Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was sweet relief to slide back under Petra’s sheets, but rest eluded him.

He didn’t usually sleep through the night. He preferred to work, either doing whatever job struck his fancy or tinkering with his machines in his lab while Tal drifted in and out. Silas tended to sleep about four hours a night, supplemented with sporadic naps during the day.

But it wasn’t his sleep schedule that kept him awake as he draped his limbs over Petra, pressing her into the mattress and shielding her from… nothing.

Silas bit the inside of his cheek. Damn.

He’d never been protective of another being in his life. Possessive? Certainly. His clan belonged to him, and therefore anything that threatened a member of his family fell under his protection, even if they technically outranked him in the loose hierarchy of the Cuttcombe clan.

Tal fell under that umbrella, too, but he didn’t need protecting. There was vanishingly little, as far as they knew, that could harm a wraith. Even if there was a threat, Tal was almost as ruthless as Silas. He could defend himself.

But a compulsive anxiety about the safety of another being? No, he’d never felt that before. Not with his family, not with Tal, not with his rut partners.

Just Petra.

A deep growl of discontent worked its way up his throat. Silas pulled her closer, annoyed that they were still in her den, annoyed at his instincts, annoyed at Tal, annoyed that she was so soft, annoyed that she trusted him enough to sleep so deeply in his arms, and annoyed that she wasn’t awake so he could talk to her.

As if sensing his growing restlessness, Petra stirred beneath him, her long blonde hair dragging across the pillow as she turned her head toward his. Eyes still closed, she murmured, “Demon?”

A soft hand touched his back. It settled in the dip of his spine, fingers pressing into firm muscle and ridged bone, before going lax.

A band tightened around Silas’s chest. For an unsettling moment, he found it hard to breathe — something that only got worse when she blindly turned her nose into his throat and let out a drowsy sigh.

Silas tightened his arms around her. Sounding unreasonable to his own ears, he demanded, “How can you sleep so well with me here? Do you have any idea what I could do while you’re knocked out?”

It hadn’t bothered him a bit the previous night, but Tal’s questions had pricked something in him, a volatile vein of… feeling. Now the contentment he’d felt in her presence was gone, replaced by a foreign tension he struggled to grapple with.

Somehow those feelings transmuted into being angry at her when she blinked owlishly up at him, those painfully blue eyes soft with slumber.

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“Of course not,” he snapped. “Why does everyone think that? I’m not gonna fuckin’ hurt you, Petra. You’re mine.”

Petra’s brows drew together slowly. “Who’s everybody?”

Disgruntled anew, Silas commanded, “Go back to sleep.”

His skin felt too tight, his body too small to contain the thing that craved her. The familiar sensation of shadows bleeding through him, out of him, to drape over her body only relieved a small amount of that pressure.

A small, weak voice he didn’t recognize whispered in the back of his mind, Take. Please take to her. Make her mine.

His lip curled in disgust as he shook the thought loose. Since when do I beg? He was a motherfucking demon. He’d decided Petra was his and she would be — shadows be damned.

Her huff drifted over the skin of his throat, but she was apparently too tired to fight him. Instead, she wiggled beneath him, trying to get more comfortable. His first instinct was to scowl and press down, holding her in place until she settled, but he quickly realized what she was up to and forced himself to relax.

Petra turned on her side, one arm slung over his waist, her knees drawn up and her forehead cradled by the divot between his collar bones.

His pulse thundered there at the base of his throat as the scent of her hair tantalized him. She came to me, he realized, lips parting in confusion. It was the first time she’d initiated any sort of contact between them, though she’d certainly enjoyed his touch before then.

But this was… different.

Silas lay frozen for several seconds, half expecting her to immediately change her mind and seek out the other side of the bed, maybe lunge for his weapon, but when she didn’t, he threw his arm over her. Curling his fingers around the nape of her neck, he compulsively rubbed the underside of his jaw over the crown of her head.

“Tell me something about you,” he demanded, his voice a harsh rasp in the quiet.

“Silas, do you want me to sleep or not?”

“I don’t know. Both.”

He was amused to feel a small pinch. “You’re a lot needier than I ever could have imagined.”

“My clan could have warned you about that,” he replied, surprising himself almost as much as her. Petra went stiff in his arms, but the words were out.

Silas never discussed his clan with anyone but Tal, and he’d certainly never intended to allow Petra near them, but he couldn’t summon any regret now.

Savoring the warm silk of the skin of her nape, he doubled down. “They’d tell you I’ve always been a terror — especially when I don’t get my way.”

They’d love you.

Not because she was famous or beautiful, but because she was probably the only person in the world who didn’t fear him. Not really. Not in her heart. Not as much as she should.

She didn’t quite relax again, but she did press her lips against his throat when she murmured, “Well now, that I could have predicted.”

