Chapter 36

Chapter Thirty-Six

The next day came both too soon and too late.

Silas lifted his lip in a snarl at the sunlight that slipped through the cracks of his curtains. The rest of the house was more or less sun-proofed for Tal, but his bedroom wasn’t a space his brother needed to go, so he regrettably hadn’t installed blackout curtains.

He bitterly regretted it as the late-morning sun of a hot June day threatened to bake the side of his face.

Silas curled tight around the bundle of fragrant warmth in his arms, his head ducking to get out of the path of the light. But it wasn’t the only thing that disturbed his peace.

The bundle was talking.

Soft fingers stroked his arms, nails scratching lightly against the hair there, as a lulling voice murmured, “…light is the path that guides, the warmth that holds, the magic that binds. Glory’s light can pierce every darkness, within and without, for all days begin again with a sunrise.”

“You’re in a demon’s den,” he muttered. “If you’re going to wake me up with a prayer, at least make it one for the right god.”

The rhythm of her strokes didn’t falter. Her voice was soft when she argued, “You’re half demon, half witch. That means you belong to Glory, too.”

A deep, gravelly growl shook his chest. Something about the way she phrased that made the animal in him buck and snarl. He belonged to one woman and one woman only, not some sanctimonious, flighty goddess who didn’t have the decency to respect matehood.

Silas had her flipped onto her back and beneath him in a heartbeat. Her hair sprayed across the pillows, sparking gold wherever the sun was lucky enough to touch it, and her cheeks were pink with sleep. There were still dark smudges under her eyes and something about her seemed a touch too gaunt, but even so, she looked remarkably healthy for a woman who’d been on the brink of death a day ago.

In fact, she looked remarkably relaxed as she lay beneath him. Suspiciously so.

Silas braced his weight on his palms and leaned in close, examining her with narrowed eyes. “What is this?”

“What?” she asked, brow arching.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like…” He searched for a word to describe the faint curl of her lips and the softness in her normally guarded eyes. The woman he’d come to know was all sass and layers of protective masks. This new creature was disarming and strange. He sounded nonplussed to his own ears when he said, “You look like you’re happy to see me.”

“That can happen when you are happy to see someone in the morning, yeah.” Petra’s tone was dry, but not unkind. “Why wouldn’t I be, Silas?”

“No one’s ever been before.”

Her sharp inhalation was loud in the lull between bird calls. “That can’t be true. Your parents?—”

“Are usually too relieved to see I still have a head on my shoulders and I’m not locked up in a sigil-lined cell to be really happy.” He crowded her until their noses nearly touched. “No one is happy to see me. So what are you hiding?”

Petra went quiet. A peculiar expression pinched her features. Slowly, she said, “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Are you going to tell me or not?”

He knew that he was being hard on her. Even after a good night’s sleep, he was high-strung and temperamental. All he wanted to do was gorge himself on her, to eat her up in tiny bites until she screamed that she was his and she’d never, ever leave him.

It sparked a deep fear in him when he didn’t immediately understand her motives. Surely that canny mind was working, planning, hiding something from him. There were still so many unknowns about his mate, huge gaps in his understanding of her. Those gaps became wide spaces where anxiety could flourish.

Petra breathed deeply. He expected her to lash out at him as she had in the past, but she didn’t. Instead, she grabbed one of his hands and forced him to redistribute his weight as she laid it flat on the soft flesh above her heart. It beat slow and steady under his palm.

“Silas, I want to make a deal with you.”

The muscles along his spine locked, one by one. Here it comes. “What do you want?”

“It’s not about something I want,” she replied, calm in the face of his snarling. “This is for you. I want to make a deal with you so you always know I’m being honest. I think you have trouble reading people. This way you can know for sure that I’m telling the truth — as long as you trust me.”

A little of the starch left his spine. The animal in him paced, uneasy but desperate, as he tried to read her expression and failed. “Explain.”

