But the air was empty.
And Charlotte was gone and something more. The bond between them had been severed. He was free, just as he needed to be free.
Yet as he hung in the air, he’d never felt more bound up in his entire life.
He shouted again and began to fly out over Maris Sol, away from land, bellowing his rage, moving faster and faster. He kept flying. Minutes passed, then an hour.
He began to grow weary, his recently acquired power fading fast because Charlotte was gone. His blood rose belonged to him no more.
When he began making his way back to land, his stomach started cramping like before.
His blood starvation had returned.
By the time he had a sense of just how many miles he’d covered and that he now struggled to make it back to land, he thought it possible he might not make it.
But as he moved slower and slower, his mind grew calm and he could finally think. Having Charlotte wrested from his arms had broken his fury wide open. He’d screamed his rage at what had happened to him and that for reasons he would never understand, he couldn’t have let it go any other way.
In turn, something old and worn out had left him, the shriveled part full of rage, shame, and guilt.
He would never know why he’d been abducted or suffered as he had, or even allowed to live. These were the questions he’d never been able to answer because, as Davido had told him, there was no answer. Life unfolded as it did, without rhyme or reason. It just happened.
His path had included the Infinity Killer, just as it had for at least a dozen boys since. And now the latest.
But tonight, his life had also been invaded by a human-fae hybrid, and she loved him.
And he loved her, that much he would fully admit to himself, but now Charlotte was gone.
Davido had taken her and intended to give her to another mastyr vampire. He might never see her again. How could he ever bear that?
He bellowed once more, shouting his rage at all he’d lost, and now Charlotte as well.
His heart felt ready to disintegrate within his chest and he lost feeling in his legs.
His mind became speckled with black spots and he lost altitude. The water grew closer and closer.
“Willem? What the fuck are you doing out here?”
He recognized Quinlan’s voice, the Mastyr of Grochaire Realm. He felt a big hand grab his arm, then he knew nothing but blackness.
***
Chapter Nine
“Were you watching us the whole time?” Charlotte stared at Davido, horrified.
He glanced at the ceiling and whistled. “I absented myself at certain moments, but yes, I’ve stuck close. I felt I had to, for your sake.”
Charlotte sat on Willem’s couch again, her latest beer half empty. Davido had stayed with her to let events play out as they needed to.
“So you really think that telling Willem he’d lost me forever will bring him around?”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his phone. He spoke quietly for a moment, then hung up. “You can relax now, Charlotte. Quinlan has him.”
“Oh, thank God.” She put a hand to her chest and tears burned her eyes. She knew that Davido had severed the bond, but she could still feel Willem, somehow, a resu
lt of her faeness, perhaps.