This was genuine and real and meant only for me.
“That’s the only reason you survived, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “It’s not the only reason! Just the biggest reason.”
He squeezed my waist playfully. “Does it count if I’m the only reason you survived? I think you might owe me ice cream.”
“What? I disagree. There were four guys and I took out three of them. How are you the only reason I survived?”
“You took out two of them,” he argued. I opened my mouth to argue and so he quickly amended, “Two and a half of them. But then you passed out. If I hadn’t been there…” He trailed off and his tight grip became more painful.
Okay, that was a bad thought train.
“But you were there,” I reminded him. I put my hands on his broad chest and let my fingertips feel his heartbeat. He didn’t have a soul now but he had the memory of one. And the soul he had before was the purest, strongest spirit I’d ever been around. He could conquer this.
He could keep his sanity.
“What did the Council want?” Seth asked after a few moments of silence.
“Nothing.”
“Stella…” His tone was a warning and he slid me closer to his muscled torso. His stomach pressed against mine and I could feel his internal heat radiate off him.
I dropped my head to his chest and let my arms wrap around his middle. He could stab me in the back so easily like this, but I was too tired to care. I was taking my chances with this sweet version of his evil embodiment no matter what I did. As long as I stayed near him, I was in danger.
“I know what they wanted,” he whispered into my hair.
“No, you don’t.” No matter how much intel the traitor gave him, he couldn’t know this. This suddenly felt like very fragile ground.
“They want you to kill me.”
There. The words were out in the open. He did know.
He knew what the Council wanted me to do to him but he still held me tenderly in his hands and rescued me from my enemies.
I took a stuttering breath. “I won’t do it.”
“Not even if I try to kill you?”
“You’ve already tried to kill me.” I smiled against his heart.
“I’m not going to kill you tonight,” he promised.
“I know.”
His hands lifted from my hips and wrapped around me. He crushed me against his chest and lowered us to the ground. I nestled into the crook of his arm and let my cheek press against his warm body. He tucked a bent arm underneath his head and looked up at the same view I’d woken up to.
After a while, he said, “I called your parents. They’re coming to pick you up and take you home.”
“Thank you.” But I sounded disappointed. He had done the right thing… the smart thing… but I would have stayed here forever if I could have. If he wouldn’t have forced me to leave him, I would have found a way to live in this moment for the rest of my life.
“What was it like up there?”
I shifted so I could see the same breathtaking picture he stared at. I watched the twinkling stars glitter overhead and breathed in a deep gulp of oxygen.
“It was incredible,” I admitted. “But I’m so glad to be back.”
He chuckled as if he could completely relate. “Tell me about it.”
I thought for moment and then said, “There’s so much empty space. You can’t help but feel completely alone. Even though you’re not, even though the endless space is packed with both the Darkness and our kind, it still feels… lonely. You’re moving too fast to really take much of the details in. Everything flashes by in an instant. It felt amazing to be at full-strength, though. I will say that. I loved letting go and finding out what I was made of.” His chest rumbled beneath me as hummed his agreement. I mourned his absence for a moment. I wished with all of me that he could have gone with. Seth would have been amazing at full-strength. A true sight to behold. “But honestly the whole time, I just missed this planet. It sounds cheesy, but I couldn’t wait to get back to this, back to what I’ve always known. I’m not the kind of girl that belongs up there.”
“Now I could have told you that,” he groaned. “You didn’t need to go all the way up there to figure out that you wouldn’t fit in.”
I swatted his chest. “That’s not nice!”
“I’m not very nice,” he reminded me smugly.
I dropped back down and snuggled into the nook of his arm. “I don’t know… you feel kind of nice to me.”
He flipped me on my back before I could tease him anymore. “Oh, really?” He covered my body with his and leaned in slowly. He gave me his weight and I took it happily. He felt amazing pressed against me. Hot, incredibly strong and perfectly male.
“I feel nice?”
Lost in some kind of dream world in which I had my Seth back, I whimpered against him, “Yes.”
“You feel nice, too,” he whispered in a gravelly voice that hit me so hard it made my entire body tingle.
His head dropped as his lips trailed kisses up my throat. His soft, golden brown hair tickled my chin and I stretched to give him more access to my neck. He found my earlobe and nibbled on it.
I shivered against him, and savored every sweet kiss and heated touch. I only had a few minutes until he flipped again. Until he started to slip away again. Until I lost him… maybe for good this time.
My hands went to his back where I could dig my fingernails into his shoulder blades and pull him closer. When he moved to kissing my jawline, I sighed with the feeling of intense contentment. This moment felt right… so very right.
Finally, his lips brushed mine. They were slightly chapped and dry but I took care of that with the next lip brush. I dragged my tongue against the seam of his lips and he opened immediately to deepen the kiss. He groaned into my mouth and attempted to turn me into a puddle of goo with his expert skill.
My hands slid from his shoulders to entwine around the back of his neck and slip beneath his silky hair. Every part of me sparked and tingled with feeling. He wasn’t the man that he was supposed to be, that he was born to be, but he could still bring me to life in a way that nobody else could. He still left trails of heat and fire wherever he touched me and made butterflies erupt in my stomach.
