31. Nat

31

Nat

in my sleep

“Stop laughing.” Sin lets his head hit the rim of the toilet bowl. “It’s not funny.”

I adjust my hold on his hair and do nothing to rein in my laughter. “I just—all this time, I’ve been trying to kill you—”

“Yes. Yes. It’s hilarious.”

”—and the one time I hold back, here you are, ingesting lethal quantities of caffeine.”

“You stabbed me.”

“You should be thanking me for that,” I inform him, scrubbing a washcloth over his cheek. “When I struck your clavicle, a few of the pills flew out of your mouth. One decked Zeke in the forehead. He screamed like a boy.”

“You planned this.”

“Oh, darling .“ I smile, using his own word. “I’m good, but no one is this good.”

He spits into the toilet. The heaving and vomiting seem to be officially over.

When he first swallowed and stared at me, groaning about how he’s damn tired of being stabbed, I’d been furious with him. Screaming, hollering, unwittingly drawing the entirety of the Blackguard outside to witness our explosion.

Then he’d yanked the knife from his shoulder, slid the blade into his sheath, and promptly fainted.

If Zeke hadn’t seen him swallow the pills, I’d have a body of bullet holes and five dead Blackguard on my hands.

Sin collapses back on the floor, shirtless, for vomiting on it, his pants low on his hips. He’s jittery with caffeine, shaking, sweating, and he’s beautiful.

Death’s door glamor. Old Hollywood sex appeal. Rigid lines of muscle packed under glittering olive skin, a smatter of dark hair between a slabbed v leading south.

I slept with this male. He devoured me, he worshipped me.

He begged me to want him.

As if I haven’t struggled to resist him from the very first time I stole his knives.

A rush of regret strikes me. I should have never gotten close to him. Furies are virtuous, a tier above tiers. We do not slum with black souls.

“You’re an idiot,” I say, rinsing off the rag and wringing it out.

He’s better, or at least not dead, which means I can leave. I can close the bathroom door and sharpen my knives until the details of Lesenia’s deal arrive.

But Sin smiles at me.

After I cried.

After I ran.

After I did everything a Fury ought not to.

So I sit.

He runs a hand through unruly curls. “Fine, I’ll sleep with you. Stop with the flattery already.”

I frown.

He nearly killed himself, and he somehow finds energy to flirt.

I flick wet fingers at him, spraying his face. “Don’t do that flirty crap with me.”

His smile fades and his gaze darkens, lowers to the tiles beneath his bare feet. “Apologies, love, but you’re the only creature I genuinely enjoy flirting with. Suffer in silence.”

I ignore the spark of pleasure. “You still do it with everyone else.”

I’m not sure if I’m asking or telling.

“Yeah, I do.”

Shameless. I chew on my lip, wishing I could reach out and touch him, knowing enough about him that touching would do nothing but remind him of all those he flirts with, not for enjoyment.

Hands clasped, I rest on the sink’s edge, disregarding his shirt wadded in a ball by the door and the trail of mud flaking off my throat. “I might like you better if you were just yourself.”

Hypocrite.

Hypocrite, hypocrite.

I knot my hands and sit on them to not fidget.

Strong jaw clenched, an internal struggle plays out on his face before he speaks. “The truth is … I want to be that male.” he speaks slowly, as if dragging the words out causes him physical pain. “The flirting, the charm. I want to enjoy it like I used to.”

He quiets, glancing at me.

Waiting for me to order him to stop?

I seal my lips.

“My dad abandoned me when he met his Fated.” He peers down at his hands, large and strong and perfect. “I don’t really remember anything about my mother other than she was heartbroken. She died young. Through the Fate’s will, my grandfather found me. He raised me on Olympus. They despise him there. Hera called him weak. Zeus wanted him thrown from the gates. He …”

It takes all my strength not to curse Zeus. Not to interrupt, not to vow revenge for Sin’s childhood.

He regroups with a hard swallow. “He loved my grandmother. So he stayed, despite everyone hating him. Became a pariah. He kept to himself, became emotionless. Got bitter. Every one of his heartbeats was for her. She couldn’t even stomach his touch. She lurched at his voice. She was repulsed by him.”

The confession torments me. I picture Sin in his youth. A child with big golden curls and striking purple eyes. A smile as bright as the sun. Cared for by a male in unrequited love. A child deserted, desperate for companionship.

Something I know all too well.

“Give me her name.” He startles at my menacing tone. I give him a tight-lipped smile. “Girl fight. Don’t act like you wouldn’t watch.”

He doesn’t laugh.

I’d do anything for him to laugh.

Instead, he draws his knees into his bare chest, as if to hide his brand and tattoos, long legs bent under his elbows. “Everyone loved her. She was the darling of Olympus. Welcome at any hearth, paraded at every ball, prayed to by every lover.”

