Chapter 28

28

I t’s another four hours before Killian wakes up.

Apparently, Seanna has an entire three ring notebook she had dedicated to secret magic things, and Chloe sketches out the bones of a demon trap, with instructions on weak points and where to shred them. On what to look for to identify them when you can see the paint, on how to find them if someone just tells you where they are.

It’s skipping over several layers of trap reading and destruction education, but the girl soaks it up with the same seriousness she stared at the cup of noodles, asking questions when needed and scowling at Chloe until she figures out answers.

Huge gaps of knowledge present themselves to be puzzled over, with highly specific demonology information in between. This preteen, this child, has knowledge of the construction of stasis chambers but can’t identify how to spot a ward written by a human vs a demon.

It’s a staggeringly depressing picture of her background.

So when Killian finally stumbles into the small kitchen and spots them sitting on the table, both bent over a cheap binder, he freezes.

Seanna bolts upright, immediately throwing her arms around Killian again, and he numbly pats her on the top of her head, narrowing his eyes down at Chloe.

They reflect the light, like he’s choosing to do that.

Chloe just settles back in the chair and grins at him, wide.

“Why?” he asks, suspicion coating his voice as he takes in the obvious magical education happening on his own table, as the kid disengages and plops back down into her chair.

“She’s showing me how to break traps!” she says, way more enthusiastic than she had been the entire time.

“It’s a good skill to have,” Chloe adds innocently, and he narrows his eyes further.

“Why aren’t you at school?” he says finally, leaning over and tapping the silence rune, breaking it and flooding the apartment with all the little sounds that had been faded away.

“It’s Sunday,” Seanna says, like it’s immediately obvious, like both Chloe and Killian keep track of things like the day of the week. “Did this body change hurt that bad? You slept for so long!”

Killian’s eyes flicker to Chloe, and for a split second she can swear that his gaze softens. “It was rushed, but I’m fine,” he says.

Rushed is an odd way to put it, at the sudden vicious separation, at the dead body that lay limp against Chloe’s legs.

At the sudden fear of the entity in front of her, without a physical form, disoriented and stunned.

And now the face in front of his is still smoothly handsome, even with the curls sticking up haphazardly.

He leans over Seanna to peer closer at the notebook, and even with the new face, the quirk of an eyebrow is unmistakably him.

“Recognize this one?” he asks her, tapping close—but not on—one of the basic traps, the sort that they teach people as soon as they can write wards.

The same type that Maison got trapped in, back in the little cabin Chloe called home for over a year.

The girl nods, wrinkling her nose. Chloe had drawn out the comment weak points, the places where they get tied into other wards, how to take down those instead.

“Good,” Killian says, voice deep. “Remember that one.”

Before he glances back up at Chloe, then slates his eyes over to the other room.

“I’m going over to Michaela’s house today,” the kid announces, then squints at Killian to see if he’s going to stop her. “Her birthday is on Tuesday, but that’s Tuesday, so we’re gonna go watch movies today.”

“Want a ride?” Killian asks, and Seanna beams at him, standing and offering her hand.

Which he takes, and they immediately disappear, leaving Chloe sitting at the table for a few stunned seconds.

Despite all he said about killing her father, despite how self-serving he made it sound, the obvious affection over the child reads like he’s stepping up. Taking over for the abusive figure.

Providing a childhood, as much as he doesn’t know how.

Chloe barely has time to contemplate that before he appears next to her again, brushing off his hands, then jerking his head to the other room.

Chloe can get a message.

Giving the girl a rather awkward smile, Chloe nods at Killian, striding back into the bedroom.

His bedroom, now that she knows that.

“Before you get upset, she was curious,” Chloe starts in, spinning and facing him abruptly. “I wasn’t going to not teach her how to spring you from a trap.”

He stares down at her, face impassive, before he sighs again. “You’re still hurt.”

Of course she is, a single night sleep isn’t going to solve such a deep bruise on her ribs nor the tiny cuts on her fingertips.

Her phone beeps, and he just looks away.

MAISON (12:35 PM): Heard sources that Chloe Tombbreaker is back as an active player in the world.

