13. Leni

Out here, a fire can rage for weeks. Fueled by brittle branches and dry winds.

Nowhere to hide in the desert. It’s an exposed stage, which is why King Kadmos chose to build here, on the ledge of a desolate mountain.

The only colors reside in his consort, Queen Vinia’s precious orchard.

The sound of crying slips between the white and pink apple blossoms. Growing louder and wetter.

A faint, fruity sweet smell stuffs its way up my nose. Turns my stomach.

One of Draven’s females huddles within the sanctuary of vibrant foliage and rosy apples, bare feet numb against the sandy soil. Her resentment for me is palpable in each shuddering breath she draws.

The queen forbade Draven from touching me until we’re wed, and since he cannot yet claim me, he takes others.

Hidden in the thin shadows of an well tended tree, I watch them, heart in my throat. Her hair is icy blonde, and her eyes are vacant.

Draven’s posh voice leaches through the orchard to tell me how she’s pretty, but nothing compared to me. He points out her imperfections—the colored hair, broad ankles, a scar marring her knee. They disgrace him.

“Disgusting,” he berates. “Heinous. My female values her appearance.” Draven speaks with a perverse rattle, and he projects as if he’s on a grand stage, each word intended for my ears as his blade slashes into her skin. Angry, messy, terrified tears stream down her face, wet the gag stuffed in her mouth. Draven warns her not to scar because he’ll have to cut those out too.

Her silent pleas pelt my body, and I work feverishly, piling twigs and paper into the cradle of the tree, before striking my flint against rock.

It slips, slicing open my palm. I bite back a yelp and lose the flint in the dust.

I drop to hunt for it, nose stinging with the scent of blood and apples.

Draven’s voice swells with a sickening sense of triumph.

I search faster. I can’t find it.

Thick dread settles in my veins. There’s no escaping this. We’ll marry and I’ll be his victim. Forever. His toy to cut and burn and torture. To play with and carve until I’m a husk. Skin and bones and his.

“I don’t want to do this.” Draven sighs. Bored.

The whimpering has stopped. My heart pounds.

She’s not dead. She can’t be.

“You must be better for me,” he admonishes, voice pulsating with an eerie excitement. “You must make me stop.”

I hate him. Vile, despicable, rancorous male. He’s the worst type of monster; one who’s convinced himself he’s not a monster at all.

My fingers brush against something cold and metal. Yes. I grab it, hope brimming.

Draven’s hand snatches mine. “Gotcha.”

I jerk awake, shaking with fear, throat searing, body drenched in sweat.

I’m in a bed.

Four elegant posts painted cream, adorned with sweet floral carvings, hold up sweeping lilac drapes, the same color as twilight before the stars take over. Toast and jam and a cup of tea steams on a wooden tray, wafting butter and bergamot, and apples.

If I open the pleated curtains, I’ll see Vinia’s tiered orchard stretching down the ruddy rock of the mountain. Terraced lines of once tempting ripe red apples, now charred black.

He took me back.

My body reacts first, and I’m helpless against it. I lurch over the side of the bed and empty my stomach. Spine arching, fingers mauling at the mattress, I can’t hold it in.

The door squeals open and my lungs fill with acid. I’m shuddering as I wipe my mouth, try to spit and assemble myself for Draven’s arrival.

The mattress dips next to me.

I close my eyes. More bile forces its way up my throat.

Gentle hands gather my hair at my nape and a wide palm soothes a circle over my back, as a soft, self-destructive voice says, “I shouldn’t have left.”

Slowly, it stops. The retching, the terror, the racing heart. It’s snuffed out, like flames under glass.

“Finished?” he asks, thumb stroking my cheek, stealing tears as he carefully twists my hair back and tucks it in my collar. It’s too short to stay, leaking out in a blue bloom around my face as I turn to face him.

Black starburst eyes trap me in a pool of warmth, dust nibbles of electric current up my arms, and across my chest.

