Chapter 44

Chapter Forty-Four

Petra tracked Silas’s form in the darkness, but it wasn’t easy. Even in his more human shape, he seemed to blend in with the shadows naturally, like they couldn’t help but cling to him. Her heart thumped unevenly in her chest. He’s coming. You’re fine.

She wouldn’t say she was scared of the dark, but she wasn’t exactly comfortable in it, either. So many of her worst memories involved being alone in the dark — listening to her parents stumbling into their apartment in the dead of night, drunk and fighting, sleeping wedged against a trash can in a dark alley, and being locked in a dank cupboard in the children’s home as punishment for not making her bed.

Petra was a luminist. It seemed pretty reasonable for her to not enjoy the dark even before she began to associate it with danger and neglect.

But it was only when Silas left her there in the clearing that she realized she didn’t fear it. Not when he was with her, at least. She hadn’t even flinched when he took her hand and guided her into the woods.

Because he was Silas, and if he wanted to hurt her, he’d say so. She trusted that. She trusted him. When they walked hand in hand in the dark, she believed he knew the way.

That didn’t mean she felt at ease in the woods, though, and it certainly didn’t rule out the fact that Silas liked to screw with her. She trusted he wouldn’t cause her any damage, but lead her into the woods to freak her out a little? Yeah, that sounded like something he’d do.

But she could make out the twin discs of molten bronze that were his eyes. She could just make out the curl of his horns. She could sense him there, moving closer to her at a swift clip, even if she couldn’t hear his footsteps in the underbrush like she should’ve.

And then he was back, warm hands cupping the sides of her face. Silas hunched his shoulders a little and pressed their lips together. It wasn’t really a kiss at first. He held very still and took a handful of deep breaths, like he just wanted to feel her there and share a breath.

Petra grabbed the fabric of his shirt above his lean hips and scrunched it. Stretching onto her tiptoes, she pressed a little closer, deepening the kiss until he responded with a low groan.

His tongue snaked inside her mouth to curl possessively around hers. Petra sighed as she tasted him, let him have his way with her. Her mind went so pleasantly fuzzy whenever he touched her. Everything seemed bright and soft and warm. His clean thyme and musk scent filled her nose. Her magic, hot and unpredictable, surged inside her to press against her skin, begging for something she was beginning to understand

The kiss deepened, growing messy, more intense, a moment before Silas threaded his claws into her hair to jerk her head back. “Fuck,” he grunted. His fangs scraped her jaw, the curve of her cheek. It felt like a reprimand.

“The fact that you glow brighter when I kiss you makes me fuckin’ crazy.”

Petra forced her eyes open and discovered that she could make out Silas’s face a little better. Not just because he was close enough to share her breath, but because he was right. “I didn’t know I did that.”

An unsettling gleam entered Silas’s eyes. “What? That never happened with anyone else?”

Even if it had, she wasn’t sure it would have been the smart move to tell him so. Silas didn’t seem like the kind of man who would take hearing about her past sexual partners very well.

“No,” she answered, wary of what that answer would do to his ego but figuring it was the safer of the two options. “I always give off a little light, but normally I only really glow when I feel… strongly about something.” Historically, that strong feeling was anger.

She could make it happen consciously, too, but typically she tried her best to suppress any accidental glowing — mostly because it could lead to some serious damage to those around her if it got out of hand. Being a gloriana came with many gifts, but there were an equal amount of dangers.

Silas gave her one of his knife smiles, but this time it didn’t send a shiver of dread down her spine. “You feel strongly about me, baby?”

After lying about everything for so long, it was a forbidden sort of thrill to answer, “Yes.”

His sharp inhale was loud even over the chorus of bugs all around them. In a low, low voice, he promised, “Little goddess, I’m gonna fuck you so good.”

“Promises, promises,” she muttered.

There was something about the way his eyes crinkled that took her breath away. “Don’t you worry. I keep my promises. I’ll even keep them when you don’t want me to.”

“Why would I not want you to keep a promise?”

Silas leaned in close to whisper, “Just you wait.”

Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of asking what he meant, since she knew it was a trap, she asked, “Was he not there?”

Silas untangled his fingers from her hair. They skimmed her cheeks and down her neck, eliciting a shiver, before they settled on the curve of her waist. Half-turning, he pointed toward the ramshackle fort. “He’s right there.”

Petra squinted into the darkness. At first she didn’t see much of anything. The glow of sunset was far behind them, and the moonlight struggled to break through the dense canopy over their heads. Not to mention the fact that her eyes were just never very good in the dark.

“I don’t see any—” The words died on her tongue when a shadow passed in front of the little wooden sign above the door. She couldn’t quite make out the letters, but she knew they were there. That meant she noticed when they suddenly weren’t.

Petra sucked in a sharp breath as she made sense of what she was seeing. If she didn’t know to look for something, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the deeper darkness that pooled in one place. It was like the impression of a person — a cutout in the fabric of the night.

The more she stared, the more she could make out: The suggestion of great height, impossibly wide shoulders, something that might have been horns, and, if she squinted… the after-image of glowing eyes.

An electric current of fear passed over her body, raising just about every hair on her person. Just as fast, Petra’s stomach dropped somewhere around her knees. “Holy fuck.”

Silas’s lips twitched. “Told you.”

She barely heard him. A part of her was still convinced she was hallucinating, the animal part of her brain seeing predators in the darkness, but even that slim doubt was destroyed when Tal moved .

He’d only drifted about a foot away from the door when Silas snapped, “No, you stay there. Don’t move a damn inch.”

Petra slapped his stomach with the back of her hand reflexively. “That’s not nice.”

