Chapter 23

CHAPTER23

The darkness of the room is it’s own realm. And in this realm, Ashen is a different man. The power and shadows and decades of dark history are still there. But he seems unguarded. Though there are moments where he fights himself to keep hold of his defenses, he lets them down, one bridge at a time.

When the door closes behind him and the world is shut away, Ashen spends a long moment just watching me. I must look like the wreck that I feel like on the inside. Like a wick that’s almost burned out. But he watches me like he’s found something wild and rare and precious. Looking at myself reflected in his eyes, I don’t feel so damaged. I feel like what I have been for a long time. Unique.

The Reaper moves toward me with slow steps. Maybe he expects me to back away the nearer he comes. I guess I have done that a lot lately. But this time, I stay firmly rooted in place.

When he stops in front of me, Ashen’s eyes alight with a gentle fire. It doesn’t blaze the way it often does. It doesn’t turn black like when he’s enraged. It’s like a flame that’s been burning a long time, lapping at the air with gentle strokes.

Ashen’s hands come to my face and I feel the relief in his touch. I lean a little into his palm and close my eyes. It’s such a simple thing, a touch, but just as vital as air or water. My brain tries to shout at me to not give in, but in the end it’s not Ashen it surrenders to. It’s my own wounded heart, steeped in poison, that wins the war. It has a will to survive that even reason can’t contain.

“Ki murangen, naga ekimmu,” he whispers. I love you, my vampire. His breath floods my skin with tingling heat. His lips press to mine. I feel his words in his touch and I know he means them. I know it, beyond hope or faith. Maybe there are other things he wants that matter as much as I do, I can’t be sure. But his love, whether made of copper or glass, it’s real.

The kiss deepens and Ashen grasps the hem of my sweater, dragging it up my body and letting his fingers trace my skin. I break away and he lifts it over my head. My hands grip his arms as he reaches behind my back and unclasps my bra. He pulls the straps down slowly, first one shoulder, then the other, until it falls from my arms and drops to the floor.

I undo the buttons of Ashen’s shirt as our tongues sweep and explore one another’s. His hands touch every bit of exposed skin he can. They trace the lines of my ribs and the slope of my shoulders. They follow the foothills of my spine. They sweep across my breasts and trace slow circles around my tight nipples. When the last button is released, I push Ashen’s shirt from his shoulders and press my touch into every muscle as the fabric falls from his skin.

Ashen breaks away to trace his lips down my neck, kisses and little bites following my collarbone. He carves a path downward until he pulls my breast into his mouth, sucking hard on my flesh. My fingers lace into the soft, short hair at the back of his head and I trace his scalp with my nails. His moan echoes through the cavern of my chest as he circles my nipple with his tongue. When he moves to the other side, he drops to one knee and pulls my body into him, his hands splayed across the cool skin of my back.

With his palms still pressed across my spine, Ashen kisses his way to the center of my chest, then starts a slow path down the center of my body. He follows the line that traces down my stomach. He kisses my belly button as he unzips my jeans and pulls them down. He slows as he goes lower and then stops at the soft ridge of flesh just above the line of my panties.

And then he goes preternaturally still.

The tempo of his thumping heart picks up speed. His shoulders feel hot beneath my hands. Smoke coats the floor as the whole world seems to still.

Ashen presses his forehead to my stomach. When he wraps his arms across the back of my legs and holds me close, his grip hardens like hot stone.

“Reaper?..”

His grip tightens. Smoke erupts behind him like a pyroclastic cloud. Sparks crackle within the billowing shadows.

Something’s not right.

“Ashen?..”

Ashen inhales slowly, and exhales even slower. It’s as though he’s trying to pull the demon back beneath the surface of the man. “I am so sorry, my Lu. I am.” His voice is so thin and strained. I’ve never heard him like this.

I know there’s a lot to be sorry for. Part of me still wants to find a place to put all my blame for everything I’ve suffered, and he’s an easy target. But maybe not everything was his fault. Sometimes, I wonder if just knowing one another is all it took to suck us both into a whirlpool of scalding water. It was never going to be enough to swim for our lives. We were both fated to burn.

“For what?”

Ashen doesn’t answer me with words. He just grips me tighter, pressing his forehead to my flesh. I smell hints of sulfur and salt. A note of sour citrus. These are fear, and rage. This is sorrow.

He stays locked to me for a long, immobile moment. His breathing is off. His body is too hot, his grip too tight. I don’t know what to make of him. He doesn’t let up. And then something wet glides down my skin. Oh my God. “Ashen?”

I lay my hands on his face and sweep my thumbs beneath his eyes, streaking a hot tear across his cheek. “Ashen.”

I push him away enough that I can drop to my knees and hold his face between my palms. He keeps his gaze trained on the shadows beneath us. “What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

Ashen shakes his head.

“Don’t hide from me now,” I whisper. “Look at me.”

He drags his gaze from the floor and his glassy eyes meet mine. The heartbreak in their depths is the kind of grief that never lets go.

“Talk to me, Ashen.”

“You said Gallus…” Ashen takes a strained breath as rage surges against the sorrow and sparks rain across the floor. “You said he cut you open. To see if you could carry a child.”