Without even looking over her shoulder, Killian raises an eyebrow at her.

CHLOE (12:35 PM): I do hate that nickname.

MAISON (12:36 PM): Heard that two junior level guards in Washington reported you were back, then people dismissed it, until the complete and utter destruction of a base in Minnesota.

CHLOE (12:36 PM): To be fair, I did the breaking in, not the destroying.

MAISON (12:37 PM): Delina is jealous of your adventures and don’t you dare ever bring her in someplace like that.

Chloe quirks a smile at her phone, before deciding that she’s done with the conversation and shoving the phone into her pocket.

“Overprotective, much?” Killian asks blandly, and at some point, she’s going to have to address the fact that he can see through her eyes.

“That’s the Half Demon,” she informs him, “and his n…person.”

“Did you almost say Necromancer?” Killian says dryly. “Is that the one who brought you back?”

She doesn’t like him figuring that out, so she crosses her arms as he squints at her, like he’s trying to figure her out.

“So that’s what they were doing with Alerin’s son this entire time, they turned him into a Necromancer’s bodyguard,” he says, and it’s way too accurate. “And why he would’ve flipped sides, if I had a guess.”

“Are you just guessing or something?” Chloe asks, and there’s almost too much heat in her voice for the moment, so she relents. “They’re very…loyal to each other.”

He takes another long moment, before he shrugs, one shouldered. “Inherited that from his father. Half or not, the demon side comes through.”

It’s too insightful and begs more questions about the demon attachments that she’s not quite sure she wants to deal with at the moment.

But she crosses her arms, raising an eyebrow instead. “Switching bodies hurts so much?”

“It’s not fun,” he challenges right back. “There’s a reason we don’t do it around humans.”

Despite his tone, he reaches towards her and his hand grazes her elbow. Her heart jumps, any words suddenly leaving her brain at such a simple touch.

“You slept well,” he says, gentle and tentative, stating it despite the question.

She doesn’t know if he can tell that from the touch or not.

“And you seem very aware of my physical status,” Chloe shoots, before rubbing her eyes. “Of course I did.”

A small quirk of his lips. “Good.”

“Her father…” Chloe trails off at the sudden shuttering of his expression. “What did he do to you?”

“What do you mean?” he asks, voice so carefully neutral, but his hand tightens ever so slightly.

And Chloe’s too experienced in all of this to be cowed by questions. She’s withstood torture. She’s withstood imprisonment. She’s shot Killian, for heaven's sake, and he’s saved her life.

She’s not going to be scared by him showing some fear.

“A few things she said,” Chloe says, sticking her chin up. It’s unfair that he took a new body and it’s still so much taller than her. “He experimented on you?”

The human face is impassive, perfectly still, but beneath it the demon face spasms as if she hit him.

But he clings to her arm, as if it’s the single thing keeping him there.

“Can you tell me how?” Chloe asks, and her heart pounds. “You were at the Minnesota base. You were kept captive in a cage. You had a cell you knew well enough to teleport to.”

He wanted to kill the Terese project out of some mercy.

And if he wants her trust, if he wants the small physical comforts from her and all that means, she’s going to need some actual answers.

He squeezes his eyes shut, the only change in the expression on the human face, but the second face is a sudden spasm of terror.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Chloe says, softening her words despite her want to know, because she can’t exist without a little gentleness for those around her. “I’ve been around enough of my friends…the Terese projects…to know that they were all affected differently. That their abilities changed, that they were left completely unfamiliar with what they can do. If her father,” Chloe throws a nod towards the kitchen, past the rune, “experimented on demons, there’s only one type of experimentation I know going on right now.”

His jaw flexes, and he stares at her for a long second.

And Chloe stares right back, not backing down, despite her innate want to gentle this conversation.

“They didn’t succeed,” he says, finally, after too long of a moment.

“I can tell that,” Chloe replies, with just a small enough nod that his shoulders relax, just a bit. “Believe me, I can.”

His hand slips away from the tentative touch on her elbow, and he backs up, sitting heavily on the bed.