“Better now?”

I nod, cheeks red with the burn of humiliation. “Cross, I …” I hesitate, unsure what I’ve called this stranger. Mortification rears again as I fall back into reality.

This isn’t my room in the palace. There are no books, no maps, no cards. No game board, half played, teetering on my nightstand.

“Cross,” I breathe. This time, the name is familiar, heavy on my tongue, a passcode that unlocks emotion within him. His hand slides over my thigh.

“I—” The word rubs against my throat like sandpaper.

At once, he gathers me into his chest. He smells like a winter’s night, clean and tranquil, and I bury into him, forehead pressing against his neck, arms coiled around his middle, reminding myself that if he’s here, there’s still hope.

His sturdy arms envelop me, drawing me into the hard planes of his chest until I’m clinging to him like a starving cobra, seated in his lap, ankles locking over the hard outline of the gun in his back holster.

Neither of us acknowledges what I’ve done, how I’ve wrecked this beautiful room. Cross simply walks us out, firm hands gripping my thighs, his mouth at my temple, saying, “It’s over. Eyes open now.”

We end up in a different bedroom, and as soon as he releases me, I rush for the bathroom, slamming the door shut, and clutching at the raised black slate counter. The stone is cool against my trembling fingertips, two of which are still faintly discolored, yellow and green.

A reminder that my kind are not designed to sustain injuries.

Draven always loved that.

The sink runs hot as I splash my face and hands. Wet down the frizzy aqua ends of my hair.

“Come back out here.” Cross’s voice is right on the other side of the wall, a blend of concern and authority.

I can’t face him. Show him how weak I am, how I’ve been pretending all this time. “No.”

I draw in a deep breath, trying to steady myself. Grip the sink until my arms shake.

I promised myself to never again be the girl in the dream. Neither the tortured victim nor the helpless bystander. I want to be strong like Cross. A male who walks into battles with his head high, who shoots without hesitation, who kisses like a storm.

“Please come out, Leni. We need to talk.”

“I need a toothbrush.” My cheeks redden as I say it. I avoid the mirror, the sad, broken core I’ve wrapped in tattoos and dye. Steel myself. “And I need soap and—”

The lock on the door shears, clunks and swings wide for Cross to stride into my space, behaving as if he didn’t notice the sound of crunched metal. “Use mine.”

He steps past me, a train of silken shadows gliding over the tile, splashing around my ankles, and retrieves a white toothbrush from the shower, snatches toothpaste with it and sets them in front of me. “Help yourself to anything.”

He sounds earnest, and his eyes soft like they were when we hid in the coffee shop, and he’s close, closer than he lets himself get to me, heat swirling from him and crashing over my spine, the back of my thighs.

I want to fall back into him, want to bury myself in black, feel it lick all around me, warm and wholesome, like an endless night.

Wouldn’t I?

His threat pierces my stomach.

“Where’s Drake?” I ask.

“How should I—” He starts and quickly stops himself, as if threatening torture is easily forgotten. “No Drake. I won’t let him get near you.”

Avoiding his reflection, I spin the flat handle of his toothbrush across the counter, ignore the waves of sweet heat pooling up against my back like a caressing shore. “Because I’m pathetic? Or because I’m weak and you loathe me? Because I’m helpless?”

Words Draven sneered at me too.

The back of my eyes burn.

Do not cry.

He doesn’t get to see me cry. None of them do.

Cross brushes a wet strand of teal from my face. “Lev only said those things to hurt me. He thought you were sleeping. He’s not trained to pay attention to the offended hitch of your breath when you’re insulted, or how your pulse races when you hold your tongue. When the authenticity of your tattoos came up, I thought you might strangle him.”

To hurt him? I glance up and identify the silky glimmer in his gaze as … approval. “You knew I was faking?” A good tactic, until I’d actually fallen asleep.

The corners of his mouth curve. “When have you ever done what I asked you to?”

