Chapter 10

CHAPTER10

Ediye and I arrive in the Kur where the great hall is as quiet as a tomb. Zida lies curled on the dais and raises her head as the black sphere dissolves around us. Her tongue flicks in our direction and her scales shift as her tight coils loosen, but she doesn’t leave her resting spot. She just watches as we head further into the depths of the building.

I’ve never been to this part of the Kur, but Ediye seems to know her way around the dimly lit corridors. She navigates the space with confidence, even when we pass a pair of soldiers who try not to gape at the nearly naked, rather grimy, exceedingly smelly Queen in their midst. They dart their gazes away. I guess they’ve taken Ashen’s warning to heart, judging by the flash of fear I scent on their skin as they pass.

We drift by a few rooms, one a wide throne room with tall windows overlooking the fog-covered Bay of Souls. There are a few smaller rooms that must have been offices for council members, each one emptied of everything but desks and chairs. And finally at the end of the hall, Ediye slows her quiet steps and stops at an open door, a grim look of worry crinkling the space between her brows. She glances at me with a smile that looks equal parts sorrowful and relieved, and nods toward the room.

My heart pounds at my bones as I survey the scene before me. I take a few tentative steps inside, my senses assaulted with the sights and sounds and smells of rage.

Ashen stands with his back to me a short distance away in the tall, wide space where a table rests broken against one wall and chairs are scattered around the perimeter, some shattered and others overturned. His wings cascade to the floor in thick curtains of black smoke, vibrant sparks layered in their depths. But beneath the black clouds and the falling cinders is something akin to snakeskin, the ridges of each black scale lit like orange embers twisting through wood. I’ve never seen his wings like this. I didn’t even know it was possible, and it’s both frightening and magnificent. The light within them shimmers as he moves over whatever has captured his attention, the work of his hands obscured by the thick smoke and black scales and the threads of deep amber light.

I glance at Ediye but her expression is stoic and unreadable. The sound of a tight and anguished cry draws my attention back to Ashen, and beyond him flows the desperate pulse of a heart that’s giving up.

“Bring. Me. My. Wife,” Ashen snarls.

“I don’t know where she is,” the man grits out, his voice thin and garbled as though his mouth is full of stones. A piercing cry flows from the demon in Ashen’s grasp.

“I said to bring her to me. I did not say you could talk.”

Ashen’s growl unleashes with dark and wicked satisfaction. There’s popping. Ripping. A gurgling rush. The sound of blood splattering across the floor. The distressed heart stutters. It stops. Only Ashen’s remains, his breathing quickened with exertion.

“Well,” I say. Ashen’s spine straightens as though he’s been doused with ice water. “Let me guess, Reaper. Did he spit in your butter?”

Ashen’s wings crackle as he slowly turns to face me.

The Reaper’s naked chest is spattered with blood and glistening with a sheen of sweat. His arms bear jagged scratches where enemies have tried to fight back and failed. His face has a haunted beauty, dark circles of sleepless nights framing his cognac eyes. The black flame in his pupils is rimmed with bright crimson rings. He looks every inch the demon until he takes a breath, as though he hasn’t breathed in days. The man beneath the Reaper rises to the surface as his brow furrows and his eyes take on a glassy sheen.

“Lu?..” Ashen grips a mangled body by the bloody neck. The man’s disarticulated jaw is clenched in Ashen’s other fist. It’s been ripped clean off, the tongue lolling out of the demon’s disfigured face like a grotesque purple slug.

“Wow,” I say, gesturing to the corpse he holds. It lands with a wet thud on top of another bloodied body, the teeth of the jaw smashing against the stone floor as he drops that too. There are more bodies scattered around the room, some turning to cinders, others lying in everlasting death. “You’ve been busy.”

In a few quick strides, Ashen is sweeping me up in his arms, crushing me to his burning chest as though trying to absorb me. The magic of Ediye’s spell dissolves when my mated mark touches his. As soon as it’s gone, the wave of his relief floods my chest and climbs my throat and steals my breath, strong enough to choke me. I squeeze my arms around his neck and press my face against Ashen’s skin, breathing in his scent, its usual warmth hidden beneath notes of blood and the salty musk of rage.

Ashen sets me down and grasps my face between his gory palms, kissing every inch of my skin. My eyes, the tip of my nose, my cheeks, my lips, the tears that cling to my lashes. They are all peppered with desperate little kisses until I laugh, and still there are more, and more, and more, until finally he lifts me from the floor again. He nuzzles my neck, whispering his subsiding anguish into my ear. My Lu. My Lu, my Lu. My wife. I couldn’t feel you anywhere. I searched but you were gone. Just gone. I’ve never known such endless panic. Where were you? I lost myself, Lu. It was oblivion. I was consumed by darkness without you, my Lu.

Ashen holds on and he whispers and he kisses and my tears flow in a stream that might never end, dripping down his skin. Ashen turns us around just enough that he faces Ediye over my shoulder, though he still doesn’t let me go. “You brought her back to me,” he says. His voice is barely more than a strained and gritty whisper. “Thank you, Ediye.”

Ediye doesn’t say anything. I just hear the swish of her hair as she nods. But I know her better than anyone. I know she must be trying not to cry. She hates crying in front of anyone but me.

Maybe Ashen senses it too, or maybe it’s his own emotion that he’s trying to hide, but he turns away, and it’s a long moment before he sets me down and lets me stand on my own two feet, though not without keeping his hands wrapped around my upper arms.

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and smile at Ashen, his face such a mix of pain and exhaustion and the relief that’s still stuck in my throat. “All right, Reaper?”

Ashen lets out a huff of a laugh and his answer is a sweet, soft kiss. The flame of desire is dim beneath everything else that I feel in him. Other needs are more urgent. The need to protect. The desire to be caring, and so gentle, to use those bloodied hands to nurture after meting out suffering and harm.

