Ember sat perched on the edge of the bed, the best view of the open-plan apartment. She’d made the most of the shower whilst he was gone to get rid of the grime of the day. She’d been grateful for the fresh clothes too, relieved to be out of the uniform she’d been in since early that morning.
She’d helped herself to a glass of water but had no appetite.
Mother: dead.
Aunt: dead.
Ex-fiancé: dead.
Father she’d never met: dead.
Brother who was out there somewhere: could be alive or dead.
And linked to all of them in one way or another: Nate.
When she’d struggled to understand how he’d become such a big part of her life from his visits to the café, she’d truly had no idea.
And now she was his latest collection. Just like he’d collected her brother, he’d collected her now too. Except she had to maintain her determination to do whatever she could to make sure he didn’t just cut his losses and deliver her – or kill her and face the aftermath.
She wrapped her arms around herself as she paced the loft again. She’d already circled it several times.
She stopped at the fireplace for the fourth time, her hands on her hips as she scanned the piles of books.
Even the prospect of leaving Lowtown, something that had been so significant a week ago, now seemed like a dim and distant memory. She’d be lucky to even make it to the border, let alone get through it. Right then, she couldn’t be sure if she’d make it out alive at all. And yet she was numbed to the fear of it, as if it was an everyday trauma, an everyday occurrence.
She didn’t even recognise herself from a week ago – except for the fact that, as with her application to Midtown, she was not going down without a fight. She’d work something out. From the way Nate had rushed out, maybe he already had. Whether that was going to be to her advantage though was another matter.
Whatever the outcome, as she stared at the ashes in the fireplace, she needed to find a way for Nate to work with her and not against her. And that started with finding a way for him to trust her.
Whatever front he put up, he was not inhumane even if not human. He could deny the guilt all he wanted, but he felt it. All his decisions from the moment he didn’t take the ring from her told her he felt it. And someone who felt guilt had a conscience. And someone who had a conscience could be reasoned with. And to be able to reason with him, Ember needed something to negotiate with.
But right then, she had nothing.
She crouched down and tilted her head to the side to read the spines of the rows of books.
In many ways it felt hard to imagine him curled up with a book in front of the fire alone. In other ways, it was almost too clear and natural a vision in her head.
She reached out to run her fingers down the well-worn spines, various thicknesses, textures and states of wear and tear caressing the pads of her fingers. She stopped at one near the bottom of the third pile along to the right of the fireplace: a book without title or author on the spine.
At first she tried to ease it out whilst avoiding toppling the twenty or so books above it, but as the piles either side swayed precariously, she removed all the books on top.
She sat back onto the sofa, her find in her lap. There were no markings on the cover either, just the knot of the cord that bound the book shut.
She unravelled it and opened it to the first page. The book was hand-written onto parchment. The pages were dominated primarily by symbols aside from small sections of writing alongside them. Some pages were well worn, others smudged, some of the inked words dissipating into faded blotches.
It didn’t take long, despite the hundred pages or so, for her to start spotting the various symbols around the room matching those contained in the book. This was the collection he had referred to. This was the one he had spent twenty years trying to locate.
And this was part of her heritage. These symbols were born out of what she was. The heritage she had chosen to ignore. The heritage that played no place in her life up to that point; up to the point three years ago when her aunt had told her on her deathbed what she was. The heritage she now knew had torn her family apart. The heritage that had since caught up with her.
Now the Hordas clan were the instigators of wanting to turn her life upside down again. They wanted to take away everything she had worked for. Worse, they wanted to use her somehow to grow in the power she despised.
Nate was the only one who could prevent that from happening – if he could choose her over everything he had worked for.
Nate who was still so much of a mystery to her. If she could understand more about him…
She found herself searching for it without even thinking about it. In the hour that passed, she examined every page for the symbol over his heart.
Eventually, she found it.
As she read, her heart skipped a beat as so much fell into place. With it, tendrils of dread squeezed.
She rose from the sofa and turned to face the door as she heard it open behind her. She knew it was pointless to try and conceal the book.
Nate closed the door and locked it before hanging the keys next to it along with his jacket. Thankfully, he’d returned alone.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked as he drew level.
His attention dropped to the book in her hand and the disrupted piles behind her.
He reached to take it from her grasp, Ember not objecting.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked as he stepped past her to put it back in its rightful place, reconstructing the piles in the process. She wondered if he was avoiding her gaze on purpose. If he suspected she now knew.
