she was too tired to leave. They needed to be together, to come to terms with the unspoken alliance they had entered into with a few kisses, touches and promised trust.
Outside the rain continued to clatter the windows, yet the lightning had ceased. Vika hoped they were safe from another power outage. If the lights went out again, she was doomed.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice cracking on the final word.
“Scuffed the skin on my palm, but otherwise, I’m just shaken.”
And bruised, her consciousness whispered. Your heart has been bruised.
That made little sense to her. Her heart could be bruised only if she felt something about the man beyond the desire to clean him up.
You do.
CJ took her hand and examined the palm, carefully touching around the tenderness. It hurt, but she didn’t pull away. Placing his palm flat against hers, the one covered with black tattoos, he closed his eyes and whispered, “Flesh, bone, blood, vita.”
Heat scoured her palm, but not painfully. Rather, it was as if she’d placed her hand in a bowl of warm water. With a tightening of her skin, CJ then kissed her palm and relented.
The abrasion had healed. Vika had been witness to witches who could heal before, but never so quickly. If this was his magic depleted, then she would marvel to see him at full potential. Yet it had been his perceived power that had compelled her to explore the dark witch. Indeed, a witch’s greatest power originated in the minds of others.
“Thank you.” A few more sips of tea slowed her frantic heartbeats. “Those healing tattoos are amazing. Your cuts are healed, as well. Is it just the one tattoo on your arm?”
“Here.” He touched his biceps where the circular healing sigil had been tattooed in black. “I’ve also one on my hip and my right foot.”
She sat upright and moved closer to Certainly’s body, not quite touching. To look over the artwork on his skin distracted from other devastating experiences. “You’ve so many tattoos. You said from the ink witch?”
“Yes, Sayne. One of few ink witches remaining in the world.”
Tapping the back of his tattooed hand, she then traced the design carefully. “Are they all spells?”
“All, save one.” He held up his right arm to display the wrist. Vika studied the delicate design of a rose with barbed wire twisted throughout its petals. “Thoroughly and Merrily—my twin brother and our older sister—have the same. It’s in remembrance of our mother. Witch hunters got her like they got your grandmother.”
A hot tear wobbled in Vika’s eye. “I’m sorry. The tattoo is beautiful.” Though she didn’t ask why the barbed wire. She could guess, knowing how the ignorant tortured witches, and it was unsettling. “Someday, I’d like to learn about all your tattoos. Especially the ones on your hand.”
She traced the innate lines on his palm that had been there since birth, and then the black spellwork. The center featured a sak yant design in an eye shape with scribbles she guessed could be Arabic, but could be some demonic tongue for all she knew.
“What does this one do?” She traced the eye.
“Entrance and closure. Opens me to receive, and as well, when combined with other spells on my body, can give me access to another witch’s spells. But I can also use it to repel magics.”
“And these lines around your thumb?”
“Focus. I can trap a person’s focus with a snap of my finger. Or deepen my concentration beyond a meditative state.”
“That sounds dangerous. Like you could go into a catatonic state.”
“Almost. I use it now on the nights when I lie awake under the lights.”
They held gazes for so long, Vika thought she heard her heart cry out. It was a small cry, one she found unfamiliar. A needy, yet understanding vocalization pulsing through her veins. She turned on the couch to face him and slid a palm along his cool cheek.
Bruised internally, but so ready to heal.
CJ’s hair was wet still, and his skin so cool. His gaze did not sway as she followed her fingers along the stubble edging his jaw, and before his ear and along the hairline, framing his masculine structure. The demon mark remained, a modena of violence marring his neck. She touched his lips and found them as cool as hers felt. The rain had been relentless, scouring their bodies as mercilessly as Pain had tortured this dark one.
“We survived,” she whispered. “One, along with the other, cushlamocree.”