17. Nat

17

Nat

remember when everyone had a mace?

Just when I think I’ve witnessed enough desperate groping for the night, Sin flips the lights on.

He doesn’t hold the door open for me, help with my torture heels, or even glance in my direction as he quirks an eyebrow at the couch.

Meda and Luke are breathless, sitting two feet apart on the cushions, wearing only their underwear.

And the male I walked home with, the one with storming footsteps, the one who tore apart the buttons off his shirt, and abandoned his belt in the sewer drain while clutching his knives as though attack was imminent transforms again.

It reminds me of the sun’s crash to the earth.

A sheer moment of captivation, an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch, certain you can handle the heat, glowing under it, begging for more and then nothing.

Darkness snaps on.

Cold whips.

Life dulls.

Nothing but a pretty sunset to remember it by.

Sin kicks his boots off at the striped wingback. “I confess to being bored on night watch, but never enough that I’ve torn my own clothes off while watching … Forrest Gump, is it?”

The only sign of Meda’s discomfort is the slight work of her throat. “One of the scenes was filmed nearby.”

“Savannah,” Luke corroborates, two massive hands covering the gap in his American flag boxer briefs.

Sin’s smile is lazy, his posture relaxed as he rests his arms across the top of the chair. “And this information makes you want to undress?”

“You weren’t supposed to be back for hours,” Luke says, grabbing at clothes on the floor.

Meda doesn’t hide her perusal of the mortal bending in front of her, unabashed in her own matching cotton sports bra and hip huggers.

Sin winks at her. “Always leave them wanting more.”

He certainly did that.

I want to hurl him over that stupid chair and catapult him straight into the TV.

Meda gradually peels her focus from Luke’s bulging thighs. “I’ll get Atlas, we can debrief.”

“If you debrief, there will be nothing left,” Sin teases. “There’s no rush tonight. I’m fascinated to learn more about the connection between arousal and shrimp boating.”

It’s as if I don’t exist.

As if none of it happened. As if Sin wasn’t just gang-banging in a godsdamned Post Office, as if a male didn’t upchuck up at the thought of kissing me, as if Theia weren’t in captivity.

The only evidence that today happened at all, is the bite mark quickly healing in Sin’s wrist, a perfect perforation of my teeth after he dared to drag me from Hedone.

I fling my heels on the floor in a bang. Cross my arms.

Sin doesn’t look. Can’t seem to look at me.

Whatever happened … whatever jealously I thought I saw, it was for show. For his friends.

“The vicious little Fury’s in a mood because she didn’t get to maim anyone.”

“The night’s far from its end, Lord.” I storm past them to my rooms, feeling a hand graze my elbow and jerking away, slipping inside my disco fuck room.

The door catches when it should slam. Sin’s foot stopping it. He kicks it wide.

“Don’t call me that.”

I laugh, icy and brash, putting as much distance between us as I can before I whirl around. “Oh, you’re talking to me now? I exist again? I thought you only cared when you owned me.”

“If you wanted for my attentions, sweetheart, you have more than the strength to push through the crowd and claim it.” He strides straight for the mirrored buffet, where a meal’s arranged. Plate warmed under a silver dome, wine decanting, fork and spoon freshly shined. Ignoring the food, he slops wine into a glass, glances at me harshly and drinks it all.

“You didn’t check it for poison.”

He fills and finishes another glass. “Tonight, darling, you may kill me if you wish. Tomorrow I will go thirsty.”

Confused, I grab for the knife on my nightstand, a bribe from Hades to return home, and set it in a defensive grip.

I don’t know this male.

He’s not the tender voiced hero vowing to save me, nor the foolhardy blowhard buying females. The charmer is gone too.

This male is haggard.

Broken.

I open my mouth to tell him to knock it off, but he refills his glass, spits out a dark, somewhat crazed laugh, and charges to the bathroom—my bathroom—muttering about filth, ripping at the laces of his pants.

The shower turns on.

It takes me eight minutes to finish the wine.

Another four to discover and stuff myself into a silk dressing robe.

The next ten, I spend mentally flipping through every face at Hedone, committing them to memory for my Soon to be Dead scrapbook.

Rage sings in my blood.

I feel destined to exterminate these creatures, to drive them underground and chase after, feed them to my warrior sisters, pointing out the most heinously delicious.

Two minutes I delight in fantasy. In severed legs, and loose ears, in slashed veins and gory screams.

A loud thud from the bathroom jolts me back to reality.

I’m at the door before I realize I’ve moved.

“Sin?” I knock. “Time’s up. Tell me what you learned of Theia.”

My ears twitch, distinct sounds registering. Plastic bottles bouncing off tile, water spitting. A deep, guttural groan.

Is he getting off?

That fucker .

I slam open the door, fury snapping in my blood.

I freeze.

He’s dressed.

Shirt shredded down the middle, torn up his biceps but dressed. Socks and pants soaked to the bone.

He’s seated under the spray, shielding his face from the onslaught of hissing water. Shampoos and soaps, the loofa are scattered across the bathroom floor. Thrown. Making lines of pearly white and iridescent bubbles.

Every instinct demands I go.

This is not for me to witness, to repeat.

