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

care about the future anymore. I care about you, Lydia, and something is happening to you.”

“It’s not me. I am but a vessel. A prophet with history penned in invisible ink upon my skin. Cities fall to ash and dust in my dreams. I hear them crying out to me every moment of the day but I have never heard such terror. We have done something wrong and I do not know what it was.”

“Bones? Was Bones wrong?”

“We missed something and now my mind is barbed wire.” She reached out a hand, threading her fingers through his hair. “And you wear a crown of broken glass.”

“I am not wearing a crown, my love. What are you saying?”

She made a pained sound, coughing up more golden liquid until she could barely breathe. Pitch held his hands cupped at her chin. Waterfalls of light spilled into his palms and dripped to the floor where they sizzled and burned.

Starlight drowned her. She smelled blood and perfume mixed with the taste of pomegranates and wine.

“Pitch,” she whispered as she was dragged into the webs of her mind. “Pitch, I’m so sorry.”

His life had been perfect. A woman who loved him, his soul complete once more. Pitch felt the imprint of her on his very soul.

And then she slipped through his fingers.

Rage was a dangerous emotion. It made him want to break things, to pick fights, to maim and kill. But he could not do that.

All he could do, was paw through journals written hundreds of years ago and hope they might give him some form of answer.

Lydia woke up. All the dangerous magic within her, the Goddess who had made herself known in a splash of golden blood, disappearing to rest. Her vision slowly returned, but she was not herself.

He wanted her to wake up completely. There was something still asleep, some vital part of her which made Lydia who she was. The house was silent where it had once rung with joking laughter. Her steps were quiet where they had once pattered like mice. Her eyes, though unseeing, were vacant of all emotion.

The latest episode had drained her. And he didn’t know what to do.

He followed the Phoenix whom the others had awoken. She did not trust him, nor should she. Yet, he was the one who found Jasper in his cell. Pitch was the one who let him out, who guided them and nudged them together because they seemed to fit like puzzle pieces.

Maybe he had gotten soft in his old age. Maybe he wanted to see two people together, vastly different, proving that love existed.

He paced at night. They did not share the same bed although they should. His arms felt empty without her weight, and he refused to sleep if he wasn’t holding her.

Thusly, he was distracted when he teleported himself to meet with the Five. Mercy and Jasper were far more punctual than their counterparts, and they should be exactly where he expected them to be.

He teleported into chaos.

Frowning, he froze time to gain his bearings. Everyone was in the room, and not a single one of them paid attention to Mercy in her time of need. Nurin was too close, too handsy, and he was the last straw.

Shadows snapped out of his body like whips. Ignes crawled out of Mercy’s mouth, perhaps to offer assistance to his host, and Pitch gave him a smack upside the head to drive the matter home.

He stepped from the shadows and into the room.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

And it all fell apart from there. He fought, he argued, he made a point that he was still the bigger man, and he left more angry than he had ever felt before.

Traveling through shadows lashing at his face was a kind of cathartic experience. Pain steadied him. Anger would not do, not when Lydia was at the house.

But the Five looked at him like he was a lesser being. They hadn’t worked it out who he was, and that was an insult in itself. He was one of the greatest creators of all time! His siblings had been stronger but strength meant nothing when wit was involved.

He had absorbed them. He held all their magic, all their power, and they dared to still question him?

Gaia was working it out. He had seen it in her eyes. She knew who he was, or at least had an inclination. If she tried something, all their work would be for nothing. The Five were unpredictable. They changed their future regularly which would make Lydia’s job all the more hard.

Lydia, who was weaker than a puppy and fragile as poorly blown glass. His hands fisted, and he picked up speed. She refused to trust him. He begged and pleaded to help her, but she refused his advances.

Did anyone think he was capable? Pitch was a God!

No, he reminded himself. Not a God. He had not called himself by that name in a long time, not since he demolished the realms and bathed in the blood of his enemies.

He couldn’t do that anymore. He was not that nightmarish creature who lost control after his loved one died.

She wasn’t dead yet.

The dark souls of his siblings whispered in his ears. Wasn’t she close enough to death? She was a vacant body spouting out prophecies, and that was what Sil had said in the beginning. If her body wasn’t strong enough, if her mind couldn’t handle it, the power would use her like a puppet.

What if she was already dead?

Fear and anxiety crushed his lungs. He couldn’t take a deep breath, couldn’t force his mind to quiet. She was home alone, with no one to protect her. Even when he was home, he couldn’t protect her from the magic inside her body.

He flung the door off its hinges as he burst into the house.

“Lydia!” he roared. “Lydia!”

His shout echoed off the walls, and the moths fluttered into the air. A great cloud of white and grey hiding secrets on their