HER SWEETEST DOWNFALL (Paranormal Romance / Fantasy Novella) (Forever Girl Series - a Journal) Read Online Free PDF Page B

attraction . . . much less fight it?
    She hadn’t even considered forgiveness. 
    “It’s easier this way,” she said finally. 
    She closed her eyes to the silence for a long time, her mind overwhelmed. Her thoughts until now were to get home. Which was where, exactly? Lady Karina’s estate? Paxton? Britain? Did she still want to return? No, she decided, she did not. Nor did she want to do what the Universe had called her to do. What she wanted was to stay here, in this in-between, in this sensation of falling with Ethan, in these moments where she felt breathless and her heart fluttered in her chest.
    Behind her, Ethan was mumbling to himself, and she strained to hear the words of the familiar cadence.
    “ . . . winter bound her veins; so grows both stream and source of price, that lately fettered were with ice. So naked trees . . . ”
    “ . . . get crisped ‘eads,” Ophelia said, still focused on the meal preparation. “And colored coats the roughest meads.”
    Ethan had gone silent, and Ophelia turned toward him. 
    “And all that vigor, youth, and spright . . . ” she said, and as she continued, he joined in, “ . . . that are but looked on by his light.”
    Their gaze lingered on one another, Ethan’s chest void of the movement that comes with breathing. A watery-glaze filmed his deep brown eyes, and the fire shimmered against the golden hues. 
    At last, he released the air from his lungs and shook his head. “You are a maid, and yet you recite Benjamin Johnson as though you were a scholar.”
    “I am more than what defines me,” she said. “Aren’t we all?”
    “Not all of us. Not me.”
    Ophelia took the prepared plate of food for them to share and lowered herself to Ethan’s side by the fire. “I don’t believe that one bit.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    Ophelia placed her hand on his. “We are all more, when we allow ourselves to be.”
    Ethan pulled his hand back and indicated the serpent’s mark on Ophelia’s neck. “How is the pain?”
    She sighed. How foolish she had been to expect this man to open up to her. “The sting is returning.”
    He nudged the dish from last night toward her. “There’s not much left.”
    With one finger, she tugged the dish closer. A thin film of red remained at the bottom of the dish. “What is it?”
     “Cruor blood,” he said. “To ease the sting completely, that is the blood you need flowing through your own veins.”
    “And for ye?” she asked. “It’d been the blood of the Ankou?”
    “For me it had been nothing. I did not resist my calling.”
    “Whose blood is this?”
    “Don’t let it concern you.”
    Ophelia remained firmly still. “Tell me.”
    Ethan let out of a heavy breath. “The rule of the hunter is to never waste your kill. It’s not a sport. It’s a necessity.”
    Ophelia crossed her arms and leveled her gaze at him. “So ye just killed some man, then? Ethan—”
    “Some man ?” His brow furrowed, and his expression grew dark. “You know as well as I what the Cruor are. I would hardly call him a man. I did what I had to do. Someday, so will you.”
    So Ophelia was to become something seen as less than human? She closed her eyes for a moment, her thoughts swimming through her options. “If I were to do this—and I’m not saying I will—what would I need to do?”
    The start of a smile played at the corner of his mouth. “You will do it. You know you must, and more than that, I believe you want to.”
    She scowled at his amusement. “Why would I want to?”
    “To honor your mother. This would be your chance to save many of her kind.”
    “But kill how many ‘umans in the process? ‘ow is that any better?”
    “There are other ways to hunt, if that is all that holds you back.”
    No, it wasn’t all that held her back. Ethan wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. She could hunt deer or some other wildlife. It’s not as though she’d never hunted before. But to