‘Oddly enough, I don’t have much of an appetite.’
‘You need to eat,’ he said with his usual a heavy-laden frown as he headed across to the kitchen.
The vampire with a curse on his heart. The cruellest curse there could be on it. And one of her kind had done it to him. It was no wonder he was wary around her. It was no wonder he didn’t trust her.
Tentatively, she watched him step behind the kitchen counter.
‘And you need to tell me why you rushed out of here,’ she said.
‘I had a thought.’
She headed over to join him. ‘I guessed that much.’
He gathered up ingredients from the fridge and cupboard, and laid them out on the countertop between them.
Ember placed her palms on the surface, her thumbs clutching the underside. ‘Nate, talk to me.’
‘As yet, there’s nothing to talk about,’ he declared, his full attention on preparing sandwiches for them both. ‘I’m waiting to hear back from someone.’
‘About what?’
His gaze was steady as it met hers, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he slid the plate across to her as he took a bite out of his own sandwich.
She slid the plate directly back at him.
He held her gaze in the persistent silence, his burning into hers until he pulled away, sandwich in hand as he wandered over to the sofa.
Ember let out a curt sigh, rubbed her fingers up and down her forehead as she closed her eyes to ease her frustration. Nate was a loner. Nate had been a loner for a very long time. He sorted problems out for himself. He didn’t rely on anyone. They were traits that were hard to break. They were traits that were even harder to break when you were already deemed the potential enemy as she was.
She turned to face him again. Turned to see him sat on the sofa, eating the sandwich in one hand, phone in the other. He scrolled before casting the latter onto the table in front of him and focused on the second half of his sandwich.
She headed over. She perched side-on in the corner nearest to her, facing him. ‘Nate, we don’t have to be enemies in this.’
‘We don’t have to be anything in this. I’m a collector and you’re my collection. That’s all there is to it.’
‘We’re more than that and we both know it. We slept together.’
‘No, I fucked you,’ he said, his tone as harsh, as cold, as his glare.
It was a hard reminder. An abrupt reminder. His clear attempt to push her away.
He finished the remains of his sandwich before wiping the corner of his mouth with his thumb, his gaze lost from hers again.
She studied his profile in the shadows of the room. In the virtual darkness, she saw him clearer than she ever had. Understood exactly why he needed to convince himself that was all it had been between them – except now she knew better. Saw his choice of word as the barrier it was.
‘I know what the curse is, Nate. I saw the symbol in the book: the one branded on your heart. I know she made sure that if you didn’t love her, you couldn’t love anyone else – that no one else could ever love you back. Because, if you try to be with them, it’ll kill you.’
Without meeting her gaze, he stood.
He carried his plate back across to the kitchen.
For once, he didn’t know how he felt: angry at her finding the book; embarrassed that she knew the truth; worried that she knew the truth.
He’d never told anyone. He’d never felt the need to tell anyone. There was never any point in anyone knowing. And, right then, she was the last one he wanted or needed to know.
But then maybe it was better that she did. Maybe it was better that she was under no illusion, especially as there was no way she could be hidden from the Hordas clan outside of that room, not unless she ruined her chances of ever crossing that border by branding herself like he’d had to brand himself. The Hordas clan who now felt even more infallible than ever. And without the answer he needed from Kane as yet – if it would come at all – they would remain that way. And if there was no answer, if that was how it had to be, if that meant ending her life, then so be it. He had no choice. He could do nothing more. He’d spend the next thirty years looking over his shoulder for failing on his mission – or however long the Hordas clan had left without any offspring – but he’d try to do what he always did: he’d move on. Move on to things that didn’t necessitate agonising over his decision.
‘You flinched at one point when we were together,’ Ember remarked. ‘Right towards the end. It was as though you were in pain. It was around the time I noticed your contact lenses, so I forgot about it in the wake of everything else. But looking at that book, it came back to me.’
He didn’t need reminding of it: the reason why he’d had to abandon her so soon after. Why he couldn’t risk holding her or her holding him in return. He hadn’t seen it coming. He hadn’t detected her feelings beyond lust. He should have known better. He should never have risked letting it get to that point. And now having her there was increasing the risk. For now, it was only the stirring of feelings. He could never allow it to become anything more – for both their sakes. All the more reason why he needed her as far away from him as possible.