“Thank you,” I whispered to him. “Thank you for saving me tonight.”
I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have let him continue to kiss me senseless and hold my body with that gentle gruffness I could identify with only him. I should not have reminded him that I almost died tonight. Again.
One of his hands wrapped around my side, splayed out against my ribs, while the other propped him up so he could tend to my lips properly. The grip on my ribs tightened in a second and I felt his entire body harden.
“They deserved what they got,” he growled in a low, deadly voice. “They tried to take you away from me.”
“But they didn’t,” I said on a rush. “You saved me. I’m here now. I’m here with you.”
He sat up quickly, faster than I had seen anyone move before. He jumped across the fire in the next second and picked up my sword. He had apparently rescued my mother’s blade from the mountain. He tossed it at me, like chucked it at me. I rolled to the left so it didn’t stab me.
I scrambled to my feet and stared at the deadly weapon. He’d thrown it with such carelessness that at first I panicked that he had been trying to hit me. Except, I knew that if Seth had been trying to hit me he would have.
When I looked at him across the fire, I saw his internal battle, I saw the he could barely hold it together and that his hands were itching to grab his own sword and use it on me. His anger had reminded him that he didn’t like me… that he wanted me dead as much as the Fallen that attacked me.
“Seth,” I said in a calming tone. “They didn’t kill me. They barely even hurt me. I’m fine now. See?”
He rumbled something obscene and offensive, not necessarily aimed at me. “This isn’t supposed
to happen at all, Stella. What did I give up my damn soul for if you’re still in danger?”
“Good point.”
His eyes flashed to mine and he started to bounce on the balls of his feet. “They weren’t from Aliah,” he said honestly. “The contract wouldn’t allow him to order the hit.”
“Does your traitor work for Aliah?”
A cruel smile twisted his lips. “Not exactly. They work together. Sometimes. Sometimes… not so much. As much as Aliah wants to pretend he has all the control…”
Interesting. “What happens if Aliah dies?”
“The traitor finds someone else.”
“Do you know who the traitor is?”
“Don’t,” Seth snapped. “I’m holding this together as best as I can, Stel. Do not antagonize me or I won’t be able to stop it.”
I swallowed over the thick lump in my throat and watched him vibrate with the effort to keep his head together. His fingers spread out as far as they could go, and clenched into tight balls of intent, then stretched out again. His throat worked to swallow his own lump of emotion. But the fire cast him in this perfect lighting that made my heart ache. The golden light flickered over his golden skin and caught the tips of his hair in the pretty glow. His face stayed half-shadowed, half-illuminated for me and it was the best and worst parts of him. His eyes were shaded in darkness, hiding the hatred he aimed at me in that moment, but his lips were revealed, as were his strong cheekbones and angular nose. I wanted to kiss every part of his face that reached the light.
And I wanted to cower and run from the part that belonged to the Darkness.
But I couldn’t. It was who he was now. It was who he would be for at least a year. Maybe forever. And I loved him. I loved all of him and so I would work at this and I would wait and I would love him enough to bring him back to me.
Or I would try to.
He swooped up his cutlass and dug the tip into the sandy ground near the fire. “Do you know what the funny part is?”
His voice was softer, gentler, but something about his tone made me instantly wary. Still, I asked, “What?”
He let out a huff of humorless laugh and met my eyes across the fire. “That I killed them to save your life, but I also killed them to keep from killing you, from taking that special privilege away from me. I saw you come back in. I was watching… waiting for you. I’ve been insane these last two weeks. Crazy with nerves and hope and despair. I probably haven’t slept since you left and this whole time I knew you were getting orders to kill me. This whole time I’ve been waiting for you to come back and follow them. And then there you were. A blazing ball of fire in the sky. And I knew you were coming in too fast, that something was wrong. So I immediately flew after you. But the whole way there I debated what I would do when I got to you. Would I protect you? Would I take over and finish the job myself?” He took a step forward and tightened his grip on the handle of his sword. “And then I get there and you’re half-conscious, look like hell and fighting as hard as anything I’ve ever seen before. I watched you for a moment and I stopped thinking. I couldn’t think anymore, I just acted. I didn’t have to argue with myself anymore because my body just reacted. Until you were safe… until you were out of danger. And then I had to start over. Reasoning with myself, bargaining with myself, replaying every memory I have with you, which sucks, because there are just not that many good memories with you, Stella. Jealousy, bitterness, hatred for a human boy that I want to wrap my hands around his neck and choke the life out of him. Those are the kind of thoughts that keep me from killing you. And I don’t understand why? A few nights together tangled in each other and some laughs. That’s all you gave to me before I left you and yet I can’t bring myself to do the one thing my mind wants to do more than anything.” I opened my mouth to argue with him but he took another aggressive step forward. The fire still separated us but he stood just at the edge of it, close enough to feel the lick of flames against his skin. “No, don’t you get it? Don’t you see how crazy this is making me? Don’t you see the Darkness that is building in me? You shouldn’t be around me. One of us is going to end up killing the other.”