“You two keep pushing me and we’re gonna have even less nice on our hands,” he growled, dragging her into his side until she was all but smashed under his arm.

Tal stopped his approach and instead made a motion that might have been a wave. Maybe. She was pretty sure.

Wraiths are real. Petra tried to take a deep breath, but it wasn’t easy. Good gods, wraiths are real.

She was a devout priestess. She put her life in Glory’s hands and prayed for guidance not only for herself, but for the world. That meant she accepted, even hoped, that there were a great many unknown wonders left to be discovered in the world. But it was one thing to hope those unknowns existed and quite another to come face to face with one.

Speaking through his teeth just a little, Silas told her, “Tal wants you to know that he’s happy he finally gets to meet you. He wishes he could say so himself.”

She blinked rapidly and tried to get her bearings back. “I’m… I’m glad to meet you, too.” Casting Silas a dark look, she added, “And not in a closet this time.”

Silas rolled his eyes. After a beat, he said, “He says he’s sorry he scared you, but he’s not sorry he did it. Also, he wants you to know that you pack quite the fucking punch.”

That startled a laugh out of her. “If it makes you feel any better, I definitely thought you were Silas.”

She had no idea what Tal replied, but it was enough to make Silas growl, “Okay, I think you two are chummy enough. You’ve met, Petra knows you’re real, and now we’re done.”

Wrapping an arm around her middle, he began to haul her backward, but Petra dug her heels into the dirt. “Wait, that was like two seconds! I have questions!” Dozens and dozens of them.

“You’ll just have to save them for when he can answer himself.”

Petra’s mind went blank as she took in what exactly that meant. He needs my bond to give Tal his life back.

She’d known since the beginning that Silas wanted her bond for very non-sentimental reasons, but now that she understood exactly why, and who would be affected if she refused…

Petra could barely make out Tal’s wave goodbye as Silas pulled her back toward the deer track.

After everything that happened with Antonin and then the shock of finding out she was Silas’s mate, Petra hadn’t had a lot of time to analyze her feelings about holding up her end of the deal. She still didn’t.

All she knew was that they’d just gotten more complicated.

Silas had left a light on in the living room. Not because he needed one, but he’d noticed Petra liked to always have at least one light on. He noticed everything about her. Discovering new facets of her, no matter how mundane they might be, was his new favorite pastime.

He watched her toe off her shoes and then pad over to the couch, her lithe legs weaving around the scattered trunks on the floor. Her expression wasn’t upset, exactly, but thoughtful in a way that raised his hackles.

Leaning his shoulder against the door jamb, he demanded, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Petra didn’t look at him as she sat on the cushions and drew her legs up. Her brows were furrowed, the skin between them grooved deeply. “It’s a lot to process.”

“How so?”

“I… I just can’t believe that there’s been people all around us for probably ever and we’ve all just— just dismissed them as a myth.” She shook her head. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I feel guilty. Like I've been ignoring people who needed help.”

“Guilty?” Silas made a face. “Like one in a million demons can communicate with wraiths, and it’s been kept hush-hush for ages because no one wants to be the one to say they talk to dead people. Even if you’d known wraiths were real, you wouldn’t have been able to talk to them.”

“But I could acknowledge them. I leave offerings for gods who might not even be paying attention. Why couldn’t I dignify a wraith with a hello? ” she argued, pulling her knees tighter to her chest. “I could have done something or— It just feels wrong. I know what it’s like to fall through the cracks, Silas. To have people just walk on by you and pretend you don’t exist, like you’re nothing just because you’re on the street or in the shadows or… I can’t imagine feeling that way for gods know how long.”

“If anyone should feel bad, it’s demons. We could have forced the world to see them, but we didn’t. That’s not just because people don’t want to believe there are monsters in the dark, Petra. It’s because a lot of demons would have a very serious problem with what I’m trying to do.”

“Why?” She finally looked at him, and when their eyes met, he saw anger in the cornflower blue.

He shrugged. “Because I’m basically resurrecting the dead. That tends to upset people.”

“But they’re not dead,” she snapped, like he was arguing with her. “And it’s not like worse things haven’t been done before.”

Silas tipped his head in a nod. “Agreed. That’s why I say fuck ’em.”

He’d hoped to see the lines between her brows relax, but they only seemed to get deeper. Petra pursed her lips and reached for the old leather book she’d left out on the armrest of the couch. It was the one he recognized from the trunk with the ridiculous gold bars in it.

Watching her crack open the book with quick, agitated movements, Silas pulled away from the door jamb. The fluttering sound of her flipping through pages filled the silence as he crossed the room to make them a couple of drinks. Gods know I need one.

He didn’t get far before instinct screamed at him to stop.

Silas froze mid-step, his head whipping toward Petra before the gasp had even left her lips.

“Ah!” She all but threw the book onto the floor as she reared back into the couch. In the span of a blink, she went sickly pale.

Silas lunged for her. “What? What’s wrong?”

Her cheeks were cold and clammy under his palms, and her lips trembled when she rasped, “We need to— I need to call Rasmus. Right now, Silas.”

What the fuck?

Before he could unleash the possessive beast that roared in his mind, Petra pointed one shaky finger at the book on the floor. “We need to call him. That’s— That’s…”

Confused and worried enough to give him a stomach ache, Silas released her just long enough to swoop the book off the floor. It’d fallen open, creasing the ancient spine and allowing him to turn it over to see what exactly had so rattled his mate.

His gaze fell to the yellowed page. There, scrawled in ink that had gone rusty brown over the years, was a familiar name.

Patient #43: Rasmus Jebediah Adams - wolf shifter, aged 17, infected.