Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4) Emma Hamm (popular novels txt) 📖

aches. All worries. All terror and fear. It left in its wake a sense of righteousness.

A puzzle piece shifted inside her head and fell where it should have been all along. Edges locked in place.

She looked down at her arm and saw the sparks of life running through it. Not veins of blood, air in lungs, or beat of heart. She could see the actual life force that set her aside from everyone else.

Gold shimmered in her body. Not white nor silver as she had expected. She was made of gold fibers filling her body with magic.

Not just magic, she realized with awe. But memories. She could remember everything.

Sil’s world was made of magic. People were made of silver and gold, unknowing they were kin to the stars.

A mother.

A father.

A world ending in a great battle, blood, and loss.

Then nothing but overwhelming guilt.

“I remember,” Lydia whispered as she settled back next to Pitch and Sil. “I remember everything and I am so sorry.”

She glanced at the couple still crouched upon the ground. Sil met her gaze.

“Now you know,” Sil murmured.

“I do, my love.” Pitch replied.

But Lydia knew that Sil was not speaking to him. They were now the same. Time was not linear. Sil could feel her lungs expanding in tune with a reflection of herself and Lydia felt her heart beat with another.

“I will carry on your work,” Lydia told her. “I will save this dimension because we could not save others. I will take what you learned and I will learn more myself.”

A wash of warmth bloomed over her body and mind. Sil’s voice echoed but her lips did not move.

“Love him. Show him what I could not. Bring him the peace I could not. And if all else cannot be gifted, then love him as he deserves to be loved.”

The words rang in her ears as she was jerked out of the memory by a painful grip upon her physical arm.

Chapter 10

“What are you doing!”

Lydia shook her head to clear the lingering strands of magic holding her in the past. Her eyes focused slowly upon the pulsating darkness that surrounded her.

“Pitch?” she questioned.

“What book were you reading?”

His tone was harsh, ragged and breathless. If she didn’t know him, she would say he sounded frightened. But he was not the type of man to fall prey to fear.

“One of the journals,” she flipped it over in her hands to show him. “You said they were mine as well as yours. I have been reading them while you’ve been gone.”

His chest heaved as he stared her down. “Yes I did. Didn’t I?”

The questioned hovered between them. “Do you not remember saying it?”

“I-” he paused to shovel his hand through his hair. A black lock fell in front of his forehead. “I do not know. I’ve been gone and when I returned you weren’t in your room.”

“I don’t sleep all the time.”

“Most times.”

Her heart stung. “I’m doing my best to stay awake. It’s not as easy as you might think.”

“I know that,” he said while his face flushed red. “I am embarrassed to even say the words. It is not easy to wait for you to awaken, either.”

She wanted to tell him that it was more difficult being the one who was asleep. She wanted to scream that her nightmares would make an average man cry. They would bring him to his knees with the futures which could occur for this world.

But a soft warmth in her soul made her hesitate. The anger lurking underneath her skin was tempered by a kindness blossoming in her heart. Sil’s magic, Sil’s memories, merged with everything that made Lydia who she was. It made her better.

Perhaps he could see it in her face. Perhaps the golden light of magic was breaking through her skin.

He reacted almost violently. The shadows he always kept tight against him burst outwards and hovered in the air before her like ink. Tendrils broke away from him until droplets of darkness floated all around them.

“What were you reading?” he asked once more. His expression splintered and fractured until he was nearly unrecognizable. Cold indifference turned his usually smooth features into a mask.

“One of the journals.” Lydia did not know why it felt so important that she not admit to him which journal. The lingering sense of her new found self insisted it was important. She believed it.

He did not. His hand snapped toward her and yanked the finely bound book out of her grasp. He thumbed through the pages so forcefully that the pages threatened to tear.

She knew the moment he found the lines. He stopped breathing, hovering between life and death. His eyes drifted shut and he inhaled one measured breath.

“I did not want you to read this book yet,” he told her.

“Why not?”

“I did not want you to know.”

“To know what happened or to know myself?”

He did not seem to have an answer. Instead, he turned away from her and stared down at the book in his hands.

“Pitch,” she began softly, “what happened to her? She was dying. Why?”

Lydia knew the answer to the question. She had seen the thousands of ways Sil could die and knew all of them like the back of her hand. She knew the true death but also every single opportunity which had not been taken.

The Goddess had spent many years avoiding death. It trailed her like a loyal dog until finally it was allowed to gather her into its arms.

Lydia wanted to hear the words from Pitch’s mouth.

Softly, she told herself. Easy. This was a man close to breaking and although the sense of hesitation was still prevalent inside her, she had to know the answer.

He clenched his fists, the book creaked in his hand. Lydia gaped. He managed to bend a hardcover book in half merely by closing his hand.

What had she gotten herself into? Or perhaps the better question was what had she released?

“You should not have read this,” he growled.

“Something happened. What happened? You are not acting