I can picture it. “A long-winded way to say you take after your grandmother.”

One side of his mouth kicks up. “I poison myself and you give me a compliment. Don’t let me make the correlation, Bloodspiller. It’s dangerous.” His hands work over his jean clad knees and dig in. “I decided the best way to live was to be like her, to be loved. And never love. One-way street. She’d conquered Olympus, so I came here, where I charmed, I flirted. I fucked. I was good at it.”

“Still are.”

His neck shoots up, eyes cut straight to mine. Narrow. “You’re pitying me.”

I’m not. “Would that mean I’m lying?”

He stops to stare. Long, like he’s peeling away layers, like he sees me bare under him, straining. Panting. His palms meet. He twists the ring on his finger. Finally, he smirks, “Still am.”

“Smug.”

He laughs. Quiet. Small. Grows serious again. “Lesenia liked me before she ever spoke to me. She had a crush. She was timid and nice. I took her for a dance, and it was over, her crush turned into utter infatuation. She came alive for me. Devoted. It was holy worship. It made me feel good, powerful. She was an ace in my pocket. And I didn’t need to, but I pushed her.”

“Hopefully down a plank.”

He doesn't smile. “I compelled her to love me.”

My jaw drops.

A thousand questions.

A thousand rejections.

“No.”

“Now you know the truth.”

“No. You … impossible.”

“I forced it on her. I dug deep into her mind, and I set love everywhere. Except love is more than a fleeting feeling. More than a mindset, it’s consuming. It burrows into you with hooks, and it leaves scars. It can’t be manipulated.”

The words arrive like blows. Guilt and fear coiling in my chest. Still, I shake my head.

“I planted a seed,” he whispers, “thinking a flower would grow.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw, sucks his teeth. “I thought she’d become like my grandfather, a candle that would never extinguish, a follower I’d never have to feed.” A huff of humorless laughter. “She fell in love with me like Zeus fell in love with power, and like Kronos before him. Consuming and terrifying.”

I can’t help it. “That’s not love.”

“Obsession is an incredible motivator. She entered into a devil’s pact with the Lycaon King for amber from the foothills of Mount Corinth, and forged in Hephaestus’s fires made a necklace that once wrapped on my throat bound me to her will.”

Lycaon. The wolf shifters. “Give me the King’s name. He’s dead.”

Sin chuckles darkly. And I wonder if anyone in the realm has ever heard such a haunting melody from this male. “Lesenia took care of that. No loose ends. She started with small things. Play me a song. Tell me you love me. Get on your knees.” I flinch, and he talks faster, as if to spare me the pain. “It spiraled quickly. I spent decades doing depraved, humiliating, mindless things for her. With her. And I gave up. I became apathy, choking on her love every day. Her pet mutt.”

“You should have let me kill her.”

“And lose Theia?”

I blow a harsh breath through my lips, eye twitching. An impossible choice. “If she loved you, why sentence you to hang?”

“The chop, actually.” He’s not loud, but I hear the edge like a necklace of bullets, feel the air tighten in my veins, fury clogging my throat.

I don’t show it. I keep my attention forward. Say nothing.

“She went mad with love, convinced herself I was cheating on her. As if I could. As if I could speak if she didn’t tell me to bark. She took the necklace off for one clean cut.”

“She freed you.”

He continues as though I didn’t say it, as if it never happened, as if …

He hadn’t cared. Had tasted freedom and spit it out.

“Atlas arrived in Armani black as I set my chin in the guillotine. I swore allegiance to Kadmos like someone agreeing to terms and conditions. No heroic purpose shining down on me.”

He finally meets my gaze, and I can see how much he hated it. Hated that he got out, that he survived despite not pushing through.

“You’re slaying monsters,” he says softly. “I was making them. What if I still am?”

I shake my head, the thrall licking up my arms. “You aren’t. You helped Kadmos, you saved creatures, you’re freeing Theia.”

“I bought you.”

That feels like so long ago. A thrill races through me at the memory of his first smirk. “Because you wouldn’t leave me with Oberlin. You protected me.”

“I wanted to save you.” All honesty.

“You did.”

He glances away, gaze settling on the muddy footprints on the pretty white tile. “I didn’t, though.”

“You’re wrong.”

He fought for me, argued with Oberlin. Then he pulled me up and pissed me off just enough.

He puts his forehead on his knees, and I stand. Close the space between us and sink my hand into those curls. Clutch him tight, surprise and something unsettling in his eyes. Something like hopelessness. “Would you have returned for me?”

“Not fast enough.”

“But you would’ve.”

His gaze falls to my lips. He licks his own. “I’ll always come for you.”

“Right.” I clear my throat against the swell of emotion, the idea of being rescued is so foreign and indulgent it carves into my heart. With increased resolve, I say, “And the other Diakonos, what do you do to them?”