“Her father tried for years,” he starts, voice heavy, before he runs his hands through his curls, an almost idle motion of anxiety. “He knew there was some key to it, before it was called the Terese project. Before the mad doctor smashed all expectations of what was possible. He saw the theorem around Terese, tried to duplicate it, but it didn't work. He worked with others on…your Ambra…and that worked, but he had to share the control.”

Chloe sucks in a breath, but he forges on.

“Ambra was a unique case, couldn’t duplicate it on me or any other demon, just like how Terese didn’t work. His rival succeeded another time, that one’s still out there, haven’t heard of him in six months, but that was yet another technique.” He opens his arms wide, as if showing off the dead body, showing off the fullness of his power, and the demon magic swirls through the small room, spiraling up her throat. “The last three years he kept me in stasis, then in a cage, waiting until he could figure me out.”

It’s about as much as she could glean from the breadcrumbs dropped all over, but she nods. She can’t say anything that would help, not truly, but she nods.

“And now there’s one other out there, in more pain than you can imagine, completely untraceable, wishing for death,” he says, then rubs his handsome face. “No, they didn’t succeed. Yes, there are tendrils of magic and ties in me that I don’t fully know about. Yes, I still have all my power.” He swallows. “To my knowledge.”

It’s a bit more honest than she anticipated, so she takes a deep breath, deliberately calming herself down.

“Thank you,” she says, and her voice cracks a bit, unexpected. “I just need…”

“What do you need?” he asks, quick, and her heart sticks in her throat at the eagerness of his voice. “Tell me what you need.”

It’s some sort of dangerous precipice, one that she can only tell she’s teetering on the lip of now that she’s there, balancing without any warning.

It’s the sort of moment where she can feel in her bones that she will someday look back on in either fond memory or dread.

Her lips part, at the sudden uncertainty, at her heart pounding in her throat.

“I don’t ever want to be their prisoner again,” she breathes, and it’s not where she thought she was going with that sentence when she started it.

“I won’t let it,” he answers immediately. A vow.

“Yes, I know, but I can’t let it happen,” she says, stumbling over her words and the thrumming in her heart. “All of these secrets, of these half-truths, they’re variables. They’re things that could tip it in one way, things that can surprise me. I can’t…I can’t go into these things without knowing them.”

His lips part, ever so slightly, behind the mask. Where his human face is intently listening, but his true self is reacting.

“I would’ve planned differently if I knew you had a prison cell there,” she continues, and his true self blanches. “I would’ve planned around it, had it in mind as somewhere to run. I would’ve planned differently if…”

If she knew he’d have to take another body.

“If I knew what made demons pick new bodies,” she forges on, and he stands, drawing close to her with a suddenness that made her heart jump. At the reflection of dim sunlight from the snow through the aged curtains on his lips, at the studious way he surveys her, at the sudden sensation that her head is under water and she’s been attempting to tread like she could still breathe.

“That’s a far more complex question than we share with humans,” he warns, which is fair. “Every abomination has shared that in some way.”

Hence why none of them can switch bodies. Hence why they’re all stuck in a living one. Hence the pain.

“I know,” Chloe whispers, and there’s something a bit close to disappointment leeching into her tone, despite her efforts. “That’s just…the things I mean. Not knowing…it places me in danger of getting captured. And that’s…”

That’s the thing she would fear the most.

And by the look on his face as he gazes down at her, it’s the same.

“I can’t go back to being their prisoner.”

There’s a breath, another suddenly underwater moment, where if he waits to speak she’s not sure she’ll ever surface. It’s just them, with his eyes reflecting the light back at her, like he could sear his way into her mind.

“It’s not a set point,” Killian says, and it almost takes her a beat to consider what he’s talking about. “Some of it has to do with damage to the body. Some of it has to do with damage to ourselves. Sometimes, it's as simple as the body decaying in death before we get to it. Some…sometimes, it’s just the magic of the world being so contradictory to our survival that we get forced out.”

“I’m going to guess that’s what the college wants to know,” Chloe murmurs back.

“Well, obviously they succeeded,” Killian says, his mouth twisting. “With the ease of forcing me out they had back there.”

Before she even quite knows what her hand is doing, her fingers curl around his palm, whisper-quiet in the room.

