Chapter Four — The Leash and the Lifeline

"Lyla."

His voice stopped me like a hand on my spine. I didn't turn. I could feel him behind me — close, closer than he'd been a second ago, and my body had the audacity to lean toward him, the Devourer purring in my chest like a cat that had found a furnace.

"The moment you leave these grounds," he said, soft and deliberate, "your curse will spike. You'll burn in the cab ride home. If you make it out of the French Quarter at all, it'll be as a scorch mark on a streetcar seat."

"So that's it." My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "You save my life, and the price is that I can never be more than a heartbeat away from you. Forever. Or until I die — whichever comes first."

"Yes."

I turned around. He was closer than I'd thought — close enough that I could see the faint pulse at his throat, could smell the cold silver of his blood beneath the library dust. Close enough to feel how badly I wanted to step back.

Or forward.

"Let me tell you something about Aether women," I said, and my voice was steady now, because I'd spent three months practicing this exact speech in a basement full of dead theories. "We die at twenty-five. That's the whole deal. My mother died at twenty-five. My sister died at twenty-five. And every Aether woman for two hundred years has gone to her death dragging someone she loved with her — not because the curse wanted them, but because they couldn't stop themselves from reaching out. From hoping. From loving."

I took a breath.

"I don't want salvation. I just want no one to burn for me."

Something moved in his eyes. Not absence — something older than absence. Something that looked almost like it hurt.

"You think I'm offering you hope," he said. "I'm not. I'm offering you a fact. Your curse responds to me. My blood holds it. That's all this is, Aether — a clinical arrangement between two people who have nothing else in common."

"Clinical," I repeated. "Right. Then why does it feel like this?"

I didn't plan it. I swear I didn't plan it. But my hand came up — traitorous, unfaithful — and pressed flat against his chest, over the place where a human heart would beat.

His heartbeat was slow. Steady. Ancient.

It sped up.

And the curse in my chest roared — scarlet light flaring through my veins, my eyes burning, pain and heat and something else, something that wasn't pain at all, all at once.

"Ow—" I doubled over, hissing. "Okay. Okay, that's—that's my cue. Clinical. Totally clinical. I believe you."

His hand caught my elbow, steadying me, and for one terrible, wonderful second he was close enough that I could count the eyelashes against his cheek. The curse quieted — instantly, helplessly, like a child soothed by a familiar voice.

"Your pulse is erratic," he observed.

"Your face is err—" I bit the word off. "That's not a thing. I'm fine. Let go of me."

He let go. I immediately wanted him to not let go. I hated him for that. I hated my blood for that. I hated the whole beautiful, cursed arrangement.

"Stay," he said quietly. "Let Isolde treat you. Let me keep you alive. Whatever this bond is, Aether — we'll break it. I give you my word."

"You're a vampire," I said. "Your word's probably worth something. I'll think about it."

I didn't think about it. I lay in that enormous bed all night, staring at the ceiling, and I felt him — two floors below, in the library, reading. I felt the moment he set down his book. The moment he stood. The moment he walked to the window and looked out at the city as if he could see me through stone.

The Devourer purred the entire time.

It had never been this quiet. It had never been this happy.

That was the scariest part of all.

An hour before dawn, Isolde Gray returned to her study in the west tower, closed the door, and locked it. Then she took out the tonic she'd prepared for the little Aether girl, added three drops of something black and patient from a vial she kept in a hidden drawer, and swirled it until the darkness dissolved.

"Sleep well, Lyla," she murmured, to no one. "You'll need your strength. The Devourer needs a lot of fuel before it's ready to burn."

She smiled at her own reflection — warm, kind, beautiful, a physician who had spent two centuries waiting for an Aether woman desperate enough to drink her medicine.

"Burn beautifully for me, little one. I'll be right here to collect the ashes."