Chapter 19

19

C hloe tries to sleep, she really does, but her mind is still woefully conscious, buoying above anything resembling rest. Her thoughts spin around the idea of someone spotting her, someone recognizing her; around the walls of the small hotel closing around her, the ward shining bright even when she closes her eyes; around the odd loneliness of being where she is.

She’s been alone, of course, spent months without living with another person several times in her life. Had avoided people who actually knew about her for years after breaking out of prison, and hadn’t really had a stable roommate until she sorta adopted Gurlien and he found them the cabin.

But these few hours, with the lights flicked off and a hotel that creaks more than it should, eat at her, opening up a pit of something she can’t quite see across.

And somehow this bed, the exact same size as her bed back at the cabin, is an overwhelming expanse.

It’s bullshit.

She flips the battery in her hand, flicking it between the penlight and back, casting shadows onto the patterned wallpaper, but it does little to soothe herself, and only pulls at the exhaustion in her mind even further.

She once spent an entire week in an apartment and didn’t see a single other person, and these few hours are almost torture.

She considers texting people, striking up a conversation with her friends, see how Delina and Maison are dealing with the attack, but frustration stays her hand in that as well. Stops her from attempting to reach out. It’s so late where she is that it’s now late back in Northern Washington, late enough at the compound that any sane person would be asleep even there.

She flops over in the bed, right as a scraping sound hits the lock, barely on the edge of her hearing, and she grasps the battery tighter before Killian steps through the door, not even turning on the light.

His footsteps fall quietly on the carpet, like he’s sneaking back in, before he huffs out a breath.

“I was gone for four hours,” he says, still not turning on the light, but crossing over to the window, tracing a finger along the wards. “There isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t be asleep.”

“Don’t knock me out,” Chloe preempts, and she can only see his silhouette against the dim streetlamps shining from the street below.

“Did the necromancy change you that much?”

It’s a weighty, meaty sentence, the sort that people only say when they want to end an argument on a bad note.

“How should I know?” Chloe grumbles, watching his profile in the shadows. It’s a strong profile, one that would flip her heart in other situations.

He hmms in the back of his throat, then twitches the curtains closed again, some small magic flowing from his fingertips in the action, and the room grows even dimmer.

Chloe flicks the battery into a penlight again, and he squints, but she gets an awful sense he’s evaluating her.

“How protective are your abomination friends?” he asks, instead of anything she thought he’d say, sitting back down on the bed next to her. “I’m not talking friendship, have any tried to initiate bonds with you?”

“Not like that,” Chloe replies cautiously. “That’s not ominous, not at all.”

“Good, because I don’t want them territorial over this,” he declares, and the bed dips down next to her. He’s not touching her, just…existing very close.

“Still ominous,” she tells him, before flicking the penlight back into the battery and setting it on the side table.

He scoffs, and it’s at least a not-so serious sound. “I just want to sleep in a comfortable place without another demon vowing to battle me.”

“Yeah, no battle,” Chloe replies, and it’s almost amusing. “No, they’re all…paired up.”

He makes a small sound, something between a judgment and a sigh.

“They’re all happy, they all have people who count on them, everyone is…everyone is perfectly happy.”

It’s a shade too honest, so she huffs out a breath herself.

He sighs again, and she glances over, right as he rubs his face, surprisingly human.

“Your friends will give us the information tomorrow, yes?” he asks, and there’s a weariness in his tone, something buried deep. “So we can move on with this, destroy the base, and be done?”

“That’s the hope,” Chloe speaks up to the dark room. His silhouette is dimly outlined with the light from the window, a bare suggestion of the cheekbones and chin of the body, and none of the second face underneath shines through.

Though the power bristling out from him forbids her from ever thinking otherwise.

“Good,” he says, voice low, and if she hadn’t spent that last little while exclusively speaking to just him, she would’ve taken it as a threat. “The faster I get away from this, the better.”

Despite the awkwardness, despite the inherent weirdness of sharing a bed with an actual demon, Chloe turns to him, propping her head up on her arm.

“Will destruction be instantaneous when I take down the wards?” she asks, and he quirks an eyebrow at her. “Or will it be a ‘after everything is done?’”

In the filtered moonlight, she catches a glimpse of him baring his teeth. “Depends on how good you are.”

