Reap the Shadows (Steel & Stone Book 4)

  She wanted to survive, but was her survival worth innocent lives? What if the next time she shaded she decided to use the Sahar? She’d successfully used the Stone while shaded once already, but as Natania had pointed out, her daemon instincts had barely been stirred awake at that point. The violent madness of the Sahar married to the unchained bloodlust of a daemon ...? She didn’t want to imagine what kind of monster she might become.

  They stood together in silence, her head tucked under his chin, his arms warm and strong around her. His presence alone comforted her, made her feel safe, like all her problems weren’t that bad. Or maybe she was comforted because deep down, she felt as if he would somehow take care of things the way he always did.

  Some of her contentment evaporated as her conversation with Seiya came back to her. How had she not realized sooner that she had come to rely on Ash to save her? That reliance was what made protecting her so risky for him. That was the line, the dividing factor: joining a fight, knowing she had to finish it herself, and joining a fight, knowing Ash—or someone else—would be there to finish it for her.

  After the near tragedy on the cliff, she’d realized it was wrong to keep counting on him, so she’d left him behind in the Overworld. But she hadn’t realized that it wasn’t her overall weakness that was the problem. She wasn’t weak anymore. She could fight—and win. She’d fought griffins, Gaians, and reapers and won—maybe with some help from her daemon blood and the Sahar, but she’d still won.

  Her problem wasn’t “magic and brawn,” as Natania had put it. Her problem was an inner weakness, and she wasn’t sure how fixable it was. Could she retrain the part of her brain that wanted to rely on Ash? And could she retrain him to stop coming to her rescue?

  His arms loosened and he took a half-step back. She looked up and his grey eyes captured her, transporting her back to that day long ago when he’d walked out of the pantry in the Consulate kitchen, a box of crackers in hand. Those eyes had cut through her, looking straight through her skin and into her soul. She wondered what he saw in her soul now, as compared to that day so many months ago. That girl had been burned away in the fires of pain and struggle, love and heartache, and the harsh realities of a world she’d mistakenly thought she’d been prepared for.

  “When I feel trapped in my own head,” he said, “there’s one thing that always makes me feel better.”

  “What’s that?”

  A smile ghosted across his lips and he led her toward the railing. Pulling her into his arms, he jumped up onto the railing. She squeaked, clutching his neck. He landed easily, catching his balance, and his eyes met hers again. Grey irises darkened to black and shimmers enveloped him. Magic sparked against her skin. Black scales took form, tracing the lines of his cheekbones and edging his jaw. Dark designs swirled in the hollows of his cheek, mimicking the patterns of his scales, and the three spines on either side of his head appeared from the shimmers.

  His wings spread for balance, his tail sweeping out behind him. She barely noticed the fifteen-story drop at her back, his arms the only thing keeping her in place on the railing. She just stared at him, mesmerized. Sometimes she forgot the regal, alien beauty of his daemon form. She had no idea how she’d become immune to his Nightmare Effect, only that it had stopped affecting her while they’d been in the Overworld. Her fingers rose of their own accord and brushed over the scales that ran across the top edge of his cheekbone.

  She didn’t really think about it. She didn’t actually decide to do it. She just slid her hands into his hair and pulled his head down. At the same time, she stretched her face up, and her lips brushed lightly over his.

  He hesitated, and her eyes opened to see the flicker of disbelief in his black eyes—disbelief that she would want to kiss him in his daemon form?—before she pulled his mouth back to hers. His hand found her cheek, sliding across her face and into her hair as she kissed him slowly and fiercely, holding him in place. She traced his teeth with the tip of her tongue, finding the sharp points of his canines. He pressed his mouth even harder to hers, deepening the kiss until hot desire rushed through her.

  His arms tightened around her and his wings folded in, wrapping around her in a tight, warm embrace. With his mouth still over hers, he pivoted slowly to put his back to the deadly fall on the other side of the railing, and she thought he was going to jump back down to the plaza.