“I can’t promise I’ll always say everything I’m thinking right away, or that I won’t hide things. I’ve lived both a very bad and very good life, Silas, and that’s made me into a liar even when I don’t want to be.” Her hands tightened around his wrist. “But I think we can both use a— a code for when we need the truth from each other. If you promise to not abuse it, then whenever you put your hand on my heart, I’ll be honest with you. No exceptions. If you do the same…”

It took him a moment to grasp what she was offering him.

If he agreed to reciprocate, if he could trust her, then she would give him the key to all those shadowy parts of her he was so desperate to see.

All he had to do was rein in his natural urge to ruthlessly exploit it. Easy.

“Deal.” He didn’t waste a moment. Keeping his palm pressed against her chest, he demanded, “What are you hiding?”

A bubble of laughter escaped the plush cushion of her mouth. “Nothing,” she answered, heartbeat still steady under his palm. “Seriously, Silas, I have nothing to hide anymore. I’m not planning anything. My life is over. I have nothing— no one else. I woke up and I just…” The blue of her eyes, aquamarine in the late morning light, glittered with something warm and vital to his continued existence. “I was just happy to be alive and with you. I feel safe when you hold me. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

Silas didn’t like being humbled. It happened rarely enough that it typically wasn’t an issue for him, but there was apparently no avoiding it with Petra. While her heart beat an easy rhythm, his had begun to pound. Blood rushed in his ears. His stomach went tight and twisty.

“Honest?” he rasped, suddenly back to being a boy again, when he tried so hard to make sense of a world of emotion and connection that seemed forever out of reach.

Petra didn’t give him an odd or impatient look. She simply nodded once, her gaze locked with his, and answered, “Honest.”

His first impulse was to immediately demand all the other answers he craved. A heady sense of power threatened to overtake him, bigger and more intoxicating than what he felt when he had her on her knees or screaming for him on a sacred altar.

This was a different sort of power, and though his natural inclination was to exploit it without mercy, some deeper instinct stayed his hand.

You’ll get what you want, that instinct promised. This is the start. Ruin it and you’ll never get everything you need from her.

His second impulse was, of course, to spread her legs and drive himself so deeply into her cunt she would feel him all the way in her ribs, but that, too, was dangerous. For one thing, he was absolutely certain that any sexual contact between them now would set off his rut like lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite. For another, he couldn’t get his father’s warning out of his head.

I already failed her once. I can’t do it again. I can’t hurt her.

Not like that, anyway. There were good hurts and bad hurts. The only kind he could stomach giving to Petra were the sort that would make her go all wet and soft for him.

Not used to restraining himself, Silas bit back a curse and dropped his head to bury his face against her throat. His hand ventured down for a harsh, proprietary squeeze of her heavy breast, but it was a small concession to the monster of his lust.

“You’re happy?” he demanded, pressing his face into the bit of his soul she wore around her graceful throat. That piece, just like the rest of him, belonged to her now.

“With my life? No.” A soft hand threaded through his hair before finding its place around the curve of one horn. Her voice took on a wry note when she added, “But with you? I know I must have lost my mind because… yeah, I think I am.”

It was by an unspoken agreement that they didn’t speak about anything of importance for the rest of the morning. Having her all to himself, healthy and curiously happy, helped settle his hormones into a temporary lull, allowing him to think clearly for a while as they huddled under the sheets.

Once hunger drove them out of bed, they quietly worked side by side in the kitchen to assemble breakfast. Silas knew that Petra had questions, especially when she eyed the refrigerator newly filled with mismatched containers of meals ready to carry them through the next few weeks. But she didn’t remark on it. Instead, she found the cheese in the crisper and quietly shut the door.

Simply having her there, standing beside him dressed in nothing more than his old t-shirt and a pair of his socks that were so big on her they had to be folded at mid-calf, filled him with an intense wave of satisfaction.

He made coffee and toast — the bread courtesy of his younger cousin Shelley, no doubt, who owned the bakery in town — while Petra scrambled eggs with butter in a pan. She warned, “I’m not a very good cook. Never really had the chance to learn, but I can do scrambled eggs.”

