40. Ben

40

BEN

It’s morning when I wake in the mass of pillows of the bathhouse, Stella in my arms. The air is warm and humid enough that we aren’t cold, but I’m pretty sure a certain gargoyle had a wing draped over us for the majority of the night. I sit up, frowning at his absence, but ease when I catch sight of him.

Stoneheart sits, dressed and standing guard.

“We need to get back. I’m expected for a meeting with Silas soon,” he says.

I nod still half asleep.

Stoneheart hesitates for a moment. “We should let her sleep. Take her to our bed first and come back for me.”

Now I’m fully awake. “You’ll let me teleport you?”

Stoneheart only arches a brow as if him trusting that I won’t take him somewhere terrible instead of to the Firefly isn’t a monumental thing.

I don’t have to say goodbye to them yet. My throat swells, but I try to ignore it. I dress before picking up a sleeping Stella and her enchanting dress. She’s still nude, but the trip to tuck her into our bed at the penthouse is quick.

I almost don’t castigate myself for starting to think of the bed as belonging to me too.

Stoneheart has cleaned up the room when I return.

I shiver at the lack of her presence. I rub my chest and frown at the odd overdrawn sensation there.

“Are you okay?” Stoneheart asks. “I can make my way back myself if you need.”

I shake my head. I’m not losing a chance to claim this small part of him.

“I’m fine. Just trying to decide how Antarctica is this time of year,” I tease.

Stoneheart snorts but looks a little uneasy.

“I’m joking.” I hold out my hand. “I’ll leave that adventure for another time.”

Stoneheart’s grin is wry. “You like me around too much for that.”

He takes my hand, and I swallow, realizing how right he is.

“I’ve got to keep you on your toes.”

I pull him into the in-between, and the shadows run over our skin as I travel to the library of the penthouse.

He looks around alarmed. “You definitely do that. What is this place?”

My heart stops.

“You can see it?”

The shadows dissipate, and the empty library takes shape around us, but the details of the room don’t matter.

“Yes.” Stoneheart frowns. “Am I not supposed to?”

“Usually, the trip is instant for the people I teleport.” Surprised confusion makes my mind spin. What does this mean?

Only those who can travel between planes can see the in-between.

Or those they’re bonded to.

Shock halts that thought, and I stare at Stoneheart. Impossible .

But is it?

I rub my chest and surely as if waiting for me to take notice of them, the bonds are there. Probably growing slowly with each minute I spent with them until this gargoyle had stripped me of my reservations last night.

That memory of euphoria and bright connection.

I didn’t see the signs, didn’t look for them because I’ve never experienced something like this before.

I’ve soul bonded to two people by accident.

But that’s too messy for a master tactician.

A deeper truth clicks into place. The whole time I knew Stoneheart would have some devious plan to keep me here. Offer me something he thought I couldn’t refuse or something like that.

I’d been surprised that he hadn’t unveiled it when I mentioned leaving last night. It made me wonder if I’d been too suspicious about him. Maybe it was as simple as using my feelings for Stella as leverage.

But that hadn’t been his plan.

“You caused this on purpose,” I whisper.

Something in my voice must shift Stoneheart from his curiosity and the warm way lovers speak to the powerful territory leader who stands before me. I never should have forgotten who he was.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“How did you expect to convince me stay?” I ask. “Tell me the truth.”

I want to hear it from his own lips.

“Why?” he asks, but my lips purse. He owes me answers. Finally, his eyes narrow, as if gleaning things I’m not ready to tell him.

“Stoneheart,” I prompt.

“You love her.”

I say nothing to that. The idea that he’d only been relying on my feelings for Stella sounds so na?ve now. When had I stopped being suspicious? When he kissed me? Called me songbird?

He straightens, realizing that I’m not leaving until I dig into this. “But that wouldn’t have made you stay. You’re very good at depriving yourself if you think it’s for the best.”

I want to deny that, but it’s true.

“Unless you grew…attached,” he says. The confession is unabashed.

“You expected me to bond with her.”

Stoneheart tilts his head. “It was one possibility in a sea of them. Demons are known to be masters of soul magic. The bonds they form are as organic as breathing. They are some of the few who can even break bonds without it being too damaging.”

He’s not saying anything I haven’t heard before, but I didn’t know what something like that would feel like.

“You relied on my ignorance,” I say. And that stings. Does he even care about me, or am just another asset he’s securing like a politically advantageous wife?

“I expected you to anticipate that part of your nature. That you didn’t…worked well for me.” There’s a flash of regret and some relief before cruel satisfaction takes over. “Because you’d never break a bond, would you, Ben? Not now that you have one with her.”

I don’t deny the presence of a bond. I can’t fathom its existence let alone decide if I have the constitution break it with how I feel about them.

“You’ve miscalculated, Remy,” I say.

Because Stoneheart would never assume that I’d bond to both of them. And now I must figure out a way to undo it.

I can’t be bonded to other territory leaders and serve Kalos. Recognized bonds are legal things. The Council would require I forfeit my allegiance to Kalos to keep his influence from spreading too far.

Exactly the conflict I expected, but one that hurts more than I ever imagined. Because this delicate thing shining in my chest? It’s beautiful. The warmth of it fills every lonely cavern in my soul.

I’ve never experienced anything like it.

“Did you expect me to make leaving easy for you?” Stoneheart’s stare is as intense as a cat finally catching the mouse he’s been playing with. “Will you tell her if you decide to dissolve the bond? Or will you let the connection she feels to you blink away?”

Can one be angry at the Devil when he shows his hand? He’s just doing what I expected from him at the start. It’s my fault I fell under his spell.

The snapping frustration tightening my throat doesn’t care that he’s only doing what’s in his nature.

“ Fuck you ,” I say.