Vlad stopped me by catching my hand when I was about to cut my palm to try again. “What’s wrong?”

“I must be tired,” I muttered. “Or maybe, I maxed out my abilities before because I can’t seem to reach him—hey!”

I tried to snatch my hand back as his suddenly caught fire. He held on, his mouth tightening when a fear-driven current surged into him in response. I hadn’t thought I’d been affected by what had happened, but apparently, I was now afraid of fire. How ironic, considering who I was married to—

“I’m not burning,” I said in surprise, feeling no pain as the flames caressed my skin instead of scorching it. “Why?”

“I must have coated you in my aura when I was dousing the flames on you. I didn’t intend to do it, but it’s not as if I were thinking clearly at the time.”

“Fuck,” I said with feeling.

Now I wasn’t only rendered fireproof; I was also rendered psychically impotent! “You mean we’re stuck with hoping nothing’s changed with Mircea’s location?”

Then I felt instantly guilty for being so vehement over my dismay. “I mean, it’s not your fault, of course—”

“Stop worrying about me,” he cut me off, and his eyes flashed green. “I will carry pain over tonight whether you wish me to or not. Yet it will not break me, Leila, so you need not walk on eggshells around the topic. I am stronger than what I feel, and more than that, it is my pain. Don’t try to protect me from it.”

“I can’t do that,” I said with naked frustration. “I understand what you’re saying. I do, and you’re right. You’re not some fragile little thing that needs coddling, but just like you couldn’t stop yourself from overreacting and coating me in your aura before, I can’t see you in pain and not try to ease it. It doesn’t mean that I think you’re less of a badass vampire or even less of a man. It means that I love you.”

He let out a rough sound even as he kissed me. “Even if I hadn’t known that before,” he said against my lips, “I would certainly know it after tonight.”

When his mouth finally left mine, he pulled away so he could stare into my eyes. He didn’t speak, but he dropped his shields, and his naked, unguarded emotions flooded into me. At once, I felt drowned by his love, scalded by his regret, humbled by his pride, and overwhelmed by his determination to keep me safe at any cost. Those emotions grew until tears began to trickle down my cheeks, and I held his face while I tried to find the right words to tell him that I loved him in the same recklessly fierce way.

“I wish you could feel me like I feel you,” I whispered, finally giving up because words would never be adequate to convey what he meant to me. “Then you’d know I would go through tonight all over again, a thousand times if I had to, if it meant being in your arms like this.”

The faintest smile curled his mouth and deeper, richer swaths of emotions began sliding through mine. “I don’t need to feel you to know it, Leila,” he murmured, leaning forward until his forehead touched mine. “Every day, I see the truth of it in your eyes.”

Chapter 42

I should have guessed that there was more to the ramshackle farmhouse than appearances first suggested. Yes, the exterior frame looked held together by frozen termites and I wouldn’t dare walk on the second floor for fear of falling through the ceiling. But, as I had found out earlier, it had a fully furnished, two-bedroom, very stocked basement. Even better, the frozen ground all around it acted as a natural, reinforced barrier.

Before they began dealing with the still-unconscious necromancer, all the guys took off the feminine clubbing outfits they were wearing and put on clothes that protected against the frozen atmosphere. I was waiting to change until I took a shower, but first, I wanted to make sure I didn’t need to whip out the mirror to re-up on the spell. I wasn’t sure if the instructions Leotie had left me were set with the same six-hour time frame that she’d used to keep all of us trapped in the mirror spell.

After changing, Vlad spent about five minutes texting who I assumed was Mencheres since who else would he urgently need to talk with right now? Finally, we carried the necromancer down into the basement’s cellar since that room was surrounded on all sides with the hard, packed earth.

I expected the chains that Vlad and Maximus began to restrain the necromancer with, but I was surprised when Vlad began to melt some silver knives he’d also brought down here with him.

“Why are you doing that?”

“So I can do this,” he replied, and wedged the necromancer’s mouth open. Then he poured the now-liquidized silver down the vampire’s throat.

I couldn’t stop my wince as I imagined how much it would hurt to have a belly full of slowly-hardening silver. If the spell wasn’t still rendering the vampire into a comatose state, he’d be going nuts right now. As it was, he shuddered, his body registering the pain even if his mind was numbed to it.

Then Vlad heated up another handful of silver knives. He didn’t melt them into liquid this time, but left their pointy tips intact while molding their handles and over half their blades into something that looked like a grisly version of one of the snowballs he’d made today. Once the spherelike mass had hardened, he shoved it into the necromancer’s mouth, where the whole brutal bundle now doubled as a spiked silver ball gag.

“Now we won’t have to concern ourselves with him attempting any spells once he wakes up,” Vlad said.