Translation: why was she tired now, when she was only healing one person?
“It’s the air,” Robin replied almost reluctantly. “It’s doing something to me. It feels…weird.”
“Tell me about it,” Lucy muttered.
Jake’s wolf form tried to stand up, surprise filling him that no pain came at all. He eyed Robin in amazement, ready to thank her again with a nudge at her feet.
An unfamiliar voice spoke out before he could. All four of them tensed.
“It’s not weird, Princess Ana. It’s my actual home, where I feed off the energy from my prisoners to creature demons of my own.”
Simon growled angrily while Robin looked as calm as ever. Jake recognized the man as Jin, the ruler’s son they’d been trying to catch in the act earlier—except this time; he didn’t really look like Jin anymore.
He still looked Japanese, and still looked slim and tall and regal. But his white skin now had blue veins running across, and his almond-shaped eyes were pure black, with no white. When he smiled, sharp teeth appeared. His nails had grown black and sharp, too, and they rested at his sides now.
Instinctively, Jake stepped in front of Lucy to shield her. Simon and Robin formed a unit in front of them, and Jin watched in cold amusement.
“I should have known you were a witch. I’ve always hated witches,” Jin—the demon—murmured.
Robin still didn’t answer, and it almost felt like she was staring into space. It was Simon who replied for her, his voice full of contempt.
“So this is what you do? You trap people for your personal sexual high to create your idiotic demons?”
Jin smiled. “I feed on all kinds of heightened emotions. Fear and sex seem to be the most available. Sometimes I create charms, too, and use them to kill…so I can feed easily. It’s a good life. Humans are so gullible.”
Holy shit. This guy was the charms guy. From Simon’s slight eye flicker, it was obvious he hadn’t expected that either.
Jin kept talking. “I should have fed on the witch in the sauna, but her response wasn’t what I expected. I should have known from the very beginning that something was going on with you two.” The smile turned malicious, and his voice changed—deeper, scratchier. Jake watched as a black tongue came out, long and filled with the same ooze that was on that rolling creature.
Jake backed a step, pressing against Lucy’s legs. Simon stepped forward, but Robin pulled him back.
Then everything happened at once.
Two portals opened—one behind Lucy and the other behind Jin. She snapped her head towards them, pushing Simon as she did so.
“Protect them. Go,” she barked.
Then in a blur of speed, she charged for Jin and pushed with her magic, the force making Jin fall in the portal behind him. She turned to run back towards them—
Jin’s tongue came out and wrapped around her ankle, yanking her down to the ground with a thud. Robin cried out in pain as she was yanked in with Jin.
A curse sounded beside him.
Then Simon barked at Jake to save Lucy and get help before diving in the other portal with Robin and the demon.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Being dragged by a demon wasn’t in Robin’s survival plans, but some things just couldn’t be helped. She scolded herself for not anticipating that movement, then realized there was no point and to just go with the flow and see how she was going to kill the demon before said demon killed her—because there was no denying now about Jin’s kind, really. The demon energy rolled off him in waves, and she couldn’t believe how good he’d been at hiding it that even her magic couldn’t detect it before.
Excruciating pain like burn marks pricked at her skin seconds before the portal pathway ended, and she was falling on her feet on the other end. She snapped her eyes open and found herself in some kind of cave, with Jin gone and—
“What are you doing here?” she asked incredulously, staring at Simon’s hunched form beside her. “You should have gone with them.”
He sat up quickly and scanned the area, narrowing his eyes at the silence.
“And leave you all alone? No way in hell.”
“I could have handled myself.”
Those narrowed eyes switched in her direction, and the intense anger in them had her shutting up in shock. He’d never given her that kind of look before, and she knew provoking him at this point would only lead to him exploding. She could practically feel it in his vibrating body.
Besides, they had bigger fish to fry—like finding that demon that dragged them here in the first place.
“Where are we?” he whispered.
“I wish I knew,” Robin replied. “I only latched on to his energy and created the only sealed portal I could. It won’t open on this side anymore.”
And it would have worked, if only she hadn’t been dragged with him. Now they were trapped here, too, and had to rely on Jake to get someone to create a portal from the other end to get them out.
If Jake even made it.
They also had a demon lurking about, and being in open space just wouldn’t do. Tugging on Simon’s arm, Robin hurriedly placed a cloaking spell around them, rendering them invisible to everyone but themselves. It surrounded them with a glow, and she did her best to keep it light so as not to waste any more of her energy.
She was exhausted—far more exhausted than she wanted, but that was expected. She’d broken too many magic rules in this mission, starting from using too much in a day, creating portals without the proper rituals and creating two portals at the same time. Any normal witch would have dropped in exhaustion on the spot, and it was amazing how she was still on her feet.
She could feel Jin’s presence—ominous, oily, and dark, except she couldn’t pinpoint where he was exactly. So they moved in unison, walking as quietly as they could without disturbing any of the rock formations.