  Instead, without breaking their kiss, he leaned backward and let gravity take them. They plunged off the edge.

  She tore her mouth off his and screamed at the top of her lungs as they plummeted headfirst at terminal velocity, his wings still wrapped around her and doing shit-all to stop their fall. Over her own scream and the tearing wind, the sound of his laughter pierced her heart. She’d never heard him laugh before.

  He pulled his wings off her and partially extended them. She felt the moment their plummet changed from an uncontrolled fall to a high-speed dive. He snapped his wings open and they shot out over the street, far too close to the ground for her comfort. Buildings whipped by as they sped through the air and then the river was flashing by below them. She clutched him desperately as he banked sharply and they whooshed under the bridge, following the curves of the water.

  Ash squeezed her and put his mouth against her ear. “Let go.”

  “Are you insane?” she yelled over the wind.

  “Trust me.”

  Her hands shook. His wings beat downward, pushing them higher above the water. She looked down, then back at him. Squeezing her eyes, she unclamped her legs from around his waist and let her arms fall from his neck. Another beat of his wings, and then suddenly they were spinning. He rolled them in the air so his back was to the water, and with his body underneath her, he spun her around in his arms.

  His barrel roll came full circle and she hung in his arms, her back to his chest, her legs dangling, and her hands locked on his forearms in a death grip. Her heart pounded in her throat and despite her fear, she opened her eyes.

  The water zoomed past just a few yards below them, the light from the city sparkling on the surface. The wind whipped her hair out behind her and tore at her clothes. She stared, her breath caught in her chest.

  “Ready?” he said in her ear.

  “For what?” she squeaked, her panic spiking.

  Magic sparked over him, a coming spell. He snapped his wings downward and a huge concussion slammed into the surface of the river. Water exploded all around them as the force rebounded off the surface and came rushing back up. It caught his wings and rocketed them upward as if they’d been launched out of a cannon. They shot up in a tight spiral, the river shrinking below them.

  Then they were gliding serenely above the city, the dark rooftops carved into definition by the glowing tangle of streets lit bright orange by streetlights. She stared in wonder at the vista spread out before her, beautiful and anonymous. The lights of thousands of windows sparkled, woven through with winding streets and the dark band of the river.

  A tremor went through her. Before she could chicken out, she released him and spread her arms out to either side as though they were her own featherless wings. She hung in his grip, with only his arms keeping her from falling, nothing but the night and the glowing city below her. Fear morphed into elation as the wind rushed over her body. Freedom. Complete freedom.

  “Dive again,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, let’s go!”

  His arms tightened. He pumped his wings twice, then folded them tight. For just an instant, they seemed to hang in the air, suspended on nothing but the breeze. Then they dropped. She screamed again, but this time in excitement. She spread her arms wide as they free fell toward the city lights. The world disappeared; it was just her and Ash, his arms tight around her as they plummeted together, everything else lost to the wind and sky.

  He pulled his wings partway out, catching the wind to alter their trajectory, and then spread them wide as the river rushed toward them. He leveled out, barely h
alf a dozen yards from the water, and once again glided above it. She stretched a hand toward it and he glided lower until her fingers broke the surface, dragging through the cold ripples. His wings came down, the tips splashing against the water as he ascended again. He banked toward the west side of the river, flying past a wide street and over a dark stretch of trees surrounding a large park.

  Their flight slowed and he pulled up, landing lightly on the grass. She put her feet gingerly on the ground, holding his arms in place around her middle as she recovered her equilibrium. When she was sure of her balance, she stepped out of the circle of his arms.

  The park was cloaked in shadows, the silhouettes of dark trees surrounding them, their sprawling branches blocking out the neighboring buildings. The only light came from a few spotlights trained on the spot where the meandering stone paths converged. In the center, a statue rose—an angel carved out of white stone.