“It’s not going to be me,” I shot back. “I’m not going to kill you.”
Another malicious grunt of laughter. “So confident. So sure. You must have better memories of us than I do.”
That stung. I lived with the guilt every day for how poorly I treated Seth before he sold his soul and the affection I felt for Tristan that pushed him away and drove the wedge of hostility between us. He had every right to be upset about it. He had every right to hate me for what I did to him.
But I loved him now and I’d given up Tristan completely.
Much in the same way, I finally embraced my destiny as the Protector of Earth; I walked away from all my human ties and gave myself fully to the cause.
And to Seth.
“Unlike you, I know who I am.” Maybe it wasn’t wise to poke the beast, but I couldn’t stop myself. I could be angry, too. He wasn’t the only one that got to feel negative emotions. “I know that I can trust my emotions and decisions.”
His eyes lit with an unexplainable heat, excitement, challenge, sarcasm and mischief all in one look. “I cannot wait to break you,” he laughed. “I cannot wait to watch you shatter into a million pieces because of me.”
Those words punched a gaping hole into my chest. They went all the way through me, taking everything with them. I felt the carnage and gore leak out of me and became woozy from the imagined blood loss. His bipolar behavior was a part of him now; logically I knew that. But emotionally… emotionally, he was already shattering me.
Didn’t he see that?
Every moment we were together like this chipped away at the pieces of me. It was only a matter of time before I crumbled to the ground in millions of broken, shattered pieces.
The sky brightened above and I heard the rushing sound of Stars approaching.
“Time to go,” he grinned at me. “Till next time, Stella.” He walked around the fire and I clenched my mother’s sword with two hands and prepared for the worst. On an evil laugh he chucked me under my chin and said one last thing. “I do love you. I have no idea why, but there it is. I love you. And because I love you, I want to hurt you. And more and more every day I’m giving over to what I want. Remember that the next time you see me.”
And then he was gone. He took off to the skies in his grayish-white Light and disappeared in the cloud cover overhead.
My parents, Serena, Nate and Jupiter landed in the next thirty seconds with all of their weapons pulled and ready. I raced to my mom’s outstretched arms and clung to her when the emotion took over again.
“Oh, Stella, I hate that we lost you. I hate that you were nearly killed.” She squeezed me tight and added, “Again.”
I sobbed against her shoulder while everyone stood around awkwardly waiting for me to pull it together so we could go home.
“How close was it?” Serena asked with a kind of patient tolerance of my behavior. “Must have been pretty bad.”
“It’s not that,” I hiccupped. “It’s… it was Seth.” And I burst into tears again.
Thankfully this made more sense to my family. My dad scooped me up into his capable arms and let me cry against him while he carried me home. Once there, I took the hottest shower imaginable and just stayed under the spray of water until all the hot water ran out. Then I took care of whatever injuries remained and crawled into bed.
I needed to go over the night with everyone and fill them in on all the newest with Seth, but they gave me space tonight. Emotionally traumatized did not even begin to cover how I felt right now.
The worst part was, I had flown through time and space, I had faced an angry Council that wanted to rip me from everything I had ever known and the fate I felt concretely tied to, I had been ordered to kill Seth and refused, I’d been told the traitor was sabotaging me at every turn and that I could no longer trust the one authority that was supposed
to protect me above everything else and then I’d been viciously attacked and nearly assassinated.
Yet, the worst part of all… the one thing I was having trouble coping with the most was Seth.
He loved me. He hated me. He wanted to save me. He wanted to kill me.
It was enough to make me crazy.
And it would only get worse. Like he said, every day he was giving into the Darkness more and more and more.
I had sworn I wouldn’t kill him. I had promised to help anchor him to his missing soul and the goodness that he could become again. But after tonight I had started to wonder if that was impossible, if maybe I wasn’t strong enough to do that.
Protecting Earth paled in comparison to the enormity of my objective with Seth. Taking care of Aliah, Seven and their entire army of Fallen felt easy when held in contrast to the task of keeping Seth sane and forcing him to hold onto his Light.
Tonight I was nothing but determined to prove the Council wrong and save my Counterpart, but how long would that last?
Like Seth, I would be faced with this choice every single day. How soon before I wanted to end Seth? And how soon after that before I gave into what I wanted, too?
Chapter Six
“Happy birthday!” Piper ran screaming into the produce booth holding a homemade birthday cake with gloppy frosting and seventeen spiral candles. She bounced with so much energy the aluminum cake pan tipped to the side and started for the ground.
“Pi!” I hopped up from my stool and caught the cake before it could flip over or hit the ground.
“Holy reflexes, Batman! Good save.”
I dimmed my glow that had automatically bloomed with my superhuman speed. Cradling the cool pan in the crook of one arm, I pretended to wipe the sweat from my brow with my free hand.
“Whew. That was a close one.” I looked down at the delicious looking dessert that had my name spelled out in a mixture of raspberries and strawberries. I dipped my finger into the buttercream frosting and tasted the super sweet goodness. “Yum. Losing this cake would have been a birthday tragedy.”