His shoulders shudder, a low, horrible breath cracks from his throat.

Hate drives me to hands and knees, crawling on the wet tile.

The water’s scorching, but that’s not what’s stained Sin’s flesh a nasty pink. Long lines of mottled skin are from scratching.

Up his neck. Down his chest.

I put myself between the water and him, and rise to my knees.

The last time I showed comfort, I did it by maiming Theia’s stalker.

There’s no one in this bathroom for me to kill to make him stop, to snatch back the rattling breaths and calm the thumping pulse in his wrist.

“Sin?” It’s not my voice, it’s a ghost of it.

A recording of when I knocked on Theia’s door, wondering why she wasn’t up at six, making inedible cranberry scones and singing to the mouse in our wall.

Fear and worry and a timbre of panic.

“I’m tired, love.” He drags his eyes up slowly, lashes waterlogged and drooping, cheeks violently pink. “I’ll be yours to torment again in the morning. Just give me this.”

It’d be so easy to leave.

So easy to see a problem and realize there’s no good solution. That to end hate, you must become fury, or to offer comfort, you must trample choice.

I drop my butt to my heels. “Is this because I used up your fancy YSL soap? It smelled like an abandoned whiskey old fashioned. I did you a favor.”

He stares at me a long moment, mist condensing on his cheeks. “It was a cleanser,” he says eventually, words thick as if he’s speaking through a swollen throat. “And it smelled like orange blossoms and orris.”

“Who wants to smell like a fruit cocktail?”

The edge of his mouth twitches. “Darling, of all people, you ought to enjoy the duality of sharp and sweet.”

“I prefer sharp and deadly.”

His smile is small. “My honest Bloodspiller.”

Guilt prickles at ribs and I smother it with silence.

We sit until my robe soaks through and the heat seeps into my skin. The steam is so thick, it’s as if we’re inside a cloud. Sin’s pants squeak on the tile, his legs extending flat on either side of me. My palm relaxes on his thigh.

Our eyes meet.

I hear myself say. “It’s that hard to be charming, huh?”

Amethyst eyes drip down my neck, chase my arm to my hold on him. Fingers curl around my wrist. “Not for you.”

His voice is the hollow flow of water on the spring equinox, when Persephone leaves.

Mine’s no better.

“I’m a delight.”

“About time you admit it.” He hesitates, shakes his head. “I like it usually. I like flirting and smiling, but not for those people.”

“Traffickers.”

“Fucking monsters.” A caustic edge breaks into his voice, clinging to the low timbre. “They expect me to do it, to offer them pleasure, to fix their days, as if I’m a puppet for their enjoyment.”

He looks absolutely wrecked. Hair plastered to his forehead, eyes wide and rimmed red. The tension in his jaw rivals the string of Artemis’s bow.

Anger slithers down my spine. “You weren’t in a collar. You weren’t chained, you didn’t have to—”

“Because I could kill them. Because if I felt like it, I could snap their necks, choke them and make them cry out for mercy, so—”

“ So act like it. Don’t bow. Rise.” I straighten my shoulders the way I was taught. Rigid. Unyielding. “Look at you. You’re strong. They should be scared of you.”

“They are.”

“If they were, they wouldn’t touch you.”

“Do you know what’s better than holding dominion over another?” He grips my chin between his fingers, and I register the tremor skating up his arm. “Getting them to hand it to you. I give it and they preen.”

I shake him off me. “The Erinyes do not bow.”

“Good. Don’t. Once you do, you find it’s easier the second, third, millionth time.” He rakes fingernails down his cheek. New streaks of pink. “In the beginning, I discovered quickly how forthright lovers are in the throes of passion. I’d take secrets and sell them. It was not an unfulfilling life for someone of my station.”

If I was expecting him to say anything, it’s not that.

“Lesenia was a lady in the Atlantide courts. We got along. Shared a bed. While I was asleep, she bound me to her will. If she wanted, I wanted. If she thirsted, I did. There’s nothing sweeter than shattering something so ruinously it becomes another.”

Lesenia. “The blonde.”

“She beat me,” he says, tipping his head against the wall, shutting his eyes. “She won. I convinced her to kill me. And I walked to my execution like a rat to garbage. Atlas stopped it. He offered me a place in his army. I’d laughed right in his face. Me, a warrior for the ideological king? For good? The fuck did I know about fighting for good. Lucky for me, he’s convincing when he’s drafting. I did a bit of good, whether you believe it or not. And I never returned.”

Until today.

A tense silence passes between us.

The shower hitches and coughs, turns ice cold, and both of us scoot closer.

“I should’ve gone back,” he mutters, clenching his fists. “It should’ve been the first place I went. I should’ve begged on my knees to convince Kadmos.”

He meets my gaze again. The memories are there, horror and exhaustion and guilt.

So much guilt, something akin to heartbreak throbs in my chest, buried in a mountain of anger.

He already knows. Maybe everyone who has the unfortunate displeasure of meeting her knows, but I say anyway, “She has a black soul.”

One lip tips up. Barely. “Don’t console me, Bloodspiller. I’m every bit the devil you believe I am.”

“It’s not consolation. I can see her soul, and one day I’ll cut her apart because of it.”