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

Now he understood why she had lost her mind.

“Mercy,” he whispered. “Mercy, no more crying please.”

“It was me,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “I did this. I took so much life, and I can’t find my way back.”

Sparks sizzled on her shoulders. One landed on his beard, and Jasper had to pull away from her to snuff it out.

Mercy fell away from him, catching herself on her elbows and burying her hands in the ash.

“Gone,” she muttered. “Gone forever and gone.”

He didn’t know how to help her. He didn’t know how to ease her suffering, and nor was he certain that she should be eased. There was so much to rebuild because of her.

He knew it wasn’t a fair thought. But, looking around them, he understood why she had been locked away. A creature with power such as this had to be controlled.

She shifted to look at him, and he watched all humanity drain out of her gaze. The thing that looked back at him was red-eyed and disturbingly cold.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked him.

“No.”

Her fingers convulsed. “In my dreams, everything burns.” She cocked her head to the side in a birdlike manner, her eyes scanning the area. She did not look at Jasper again.

Worried, he reached forward and guided her face towards him. “You are Mercy.”

“I am mercy,” she agreed. “I am destruction. I am ruin. I am power.”

“No. No, you are my Mercy. My woman, not a Phoenix. Not yet.”

That seemed to confuse the creature. She turned away again, her skin boiling and peeling away to reveal the dark, cooled magma beneath.

Bluebell battered against his skull. “Let me help.”

“Not now,” he grumbled as he tried to think of some way to stop this from happening.

“Let me help! I can help!”

She was so frantic that Jasper relented, allowing her control over his arms.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. The battle was nearly over. He had almost nothing left to give.

“I’m going to make things grow.”

“We can’t do that.”

“I can.”

Jasper felt the strangest suction from his center, almost as though someone was pulling a thread through his belly button. He swayed, head spinning, but his arms remained steady.

He watched his palms press into the ash, and again, dizziness skewed his vision. From between his fingers a small green stem unfurled, growing from the ground and blooming before his eyes.

Jasper was pushed aside in his own mind as Bluebell took full control. The blue glow of his eyes reflected on Mercy’s tarred skin.

“See?” Bluebell said through his lips. “Not everything you have done is bad.”

Mercy moaned.

“This plant never would have grown here before you came. Now it stretches its roots and opens its leaves to gather light. You made this possible. From the ruin of a forest fire, a stronger forest grows.”

Bluebell faded back into his mind, and Mercy looked up at him. The color of her eyes swirled in a kaleidoscope that finally landed on the ombre he so loved.

“I’m losing my mind,” Mercy firmly said. “I always knew it would happen, but I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

“You’re not losing your mind.”

“It’s my only way to survive this, Jasper.” She pressed a hand against his cheek. “I can’t live with this. I can’t live knowing that my fears were correct. That I know myself well enough to understand that a monster lives inside me. Insanity is safer than this reality.”

“You are not a monster.”

“You can’t tell me that. Not when you look around and see all that I have done.”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. He couldn’t. She had taken from this city and given nothing back to it.

Mercy seemed to recognize the thoughts that danced behind his eyes. “I am a brutal woman, Jasper. And you have to let me go.”

“You are a steel blade. Sharp and deadly to all. But when wielded by the right person, I believe you would be an advocate for good.”

Bluebell thundered forward in his mind to say her last piece. “You are not destruction and ruin. You are new life and birth.”

Mercy shook her head at them. “Your unfailing belief in me will be your undoing.”

“Let me be your master.” Despite the ground digging into his knees painfully, despite the greasy ash under his palms, Jasper spoke the words with vigor.

“I will take no man for a master.”

“I promise you now, I will not ask you to do anything without first convening with you. You will not be my sword; you will be my equal. I love you.” The words stuck in this throat, until he could say them again. Stronger. Louder. “I love you. I love everything about you, including the dangerous side of you. I watched your descent. Now let me help you rise. A Phoenix is always meant to ascend.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” she said. “A master is forever or until they die.”

“Then forever it is.”

“You will be old,” tears shone in her eyes, “and I will be young. I will never change. I will never feel the things you feel. You will be responsible for me. My pain will be your pain.”

He smiled at her. “Then so be it. Did you not hear me before?”

She expelled all the air from her lungs in a long, wheezing breath, only to suck in more a moment later. The tension in her body visibly eased. Finally, she reached out for him.

Her hands clutched his biceps. “It’s too early to love me.”

“We’ve been through enough together for me to know.”

“You really love me?”

“Enough to let a woman take control over my body and make a plant grow. Which I didn’t know I could do.”

Mercy snorted. “You can’t. Bluebell can.”

“She appreciates the credit.” He brushed a tear from her cheek. “Are you putting yourself back together yet?”

She didn’t have to say the words back, even though it made his heart ache. Mercy wasn’t like him; he understood that. And she had told him long before that Phoenixes didn’t experience emotions the way humans did. Perhaps