His ragged don’t stop, don’t you ever stop, comes to mind. The burn of his tongue across my throat, the thrust of his hips into me. Sparkling friction.

“Do you have a lot of nightmares?” he asks. Careful. Soft.

I yank my focus from his mouth. I have nothing but nightmares. “I told you I don’t like violence.”

Half sad, he stares at me for a long moment. “Then maybe the next time I ask you to close your eyes, you do it.” He steals the toothbrush from under my pinky. “My toothbrush. The soap’s in the shower, towels are—”

“This is your toothbrush?”

A pause. “I don’t keep a spare.”

“You have an entire spare bedroom, but the line stops at extra toothbrush?”

A half-amused, half-challenging glean in those obsidian eyes. “The guest room is plum full of rainbow unicorn toothbrushes, cotton candy mouthwash, and enough whipped body butter to dye the Thames purple. However, I don’t think either one of us wants you back there, so unfortunately, these are my rooms and I only keep what I need. No excess.”

“Plum full?” My eyebrows are in my hairline.

He chews on the inside of his lip. “I’m older than I look, pyro.”

Pyro. Low blow. “How much older?”

He has to think about it. “I believe I attended a ball to celebrate England’s first railway steam locomotive.”

That’s … a couple hundred years. Spare change in the world of creatures and Gods. I press a finger into the single worry line in his forehead and tease, “So, not much older than you look.”

His smile disarms me, feels like fresh, cotton sheets spreading over my skin, coaxing me to stay, to snuggle and block out the world with it’s staggering thread count.

“Cotton candy mouthwash?” My voice is throaty. Wrong. “Really?”

“Sweet tooth,” he accuses wryly. “There were misguided assumptions regarding the preferences of our female counterpart. It’s still hotly debated. The contraband remains as proof of intent to harm.”

Gods, why is he still smiling? He’s smothering me.

“I’ve never shared a toothbrush.” The minute it’s out, I feel dumb. Young and inexperienced and one hundred percent stupid vomiting pathetic female.

He looks at me like I’ve said something radical, runs the white bristles under the water, and chases the excess down the drain with his fingers. “Now’s the chance to mention, I haven’t attempted cohabitation either, and some really impatient ass broke the lock to the only bathroom.” Lip chewing, slanted eyes. “Not an ideal start, to say the least.”

“Why?”

“Impatient asshole.”

“Glaringly obvious.” It’s supposed to be pointed and barbed—duh, you murder people—but the scent of oranges, missing the usual sour, tart, nose tickling notes blankets me, and my words fall out teasing. Flirtatious even. “Why have you never lived with someone?”

Why do you care?

I shove the toothbrush in my mouth. Spearmint.

He doesn’t reply right away. Too busy macerating his bottom lip as he follows the gentle rake of my toothbrush, the pull of my lips over the handle. When a dribble of white foam spills, he looks away, clears his throat.

“I’ve tried,” he admits, voice scratchy and rough. “Many times, with many different people. But it’s … disheartening, constantly needing to explain who I am, that I haven’t stolen them against their will.” A muscle twitches in his jaw. “There’s no time to discuss toothbrush dominion when they’re throwing lamps at me, screaming that I drugged and abducted them.”

He rests his head against the wall behind me, hips following, long legs stretching in front of him. “I’ve known Lev for over a century, and he’s forgotten who I am more times than I can count. He tried to kill me yesterday when I was checking his fucking pulse. It’s my gift.” Gift again. Spat like poison. “Or so Kadmos claimed. As if I should be grateful.”

His eyes drift off into the distance between us, reliving the past. “Kadmos was just as Hope is. Good intentioned, a driving force, something to cherish and hold close in the darkest time of the night. But hope can also be the expectation of worse to come. It can seed the impending sense of doom. Without hope, we can live blissfully ignorant of the ultimate failure looming. My gift is imbued with hope. I cannot abandon it. Regardless of how it torments me.”