The memory of that torture is as multifaceted as light fracturing in a prism. The pain of the scalpel. The tang of my blood in the air, burning my own throat with hunger. The feeling of every layer as it was stripped away. Not just skin and muscle and organs, but time and hope and dreams that had long abandoned me. The pain of memory, of how desperately I wanted a child in my early years that I tried everything, everything to force my body to comply. There was the pain of epiphany, that maybe if they were bothering to look, something might have changed. And then the desperate hope that nothing had.

I swallow a thick knot that tightens in my throat. “Yes.”

“You said they stole. Stole from you,” Ashen says, his rage so burning hot that I almost have to lift my palms from his skin.

I nod as a tear slips from the corner of my eye. I feel like there’s not enough air in the room. I can barely manage a single word, but it finally comes in a stretched whisper. “Yes.”

“Stole what, Lu? Were you pregnant?”

I shake my head. It’s with a deep sense of both gratitude and fury to the fates when I tell him, “No, I was not pregnant.”

Maybe it was a chance that might have been, if I’m changing in the most fundamental ways. The curse all vampires suffer, to never conceive, not even a half-breed. Maybe it could have been lifted. But the Shadow Realm stole even that chance from me.

“I never will be pregnant, even if I become something new. Gallus and Ember…”

My chest feels tight and my tongue too thick. Pulsing heartbeats echo in my ears. A line of sweat beads across my hairline. Ashen looks at me with fear in his eyes, real fear, either for what I’ve already told him or what I’ve left unsaid. I swallow and try again.

“They took… they stole from me...”

ChristI just can’t do it. I feel like I’ve been poisoned by memory and imagination. It’s like a film that coats everything you see, that terrible moment when fears you never even knew you had suddenly unspool before you. Terror that makes your stomach twist until you feel the sickness climb your throat. Your mind throws images at you of what could have been. You see yourself in the warmth of the summer sun, cradling your dream in your arms, and then you watch them rip it away.

I can only shake my head. My gaze drifts into the dark recesses of the room. Ashen lets out a long, shuddering breath. He bends his head. Wings of smoke unfurl to become curtains of sparks and shadow, a beautiful shroud that curls around us. They ripple like a funeral veil drifting in the wind. It’s sorrowful. Haunting.

“I’m sorry, Lu. I hadn’t realized until this moment it could be a possibility, not until I kissed your flesh and remembered your words. All the timing suddenly lined up and came together in a terrible nightmare, as though what you endured was not already more than anyone should ever bear.”

Ashen drags a hand through his hair. His shoulders fall. For the first time, he looks like a man I could break. But I can see he’s already as shattered as me. For as many times lately as I’ve wished I could crush him into dust, I find I don’t want to. I don’t want to fix him either. I just want to exist with someone that knows what this feels like.

Ashen takes one of my hands, turning it over in his palm to trace the lines with his thumb. “What you’re going through… I endured a similar loss once, long ago.”

“You had a child?”

There’s a long beat of silence as the thick smoke drifts around us, heavy as a blanket. “Almost.”

The bones of my chest feel like they’ve caved in. There’s bitterness and sorrow and guilt in the air between us, but a kind of shared grief that ties us together. “I’m so sorry, Ashen. So very sorry.”

Some of those layers of time that accumulate like thick sediment in Ashen’s eyes seem scraped away when he looks at me. And not just at me, but into me, right into my soul like he can see its shape and color. His grip tightens around my hand. “I know I have not given you reason to trust in my promises, my Lu. But I swear to you, I swear, I will do everything in my power to give you your vengeance. If you want to burn every realm, I will hand you the match and stand with you until the last cinders fall. I will pay for this promise with my life if I have to.”

I try to smile but it doesn’t feel quite right in my skin. “That’s kind of a genius plan. If I kill off all the realms, you’ll be the only one left to love.”

“It does have some upsides, as long as you spare me.”

There’s a long and silent moment before we pull one another into an embrace. My body drinks in his warmth. His anger cools beneath my skin. I watch over Ashen’s shoulder as I trail my fingers through the smoke billowing from his back. Glittering sparks follow my hand and Ashen holds me tighter, as though there’s some relief in the touch. “Take us away,” I whisper as his fingertips follow the ridges of my spine. “Make us forget. Close out the rest of the world until there’s no past and future, just us in this room. Just for one night.”

We sway gently, two trees whose trunks have twined together in decades of weathered storms. “All right, my vampire,” he says. When the moment seems ready, Ashen raises us both from our knees. His wings still curl around us in a thick black fog, as though the realms have long disappeared and we stand in our own dimension. “But I cannot promise that one night will be enough.”

And when Ashen sweeps me up in his arms and I twine my legs across his back, the gentle spray of sparks raining down my skin, I know he’s right. One night won’t be enough. When he lays me on the bed and kisses and strokes every inch of my body, whispering adorations in ancient languages, I know a week trapped in this room wouldn’t be enough. When he drags my panties down my legs and kisses his way back to my core to feast on me, and the world and time drifts away as I come apart, I know that a year trapped here would be far too little. And when he pushes into me, looking into my eyes with unguarded warmth as my body welcomes his inside, I know what he’s already figured out. There will never be enough time without the world.