An hour went by as we scoured the remains. Houses Xunn and Kifo remained central to our focus, as they’d been specifically targeted in this attack. Avril and Heron covered Darius’s mansion, while Caspian and I looked through his, and Scarlett briefly scanned the other three.

Caspian’s home was mostly destroyed, but there were parts of the first level still standing. After we checked the ground floor and found more traces of explosives, we moved upstairs. I used my True Sight to look through the piles of rubble, and found several notebooks in a metal box buried at the bottom.

I dug the box out as Caspian came to stand next to me. Its lock was melted shut, but I pried it open with my bare hands, and revealed its contents. I pulled one of the notebooks out, its pages soft and pale brown. This particular corner of the house had not been fully damaged, from what I could see. The notebook was a sketchbook, I realized as I flipped through it.

“Can I have that, please?” Caspian asked, his voice low and a flicker of sadness in his jade eyes. I nodded and handed it over. He looked through it, then looked at me. “I’ve been drawing since I was a little boy, especially after my parents died. It helped me handle the loneliness and loss.”

I glanced at the pages and saw pencil portraits of his mother and father. Caspian would’ve been an accomplished artist if given the opportunity. His lines were firm and the contrasts were quite dramatic, but the overall compositions were beautiful. They showed a side of him I hadn’t thought existed.

“You didn’t want to forget their faces, did you?” I murmured.

“I already have,” he sighed, “but I can always look at what I drew and the images come back, albeit a little hazy.”

My chest tightened at the rawness in his voice. I could only imagine what it must’ve been like to grow up like he did, with nothing but a military regime instead of loving parents. His adoptive father must have been good to him, but I could tell from his demeanor that affection wasn’t part of his daily life. Caspian had a hard time trusting people, and I was sure it stemmed from his childhood.

I flipped through another notebook and found sketches of daemons in different forms—from hunters to the armored ones we saw earlier, but others, too. Some were huge, with hunters hastily doodled on the side for scaling; others looked weak and covered in rags. I saw female daemons, too, with long hair and slim horns. Caspian had been drawing these for a while, from what I could tell. There were pit wolves and schematics of the gorge caves. He’d drawn other Exiled Maras, too, and panoramic views of the daemons’ underground cities.

I looked up at him with questioning eyes, and he shrugged, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“I promise I will tell you everything, Harper, as soon as I make sure that it won’t put anyone’s life at risk,” he said gently, his gaze softening.

He was definitely different from the Caspian I’d known prior to the explosions. And the change felt more permanent. I didn’t know what to do with that. My mind tumbled around the events since my first day on Neraka, as I tried to pick at the signs that might’ve pointed to this dynamic shift between us.

As far as I was concerned, it was getting harder to deny that I was developing feelings for him. I already felt closer to him simply because I could see his emotions. But I wasn’t sure what those emotions were, as the colors changed back and forth and further confused me.

“I trust you will, at some point,” I replied, then looked through another sketchbook, finding more drawings of daemons, one of which was massive and frightening enough to give me nightmares. “I’m sorry for your losses tonight, Lord Kifo. I’ll do my best to punish those responsible.”

A faint smile crossed his lips as he moved forward, leaving only a couple of inches between us. With him so close, I could see ribbons of gold emanating from him, like shimmering tendrils that warmed my face and chest. The jade pools in his eyes darkened, and he slowly lowered his head.

“Thank you for your blood tonight,” he breathed. “Pyrope is a rare and beautiful gift for someone like me.”

“It was the least I could do.” I shrugged, the last part of his statement slipping past me for a second. “I mean, you healed me earlier, too, and I… Wait, Pyrope?”

My eyes widened as it all fell into place. He was right. I’d given him my blood, with my full consent. It wasn’t exactly a pact, but still, the act of willfully giving him my blood could easily qualify as Pyrope. What had Jax told me about it? He did it with Zeriel, in return for his service, and Maras would sometimes engage in it with their non-Mara lovers.

Oh, dear…

Why was my mind rushing to the “non-Mara lovers” part, instead of the part regarding “services rendered”? Zeriel had paid with his blood when Jax saved his life.

Caspian gave me a soft smile, his lips inching closer to mine. Was that why he was suddenly so warm and gentle with me? Had my choice of giving him my blood changed the way he looked at me to such a dramatic extent?

“I mean… it’s not technically Pyrope, is it?” I mumbled, as my heart performed a series of somersaults, kicking my stomach in the process.

“Not technically, but by a very loose definition,” he replied, blinking slowly.

He seemed to look right into my soul, and the golden aura around him seemed to intensify. My lips parted, mostly for me to breathe some air in, as I was getting a little lightheaded with him so close to me. His gaze dropped and his head moved an inch forward.

I froze, understanding right then and there that I wanted him to kiss me. Caspian Kifo, the mysterious and icy Exiled Mara I knew very little about. The seemingly ruthless leader who repeatedly saved me and even gave me his blood to heal me. The creature who had perfectly mastered the art of both drawing me in and pushing me away. I wanted him to kiss me.

But his lips never touched me.

Instead, his eyes found mine again as he took a deep breath, and the chills returned. He moved back and put the notebooks back in the metal box at my feet.

Caspian was flipping on me again. I could see dark green and red ribbons strangling the gold ones, his emotions shifting from what seemed like… affection, to something akin to distrust and pain, or anger. The red was particularly difficult to identify. My mom and dad never had trouble reading other people’s feelings. Neither did Serena. They were able to interpret the colors with great precision, yet I was struggling with Caspian.

My inner sentry growled as he walked over to another corner, resuming the search. My shoulders dropped and I breathed out, slightly irritated—not so much by his hot and cold flips, but by my reaction to his close proximity. I was clearly into him, and that came with problems in a world like Neraka. What were the chances something would even happen between us?

Close to zero, maybe?

And why am I thinking about this? About him? Damn it, Harper, snap out of it! You have a mission to focus on. People to save. Come on!

One thing was still clear and impossible to refute at this point: Caspian owed me a question. I was better off channeling my energy into that. Asking the right question of the one creature on this planet who seemed to know more than everyone else was crucial.