Blue Blood (Series of Blood Book 3) by Emma Hamm (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

“He wouldn’t hurt me! It’s me! It’s him! It’s…Jasper.” Lyra turned towards him. She stood on the other side of the shield and stared up at him. “What is going on?”

“She’s important to me.” He looked down to meet her gaze. Lyra would understand. She had to see the truth in his eyes. Mercy was more than just a piece of a puzzle to him. She had become much more important than that.

She squinted at him, shook her head, and furrowed her brow. “Jasper, you’ve only been gone for a little while. I know that what happened between us was disappointing, but this is just a rebound. You’re too attached for such a small amount of time—”

“Now this is where I get to be the adult,” he growled. “When you’re put in a life or death situation with someone else, you get close pretty quick. And before you ask, no, I don’t know her favorite color. I don’t know what her parents names are, and she doesn’t either. There’s something wild and untamed in her that calls to me.”

“That’s called infatuation, Jasper.”

“I think there’s a different name for it that you might not be able to understand.”

Lyra’s expression twisted in shock. “Excuse me? Are you trying to say that I’m not in love with Wolfgang? He’s the only person I would never question my feelings for, you overgrown lunk of—”

“This isn’t your kind of love,” he interrupted. “What is between Mercy and I isn’t fairytales and happy endings. She is fire and ruin. When I’m with her, I can feel myself burning. She will be my downfall, and I will willingly walk into that fire someday to be consumed by it.”

“That sounds like addiction.”

“That’s one way to put it.” He ran his hand over his beard. “Look, everything’s twisted. She isn’t human, but then again, neither are we. Wings sprouted from my back when I was five, and I hear voices in my head! She can survive being burned alive and doesn’t have a heart. So why should we be constrained to human ideals of love and what is normal?

“I don’t want that,” Jasper continued. “I want her. I want the wild abandon. I want enchanted forests and dark nights lit only by the fire in her eyes and the glowing light between her ribs. I don’t want the human. I want the Phoenix.”

Lyra stared as though she didn’t recognize him. Her eyes widened with each word, and she seemed to fade before him. Jasper found that he didn’t want to see a woman with dark hair and dark eyes. He wanted the pillar of light that had become part of him.

“I just don’t understand,” Lyra finally said. The shield between them melted, and she stepped closer. “I think you’ve been through a lot. I think you might need to clean up, clear your head, and put yourself back into the right frame of mind.”

“I need to find her.”

“And we will. But right now, we need to get ready. Running into a battle half-cocked is only going to hurt us and her. You used to know that.”

He did. He used to know all the pieces of battle that made both him and Lyra a machine while together. No one had been able to break through their walls when they stood side by side. They hadn’t needed strong magic. All they had needed was each other and trust.

Somehow, that had disappeared. All of it. Now he was thinking like Mercy. He was all anger and no logical thinking.

That scared him.

He stumbled back a step, then another, until he found himself at the door. He would clean up. He would put on his own clothing and let warm water cool his anger.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Don’t leave without me.”

The others remained staring at the door long after he vacated it. There was a lingering tension in the room.

Finally, Wren shook her head. “Do you think he’s really going to his room? Or is he teleporting somewhere stupid, and we’re about to lose both of them?”

“I think he’s really going to get himself together,” Lyra replied.

“Are you sure?”

Lyra shook her head. She watched the door with furrowed brows. “Not really. I’ve never seen him like that before.”

“Do you think there is something he didn’t tell us?” Wolfgang’s deep voice grated. “He certainly doesn’t seem like the man I remember. There’s something else there. Desperation maybe.”

“He’s never really been in love before,” Lyra told him.

“He was in love with you.”

“He thought he was,” she corrected. “I was always worried it would be like this. Fairies are highly possessive. There was only the smallest amount of obsession when it came to me, so I thought maybe he would be logical enough to tamp down that tendency.”

Burke squeezed Wren closer to him. The foot he had propped up on his knee began to bounce. “Jasper’s always had a good head on his shoulders. Let’s just say he’s been through a lot recently, and he needs some time to recover.”

“I don’t think it’s that.” Lyra said. “I wish it were. That would be easier.”

In their silence, they did not notice the small shake as Wren’s creature took control over her body. The purple-haired woman’s eyes fell back in her head, and their whites focused on each person in the room.

“Sometimes talking to a Fairy can help,” Wren chirped.

Usually, when Wren’s creature took control, the voice was deep, sometimes echoing with thousands of voices. This time, it was only one. A high pitched, birdlike voice.

Lyra turned her intense gaze towards Wren. “And you are?”

“Marigold.”

“You’re a Fairy?”

Wren nodded. “I was a Fairy. I am now part of E.”

“And you think you can help?”

“It’s always good to talk to another of the same kind. Sometimes it helps to gain a little perspective.”

Lyra licked her lips. “All right then. What’s your perspective to share?”

“Fairies are possessive; that is correct. But some more so than others. Your friend doesn’t have a very nice type of Fairy inside