“Most of my childhood punishments involved being banished to Papaw’s kitchen,” he told her, “so I can handle the cooking.”

It satisfied something else in him, too, to know he’d be feeding her. What normally was significant for clan life — sharing meals — was given even more importance knowing that something in Petra’s past made her sensitive about food. He didn’t understand how to connect with her emotionally and he was probably going to be a shit mate, but he could at least always make sure she was fed well.

As they worked around the kitchen and enjoyed their meal, they spoke sporadically about nothing. Petra asked him about his house — previously belonged to his great-grandfather — and about how many people were in his clan — a lot — as well as how much time he spent there — not much.

He asked about what kind of houses she liked, since he had many and could change them to suit her with a snap of his fingers. Her answer was, of course, another mystery. “I’ve never lived in a house, so I’m not sure. This one seems really nice, though. I like being in the woods. I don’t think I could live somewhere like this full-time, but it’s definitely nice.”

It took a monumental movement of will to keep himself from digging. Never lived in a house? Those blank years before her initiation into the Temple mocked him once again.

But Petra seemed so at ease as she sat across from him, the too-wide collar of his t-shirt sagging over one shoulder and her blonde hair pulled up into a messy bun. His mate had never looked less like a priestess. While he loved the glamorous side of her, he found this new woman infinitely more captivating.

No one, as far as he was aware, had ever been completely at ease with him before. And yet everything in Petra’s body language spoke of a trust he didn’t feel he’d earned.

He was loath to break the spell that the morning had cast over them, but there was so much they had to talk about and increasingly little time in which to do it. She needed to know what it meant to be a demon’s mate before his rut really hit, and he needed to begin sifting through the absurd mass of data he’d stolen from Vanderpoel to determine exactly who he needed to kill to keep her safe.

Normally that would have titillated him, but now… Now all he wanted to do was watch her butter her toast with that incongruously focused expression and try to breathe around the thing that expanded in his chest whenever she glanced up at him with a small smile.

But eventually, she finished her toast. Their mugs were drained of coffee. Afternoon crept in, and so did the summer heat.

Petra drew her legs up until her feet balanced on the edge of her seat. Looking deceptively calm, she said, “So… I killed someone.”

It was no use debating the point, though he felt like there was some wiggle room there. She believed she’d killed someone and to an outsider, all evidence would suggest that she had. Like any criminal, Silas knew the truth was a relative, malleable thing.

“We killed him,” he answered, watching her closely.

She played with a short lock of hair by her ear, her eyes lowered to stare at the remains of their breakfast. “Did you get anything from Antonin’s suite?”

He snorted. “Yes.”

She seemed to be trying to get her thoughts in order rather than working through all the information, so he wasn’t surprised when she just nodded. “Did you try to lock me in the closet?”

Silas leaned back in his chair. The old wood, sawed and lathed and assembled by his great-granddad at least two hundred and fifty years prior, groaned under his weight. Damn Tal. Silas hadn’t been in the headspace to ask why he failed to secure Petra like he’d promised, but now that he thought about it, it explained why the wraith had so happily kept his distance.

He wasn’t just respecting Silas’s privacy. He was avoiding an ass-whooping.

“Are you going to be mad at me if I say yes?”

Petra narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to lie to me if I say yes?”

“No,” he answered. After a moment of hesitation, he amended, “Probably not.”

“Then answer the question.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask who else would have used shadows to seal her into a closet, but Silas took one look at the glint in her eyes and backed down. He liked fighting with her, but he didn’t want her to be angry with him — a distinction he’d never made in his life but one which now seemed essential to maintaining his equilibrium.

“I didn’t want you to meet with Vanderpoel. You were supposed to stay in the closet until I’d handled him for you.” The experience of explaining himself was deeply unnatural, but he pushed through it because it was Petra, and she was his, which meant she was basically an extension of himself. “I planned to get your information, kill him, and then leave with you through the secret door.”

“That’s why you packed my things.”