He stares down at her hand, at the point where the two of them connect, like it’s just as puzzling for him.

He had said he feels her through his real self, through his actual skin, not the human one, so she swipes her thumb across the back of his knuckles.

Skin feels like skin to her.

His brows flash up at the contact again.

“Thank you,” she says, and watches it play across his face as he realizes she’s sincere. That she hears the vulnerability in his answer, at the trust he’s placing in her.

His hand twitches in hers, before he folds his fingers over hers, like he’s just now allowing himself the touch.

Once, in a moment that Chloe shouldn’t have overheard, Melekai and his Necromancer were chatting in a hallway, their voices too loud to know anyone was nearby. Lyra had said something funny, Melekai laughed in response—Chloe hadn’t known he could laugh until that point—before he sighed. There had been a shifting of motion, a rustle of clothing, like he had wrapped an arm around her and was leaning in, before he spoke.

Chloe had tucked herself deeper into the corner of the building, suddenly aware that she was intruding on such a small moment, but his words still burned into her mind. “Everything is more real when I touch you. The world, this body, my very self.”

With how Killian’s looking at her hand, those words echo suddenly through Chloe’s mind. At the sudden certainty that Killian, too, isn’t someone who can be touched so easily. That all of this casual contact—the hand holding, the support on her back, the kiss in the bed—just might be more than he’s ever had.

It’s a dizzying amount of power he’s placed in her, just by that little touch.

So. Of course. She pushes for more.

This time, she takes the step closer to him, moving into his space, and his breath hitches.

“For what?” he asks, almost blankly, like his brain is trying to catch between her words and her actions and latching on to the last thing she said instead.

“For answering me,” Chloe says, and, telegraphing her motions this time, giving him the space to pull back if he needs, hooks her other hand on his belt loops, pulling him ever so nearer to her. “I asked a question with significant emotional weight, and you still answered. Thank you.”

His hand settles on her hip, like this is a choreographed dance that he’s never seen but still knows intrinsically, and she can feel the heat of his touch through the fabric of her carhartts, at the small strip of skin where her shirt rides up.

“Careful, little alchemist,” he keeps saying that, but his thumb swipes across that bare sliver of skin, drawing up goosebumps.

“Or what?” Chloe breathes, and the corners of his lips tilt up as he swipes his thumb again, like he’s marveling in the sensation.

He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.

So she waits, with just that small maddening contact on her hip, watching him. Watching as he visibly debates with himself, watches as his eyes dip from her gaze, to her collarbone, to the hand he has on her, back up to her face.

Before his eyes narrow, sudden with their suspicion, and it’s almost comical.

“You abominations have absolutely told you about this,” he says, almost complaining, like she has an unfair advantage over him. “You’re not distressed by this at all.”

She has a split second to wonder impishly, to delight in the idea that he finds this awkward, before he jerks her towards him, crushing his mouth to hers.

It’s different from the last kiss. The last one, with the tall brunette body and the rougher hands that held her gently, had been sort of a tentative exploration born out of late-night vulnerability. Of a connection both of them too tentative to fully explore, of the night before something huge and insurmountable.

And now, after they climbed the insurmountable task, when they’re both safe and he’s in a new body and she’s merely bruised, he grips her like he knows she can take it.

It’s far better than treating her like she’ll break underneath the slightest touch.

Chloe’s not built like someone tough, she knows this, with her relative short height and overall impression of being tiny, and most dates skate around her, like they’re worried they’ll shatter her apart with barely any contact. Like anything they do would scuff her up, reduce her to something lesser.

Like she didn’t become the best tombbreaker in the world by being pristine and pretty. Like she didn’t break out of Toronto, like she didn’t brute force the locking pits, like she didn’t destroy all semblances of traps in the stasis ward, like she didn’t destroy their flagship prison.

Like she didn’t first pick a lock at the age of seven, destroying her fingernails and developing calluses on each fingertip, the sort that confuse police and profilers.

And now, with him in the new body and her with the bruised ribs, he kisses her like she can take it. Like she can match it, like she can give as good as she gets.

And lord does she.