Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,17
was…the soul of him was missing.
She didn’t doubt that Dalair cared deeply for her. Not even for a moment. Since she regained her memories and gradually made sense of them after her Awakening, she knew exactly how much he’d sacrificed for her.
He’d given everything.
But while he was still himself, and even now, just a shell, a shadow, she’d given him so little in return.
So fucking little.
“I took his blood,” Sophia reported by rote.
In hindsight, perhaps she should have checked with Rain before she drank the blood of a “polluted” body. Dalair’s veins contained their enemies’ poisons, after all. Goddess knew what it all entailed. Sophia should not have been so complacent and reckless.
“How do you feel?” Rain queried.
Well, at least the healer didn’t panic, Sophia noted. Though Rain wasn’t the type of female to ever panic. She was calm and tranquility personified. Great attributes to have as the race’s healer, even without her original Gift.
“Tired,” she said with a shrug. “But that probably has little to do with his blood, more to do with…”
Sophia trailed off, too exhausted to find the right words.
“Sadness? Fear? Worry?” Rain provided softly. “It’s all right to feel what you feel, Sophia. I cannot imagine what I would do were I in your shoes. To see the male I love like this.”
She came around the table to stand next to Sophia and grasped one of her hands in both her own.
“We will find a solution together,” Rain reassured her. “We won’t ever give up. You must be strong for him.”
Sophia nodded dully.
“So…you have grown in your Pure female fangs, Sophia?” Rain asked gently.
Sophia nodded again, her eyes never leaving Dalair, who lay immobile, seemingly lifeless, on the table.
“Then there can be no doubt how you feel about the Paladin,” the healer noted. “Besides taking his blood, have you…”
Jerkily, Sophia dipped her chin in confirmation.
“I see. And how do you feel?”
“Fine,” Sophia murmured.
Physically, except for the enervation in her muscles, in her very bones, she did feel fine. No sharp pains, or other signs of the ravaging effects of the Decline.
Did this confirm that Dalair loved her back? And more than love, that they were Eternal Mates?
But how was that even possible if he wasn’t himself? Did the Cardinal Rule only apply to physical compatibility then?
But that couldn’t be right either. Love was something the “heart” felt. And the heart, according to what Sophia had been taught when she was Kira in her previous life, resided in the soul; it wasn’t the muscle in the chest that pumped blood. Not the way ancient Egyptians understood it.
Mentally, she was an unmitigated mess. Self-loathing warred with fear, churned with a savage lust, mixed with an acute sense of loss and despair. The Darkness within her swirled with menace, pulling her deeper and deeper into its debilitating vortex—
Rain’s gasp broke Sophia’s trance. For the first time since the other female entered the healing enclosure, Sophia looked her in the face.
“Your skin…your eyes…”
The shock and dismay in the soft-spoken healer’s face shrilled like a warning bell. Sophia disengaged from Rain’s grasp and marched to the en-suite bathroom to look at herself in the mirror.
Merciful Goddess!
A monster’s reflection stared back at her. Greenish black veins zig-zagged all across her skin, which had turned a corpse-like gray. Red streaks radiated from her bloodshot eyes, burning crimson in the pitch-black centers. The sharp tips of fangs she didn’t realize had elongated from her gums glinted behind parted lips.
No, she didn’t suffer the Decline. But this was infinitely worse.
For the visage of the Destroyer reflected in that mirror.
“No…no, no, no, no…” Sophia rasped.
Under the power of her black stare, a soundless vibration trembled across the surface of the glass before the mirror cracked like thin ice fracturing across a frozen lake, and shattered completely into a thousand shards all over the bathroom counter and marble floor.
“Sophia!”
Rain rushed to the entrance of the bathroom, but Sophia held up a hand to keep her back.
She didn’t know what she was capable of in this state.
Well, she did. And that was the crux of the problem.
Right this moment, feeling the way she did, she didn’t know what she’d do. She felt like she had no control of herself. It terrified her as nothing else could.
Sophia sensed the presence of other people in the enclosure, out of sight. Rain was looking meaningfully at them beyond the view of the bathroom entrance. The healer didn’t say anything, but Sophia easily read the expression on her face. It said: