“Oh no…” I gasped, slowly turning around to face my devilishly handsome nightmare. “Oh no, no, no! You have got to be kidding me...”
His eyes flared red, watching quietly as I struggled to cope with the reality that the city was still open to daemon attacks. With everything that had been going on, it wasn’t exactly surprising that I had lost track of this one tiny but extremely important detail. It wasn’t like I could just summon a daemon to test the protective spell…
“Took you long enough.” Zane smirked.
I could have slapped myself. I should’ve realized this sooner.
“Why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t I notice it earlier?” I mumbled, walking away in a daze. I nearly flew down the stairs, the urgency hitting me hard, like ice water against my bare skin. “I should have seen this…”
I needed to tell Patrik. It meant that we had to be extra vigilant once more. And there goes my sleep for the night…
Zane decided to accompany me anyway, walking by my side as I rushed toward the second level. I felt his eyes on me but refused to look at him. I was way too angry—at myself, but also at him.
“So what’s going on between you and the redhead?” he asked. Assuming he meant Vincent but not willing to play into this scheme, whatever it was, I shrugged and decided to play the ingénue instead.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Vincent. Of House Roho,” he replied bluntly, adding weight to each word. “Is he courting you?”
Aha! So he does know more than he is letting on!
“Do you know him? You know the other Maras, too? How much do you know about this city?” I shot back, my fists so tight that my nails were digging into my skin. I looked at him, and he averted his gaze and focused on a distant point ahead. Something told me I’d hit a soft spot.
“No, I just have very good hearing,” he muttered. “You mentioned his name more than once during dinner. Which, by the way, smelled quite nice from outside, though I kind of feel sorry for your species. You don’t eat souls, you can’t eat meat… It just feels drab, if all you get to enjoy is blood.”
I scoffed once more, and kept walking, increasing my speed in order to get away from him. He wasn’t being helpful, yet he was asking a lot of questions. I had to tip the scales a little bit. He kept up with me as we reached the bottom of the stairs. The Broken Bow Inn was just a few minutes away, farther down.
“You seem upset,” Zane said.
“I just don’t understand why you’re so interested in me and my relationship to the people around me,” I replied.
“I am simply making assessments as to whether you are worth saving or not, ahead of what is coming.”
I stopped walking again, and turned to look at him once more. It was becoming increasingly frustrating to try to get any information out of Zane. He was so cryptic and unwilling to tell me anything that could be of use to us, and yet he could not stay away. Meanwhile, an ominous feeling crept up my spine. I knew for a fact that what he wasn’t telling me made the difference between us walking out of this alive and us getting carried out, feet forward.
“You love talking in riddles, don’t you?” I muttered, my hand slipping into a secret pocket that I had cut into my dress. I’d slipped a knife in there earlier, for just such an occasion. He gave me a half-smile and inched closer, enough for the air between us to get thicker and heavier.
“I just don’t like giving away all my secrets at once,” he breathed.
With one swift move, I brought my blade up to his throat, the sharp metal digging into his tan skin. He stilled, slowly raising his hands in a defensive gesture. A grin slit his face, but it was all he could do.
“Oh my, well done,” Zane said. “Impressive speed. You’re learning fast…”
“Tell me the truth, unless you want me to slit your throat and let you bleed to death right here,” I hissed, menacingly baring my fangs. Judging by the glimmer in his eyes, he seemed to like that, which immediately made me press my lips together in a thin line. I couldn’t give him any sort of satisfaction.
A couple of moments went by in sinister silence. I wondered if my knife against his throat might make him talk. He didn’t seem bothered. If anything, he was amused. That just riled me up even more.
Something hit the cobblestone behind me with a sharp noise. I instinctively glanced over my shoulder, just to make sure that I wasn’t going to get attacked by someone else—especially not another daemon.
It was all Zane needed to blow more yellow powder in my face as soon as I turned my head.
Damn it, how many more times am I going to fall for this?
“Crap, not again…” I wheezed and coughed, and everything went dark.
Heron
After our talk with Lemuel, we went back to the Broken Bow Inn, just as the third moon reached its highest point in the starry night sky. I dropped Avril off at her room and slipped into the shower in my own. I welcomed the cold water against my skin—I could make sense of almost everything that had happened to us over the past couple of days, but the one thing I had yet to wrap my head around was how I felt about Avril.
Restlessness took over, and I put on a pair of pants and started pacing the room. Something had developed between us, something very intense. It heated me up whenever Avril was near me. I had an urge to see her again, even though it had only been twenty minutes since we’d last spoken. Literally.
I had already been attracted to her long before Neraka, but the dynamic between us had changed—particularly since our accidental Pyrope back in the gorges. To say that I was conflicted was a serious understatement. I wanted to talk to her. I needed to be near her. There was something about Avril that made me think I had a chance at a soulmate after all.
At the same time, I was afraid of another rejection, since I had really messed it up the last time. I sure as hell wasn’t looking to get slapped, or worse, again. What made things even worse, for me at least, was my near certainty that Avril felt the same way. My body and my soul were battling it out with my brain, and I had very little faith in the latter. My instincts had kept me alive for years in Azazel’s prison. Why was my brain interfering?
Probably because Avril isn’t just any other female; probably because she is the best thing that has ever happened to you, and you have no idea what to do with that.
I exhaled sharply and scraped away at the bottom of my heart, until I found the courage I needed to go to her room and tell her how I felt. Given the mess we were in, and the possibility that our lives might come to an abrupt end, it made no sense to hide my feelings any longer.
Who knew what tomorrow would bring?
I found myself standing outside her door. My palms were sweaty, my pulse was racing, and my stomach was starting to bother me—as if thousands of needles had filled it. It hurt like hell. As much as I racked my brain for something intelligent to say to her, I couldn’t think of anything.
She was by far the most beautiful and fierce creature I had ever come across. As much as I wanted her, and as much as some might have said I deserved it, my previous philandering made me feel unworthy of her attention.
Get it together, man…
I cursed under my breath. I had been brave enough to make it to her door, and yet I seemed to have no strength left to freakin’ knock.
After a couple of deep breaths, I raised my hand, and just as my knuckles were about to touch the door, it opened. Avril stood before me, freshly showered and changed into a training suit, her hair wet and her skin smelling of roses and lavender. She looked surprised to see me, while all I could do was stare blankly at her.
The effect she had on me was close to devastating, and all I wanted was to lose myself in her, in everything she was, and in everything we could be together. I was in so much trouble.
Avril
(Daughter of Lucas & Marion)
For some reason, Heron was standing outside my door. The look on his face startled me, because it was exactly what I had seen of myself just
minutes earlier, in the mirror. My temperature spiked, as I wasn’t sure why he was there in the first place.
I had been meaning to talk to him about Pyrope, about what it meant to him. I couldn’t find the right words, mainly because I knew how important it was to him, as opposed to how it had taken place. We had obviously not planned for it, but it was still a very intimate gesture—especially between the two of us. I was clearly into Heron, and maybe him being here was a sign that I should talk to him about it. It had been eating away at me since yesterday.
We stared at each other, quiet and blank, as I tried and failed miserably to formulate a coherent sentence. I had opened the door to go talk to him, and yet here he was, somehow one step ahead of me. Unless he wasn’t here to talk about us. In which case, my internal turmoil was pretty much useless.
“Hey…” he muttered, a glimmer of fear lingering in his jade eyes. “I was wondering… I can’t sleep… Do you think we could just hang out for a little while longer?”
I blinked several times, registering what he had just said. My brain was moving in slow motion. I was supposed to say something, but all I could do was open my mouth—no words came out.
“Sorry to intrude, but I just didn’t feel like being on my own in that room.” He scratched the back of his neck, then followed it up with a shrug, like a little boy who couldn’t think of a better excuse. In many ways, Heron was exactly that. And the funniest thing was that it was definitely one of the reasons I liked him so much.
“It’s okay,” I murmured. “I was just about to come check up on you anyway, for pretty much the same reason… I don’t want to be alone either. Not after everything that has happened…”
I stepped aside, allowing him to come in. Fire poured hotly through my veins. It had become a common symptom whenever he was around—my blood simmering, my head feeling light, and my stomach tightening, all signals from my body letting me know that I was definitely and irrevocably into him.
He walked across the room, then stopped by the window and turned to face me. He shoved his hands in his pockets, his gaze wandering around for about half a minute before it settled on my face.
“Yesterday was crazy, right?” I managed, already mentally slapping myself. There were plenty of better conversation openers than that.
Heron gave me a half-smile as he leaned against the window frame. He had this way of looking so deep into my eyes that it felt as though he were reaching into my very soul.
“You could say that.” He nodded slowly. “But you’ll have to be more specific, because there has been a lot of crazy going on since we got here. We might not be thinking about the same thing…”
“Well, what were you thinking about?” I replied, trying to get my senses in my body under control.
His gaze softened, and he crossed his arms over his chest. Maybe a minute went by before he spoke, but he didn’t give me an answer. Something told me he was just as nervous as me, if not more so. We had gotten off to a rocky start, and we had mutually agreed that friendship was our best move forward. And yet, we were standing in front of each other, fidgeting, as an invisible magnetic force pulled us closer together.
“Is it okay if I spend the night here?” he asked.
I was speechless. What did he mean? Was he being literal? Why the hell am I not asking him that?
“What... Um, what do you mean?” I mumbled.
“Like, sleep. In this room. With you,” he replied, then immediately corrected himself. “I mean, not in the same bed with you. I’m not… I wouldn’t… It’s not what I was implying… I can sleep on the sofa.”
He pointed at the divan positioned at the foot of the bed. It was rather small for Heron, but not impossible for him to actually sleep in. The question was… did I want to sleep in the same room with Heron? Well, I didn’t want him to go…
“Um, yeah, if you want to.” I shrugged, trying not to make a big deal out of it, even though alarm bells were already ringing in my head—not because of him, but because of how happy I was about this sleepover.