I spit and rinse, and he suddenly seems to remember this isn’t a confession. I get to talk back.

He swallows hard, flexes his hands. “So. Am I what you expected?”

Maudlin and snarky, and bossy and … kind. To me. Protective. No, he’s nothing like the creature I’d built up in my head. The violent King Killer who’d take and take.

I pretend to misunderstand, shifting my gaze around the bathroom. It’s larger than any in the residence, but that’s not what surprises me. It’s the absence. The nothingness, the mundane simplicity. “Honestly?” I wipe my mouth. “I pictured you as more of a tropical bathroom guy. Palm tree decals and a seahorse soap dispenser. Clownfish art. Highbrow elegance.”

His smile is tender sun on my skin. “Oh, it was.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I have a keen eye for design, a natural proclivity for knowing just how many coconuts should be artfully nestled in a basket. But once word got out, the entire guard copied. The seashell market crashed, conch shells were abused. Tiny drink umbrellas became a local currency. I had to start fresh.”

Cheeks stinging from smiling, I perch against the counter. “Ah yes. Happens to the best of us. Thus you made the classic switch from beach fanatic to goth enthusiast.”

“Never let anyone anticipate your next move.”

I can’t help but laugh. “My Yaya used to say that.”

“Wise woman.”

“I always thought so.” I fold the edge of my—his—shirt against my thigh as a pang of longing strikes. “She studied game theory and lived her life accordingly. She supported Kadmos until the very end. Very few of our kind fought, but she believed he’d improve everything. With his failure, he doomed us. She was … hurt over and over again”—Destroyed. She was destroyed—“and it wasn’t until recently that I realized she’d gone utterly insane because of it. Not quite the genius, after all.”

She fought for good. Why couldn’t she fight for me? Was I not worth it? It’s a selfish recurring thought.

Cross moves closer, blocking the flickering light above us, tall frame radiating sheer strength and raw energy. He bites into his lip. I ache to free it, to demand he stop wrecking it, to stop brutalizing it.

“Why should insanity strip away her genius?” he asks.

“What?”

“Only the strong go insane, the weak never last long enough.” He leans into my space, oranges and soap, strokes his thumb over my necklaces. Smiles conspiratorially. “Why do you think the Gods are so fucked up?”

I slap his hand away. “You shouldn’t talk like that. They’ll punish you.”

“Who? The one wrathful God I prayed to half my life? Or the incestuous brood who mistakes control for power?” He cradles my wrist between us, and glides impossibly gentle fingertips down my palm, over my fading bruises.

“I’m serious,” I catch his hand in mine. “Even if you don’t belong to them, they’ll invent a way to make you miserable. They’re tricky and petty. They’ll get you in ways you haven’t even considered.”

“Thumb tacks in my shoe?”

“Worse.”

He braces his hands against the counter on either side of me, thumbs invading the dangerous, knuckle-thigh contact zone. With me perched on my tailbone, him with shoulders dropped, feet planted a mile away, we’re chest to chest. His clean orange scent engulfs me. A knot of desire slides into my stomach.

“Give it to me,” he says.

I nearly choke, cheeks and chest instantly hot. I squeak out brittle, unsexy things. “Like worms in all of your apples, every piece of gum stuck to its wrapper, and weak rubber bands.”

“You are maniacal.”

“Diabolical.” I’m breathless. Flirting with the male whose single blow could pulverize me. He’s stone against me, six and a half feet of rake-me-over-coals-in-a-thumb-war as he lifts my chin, exposing me to those swirling, inverse galaxies.

Whatever he’s about to say will wreck this. I can see it in the slight dip in the corner of his mouth, the faded amusement in his eyes.

And I’m tired of it, of talking about death and gifts.

Of feeling weak and exhausted.

I want to stay here, in this stifling bathroom with this intense male, with the floor of black smoke, and flickering lights that follow him.