  Piper slowly walked toward the statue and stopped just in front of one of the stone benches that surrounded the base. The angel’s feathered wings framed her body and her robes swirled out around her feet. Her hands, folded together, were pressed against her cheek as she stared sadly into the distance. She was carved in such detail that it looked as though, at any moment, her flowing hair would shift in the breeze and her wings would spread to carry her back to the heavens.

  Ash came up beside her. She glanced at him, surprised to see him back in glamour. He also looked up at the statue, his expression inscrutable.

  “Does she look like a seraphim?” she asked softly.

  “No,” he murmured. “Some seraphim try to look like her though. No seraphim could look so peaceful. They’re too absorbed in their own egos.”

  She snorted quietly in amusement. She’d heard that about seraphim, the white-winged daemon caste of the Overworld. Her eyes went back to the statue. To her, the angel looked unbearably mournful, as though she’d witnessed the most terrible of tragedies a thousand times over. But Ash had described her as peaceful. She supposed sorrow created its own kind of serenity.

  “I wish I could feel that kind of peace.” She glanced at him, smiling. “Though flying was pretty close.”

  A smile touched his lips as he continued to study the angel. Her eyes traced the lines of his face and the braid in his hair, devoid of any colored strip of material. She remembered holding the strip of blue cloth in her hand before tying it to a rock and throwing it into the river—casting it away as though it had meant nothing. Pain lanced her.

  She couldn’t be a liability to him anymore. She understood the problem now, but could she break the pattern? Could she learn to shut down the subconscious part of her that wanted to rely on him? And what would it take to prove to him that she had changed? She couldn’t just explain it; he would need to trust her on a gut-deep level for it to make any difference in a life or death situation.

  He turned toward her. Shadows drifted across his face, enhancing that aura of mystery and menace he always carried. Her heart swelled, choking her. It hurt so much, wanting him ... loving him ... not being able to be together. There were so many issues hanging between them, so many problems she wasn’t sure could be solved.

  “I feel so stuck,” she admitted softly, unsure whether she was making any sense. “I feel trapped by everything that I don’t know how to fix.”

  He shrugged, the murmur of his voice blending with the whisper of the leaves in the breeze as he looked up at the mournful angel again. “Life doesn’t wait for anything.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “What do you mean?”

  “Some problems aren’t fixable, but that doesn’t mean you should stop. That sense that you can’t move forward ... that’s the trap. It’s better to take the best future you can manage with what you have, than to put your life on hold trying to fix everything in the hopes of a perfect future that might never come.”

  His eyes returned to hers, burning through her with their intensity. “I realized a long time ago that I couldn’t let my problems define me—I couldn’t let Samael steal my life as well as my freedom. I couldn’t wait to live my life until I’d escaped him, because that might have never happened. Even if it was only stolen moments here and there, I tried to get the most out of the tiny freedoms I had. Any day it could have all been over. I experienced as much as I could so I wouldn’t die having never really lived.”

  His solemn stare stole her breath away. More than once, his seeming disregard for his own life had frustrated and bewildered her; he was always throwing himself into danger to protect others—usually her. But maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t value his life. Rather, he had long ago become comfortable with the idea that his life was a temporary gift that could end at any moment.

  “You can’t control your daemon side yet,” he told her, “but you’re only stuck if you let yourself be. Life is short, there and then gone. Don’t waste it waiting for a solution that might not even exist.”

  Her heart beat harder. He didn’t want her to hide away, afraid to live her life because of her inability to control shading. But his words didn’t only apply to that one problem. He was right; the future was so fragile, so delicate and ever changing. What seemed like an insurmountable obstacle today could be completely different tomorrow.

  She lifted her eyes to his, her heart racing even faster. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to give them a chance, but she’d been too afraid to try, too paralyzed by the obstacles between them and the pursuit of a “perfect future that might never come.” Maybe they could fight through their issues. Maybe they couldn’t. She didn’t know the future, but she realized now she might not even get a future. All she had for sure was the present.

  “Ash ...” she whispered, her voice cracking in her throat. “We don’t have anything figured out ... It’s all messed up and there’s so much we need to sort out, so many problems we need to fix. Maybe some of the problems can’t be fixed.”