“Great, thanks, that’s not creepy, not at all,” Chloe says, sarcastic, and this time he smiles, actually genuine. “Depends on how bad the wards are, I had to take down enough to get the Half Demon through Toronto.”

“And then out,” he says dryly. “Out is harder.”

It is, theoretically, but she just shrugs against the bed.

“But we didn’t trip any alarms until after we released the stasis chambers, and I think that has a little to do with my skill.”

It’s strange to boast like this. Everyone in her life either knows all of it already or would sell her back to the college if they found out.

“Just a little,” he echoes back sarcastically, before turning again so he’s facing the ceiling in the dark. “Sleep this time, Chloe.”

“Yeah, sure,” Chloe grumbles, rolling herself over to face the cameo wall instead of him, with the shadows from outside barely reflecting back flickers.

Still, he watches the shadows play across the ceiling, and at the angle she can see the brown of his eyes beneath the reflection of light, flicking with the movement.

“Thank you,” she says, tentatively, and he tilts his head towards her. “That would’ve been significantly worse without you.”

He doesn’t smile, but the line creases next to his eyes, something almost familiar, almost wanted. “You think you could’ve gotten out?” he asks, his voice low.

She props herself up on her elbows, and in the shadows, she can imagine a friendlier face, someone who wants her to be there, someone who cares intrinsically.

“I’ve gotten good at staying out of trouble,” she says, a strange sort of bravery inside of her, something a bit odd in her stomach. “I’ve been out for ten years. I don’t do that by luck. It’d be hard without…without killing them.”

“Have you killed someone?” he asks, turning so his entire body is pointed towards her. “Most humans view that as a step.”

Chloe swallows, and in the darkness, he grins at her.

“Besides the demon in the cage,” he continues, languid. “I’ll give you that one, it shouldn’t count.”

That’s a little bit nice.

It absolutely counts.

“Not directly,” she replies. “There are absolutely situations I’ve created, traps I’ve broken, things undone, that means people have died.”

The air is perfectly still, such a contrast to the swirling power that had surrounded them during the battle on the street, not even the puff of a heater.

“That’s almost noble,” Killian says, and somehow, it’s perfectly sincere. “That you recognize it. That creating a situation counts.”

“Of course it does,” Chloe says, surprising herself with the force behind her voice. “They created the situation that made me. They created the situations that led to Terese. To Ambra. Even if they didn’t control what happened after, the blood is still on their hands.”

The words hang between them, and, almost tentatively, he reaches out a hand and barely touches her elbow, a soft contact that’s almost a caress.

“I’m a wrecking ball when it comes to defenses,” Chloe continues, quieter, like his touch stole the volume. “And I know enough to know that sometimes the defenses are there for reasons when I rip through them.”

The base in Toronto is a perfect example. When taking down the stasis…some of those released immediately killed those around them.

“Alchemists usually don’t think that way,” he murmurs.

“I do,” Chloe replies, so quiet that she can barely hear herself, just above breathing. “Them not thinking that way is why the college is that way. If they just for a few seconds, for a few minutes, took the break to think of all the implications, all the damage they have wrought—”

He swipes his thumb over the skin along her elbow, and it derails her thoughts, just enough for her to catch her breath.

“I agree with you,” he says, gentle.

“Thanks,” she whispers.

If they had thought for just longer than it took to make the orders, she would’ve never broken their rules, would’ve never felt backed into the corner, have never been arrested. Would have never been taken away from her friends, from everything she wanted in her life.

“The child,” he starts, like he’s trading her a secret, the same staged whisper. “Would’ve been taken care of by a stable father if someone stopped him from going mad with power. If someone thought to pull him back before he went too deep, before he sacrificed all his common sense just for control.”

Chloe’s heard that happening before. Of children of magicians having stunted childhoods, barely surviving starving to death because of neglect. Of entering the college before they can read, half feral.

“He kept her instead in a house with dangerous creatures, with traps everywhere, and just enough food for her to remain alive. I wasn’t the only demon she walked freely around with no guardrails.”

The hair on the back of Chloe’s neck raises.

It’s stereotyping, of course, but demons aren’t known for sparing humans. Even Ambra had no real difficulty cutting through people in her way once threatened.

He swipes his thumb over her elbow again, playing with the texture of her skin, and goosebumps raise on her arms in the dark.

It fits into the picture she’s putting together of him. Of someone wronged, of someone held just like her. Of someone who saw a child and crafted a place so safe all aspects were considered.