He nodded, then lay on the sofa, his long legs stretching well beyond the armrest. Nevertheless, he seemed determined to make it work. I grabbed a blanket from the bottom of the dresser and handed it over to him. Our fingers touched, and thousands of electrical currents buzzed through me. It was both scary and exhilarating at the same time.
I blew out the candles on the wall sconces, then hid beneath the soft and heavy bedcover, letting the silence fall between us once more. I looked at the shuttered window, going over the events of the day in an attempt to stop myself from listening to his heartbeat. It was rapid, restless, and told me so much more than his words. It warmed me on the inside, but it also made it more difficult for me to speak up about how I felt. It was as if I knew he would respond… favorably, but I just didn’t have the courage to take that step.
“What do we do tomorrow?” I asked, in the absence of anything better to say. The air around us was charged with unspoken words.
“We can start by meeting with the rest of the team in the infirmary, first thing in the morning, like we agreed,” Heron replied. I could feel his eyes on me, and if I lifted my head, I was probably going to find him looking at me, but I lacked the courage to even do that.
You coward! You were the one going after him tonight!
“Makes sense,” I murmured, then stared at the ceiling, following the fine cracks in the plaster.
Minutes slipped by as I tried to find the right words to say to him. I needed to talk to him about how I felt. Heron needed to know that I was developing feelings for him—mainly because I wanted to understand what it could mean to him. Was he going to look at me as another conquest? Because if that was the case, I was better off chewing the bark from a tree. Or was he going to reciprocate, and rid me of my growing misery? I hated keeping things to myself, especially feelings. They always cluttered up and made me feel anxious…
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” I said slowly, after a while. “About… you know, yesterday, and us. I mean, I don’t really know where to start, or how to say this, but… I’m… Ah, hell, might as well spill it. I’m starting to like you, Heron. Like, really like you. Well beyond the friendzone we discussed. And I just wanted you to know that. Don’t think it’s an excuse for you to try to get into my pants. I’m not one of those swooning succubi you left behind back on Calliope.”
There… Doesn’t that feel better?
I waited for an answer, but all I got was a nearly deafening silence. My breath got stuck in my throat as I braced myself for his response – it could be literally anything and that was what scared me the most.
Then a faint grumble made it out of his chest. He was snoring…
Ugh. Way to miss the mark, Avril!
I’d bared my soul for nothing. Heron had fallen asleep already, clearly more tired than he’d seemed. The poor thing was knocked out, and I was lying here in my bed, just a couple of feet away from him, wondering if I’d be able to say those things to him again tomorrow.
My chest deflated as I sank beneath my bedcover and turned onto one side, closing my eyes. They popped back open. I was in no shape to sleep now.
This is going to be a rough night…
Avril
(Daughter of Lucas & Marion)
I did manage to fall asleep eventually, but my dreams were not kind. Daemons surrounded me, their eyes glowing red as they clawed at my back and legs. I couldn’t feel any pain, but blood poured out of me in bright red swirls, as if I were in zero gravity. My voice was muted, although I was screaming. I was kicking and punching, but they kept coming.
My nightmare only got worse, and I saw Heron beyond the sea of daemons killing me. He was running toward me, desperately reaching out and calling out my name—but I couldn’t hear him either. Everything was muted. And as much as he ran, Heron wasn’t getting any closer. The physics of my subconscious had rallied against me.
I gasped and opened my eyes, surrounded by quiet darkness. M
y sight adjusted to the obscurity, and I could make out the contours of the windows and furniture in my room. I’m in my room… at the inn…
Warmth enveloped me, a pair of strong arms holding me tight beneath the covers. Heat expanded through my chest as I caught his scent—a plethora of spices and musk, combined with a faint whiff of citrus from whatever soap he’d used earlier. Heron was in my bed, spooning me in a soft embrace, and I… I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“I fell off the couch a couple of times,” he whispered, his hot breath tickling my ear. “I figured the bed would be more comfortable.”
I didn’t say anything. My words were stuck in my throat, anyway. Well, I could tell him to go back to his room if he wanted to sleep in a bed and not on my sofa, but that seemed cruel. He’d come to me for comfort and company. Besides, I was ridiculously comfortable just as I was.
His frame outweighed mine, and every curve of my body seemed to fit perfectly against his, as if someone had sculpted us as two pieces of a whole. I belonged in his arms, and every atom in me happened to agree.
What are we going to do about this? What am I going to do?
I still needed to tell him about how I felt, given my earlier failed attempt. He still needed to know that I was starting to see well beyond our physical attraction, that I was having trouble seeing him as just a friend.
I’ll try again tomorrow… Maybe.
There were two ways in which this was going to go. Option one: Heron would tell me he felt the same way, and that meant we could maybe explore this chemistry between us and see what we could make of it. That was my best-case scenario, and it still scared the hell out of me, because I’d never been in love with anyone before and I didn’t understand the depths to which we could go.