“Nothing.”

I wrench on his hair. “Tell the truth.”

He sets his teeth. “I give them peace. I try to make them forget.”

“Yes you do.” All those cool breezes, all the soft breaths of relief.

“It’s not enough.”

“Would it have helped you?” I ask, bending down over him. “Would a night of feeling only your own emotions, of having some semblance of peace and being able to accept that just briefly that your situation is terrible, but it is not your fault have helped? If it were possible, would you have asked for it?”

He doesn’t respond, but the answer is all over his face.

“That’s it then.” I release his hair. “The smallest amount of good can overtake fields of evil. Take it from a Fury. It's enough, Sin.”

He examines me for a long moment, searching my face. Slowly, he twines his fingers through mine. “You have more faith in me than I deserve.”

“You deserve freedom from your past.”

Emotion race across Sin’s face and he takes the rag to wipe my neck. “Nat …”

I grab the cloth from him, wiping up and down my muddy neck, washing it away. Lighten my tone. “What is in this bathroom that turns us into saps?”

Sin rolls his eyes and carefully stretches his legs out, readjusting to lean against the smooth glass shower wall.

His head has to be swimming from the caffeine. Meanwhile mine is slogging.

He pats the floor beside him. “Come sit next to me.”

I do, for some insane reason, pushing my spine against the glass.

“We’ll get Theia,” I say, pressing my palm on Sin’s thigh, marveling at the bunched muscle. “And then I’m going to choke Lesenia until her eyes pop out of her head.”

His laugh catches on the tile and surrounds us in a blanket of happy. “Fuck, you are so sexy.”

Like always, denial jumps to my lips. But today, I don’t voice it. I let the feeling roll over me, like the sun breaching the horizon, warming me.

Sin reaches up and touches my cheek softly. “Lay here with me for a while,” he whispers. I hesitate, but he tugs at my wrist insistently. “Come on, Bloodspiller. Just a little, or I’ll ingest a bottle of bleach.”

“Go ahead.”

“You don’t want me dead,” he drawls, smirking. “You’re saving me for something big. A pyre made of bones.”

I laugh again and yawn, acquiescing, stretching out on the cold tile floor next to him. Sin turns on his side to face me, our bodies just barely touching. My feet rest on the base of the vanity, his are slotted between its legs.

The lights are full bore, blue and relentless. Outside, the sun is shining, but it feels dark in here, quiet. I whisper, “Don’t let me sleep.”

“You’re tired.”

“I’m a Fury.”

“Even Zeus sleeps. Close your eyes.”

“What did I just say?” I’m smiling.

“Just rest your eyes, then,” he pleads. “You told me about the Underworld. I want to tell you about Olympus.”

I nestle onto my side, curiosity getting the best of me. I’ve never spoken to anyone about Olympus. Persephone avoids it, Hades hates it. A Fury would start a war if she got past the gates. I yawn. “Isn’t it all clouds and robes and incest?”

“Like the Underworld is all skeletons and soul pools?”

“Touché.”

My eyes drift closed as Sin talks. Voice soothing and honeyed, he details the magnificence of Olympus—the golden gates, the misty mountains, the palaces of pearl and alabaster. He describes lush gardens overflowing with exotic plants and sweetly singing birds. Sparkling fountains as tall as trees that spout ambrosia instead of water. The very air smells of honey and cinnamon stalks.

But I think it’d smell just like him.

Clove and ichor.

He paints a picture so different from Hades, I have to focus to imagine it. My breathing slows, muscles relaxing against the bathroom tile.

In my mind’s eye I see Sin lounging on billowy clouds draped in a ridiculous rainbow robe that makes his eyes sparkle. There’s no aura around him, just perfect olive skin and when I reach for him, there’s no metal plating my arms, no armor anywhere on me.

A surge of yearning courses through me.

What would it be like if we had crossed paths before he left Olympus?

If I could talk to him without feeling the rake of bloodthirst on my skin.

To know him.

To want him.

To love him.

My thoughts begin to blur. Sin’s voice fades as he discusses Pegasus and their domain. Darkness laps at the edges of my consciousness, pulling me under, pushing me into robed Sin’s arms.

He smells good.

Just before I vanish completely into oblivion, red splashes across the inside of my eyelids.

I frown, making an effort to hold on to wakefulness.

What is that?

There it is again. A hot, wet splash of light red.

I struggle towards consciousness, some instinct screaming at me that something is wrong.

I force my eyelids open, jerk upright.

I blink slowly, heart pounding, my vision crawling into focus.

A haze of silver pixelates into shapes and colors.

I’m sitting in bed.

My hands are soaked, and my neck, my chest, the sheets, a pillow.

And beside me, still as stone, is Sin’s mutilated body.