“She’s lucky you were there, then,” Chloe says, at length, and he shudders, full body.

“I killed her father,” he says, and she’s not terribly surprised, knowing what she knew about demons and from his battle out before. “An abomination broke the traps, I killed her father and then ran.”

His tone is boasting, but the words are as if a confession for Chloe to receive, to absolve him of.

Demons have no religion. Why would they, when they are the things that every religion warns about.

But she’s seen guilt and regret in Ambra’s eyes, seen the fear in Melekai’s when watching his Necromancer do anything. Seen both of them get stuck in emotions, in the negative view of the past, almost unable to pull themselves out without help.

“Sounds like he set up a system that he should’ve thought about,” Chloe drawls, surprising a huff of laughter from him.

The hand stills against her elbow, but not in a warning way. Like the idle motion is finally coming to rest.

“Or, you know, received psychological help once in his life,” Chloe says. “How many problems in the world could’ve been solved by some of these people getting an evaluation and, you know, therapy.”

“Too bad that doesn’t exist for demons,” he says dryly. “I know a few who could use it.”

“Yeah, we tried to find psychology books for Ambra. It wasn’t terribly helpful,” Chloe says, and his smile is soft in the darkness.

“The fact that you tried…” he trails off, and for a moment the shadows in the room are peaceful.

She’s exhausted. There was battle that day, her eyes drag with each blink, but she can’t imagine stopping the conversation, doesn’t want his words to cease, these spoken confessions in the middle of the night. The tiny touch against her arm, not born out of any desperation or battle, but out of the actual want for contact.

People don’t do that to her.

So instead, she reaches her hand out, resting it against his arm as well, on the faded Henley he still wears.

It feels like any other piece of clothing. Like she’s lying next to anyone she might meet at a bar, anyone she might take home for a night of fun, as if she was a normal person who could do those things with abandon. As if she had a normal life and normal encounters and a normal risk assessment of strangers. As if she could normally rent out a hotel and bring someone back, just for the sake of contact.

He inhales, sudden and sharp, but she doesn’t move her hand.

“Chloe,” he starts, an undercurrent of warning in his voice, before he audibly swallows, the bed dipping with his movement. “Think of what you’re doing.”

She’s not doing anything he’s not doing, with his hand still against her elbow. Against her bare skin, she might add, where the warmth of him bleeds over into the contact, where his thumb gently caressed.

But she has no time to put these into words, to organize her thoughts into something that’s smart to say back, before he shifts close, his other hand drifting to her chin.

Her breath catches then at the sudden danger of it. At the hand that killed those people just a few short hours ago now touching the skin of her cheek.

Before he tilts her chin up towards him and, in the dim light from just the broken streetlamps outside, presses his lips against hers.

For a moment, she marvels at it. At the heat from his lips, the subtle shifting of the demon face underneath the human. At the stubble still against his cheek, the innate normality of the contact.

At how she hasn’t been kissed in far, far too long.

It’s not smart. It’s not intelligent. It’s not anything she’d even remotely call a good idea, but before she can stop herself, she presses back against him. Abandoned the small touch on his arm to wrap herself around him, deepening the kiss.

Opening her lips against his, swallowing down his breath, for all that he doesn’t need it.

He makes a small sound in the back of his throat, halfway between shock and satisfaction, and grips her chin harder.

Like he owns her. Like he owns the interaction, owns all the fallout and conflict and stupidity that comes with it. Like he can see all of her neurosis, all of the parts of her that are impractical, flighty, prone to run.

And wants this anyways.

A hand slips to her hip, gripping her tight like a brand, and even outside of her control she presses deeper against him, against the hard strength of this body, against the stubble and the broad shoulders and the bad decisions.

For a split second, he gentles the kiss, like it’s a thing to be savored and cherished, before he pulls back, pulls away from her grip, leaving her lips stinging.

His eyes reflect the dim light back at her as they blink at each other, Chloe’s pulse jumping in her throat.

His hand still holds her chin in place, commanding.

“Be careful, little alchemist,” he whispers, his voice a low gravel. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I think I might,” Chloe breathes back, even though that, too, is unintelligent to even say.

He hmms in the back of his throat, before letting his hand fall, shifting away from her.

It feels like an end of a conversation.

He makes a soft sound, something halfway between a chuckle and a sigh, and she can feel the weight in the bed, in the pull of the blankets, but he says no more.