26. Eva

Iglare at the Magus, but all I see is Theo's corpse.

Theo.

The Magus came for me.

Theo, you're dead.

Theo, the Magus, came for me.

I've been crushed and disintegrated like a castle made of sand.

The fading light of twilight filters through the shattered window, casting jagged shadows across the ruins of my bedroom. The once pristine space is now a shrine to the Magus"s destructive rage–the bed reduced to a twisted heap of splintered wood and tattered fabric, the delicate furnishings smashed to kindling, the floor littered with broken glass and debris. The cool evening breeze whispers through the broken panes, stirring the feathers that drift lazily through the air like morbid snowflakes.

My arms are wrapped around my knees. My hair is a tangle of leaves from the run through the forest and feathers from my destroyed mattress. The Magus destroyed it, just as he destroyed me. I sit in the innards of my mattress while the Magus watches me. Blue eyes in an eerily handsome face stare at me from where he sits with his forearms on his knees, penetrating me, waiting.

What is he waiting for? My core clenches and releases with anticipation. He's going to take me. He's going to force me. What else could he have wanted to keep me for? He doesn't love me. He must just want to touch me and imagine I'm someone I'm not.

I imagine him grabbing me by the shoulders, pinning me down. If I scream, no one can help, no one will help. I'm alone in the world with him. Theo's dead. Patty's dead. How good will it feel when he takes me? If I fight, will he hurt me? I deserve to be hurt. I want to be hurt. I'm slick with the need to be hurt. Dripping with it.

His blue eyes, fathomless as the ocean, stare at me. Deep as the ocean, my core aches, yearning for him. In the dimming light, his face is a study of contrasts–the sharp planes and angles softened by the encroaching shadows, his eyes glinting like shards of ice. I want to melt those eyes.

He ran with me here in his strong arms. He was inhumanly fast. Inhumanly powerful. He doesn't have to ask permission because it won't matter to him if I say no. He didn't ask for permission when he stole me away, and he won't ask for permission now.

I stare at him, and he stares at me. My eyes are drawn to his widow's peak. The widow's peak of his black hair makes him seem human. But he's not. He's something else, something I can never escape, as immovable as the passage of time. Already, he's eating me with his eyes.

He's going to grab me. He's going to pierce me, stab me, engulf me with his body, while I fight against him as useless as a thimble of water on a forest fire.

Time passes and he stays there, staring at me. The anticipation is killing me. I want it to be over already. My body yearns for it to begin. His touch…was that all I craved this whole time? I think of all the few times he's touched me over the years. I want them to add up to something more.

"What are you waiting for?" I whisper.

He blinks at me, a subtle movement. "Waiting for?" he parrots in his deep, thunderous voice. He's a statue coming to life. "Do I need to get you food?" he asks. "Water? I'm sorry," he gets up, looming over me even from the other side of the room. "What would you like to eat? I don't know how to cook, but I will learn."

I glare up at him. "I'm not a pet to be fed! That's not what I'm talking about. I mean, when are you going to force me? Take me? Fuck me?"

He stares down at me. Something incredible happens: he looks afraid. Terrified. His eyes are wide open, the whites showing around the blue, and his mouth hangs open.

"I don't want to hurt you," he whispers. "It's too dangerous." He looks at his feet.

"You don't want to touch me?" I ask. I feel like he just slapped me in the face. My eyes sting. Why am I disappointed? I had been planning on fighting if he did touch me.

"More than anything," he rumbles. His eyes shoot up from his feet and suffocate me. He speaks with more venom than I've ever heard from him. "More than anything, I want to touch you. But it will never be enough. My desire for you is a monster that grows as it is fed. It is better not to feed the beast. We don't need him to get stronger." He clenches his fist. Without taking his eyes off me, he punches the stone wall behind him, causing a chunk of rock to fall where his fist hit.

"You're the beast," I whisper. My fingers dig into my knees, my nails biting into the flesh as terror battles with the rage and sadness swirling in my gut.

"I know, and for that, I'm sorry," he says.

"You're not sorry. Not truly." I curl into myself tighter, as if I could disappear into the tattered remnants of the mattress.

The Magus is silent when I say that. His expression, usually so cold and unreadable, flickers with something that looks like fear, like desperation. It"s a jarring contrast to his chiseled, masculine features. "Maybe I don't know how to be sorry," he murmurs. "But I don't want to hurt you."

"You've already hurt me!" I scream, shocking myself with my outburst. "You've hurt me, by creating me, by trying to control me, by never being truthful with me. You made me a copy of someone else. I'm not her! And I'm not a doll for you to play with and break as you please, just to be replaced!"