‘It made sense,’ she added. There was a lengthy pause. ‘You feel something for me. But it’s not pity.’
‘And it’ll make absolutely no difference to my decision,’ he said, finally turning to face her.
But he didn’t deny his feelings.
He heard her heart rate pick up a notch. She stood from the sofa. She took a step towards him. ‘I know when you feel something for someone and it’s reciprocated, you can’t touch them. Not like that. Not unless you’re in here. You can only ever have that experience in here, can’t you, Nate? That’s what she did to you.’ She paused. ‘If you touch someone you love out there, someone who loves you, your heart will stop. That pain you felt was because you were starting to feel something for me as I was for you.’
‘Something that doesn’t stand a hope in hell of going anywhere,’ he said. ‘Something that is irrelevant to any of this.’
‘Are they still alive?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘The witch who did this to you?’
He felt his insides tense at the mention of her. He pulled away. ‘I doubt it.’
‘How long ago was it?’
‘A little before the regulations.’
‘You’ve lived with it for that long?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can it be undone?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve tried?’
‘No, Ember. I decided it was more preferable to be a martyr.’
She folded her arms. ‘Sarcasm. That’s a new one.’
‘Then clearly you bring it out in me,’ he remarked, his gaze meeting hers briefly.
‘How long have you felt something for me?’
‘I’m not having this conversation with you, Ember.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because as I said, it’s pointless.’
‘No, Nate, it’s pivotal. You hanging around me has been about more than pity and guilt.’
‘Ember, I know what you’re trying to do. I get that you’re trying to connect with me. I get that you’re trying to persuade me to confide in you…’
‘I’m trying to get you to talk, Nate, because I know there’s something between us. To me, that’s all the more reason why we should be working together.’
‘The only thing between us is a past that I’m trying to mop up. Whatever else you see between us is flawed, born out of nothing more than misplaced familiarity. Fascination breeds false judgements. I don’t know you and you certainly don’t know me.’
‘Does anyone?’
‘No. And I prefer that way. Now more than ever. Because I’ve learned one thing out of this, Ember: that complications always ensue when I don’t do my job properly the first time. And this situation we’re both in now is walking evidence of that.’
‘Or you not doing your job properly could be the one thing to bring the Hordas clan down. It could bring it all full circle. It started with my brother and it can end with me. This could be your absolution, Nate.’
He exhaled tersely at the prospect.
‘I know you’re not sure if I’m telling you the truth, but I am,’ she persisted. ‘If I knew more about what I was, I would tell you. My aunt told me only about my bloodline. She knew nothing more. And not only did she not want what I was ruining my chances, when I found out what I was, I didn’t want what I was to ruin my chances either. I wanted to pretend it didn’t exist. You’re not the only one with a curse. You’re not the only one who needs a haven. You’ve spent all this time trying to get me to mine. Don’t let that change now. You’ll never forgive yourself.’
Refusing to continue the discussion, he stepped out from behind the countertop. ‘While I wait on this call, I’m going to get some sleep. You need to do the same. It might be our only opportunity. You look like you haven’t slept properly for days.’
She folded her arms. ‘I wonder why.’
As he kicked off his boots and socks, he glanced over his shoulder to see the frustration emanating from her eyes that he wouldn’t engage with her.
He didn’t need to sleep. He’d stand no chance of sleeping. But he did need to take some time out – from her persistent questions to which he couldn’t give her answers.
And she most certainly did need sleep. Her eyes were red-rimmed and turning bloodshot, the pallor of her skin a growing concern, her whole composure flagging. She was reaching the point where she wasn’t going to be able to think straight, where her body certainly wasn’t going to be able to keep up for much longer, all the emotional stress of those last couple of days no doubt a huge part of that.
He took a step towards her, wanting her to know what he was about to say was a directive and not a request. A directive he hoped would lead to acquiescence rather than a struggle. ‘I need you in bed with me. Where I can keep an eye on you.’
Her frown deepened. ‘What do you think I’m going to do, Nate? Try and kill you in your sleep? And trap myself in here forever? Unless that’s how I can escape?’
‘Sorry to disappoint but the barrier still applies whether I’m dead or alive, unless you’ve got a miracle cure for my curse?’
Ember didn’t budge, seemingly far from amused at his glibness.