“Tell me about you.”

“It’s late, Silas.”

“I don’t care. I want to know something about you.” That was a partial truth. He wanted to know everything, but he could grant that it was too big of an ask for two AM.

Another drowsy sigh tickled his skin, making his toes curl. “Ask me a real question and I’ll answer.”

He fished for a second, trying to decide between the dozens and dozens of questions that only ever seemed to spawn more. Gaze darting around the dark bedroom, he finally settled on one that had nagged at him for days.

“Why do you keep caches of food?”

A long stretch of silence followed his question. Silas waited with all the patience he was capable of before he gave her nape a quick squeeze. “Did you fall asleep?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Petra’s chest expanded with a deep inhale. She held it for a moment, her breasts a soft pressure against him, before she released it slowly. “That’s a complicated question.”

Silas rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “I’m shocked.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that for every damn question I get answered, ten more take its place.”

Her fingers curled into a small fist against his back. “I’m really not that interesting, Silas. Everything you think I am — it’s all smoke and mirrors.”

“You let me decide what’s interesting about you,” he deadpanned, “because so far you’ve had shit judgment on the subject.”

“For the love of?—”

“Quit stalling and answer the question, baby.”

Petra took her sweet time, but eventually she said, “It’s something I do to help with anxiety.”

Anxiety? Silas’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

“It’s a long story that I’m way too tired to get into right now, but suffice it to say I spent most of my formative years without regular access to food. It wasn’t so bad when I was really young, but after— well, when I was a teenager I’d go days without food. So I learned to ration and snatch whatever I could for the days when things were thin.” Her shoulders shrugged under his arm. “I haven’t gone hungry in decades, but I get… anxious when I don’t have something around, just in case. Having my caches helps me not think about food all day.”

Dissatisfaction again, worse than ever before. Silas was stunned by the force of it. The squirming in his gut was more like the lash of a whip inside him.

I ate some of her food. A wave of pinpricks rushed over his skin. It was an ugly feeling, the thing that whipped him again and again. Bad. Very bad.

The animal in him choked. It could hardly comprehend the reality that she’d revealed to him. Not only was she threatened in the present, but she’d been vulnerable all her life. Hungry, deprived of the most basic of needs. If that hadn’t been met by the people who should have protected her, then what other horrors was she keeping locked away in her murky past?

Silas floundered. He had no idea how to make the ugly feeling go away. All he knew was that he needed to fix this in some way — by any means necessary.

Voice rough, he promised her, “I’ll get you more.”

She’d never have to think about food again. He’d make sure her cabinets were never less than bursting, her fridge overflowing with fresh fruit and takeout and fancy cheese and anything else her heart desired. He’d pack caches himself and place them in every room of the house.

He had to, because the thought of Petra worrying about something as fundamental as whether she’d go hungry tomorrow caused him a near-physical discomfort.

His little goddess, radiant and powerful and cunning, anxious about her next meal? Petra motherfucking Zaskodna, the witch who outshone everyone she met? His witch, who’d connived her way into power despite having no coven, no name, no family? The woman who held the adoration of an entire city and one fucked up demon who couldn’t get enough of her?

Over my dead fuckin’ body.

Petra seemed to hear some thread of that intense feeling in his simple promise. Her breath hitched as her blunt nails dug into the meat of his muscle. “Silas…”

“I won’t take your food anymore.” The memory of how he’d gleefully eaten those chocolate candies on her bed and how she’d cried as she carefully scooped the packages off the floor was like acid churning in his stomach.

“I didn’t mean?—”

“And,” he bit out, “I’ll make sure you never have to think about it again. Not once. Clear?”

Petra was quiet for the span of several heartbeats before she whispered, “You’re forgiven, Silas. Really.”

That drew him up short.

He stared at the opposite wall, unblinking, and rolled the words over in his mind. You’re forgiven, Silas.

Was he asking for forgiveness? He’d never done it before, so it hadn’t occurred to him that maybe the ugly thing in him wasn’t just dissatisfaction, but guilt .

Huh.

As if sensing his unease, Petra stroked his spine and asked, in a lighter tone, “Can I go back to sleep now?”

It was hard to speak around the lump in his throat, but he managed to rasp, “Yes.”

If every nerve in his body wasn’t straining to pay attention to her slightest shift, Silas might have thought it was his imagination that conjured the soft, seeking touch of her lips to his throat. “Goodnight, demon. Sleep tight.”

“Goodnight, little goddess.”

After a few minutes, Petra’s body went soft again, her breathing even and deep. Silas didn’t follow her into slumber, though. He stared into the darkness and thought, Maybe Tal’s right.

And then, like there might be some benevolent god listening, the pathetic, newborn thing in him prayed, Please be right.