Read Online Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) by Marcella Burnard - Free Book Online Page A

shivered.
    Murmur’s nemesis. The gorgeous, perfect angel, golden curls, sculpted features, snow-white robes, wings to match, and the foulest, most horrifying heart she’d ever encountered. He’d murdered Murmur’s infant son.
    It shook her to discover something that evil had something mundane as a name.
    “How? He got sucked through the portal back to your world,” she said. She hated the tremor in her voice. “I closed the door behind him. How could he possibly?”
    “The portal.”
    “I closed it.”
    “You didn’t lock it. He’s reaching through,” he said. “Seeking a means to pry it open again.”
    “To come after us.”
    “Yes.”
    No accusation of arrogance for thinking Uriel counted her enough of a threat to pursue. No assurance that the monster would leave her alone in favor of tormenting Murmur.
    “What now?” Isa asked.
    “The portal must be sealed.”
    She reeled. She’d thought they were done. That she’d sacrificed her life for the purpose of protecting her world and Murmur’s all at the same time. Except that, apparently, she hadn’t.
    “The spell Daniel and Uriel were performing. It broke the seal and . . .” he began.
    “How do we lock it?” She. How did
she
lock it?
    Fabric rustled and his silhouette grew taller at the grim note in her voice. “Blood. And life.”
    Isa clenched her fists. “A sacrifice.”
    “A sacrifice.”
    He didn’t have to say it.
    She heard it in the vulture of silence circling the room.
    Him.
    Or her.
    “Why us?”
    “We were the key that unlocked the door.”
    She shook her head. “Daniel and Uriel were.”
    “Their lives threw the portal wide, yes, but it was our sundering that unlocked it.”
    Breath stabbed into her chest. “Locking the portal will cut off Uriel’s access to this world?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is that enough for you?”
    Silence stretched long and sticky tendrils in the dim room. Finally, he shifted. “Trapping Uriel on that side, when he wants to be here, will not be as good as killing him. But it will be vengeance enough.”
    She nodded. Exiling Uriel on his side of the door would strand him. He’d never be the commander in the hell he wanted to make of this world. Sounded good to her.
    “Better, maybe,” she said. Was a lifetime of frustrated ambition sufficient punishment? Only one problem.
    “I won’t sacrifice you,” she said.
    Murmur squared Daniel’s shoulders. “Then you give me no choice. I will sacrifice you.”

Chapter Five
    “You threatening my life? Now everything’s back to normal,” Isa said.
    Murmur snorted and stroked the back of her hand.
    “Teach me how to do what you said about shunting power away from someone overloading on magic,” she said.
    “How do you have the power you do and not know what to do with it?”
    “Everything you’ve shown me,” she said, bristling, “is supposed to be impossible in this world.”
    “Just as fighting a Magic Eater is impossible in mine?” he said, his voice muted as he considered.
    She nodded. Not that he could see in the dark. “Of course. We’re each of us bound by our expectations and what we assume to be true.”
Rule eight?
    A single tap sounded on the door, startling her. The containment lock clicked.
    “I have to go,” he said.
    “I—” Words piled up in her throat, choking her silent. So much she couldn’t say.
I need you. Don’t leave me. Take me with you.
Prisons. All of them. She’d helped him achieve freedom. She refused to be the one to steal it from him again.
    She cleared cold weight out of her throat. “Thank you. I would have spent days in pain waiting for the drugs to clear my system.”
    “I know,” he said, moving to the door. “Your pain was mine.”
    She frowned. “What?”
    He shrugged, the motion visible against the light filtering through the curtain on the door. “The price of attaining freedom through you.”
    He slid the door open, slipped through the opening, and then closed it behind him.
    A chill sliced