“Yes. I figured things would be hot for a while and you were set to leave for your sabbatical, so…” He shrugged. The fact that he would have needed to abscond with her anyway for his rut was another compelling reason, but that wasn’t why she asked, so he left that bit out.

Petra breathed deeply through her nose before she replied, “You were trying to keep me safe.”

“Yes?” Silas wasn’t certain why that came out like a question.

She said nothing. Uncurling from her seat, Petra padded around the kitchen table, her socked feet tapping out a pleasant beat, until she stood over him. Silas turned automatically. He was like a tiny astronomical body pulled into her orbit. Where she went, he did, too. Silas wondered if he’d spend the rest of his life circling her. He hoped so.

Soft hands curled around the base of his horns. She used her grip to gently tilt his head back. His cock stirred at her nearness, the way she held him, the lush scent of her. The thought of her taking control of him, using his horns to guide him between her thighs, was extremely compelling.

Fuck. I can’t wait to own her — mind, magic, and perfect cunt.

Petra looked down her nose at him. Speaking in a deceptively gentle voice, she said, “Thank you for trying to keep me safe, demon. That was a good impulse. However…” She leaned in close. “If you ever try that shit again, I’ll poison you.”

If he hadn’t been hard before, he was after that.

Silas let out a low groan. He couldn’t stop himself from pawing at her, his hands shaping to fit the curve of her waist and the perfect slope of her ass. “You know I love it when you’re scary, baby.”

He loved it when she was icy cold. He loved it when she was soft. He loved it when she was submissive. He loved it when she was a whirlwind of rage and sass and magic. He loved all the different versions of Petra. Within her there was an ever-twisting kaleidoscope. Every time he looked at her, he found something new to dazzle him.

Petra didn’t scold him for his reaction. Instead, her expression softened with exasperated amusement. Dropping her head to press a hard, too-brief kiss to his lips, she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do now, but going forward, let’s be scary together, okay? Let’s work as a team, not against each other.”

“Making sure you’re not going to get murdered isn’t working against you,” he protested.

She had the gall to pinch the short, pointed tip of his ear. Silas made an outraged sound more for her benefit than out of any real offense. “You know what I mean.”

Whether she knew it or not, Petra was asking him to act like a mate. Silas had seen many good matings and many bad ones, both at home and in his line of work, so he understood the principles of a solid relationship in the way one might understand the recipe for baking a good loaf of bread without ever having made one.

You put honesty, compassion, attraction, independence, and a dash of reliance in a bowl. Knead. Let it rise. Bake for an hour at 350 or until your relationship is perfectly golden brown.

Relationships, like baking or sigilwork, could all be broken down into easily understood parts. All he had to do was follow the directions.

It didn’t sound too hard, except for the fact honesty was a flexible thing in his mind, compassion wasn’t something he’d been born with, his attraction to her was borderline pathological, he despised the idea of her being independent from him, and he still struggled to grapple with the fact that he was totally and completely reliant on her.

Fuck.

Petra put her hand over his heart.

Something in him went taut when she looked at him like that, like she was silently praying for him to not let her down. “Right now, you’re all I have in this world. I want to be able to trust you implicitly. I think you want that, too. But that won’t work if I worry you’ll go behind my back to do what you think is right at any moment. Can you promise me you’ll try, Silas?”

“I’m going to protect you,” he said, caught between instinct and an existential sort of confusion. He needed to please her, but he also needed to guard her. When those impulses clashed, he was left unsettled, rudderless, and angry at the thing in him that couldn’t make up its damn mind.

With more patience than he probably deserved, Petra explained, “I’m not asking you to stop protecting me. I’m asking you to talk to me. To work with me so we can protect each other.”

That taut feeling only grew. He fisted the material of his shirt where it fell over her hips and bit out, “I’m not a good man, Petra. I’ll never be good. You can’t change me. Everyone’s tried and failed. I’m a monster. Always will be.”

“Demon.” The hand not covering his heart found its way under his chin. Petra tilted his head up a bit more, forcing him to look her square in the face when she explained, “I’m not asking you to change. I’m asking you to be my monster.”