The cave started to glow, and an energy filled the air. Soon, Robin found her magic weakening and realized the demon was doing his work in feeding off her emotions even when she was invisible. She turned to Simon, who looked grim beside her, and knew he felt it, too. He took her hand and guided her down narrow pathways, and they soon found themselves delving deeper in the cave and trying to get away from the energy.
But it followed them—or rather, it surrounded the cave with no remorse, and the glowing magic protecting them from detection started to crack bit by bit. Robin held on, sweat pouring down her back at the effort it took. Her knees threatened to shake, but she locked them in place and sat down on the smooth rock Simon guided her to, feeling the ominous energy choke her magic. It was sly.
Robin knew she wouldn’t be able to hold on for long. She used hand signals to tell Simon so, and even that took too much effort. He held both her hands and nodded his head, a silent warning for her to stop moving. Then he wrapped his arms around her, sitting beside her and keeping her steady. His warmth seeped into her, and Robin realized that she was shaking from the cold.
Silence surrounded them. Time passed. She didn’t know how long it was, but it felt like hours. Sleepiness seeped into her bones and made her pounding heart slow down, and she desperately depended on Simon to keep shaking her awake and get her magic moving.
An hour later, she realized Jin wasn’t going to come out and wasn’t going to stop feeding off her emotions. She had to do something.
Robin closed her eyes, pushing herself to do more. Her muscles strained as she pulled out more energy strands from inside her, colorful magic that flowed out bit by bit. It was nearly the last of her reserves.
She felt around, touching the energy in the air and testing it. It coated her magic and turned it dark, making her feel pain. She gritted her teeth and pushed on, opening her senses up to the cave bit by bit. It was larger than she expected, and the demonic energy was pretty much distributed evenly that there was no way she could—
A burst of energy came from her right. Robin’s eyes snapped open, and she signaled at Simon quickly…but he was faster than her. A
s if he read her mind, he cut through her cloaking spell and shifted as a blur appeared in front of them in the form of Jin, who had just been biding his time to attack.
Simon attacked first in his wolf form. He was slick and huge, with thick, dark brown fur and gray eyes filled with deadly purpose. He was a beast, and he snarled at Jin before latching on to the demon’s form and biting off a hand.
Blood spurted, but Jin remained standing. He looked angry at having his own sneak attack thwarted, and he launched himself on Simon, black nails digging into Simon’s fur. They rolled on the ground, and Robin watched them for a few seconds before gathering her courage to stand up and find an open space to attack. She only had one spell left in her—a powerful one—and she needed to do it right.
They kept at it, and fear rose in her throat when more blood spilled on the floor, not all of them from the demon. The negative energy in the air shifted, going weaker, then stronger, then weaker, keeping her emotions in turmoil and weakening Simon in the process. She watched pain flash on his face and suddenly couldn’t take it anymore. She had to do something.
She had to make her sacrifice.
Robin took a rock from the ground, coating it with her magic. Her gaze trained on the two, she waited for her chance and found it a few seconds later, where she launched the rock towards Jin’s head and sent him hurtling towards the cave wall with a crash. The impact was tenfold that of a normal rock, and she watched as Simon ran for Jin again, about to finish his life.
But Jin stood up quickly and swiped with a speed that was beyond them. One second, Simon was running and moving…the next second, he was crumpled on the floor, a lump in his own pool of blood.
She was screaming, and she didn’t realize it. She was running for them. Jin flashed his teeth and made a move in her direction, hunger in his eyes as he fed on her fear.
She blocked it. Then she called out to her last reserve and blasted it at him just as he reached her. She felt pain dig into her shoulder and knew his nails got through, and she tried to fight off his sinking, sharp teeth.
The cave shook with the force of her magic, and she felt the demon slump on her and watched his head roll to the side. She pushed his weight off and tried not to cry out as her shoulders protested, indicating either broken bones or dislocation. She crawled towards Simon’s unconscious wolf form as rocks started to shake loose from the ceiling.
Robin thought she didn’t have any energy left inside her, but she did—somehow, she did—and she called out to it once again, covering her and Simon as rocks came tumbling down on them. It cracked her protective shield but didn’t get through.
It finally crushed Jin to his death.
Magic seeped out of her and into Simon, instinctively looking for muscles and bones to mend. Wounds to close. The cave kept shaking before eventually going still, and finally, finally, Robin let her magic go, no longer able to hold it.
Dizziness came and took her, and she closed her eyes and floated along with it. Then darkness was there, singing her a lullaby.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Simon woke up to the sensation of every one of his muscles straining in pain, and he gritted his teeth to ride out the first wave. When he got through it, he did the exercise he often did when he knew moving too quickly would be the death of him: he took inventory of his limbs one by one, trying to determine which one was safe to move and which one needed help immediately.
To his surprise, all of his limbs were working despite the pain, indicating that he hadn’t broken anything. His mind shifted enough to let the memory of what happened before he became unconscious come through, and they bombarded his brain with horrible images.
Jin.
Robin.
In an instant, he was sitting up and looking around, shocked to find that the area of the cave he’d been lying on was now shattered to pieces. Rocks and debris were scattered everywhere, indicating a force similar to an earthquake had passed here.
Robin was lying beside him, unconscious.