I peek up at him from beneath heavy lashes, memorizing the concern in his gaze. It’s intoxicating, being cared for and listened to. It gives me ideas, like pushing up into him and licking Baltic salt off his throat. Like dragging him to me and asking for everything.

“I found you in Rome,” I say.

His bruised lip drops. His eyes narrow, his palm pasting itself to my hip to pin me in place. “No.”

“Yes. Outside the Basilica.” It’d been after midnight. Broke from dumping a Plutonian number of coins in the Trevi, suffering aftershocks of a stracciatella brain freeze, I’d been footing it back to the hostel when I caught something different from the corner of my eye. An ink spot splashed on ancient stone. “I recognized you immediately.”

Processing, he unfolds to his full height, knee slipping to press in between my thighs, slotting us closer, movement as natural as gravity.

Cross laughs then. A marvelously throaty laugh that wracks his shoulders until he winces, prickles every inch of my skin.

“You,” he says, amazed. His forehead touches mine. I inhale him. Clean. Dusting of sea and orange peel. “You were in Rome. You found me in Rome. And then you found me in Tallinn.”

He’s in awe. I’m light as air. “No. I followed you to Tallinn. Needed that favor, didn’t I?”

I watch his throat work against the brutal black band. A mini-revolt. And then he suddenly lifts me, hot hands sliding under my bottom to arch me. I stifle a gasp, bending somewhat helplessly as he presses into me, nose scraping my collarbone through my shirt and inhaling shamelessly.

“What do you want from me, Leni?” His words rumble over my skin, stones tumbling down a cliff, building speed. “I’ll give it, if you give me the truth. I’ll do anything you ask. No manipulating, no ten steps ahead. Just tell me, point blank.”

The truth will get me killed, so instead I offer, “I already told you.”

His knee brushes my inner thigh, his mouth hovers above mine. “You took it back.”

“I’m doing it again.”

“No.” He sounds pained. The black of his pupils destroy my favorite view. “No,” he repeats, grip hardening on my hip. “Nobody wants me. Nobody remembers me. Nobody…” he trails off, fixated on my mouth. “But you, you’ve been following me for weeks.” His fingers sifts into my hair, curls around my nape, tilts me up. “You found me.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“How?”

I lick my lips, gather boiling hot air into my lungs. “The impossible becomes possible when you’re desperate. I want you, Cross. For the first time in my life, I have the privilege of making a choice. This is me making it.”

Can he see how badly I mean it? How terrified I am of rejection? How this is the last move I have on my board before I’m boxed in.

“I found you,” I murmur, just to see his face glaze with desire and stir the liquid warmth low in my belly. “I found you and I think I deserve a prize.”

“Leni,” he says, like, quit torturing me.

My thighs close around his knee. I can almost taste him. I want to taste him. “Cross,” I fire back, like, do something about it.

His eyes shut. He exhales. “What was your nightmare about?”

If he feels me go rigid, he doesn’t react, keeps holding me just as close, as tight.

“At least tell me what triggered it,” he relents.

I push lightly on his chest, and he releases me easily, steps back. I blink against the sudden glare of the light. I owe him an answer for rescuing me or cheering me up. Both. “The bed triggered it.”

The pastels, the crush of the mattress, the apple smell.

Draven’s infected everything.

Cross nods without facing me, his shoulders tense. “You should shower. I won’t heal if I’m busy warming you.”

I screw teasing into my voice, but it hardly works. “Then, by all means, stop. Wouldn’t want you to rely on your shoddy sewing.”

“Not too hot,” he orders. “I’ll find you some clothes that fit.”

“Yours,” I blurt, picturing the guest room and the clothes that might stuff its closets. Gowns and corsets and shackles. “I like yours. Nothing white.”

The look he gives me sets my breath off. “What did you dream about, Leni?”

My stomach sinks. I tear my attention from his mouth to the hands that pulled me from the ocean, the hands that killed for me. “Just … something I never wanted to do.”