The Magus comes closer to me, and I cower away. He looms over me, eclipsing the dying light, his shadow engulfing me. Did I goad him too far? Why does my heart beat with excitement at the prospect? He crouches before my broken nest of a mattress and looks at me with his impenetrable blue eyes. I notice the thickness of his thighs in his breeches, and the broadness of his shoulders. He moves with the grace of a wild animal.

"I have given you everything. I built this manor for you." The breeze from the shattered window stirs his hair, sending inky strands dancing across his forehead. "I filled it with pretty things for you. I taught you to speak and to read and to fight. I gave you books. Entertainment. I even gave you horses and humans to keep you company. I let you run away. I've kept my distance from you. I never forced you to come to me. I held you so loosely. I let you stay away from me for months."

"I never asked for any of it," I glare at him from below my tangle of hair.

His eyes narrow. His jaw tightens. "What do you want, Eva?" he hisses. He leans in closer. I can feel the heat of him, the electric crackle of his presence, raising the hair on my arms. "You want Theo? You want Caesar? Why not me? Why can't it be me? I've done more for you than they ever have."

"You lied to me. You never told me what I am." I hate that my voice wavers as if I'm about to cry. "You treat me like someone I'm not. I don't even know a Caesar."

"What logic would there have been in telling you what you are? To scare you? To make you yearn for the past, for Caesar? No." His eyes flash around the gathering gloom and then eat me alive again. His voice takes on a threatening edge. "Give me another chance. Next time, I won't lie to you. I'll tell you the truth right away. I'll tell you about your past."

"My past? I know all there is to know. I'm not her! I'm the creation of a madman! Are you saying things will be better next time you make a copy of me? Because that is despicable and horrifying. You've treated me like a doll. Do you plan on dismantling me for spare parts if I don't do what you say? What do you even want from me?!"

He's silent for a long time. "What do I want from you?" he repeats, as if tasting the words. "What do I want from you?"

"What do you want from me?" I ask. "If not my body." My core clenches again.

He says it like a prayer: "I want you to want me. I want you to trust me." The last rays of the dying sunset make his eyes glow.

"And how am I ever supposed to trust you? That's laughable." But I'm not laughing. I feel only a hollow ache in my chest, a burning behind my eyes, and that relentless pulsing in my core.

"Eva. I'll do anything. I'll even tell you my true name. Then you don't have to trust me. You can trust the orders you give me. If I tell you my true name, you'll have complete control over me."

"I don't believe you." I shake my head, my tangled hair falling into my face. No magi would ever tell a mere mortal their true name.

"I'll prove it. I'll tell you my true name and then I'll be compelled to do anything you say, no matter what."

I stare at him, my pulse thundering in my ears. Finally, I say, "You'd be a complete fool to tell me your true name after everything you've done to me. After the mess you made of my life. I'll hurt you, like you hurt me."

Only the right side of his mouth comes up in a lopsided smile. "Then I am a fool. My true name is Destruction Number 7. If you say, ‘Destruction Number 7,' grow me a garden, stab yourself, paint the entire manor pink, I'll have to do what you say."

It takes me a second to register what he just said. "Your name is Destruction?"

"Destruction Number 7, actually," he says. "That is my true name, and true nature. That is what I am."

"Stab yourself," I order.

"You have to say my name for me to be compelled to obey," the Magus says. As I watch, he draws a dagger from his ankle sheaf. It glints as he runs his fingers over the vicious edge of it.

"Destruction Number 7, stab yourself."

Without a flicker of hesitation, he drives it into his own muscular thigh. The blade pierces the fabric of his breeches, but no blood blooms. "You see," he says, looking up at me with a full-mouthed smile that makes his ageless face look a thousand years younger. "You used my true name, and it works."

I swallow against the sudden dryness in my mouth. "You seem far too happy to follow that order."

He shrugs one of his massive shoulders, "I'm happy to follow any order from you, as long as it doesn't involve putting you at risk."

"Like touching me would?"

The smile drops from his face like a stone disappearing into a well. "Eva, you don't know what you're asking for. I could seriously hurt you. I've hurt you before."

"Destruction Number 7, kiss me."

His eyes widen. "You're cruel," he gasps. He leans in, resisting me. It feels as slow as waiting for water to start boiling. His lips press against mine and my lips press against his. I pull away. He looks at me with flushed cheeks, his eyes dark and hungry. "It is torture to want you as much as I want you. It is a cruelty. You're cruel. You're just like the original Eva."

That makes me angry. "I'm nothing like her. I'm going to punish you for saying that."