof location to wait out the approaching day.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Can’t? Don’t you mean won’t?”

The air smoldered with the force of his barely restrained power.

Jaelyn stood her ground. “No, I mean I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I have to remain with you.” She met his gaze squarely. “That’s all I can say.”

She braced herself for Ariyal’s explosion of anger. Even a threat to lock her in the cellar and leave her to rot.

Instead he held on to his grim control, taking a deliberate step backward.

Not that he needed to.

Jaelyn could feel the mental barriers he was erecting between them without the physical demonstration.

“And you accuse me of being vague.”

She wanted to … what? Plead for his understanding? Demand to know if he thought this was fun and games for her?

She hadn’t asked to become a pawn for the Oracles, had she? Or to become entangled with the one male in the entire world who treated her as if she was something more than a killing machine.

And she certainly hadn’t asked for her emotions to be stripped bare after decades of believing they had been efficiently destroyed.

“I don’t have a choice,” she ineffectively muttered.

“Of course not.” A humorless smile curved his lips. “Tell me, poppet, if I weren’t your current duty would you already have taken off?”

Well, he certainly wanted his pound of flesh.

She fingered her shotgun, shifting beneath his bleak gaze. She’d rather be skinned alive than to continue this agonizing conversation.

“Being a Hunter means I must go where I am commanded to go.”

“And that truly does put me in my place, doesn’t it?”

With liquid grace Ariyal turned on his heel and headed across the barnyard, his spine stiff and his head held at a proud angle.

“Shit.”

A brutal pain seared through Jaelyn as she forced herself to watch him walk away.

As much as she might ache to follow, she forced herself to remain standing alone in the darkness.

She didn’t know jack squat about men, but she did know that you didn’t poke at a lethal predator when he was licking his wounds.

Even if they were just superficial.

Ariyal wasn’t a vampire, after all.

And she doubted that Sylvermyst mated for life.

In a day or two she would be a bad memory that he could tuck away with those of Morgana le Fey.

Telling herself that was exactly what she wanted, Jaelyn stood immobile, feeling as if the slight summer breeze might shatter her into a million pieces.

She lost track of time as she stood there; then the distant scent of blood abruptly destroyed her full-blown bout of self-pity.

What the hell?

She was flowing past the outbuildings to a small pond at the bottom of the hill before she realized that the blood she smelled wasn’t Ariyal’s but that of a feral pig that Ariyal had obviously sacrificed to increase the power of his blade.

Her panic eased, but not her need to seek out Ariyal and make certain he was unharmed.

It was a compulsion that refused any logic.

Vaulting over the sagging barbed-wire fence, Jaelyn continued forward, not halting until she was kneeling beside the Sylvermyst, who was crouched next to the water, washing the blood off his hands.

He didn’t turn his head. In fact, he stubbornly refused to acknowledge her arrival at all as he shook the water off his hands. Then, rising to his feet, he grasped his sword over his head, the blade glowing with a white-hot magic.

“What are you doing?” she stupidly asked.

Anything to break the awful silence.

His gaze remained locked on the sword as he sliced it through the air in a slow, practiced pattern.

“Preparing for battle.”

She watched his graceful dance as he performed the ancient Sylvermyst ritual, her heart clenching at his sheer beauty.