Chapter 51

51

SYLAS

"We have to go back, Mina." I meant to reality, but I was dreading the rest of it. I wanted to slow time down for us forever.

"I know," she said, sinking back. I cradled her against myself and pulled us back into the weave of the normal world, and she made a small sad sound at once, because it hurt her.

"I am sorry, my queen," I said, kissing the top of her head, as I laid her comfortably on a portion of myself, letting her use some of my smoke as though it were a bed, and I joined her there, stroking her side gently until her headache went away. Blood dripped from her nose again, only this time when I wiped it away from her I dipped my fingers in my mouth to lick them clean.

She squinted to see me. "That's like really unsexy," she said, then laughed and regretted it with a wince.

"I don't want a drop of you to go to waste."

"Okay, I take it back, when you put it like that. What blood type am I, by the way?" she asked, stretching out a little. "Could we have been flying everywhere this whole time? "

"It would depend on the atmospheric conditions," I told her. Her flesh had goosebumps from a cold breeze, so I blocked the cave's entrance for her. "How can you love me?"

Her eyebrows rose. "I don't know, Sylas. I just do. And? You've never pretended to be anything you're not." She brought one hand up to trace the contours of my face, now that I had them, and I twisted my lips into her palm to kiss it...without moving the rest of me. "Even if you take some getting used to," she said, laughing. "What time is it back home?"

"Still morning."

"Even after I feel like I've been fucked for four days?" she pretended to complain, then her eyes drifted over to where she'd shed most of her clothing. "I was going to see the reaction to my post, but I doubt I have service—unless part of you can double as a cell tower?"

"No, my queen. But if they were sending people after you, they must be scared—as well they should be. You are quite formidable."

"I don't know about that," she said, rocking back to nest against me. "I just have terrible taste in men," she teased.

Not long after that, she fell asleep, and I couldn't deny she needed it.

I'd held her heart in the palm of my hand, dipping my claws inside its beating flesh as she came—and just thinking about the moment made me yearn for her again. She'd been so close to death while she'd been filling me with her light—and then she'd let me pour my darkness into her. Each jetting burst had seemed to come from deep within and the feeling of giving her myself had been so profoundly satisfying, it felt like, that just like killing people, it was something I was meant to do.

But as I watched her sleep in my arms, and on top of me, I realized I could not allow myself to kill her.

It was one thing to lust for it—but I had gotten as close as I ever would, there, with my hand inside her breast.

I loved her.

And love was not death, not when she was so young and healthy. I brushed a kiss against her temple once more. Her mind might ache, but that was something that was fixable—there had to be a way to sever her from her fate with me.

It was just nothing that I'd ever considered doing before.

Every other person that had hired me deserved to die, oftentimes long before I met them—whereas she was eager for it, even as she loved me.

She wasn't scared of death.

She was scared of being alive—and finding out that life had no meaning.

But time gave fate reason. And fate gave time a point.

We had not become intertwined on accident.

And from this moment forward, the only way I was willing to steal her breath was by pleasing her.

I let eyes open up across my back, so I could reach down a hand and reabsorb the inky fluids that had splashed out from her after I had filled her, pulling them back into myself, and underneath the blackness of my spill, I found a little metal T with two strings attached .

Some intrusion from the outside world, no doubt, probably brought up here by a nesting bird. I covered it with a handful of gravel from the cave floor, so that she wouldn't see it and remember that there was anything beyond this place.

Mina slept soundly, and I kept an eye on her dreams for her. I would wake her in a few hours, take her some place to eat and possibly bathe, and then we would face the next name on her list together.

The Golden Wolf's army would be preparing, condensing their ranks around their last precious three, but nothing they did would matter. I spent my own time dreaming of a sort, thinking of all the ways I could make them pay for hurting her. Flesh-eating beetles, pulling out their nerves strand by strand, breaking their necks high enough that they knew they were going to die but were completely unable to do anything about it.... I was strong, fast, and deadly, and if the men they'd sent after us already were any indication, all of this Wolf's whelps were human.

But then there was the magic around her friend—and I pulled the scrap of skin she'd had me peel off of Nolan from the dimension I'd hidden it in. Something in both of them was vaguely familiar. I would dare say it called to me.

I stretched the gory piece of skin open with one hand. Why was this mark important? And what power did it imbue?

I'd overcome both of the men wearing it easily enough—had Mina defeated their plan in the cellar that night, or had they been lied to about its power?

Whatever the case was, it didn't matter right now. I put the skin away and curled myself around her again, ready to chase off any of her nightmares.

She didn't need them anymore, when she had me.

Mina woke when it was dawn outside, which meant it was night at her home. She turned into me before she pulled away, smiling. "I'm starving."

"Then we will go eat before we wreak vengeance next."

She laughed. "I can't believe I need to eat before murdering someone."

"Some human needs are quite prosaic."

"And what do you need?" she asked, pulling a fingertip down my chest. I let the clothing I seemed to have on peel away at once, so that it looked like she was stroking against bare skin.

"Fear. Death. You."

She blushed and twisted her head away—I caught it and pulled it in, to kiss at her temple. "May I enter you again?"

"Is that all you've been thinking of all night—er, day?" she added, after taking a glance outside the cave.

"For a large part of it. The rest of my time was spent also starving, however." I picked up her hand and kissed it. "I want to know who we're murdering next, and how, and when."

She closed her eyes and nodded before answering. "Garrett Reid. He's old school—so legacy his triple great-grandfather or something was in the RRP's founding year. I stalked him for long enough to figure out where his family lives, in the country club outside of town, in the hills. I figured by the time I got to him he wouldn't be staying at the frat house anymore—he'd go into hiding there, behind their brick walls and security guards. "

"And why are we not killing Trent, next?" Because after hearing Mina's story—and Nolan's—I longed to.

"I wanted to save him for last," she said, and I gave her a look. "I'm not hiding from him," she protested. "Or hiding him from you, believe me," she said, sinking her chin.

I caught it. "I do. I will always believe you."

I got to watch a tentative smile on her face blossom into something joyful. "Good," she said, nodding into my hand, before she bit her lower lip. "Because I love you, Sylas. And—yeah—let's do some entering."

I wrapped myself around her like I was a blanket and she squealed.