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

“Sirens are meant to be with the water. She will swim in the ocean, you know. It will not be on the shores of your long lost island. But she will taste the salt water, feel the sand under her toes, and make friends with Nixies. All because you taught her well and helped her stay alive this long.”

Bones searched her gaze, his dark eyes strikingly clear in her blurry world. “What are you doing to me?”

The white light inside her surged, pushing her forward and lifting her palm to his brow. She could see the sparkles simmering underneath her skin until all she could do was let it out. It flowed out of her like a sun sparkling river, the white flecks of waterfalls, and the soothing calm underneath the waves.

“Healing you,” she murmured. “You are hurting.”

“Lydia,” Pitch said as he leaned forward. “You are weak.”

“I am strong enough to do this.”

All the good things she had experience and held within her memories overfilled her mind. They spilled over the edges, mixed with all the happy endings she had found inside of him. Her magic poured out of her.

Her pale pink eyes turned mottled white and trails of glowing tears streaked down her cheeks. Lips glistening gold, hair shining like a blade in sunlight, skin glittering like diamonds, she was inhuman and power incarnate.

Bones flinched, but her fingers were already digging into his cheeks. Pain and pleasure mixed in the gifts she gave him. Lydia understood all these thoughts, felt everything he felt, but could not stop herself.

“Please,” Bones said. “Please, it’s too much.”

“Gifts from the Gods are rarely kind.”

“It’s like fire in my veins. You’re suffocating me.”

“I’m helping you.”

Pitch’s voice cut like a dagger. “Lydia, enough.”

“He needs this.”

“He doesn’t!”

She didn’t recognize herself. After everything she had endured, Lydia had thought she was done. There couldn’t be anything else to give. She lost her body, barely recognized herself in the mirror, spent years building herself back up to normal.

Now, she was to lose her mind as well.

Her hands shook. A million stars burned inside her, and they wanted to help. They wanted to be released into the world, providing power to those who deserved it. Whispers echoed in her ears of an ancient times when Goddesses were powerful and feared.

Bones wrapped his hands around her wrists. His grip was gentle and his words kind. “Thank you, honored one. I have been blessed, but I cannot receive any more of your blessing today.”

Her sun sparked vision cleared. Blinking, she lifted her hands from his face. Red streaks marred his skin.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. A pass of her hands healed any lingering blemishes, but felt as though she didn’t fit in her own skin correctly. “I don’t know what came over me.”

Pitch’s chair fell to the floor as he jumped up. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, Pitch. I just said that.”

“You’re damned right you don’t know! I’ve never seen that before!”

“Stop shouting.”

He slammed his fist down on the table. Plates crashed together and glasses tipped, dumping their wine onto the black table cloth. Her gaze fixated on them. Red wine dripped from the corners of the tablecloth like blood.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

A midnight hand took hers, forcing her to look at him. “You did not harm me. In fact, I feel more alive than I ever have before.”

“She didn’t?” Pitch asked.

“No. I think she enhanced my magic, made me more powerful than before. I can feel it charging through my body where it wasn’t before.”

Lydia ducked her head and stared down at their clasped hands. She wanted to sink into the floor. Losing control was bad for most, but even worse for her. There was so much harm she could do in a very small amount of time.

“I thought I had control over it,” she muttered. “But I don’t think I do.”

“I think it’s the opposite, honored one. I think your power controls you.”

She curled her fingers through his, watching the strangeness of light against dark. He had tasted of sunshine and magic. Her mind had licked through his power, adding it to her own and feeding him tainted power that would fuel his.

Lydia didn’t have it in her to tell him that she wasn’t sure what she had given him. The power was her own, mixed with his, and added to by something else inside her. Something she didn’t understand.

A frightening beast lived underneath her skin. Even now, she could see it. Her bones were made of sunshine, her veins of glimmering gold. All that power and still she could not stop shivering.

“Lady, are you all right?” Bones asked.

“Thank you for coming.” The words dripped from her tongue, held nearly immobile by tangled thorns digging into her lips and the roof of her mouth. “Please, do everything within your power to speak with Lyra. It’s important.”

“I will try.”

He seemed confused. Perhaps she would have understood why if the wounds in her mouth weren't burning with holy water and hell fires.

They left on quiet feet. She heard them but did not say a single word more. Her mind was unraveling, twisting into a new being.

Her body couldn’t handle it. A human brain was so fragile. She was numb with her skeleton exposed to the air and flowers growing in her ribs. Yellow light flared behind her eyes, and her mouth twisted in words she did not know nor understood.

The web of Time in her mind echoed with screams. Her lungs filled with ash and the acrid burn of scorched flesh. Rust formed on her fingertips from a world so ruined that even flesh was tainted.

“You have to tell me what is happening, my love. I cannot help you.”

A velvet fingertip wiped at her lips. Her eyes shifted, focusing upon the molten gold that now covered Pitch’s hands. It was leaking out of her, like an angelic statue crying blood.

“The web,” she replied. “There’s something wrong with the web, Pitch.”

“I don’t