‘I’m not planning to kill you in your sleep either, Ember, if that’s what you’re thinking. I hardly need you unconscious. I certainly don’t need to take you to my bed for it. I want us both to get some rest, that’s all.’
‘And I’d rather stay conscious for what could be my final hours, if that’s OK with you. Live life to the full.’
His heart ached under the intensity of her gaze, the uncertainty in her eyes. She knew as well as he did that he didn’t need her permission to get her there, her deliberation merely exerting her last sense of control.
He closed the gap between. ‘I want you to know what happens after this is about what I need to do, not what I want to do. Because of that, I won’t promise you a happily-ever-after when I can’t guarantee it. I’m doing what I can though, Ember. That’s all I can offer right now.’
‘And this is more my battle than yours, Nate. My mother died because of them. My brother was stolen from me because of them. The only people I have left to care about were threatened by them. A good man has died because of them. If I’m somehow linked to their success, I can also be linked to their downfall. You need me alive for that downfall.’
The conversation was over. For now, the conversation needed to be over.
He backed off. He slipped under the covers still clothed to assure her he had no ulterior motive.
After a few minutes of further defiance, she eventually joined him, taking the space he had left for her on the window side of the bed.
She lay on her side with her back to him – her last protest.
Physical contact was the last thing he needed, even if she was as fully clothed as him. But there was always a chance, a minor chance, that he could drift off to sleep waiting for her to do so, despite the weight of his thoughts. And a witch was a witch, even if his witch was Ember.
Spooning her, he wrapped his arm around her waist, keeping her close enough that he would feel it if she tried to get out of bed.
She tensed a little at the intimacy of his proximity, no doubt partially because he’d spent every moment since they’d slept together pushing her away. She didn’t recoil though. She certainly didn’t pull away. But she said nothing either. It seemed, for now, Ember had said all she wanted to say. Because every word she had said had been true: he’d only felt the pain because she’d reciprocated his feelings.
Ember liked him. She genuinely liked him. Or she had, before she’d found out who he really was.
He flattened his palm on the mattress at her stomach, creating as little a sense of togetherness as the position would allow. But it was hard not to feel it. It was tough not to linger on the subtle aroma of her skin, to be enticed by her warmth, tempted by the pulse alive and throbbing in her neck. To not recall how her skin felt under his touch; how right her body had felt beneath his; how right it had felt being inside her. Because once she had relaxed, he had clearly become more absorbed in her than he had realised. He’d clearly crossed a boundary he never crossed or he wouldn’t have felt anything at all.
Felt something for a witch – the very species that had killed his heart dead in the first place.
And he couldn’t let that happen again; he couldn’t let any of it happen again, as tempting as it was there in his haven where he was at no risk of feeling pain. Where he could get as up close and personal as he wanted physically as well as emotionally. Ultimately, it would achieve nothing but temporarily sate the frustration and tension though.
He detected her subtle sigh. She wriggled into a comfortable position, moved one forearm under her head as an added pillow, she jutted her behind back a little and bumped his erection in the process. Because that was one thing he certainly had no control over, not lying next to her like that.
He felt her still. But she said nothing.
And neither did he.
Instead, he lay in the silence just like she did, listening to the melody of her pre-sleep breathing. Because without conviction as to what he was going to do, whilst he was waiting on that call to determine his next course of action, he wasn’t willing to utter another word.
He closed his eyes to the gentle patter of rain on the windows beyond the opaque arches, his entire loft surrounded by an outer corridor, his haven nestled within. Now their haven.
He couldn’t remember the last time he lay with his arm around someone – not in his bed. Not like that, listening to the subtle tick of the clock echoing around the space, counting down the time they had left together. Counting down the time to the point he would be forced to make a decision.
The first half an hour continued to be the toughest – especially knowing she was still conscious. But it worsened as she drifted to sleep. As her body relaxed and melded against his. As she lay unconscious and vulnerable.
It felt as if part of her had been absorbed into him, invigorating parts of him, warming his cold blood and pushing it through his veins with more vigour, heating his entire body, arousing his entire body, inciting his most basic instincts. Her rich, warm, metallic blood pumping through her veins inches from his mouth. The softness of her feminine curves. The smoothness of her fragile skin. He could have taken it all: her body, her blood, even her life if he so chose.
The temptation to bite, to keep her there, to make her his, trapped in that haven, had him teetering on the question of his own selfishness.