  He gave a slow nod. His eyes roved across her face as he tried to read her emotions.

  “But ... you’re right. Waiting for the perfect solutions, for all our problems to be solved ...” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s coming for us, tomorrow or any other day, but I don’t want to wake up one day and realize you’re gone ... and that we never even got a chance to try.”

  He hesitated, absorbing her words. Then he reached out and touched her chin, his thumb tracing her jaw as he slid his hand into her hair. She lifted her hands and pressed them against his chest. Her fingers closed around tight handfuls of his shirt as she stared into his dark eyes.

  “Even if we only have tonight ...” she said, her voice trembling. “Just for tonight, I want to forget about it all and just be with you.”

  Shadows slid across his eyes, emotions she couldn’t name. His hand curled over the back of her neck, gently pulling her face to his until their lips were almost touching.

  “Just for tonight,” he whispered, “and for as long as you want me.”

  His mouth closed over hers, slow but unstoppable, burning with that determination that defined him, that drove him in spite of impossible odds. He kissed her as if his life depended on it, and she truly felt like he was the air she needed to breathe, that if she lifted her mouth from his, she would drown and that this heat surging through her, the frantic beating of her heart, the rush of life through her veins would instantly cease. She crushed herself against him, holding him as tightly as she had when they’d been soaring above the city—alone together where nothing mattered but each other.

  Her heart thumped fast in her chest as heat spread through her body. He pulled his mouth from hers and his lips brushed over her cheek, trailing over her face to her ear, then down the side of her neck. She tilted her head back as he slid his lips across her collarbone, then his mouth closed over the pulse in her neck. She pushed her hands into his hair, pulling his mouth harder against her throat.

  She didn’t know whether it was the realization that there was a possibility she could fix
the biggest problem between them, or if their soul-freeing flight over the city had given clarity to her thoughts, but suddenly, it seemed so clear. Yes, things between them weren’t perfect. Yes, there were so many issues they needed to figure out. But she loved him, and that was all she really needed to know. Maybe this would be it for them, one night together. Maybe they would have a week. Maybe a month. Maybe a year. Maybe a lifetime. It didn’t matter.

  With one hand still in her hair, he scooped her up with his other arm, lifting her off the ground. He carried her away from the lights around the statue and into the dark shadows beneath the trees. His arm loosened and she slid down him until her feet were back on the ground. His stormy grey eyes roamed over her face. She reached for him and breathlessly guided his mouth back to hers. She didn’t need to breathe. She just needed him.

  As she kissed him, her hands slid down his chest until she found the hem of his shirt. She grabbed it and pulled it up forcefully. He broke the kiss to pull it off before she tore it. She sighed happily as he dropped it on the grass, then pressed her hands flat to his chest and slid them down, over the hard planes of his abs.

  “Finally,” she breathed.

  A soft chuckle escaped him, and then he was kissing her again. She ran her hands over him, her heart pounding and blood racing through her like fire. He held the back of her head with one hand, keeping her mouth tight to his as though the world would collapse around them if their lips parted for even an instant. His other hand caressed her neck, then her waist, tracing her curves with light, teasing touches.

  His hand moved lower and found the wide belt that held her sword. He pulled the buckle open, lifted the weapon away, and dropped it onto the grass. He lifted her legs up, guiding them around his waist, and then sank down to his knees and leaned forward, gently laying her back on the grass. She drew him on top of her until his weight pressed down on her, her heart racing even faster.

  He finally pulled his mouth from hers and moved his lips down her chin, over her throat, and lower. His agile fingers pulled apart the ties of her shirt, and then his mouth was tracing her skin, his lips touching every inch of her until fire consumed her and all she could do was clutch his hair and remember to breathe. Her awareness narrowed to nothing but him, to his touch, his warmth, his strength, his hot breath on her skin, his mouth coming back to hers, their bodies together. She was free falling again, his arms around her, and nothing else in the universe mattered.