Panic hit him at the sight, along with a fear that coated his throat and had his heart stopping for a full three seconds. Then he was kneeling before her, the fear increasing when he turned her around and found her unmoving at all, her eyes closed and her pallor gray. He moved his hand to her wrist—
Relief flowed through him when he felt her pulse, faint but steady.
He looked around again, trying to find Jin. The demon was gone, and the energy he felt in the air earlier had grown faint. But it was still there. He didn’t know what that meant, but he wasn’t sticking around to find out.
Simon stood up, his muscles protesting at the movement. He ignored it and kept moving, bending down to place his arms below her. He lifted her up, realizing how light and soft she was.
And how cold.
He wasn’t going to dwell on that now. Simon carried her away from the messy cave area and tried to find a safer one for the two of them.
Robin didn’t wake up, and by the time an hour passed, he was beside himself and trying not to scream in frustration. Her pulse and breathing were still steady, but the worry never eased. To distract himself, Simon rounded the cave a few more times, meeting no threat and deducing that his first prediction was right: Robin had killed Jin, then Robin had healed him with whatever strength she had left.
It only made him more frustrated and helpless because he wasn’t able to do anything. But he pushed those emotions down, knowing they weren’t going to help in this situation. When he was certain they were alone, he went back for Robin and used her cloak as makeshift pants for him. Then he used his body to keep her warm when she shivered, wishing he could provide fire or something more substantial.
By the second hour, her breathing steadily got stronger, and her wounds started to close with her magic. There was water dripping down from the ceiling just a few meters away from them, with no particular source. Simon used it to clean the blood off of her until she looked decent, then lay down beside her and pulled her in his warmth. Sleepiness took over, and he closed his eyes, intending to just take a nap.
His eyes snapped open later when he heard movement, and Simon sat up in a flash, still disoriented. He regained his senses soon enough to discover Robin stirring on the ground and rolling around to face him, her eyes still closed. He got some more water and placed it near her mouth. She drank it in tiny sips, then sighed and went back to a deep sleep.
Simon soothed her as best as he could. When she began growing warmer, he folded away some parts of her clothing. Then he just sat there and hoped to hell they’d get help soon.
And he hoped Robin would wake up soon, too.
*****
She woke up after three hours, shaking him awake with worry in her voice. He straightened immediately, taking her in and watching her widened green eyes staring at him as if trying to drink him in. Something in his heart leaped, and Simon savored it before shaking his head and crawling over to her right away. For some reason, the distance between them had grown when they were asleep. He crossed it quickly and placed his palm on her throat, startling her. But she didn’t move.
“You feel okay,” he assessed. “Are you in any pain?”
Robin shook her head, her gaze drifting all over his body. It was a checkup, he knew, but it felt like a caress all the same. Something stirred in his belly, and he tried to ignore it.
“No. How are you?” she asked softly.
Her voice was tired—and raspy. The stirring intensified.
“I’ve never been better. Thanks to you,” he muttered. “Don’t waste your magic on me next time, you hear me?”
Emotion clouded up her usually calm eyes. “I thought you were dead,” she murmured, her hand gripping his wrist and slowly taking it away from her throat. “I can’t have you dead.”
“Why?”
She shook her head, and her stance became stubborn. “I just can’t.”
“Why?” he insisted, his hands going back to her—this time, they rested on her elbows, bringing he
r closer. He was heavily aware he wasn’t being reasonable here, but for some reason, he couldn’t stop touching her.
It was inappropriate. It was highly uncalled for, especially when she needed a friend to comfort her, not someone who would just…touch her without consent.
“Because I care about you,” she confessed, reluctance and honesty warring in her voice. “I care about you more than I should, and you dying is the most awful thing I can ever think of…the worst thing to ever happen.”
“That’s how I felt when I woke up and saw you lying unconscious on the floor,” he admitted, his hands running down her wrist—feeling her pulse point jump as he brushed his thumb against it. “Don’t scare me like that again.”
“I won’t,” she promised, leaning closer.
He was pretty sure she meant to check on his wounds, but he couldn’t help himself. He leaned closer until their faces where inches way. He watched her pupils dilate, the green darkening as he slid his hand from her wrist up to the side of her neck, touching her jaw and her ear.
Then he pulled her in and kissed her.
It took over him right away—intoxicating, sensual, with an underlying sweetness that was absolutely irresistible. He savored her taste and drank her in, thirsty for her in a way he’d never even been thirsty for water. Need rose up inside him, but he did his best not to press his body against her and keep things at a minimal.
Her breath caught in her throat, and he tasted the sound and reveled in it. He was selfish for doing this, but Simon had rarely been selfish all his life, and he didn’t want to let this moment pass—especially now that they both almost died. Her hands came up near his chest, either to push him away or pull him close. He stopped the movement, knowing any slight touch would snap the threads of his control.
He felt drunk on her, and he wanted more—so much more that he was afraid he was going to break her if he was done. Simon had women before, and he often indulged in sexual escapades that would make one’s eyes widen. He never ever failed to make those women scream out in pleasure before he took his own.
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