It intensified as he tuned in to her deep and steady human breaths, her pulse ticking away like the clock in front of him, counting down her limited years – another reason he couldn’t afford to fall for her any more than he already had.
And that was why, if he found a solution, a way to bring down the Hordas clan, he had to let her go.
He withdrew his arm from around her. He rolled onto his back and turned his head to gaze at the windows, at the first signs of morning backlighting the opaque glass.
He looked back at her again to where she now slept soundly. Thoughts were too vivid: tasting her, touching her, making her gasp and tremble and shudder as he had. Holding her down. Fucking her hard and deep. Feeling her tight around him. Feeling her skin break under the piercing of his incisors. Feeling the heat of her blood fill his mouth.
He forced himself to pull away.
As soon as he did, so did she, turning to face the direction of where he had been, her delicate hand sliding up through the sheet where he had lay, her hips adjusting, emphasising the curve of her behind as the rest of her body realigned in his direction. But she was still asleep, her breathing still deep, with no idea how much the predator in him could have changed everything for her in a matter of minutes.
He grabbed his phone where he’d left it on the covers behind him. He poured himself a glass of water and made his way over to the sofas.
He placed his phone on the table and crouched at his piles of books. He carefully removed the book of symbols – the one Ember had come across, and the one that had exposed his secret.
He nestled into the corner of the sofa, semi-reclining as he flicked through the pages.
‘You will never fucking love again. Do you hear me, Nate?’ Elissa had all but screamed at him.
Her large blue eyes had flared in fury, more so in indignation. Beautiful eyes, at least aesthetically. Everything about her was beautiful, from her delicate features, to her waist-length dark hair, to her curvaceous body. Everybody wanted her, and yet she chose him. And, for a while, he had indulged in her beauty. He had repressed his own uncertainties about the person beneath. But that person hadn’t taken long to rise to the surface – in her attempt to control him, her tantrums, her self-obsession, her foul temper, her arrogance.
She had wanted to own him, and no one owned him. Not even the most beautiful woman he had come across. Not even a witch who had charmed and captivated him with her playful magic, with her ability to bend the rules of nature. A witch proficient in her multiple abilities due to being from a pure bloodline of both elementals and casters. A witch who, little by little, had used her enhanced skills against him: a flying cup when he defied her; a bout of sickness limiting to his bed when he wanted to go somewhere without her; a fallen branch on an attractive girl he had taken a few moments to give directions to.
‘I don’t love you, Elissa,’ he had told her. ‘I can’t love you.’
There had been no hurt in her eyes, only indignation at him daring not to worship at her feet; to be grateful for her attention.
‘I’ll never love you,’ he’d said.
As he’d left, he hadn’t been entirely convinced he would leave with his life – or what had been left of it after three years by her side. Three years without tenderness, emotional intimacy, compassion and, most of all, his view of what love should be. And it had nothing at all to do with external beauty, any more than a delicate and vibrant flower with poisonous pollen did.
But Elissa wasn’t going to kill him. Elissa had no plans to free him of any kind of burden.
One moment he’d been ploughing through the field’s long grass, away from the home they shared, a home shrouded by nightfall. The next moment he had been flat on his back in their bed, waking to the sense of his blood freezing in his veins, his heart aching, the brand scorching his skin above it.
She’d loomed over him, those blue eyes putrid with resentment. ‘You will never love again. And you will never feel being loved again. You will never know what it’s like to be with someone. I take that from you today. As of today, I make your life barren. I curse that weak heart of yours. A heart that will stop at the touch of your hand on anyone you dare to love and who loves you back. Admire from afar and suffer for it. Act upon it, and leave this world behind. Your only salvation from this curse is death.’
Her smile of triumph had been as cruel as her curse.
‘Will you ever love anyone enough to die for them, Nate? When, over time, that heart turns cold and defunct, when you can’t even remember what love is, will you sacrifice yourself for someone you can’t be with anyway? I think not.’
He rested the back of his hand against his mouth as he turned page after page, studying each in the shadows of the room.
He’d been told by many that protecting himself from the curse was impossible. In many ways, it had been. But that haven was his loophole. There was always a loophole. He just needed to find Ember’s now too. Find it, or it was better she was dead. Better than a life with the Hordas clan. A better alternative than what that would do to her. Better than being unable to live with knowing the power she gave them. Whatever that power was.