I run my fingers across Ashen’s mark as I open my lips and coax his tongue to meet mine. My Master of War. I feel the imbalance in him, the way his desperation must have tipped the scales and plummeted him into destruction. But there is peace and mercy and life in him too. And I know it will come back with every touch.

“You smell like the Bay of Souls,” he whispers when he pulls away.

“I went for an unexpected dip in the sea. It sucked, by way. There was an unfriendly creature that decided to drag me across the seabed for a while. I ended up in a strange underwater cavern.”

“We felt nothing from you there.”

“Likewise. I felt nothing through my mark. I tried to summon Ediye too, but nothing happened.”

“What changed? How did you get out?”

“There was some kind of door. Or a portal maybe. Something blocking me. When I figured out the…key…I guess it’s a key?.. I still couldn’t feel you, but I tried Ediye again and it worked.”

Ashen looks at me for a long moment before he sighs, resting his forehead against mine as he closes his eyes. “That’s my vampire.” Movement in the periphery captures my attention as his wings curl around us until we’re shrouded in our own private realm. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I should have been. I never should have asked you to run. I failed you,” Ashen whispers. His quiet confession enlivens his scent with something sweet, like carnations stained with the blood that still coats his hands.

“Don’t, Ashen. We both made the only choices we could with only moments to decide. I chose to run. You fought so I could get away.”

“It is not enough.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“That’s not the point, vampire.”

“It has to be. We can’t change time. And we’re all safe. That has to be the only thing that matters.”

Ashen lowers his gaze from mine and I know I haven’t changed his mind. His anger, whether it’s at others, or fate, or the man he sees when he looks in the mirror, it cuts a wound too deep for me to heal with words.

I lay my hands to his face and pull Ashen into a kiss as his wings crackle around us. The taste of his lips fills the emptiness that’s gnawed a hole into me these last days. “Can we go somewhere?” I ask when I draw back and look into his eyes. The bright red rings that encircle his irises have dimmed, just a little. “I don’t even want to talk. Just touch. Just sleep.”

Ashen nods as his wings shift, opening our sanctuary to the world. When I look toward the door, Cole is there with his hand around Ediye’s. We exchange relieved, weary smiles as Cyrus passes through the door, dragging a terrified demon in chains behind him, two more soldiers following in their wake. Cyrus lurches to a halt as his gaze shifts between me and Ashen. He looks as though he’s been thrown from a routine and plunged into the unknown.

“My Queen,” he finally says with a bow of his head after what seems like a long moment of indecision.

My Queen. Fuck, that’s strange. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.

“Heyyy-hi… hi-lo Cyrus.” Christ. So awkward. Ediye covers a snort with a cough. Ashen’s hold on my hand grows hotter, his attention squarely on the demon in chains.

I recognize the man from the battle with the hybrids. He’s the one who hit the beast in the eye with a blade. “What’s your name?” I ask.

The man swallows. “Pyrrhus,” he answers simply, until Ashen lets out a low growl and he tacks on “your grace”. Lordy, that’s just as weird as Queen. Maybe weirder.

“You were there in the field.”

Pyrrhus nods once. Beads of sweat dot his hairline. His heart hammers at double the pace of everyone else’s. I get the impression he’s been in this room before and knows what’s coming, but he tries his best to keep his fear from his face.

I regard Pyrrhus with a long look, watching as his chest rises and falls with quick breaths. “You missed the first time.”

We both know what I mean. Pyrrhus intended to hit me. His eyes flick to my throat as though remembering where he meant for his blade to land. “Yes,” he replies, his voice resigned to his honesty.

“You didn’t miss the second time,” I say, and Ashen’s rage flares all around me as he misinterprets my words. His wings crackle with sparks, the leathery skin sweeping across the floor as they expand. I squeeze his hand in a silent request for patience.

Pyrrhus casts a nervous glance to the furious demon behind me. “That is correct.”

“Why? You could have tried for me again. You didn’t.”

It takes Pyrrhus a long moment to consider this. His gaze drops to the floor before returning to mine once more. “You,” he says. The word hangs between us as I wait. “You warned me about the venom in their bite. You chose my side.”

I take a step closer. I know I could probably just wrench the truth right out of his mind, but the words he chooses to give me mean more than taking honesty by force. He straightens, steeling himself for what he seems to expect will be a painful turn of events. “I have one more question. Once the battle was over, if you had the chance, would you still have taken me for whatever Ember’s plan had been?”

Pyrrhus looks at my throat again, but I don’t think he’s really seeing me. He’s seeing the possible outcomes of that battle, placing himself into different futures through a nonexistent past. “I don’t know,” he replies when he meets my eyes. “If I was the last one left, no. If the others were there, perhaps. Probably.”

Ashen’s rage burns at my back with those words. I take one more step closer. The scent of sulfur and something earthy and herbal drift toward me. Fear. And truth.

“Thank you,” I say, though I don’t say why. For his honesty. For not hurting me when he had the chance.

I turn to Ashen and the red rings around his irises glow bright with fury. I squeeze his bloody hand and give him a fleeting smile. “Let’s go.”

Ashen’s throat bobs as he swallows. He releases a deep breath. He gives a single nod. “Dungeons,” he says to Cyrus without taking his eyes from me.

“Yes, sir.”

I turn and watch as the two soldiers tug on Pyrrhus’ chains. A flash of gratitude passes across the demon’s face and then he’s pulled out the door, the sound of chains clinking down the hall.

Cyrus turns to follow them but pauses on the threshold. “My Queen,” he says. He looks at me with a softness in his eyes, like the relief of a burden lifted. “Welcome home.”