CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I HADN’T INTENDED to fall asleep in the hammock with Jasmine, but we’d ended up talking for hours, and at some point, we’d put our heads down to be more comfortable. A lot more comfortable, as it turned out.
While we slept, someone had opened the door and left it open, allowing fresh air to come into the stuffy quarters. Having the door open also kept my claustrophobia at bay, and when I looked across the hallway and saw Costa sleeping in one of his room’s two hammocks while the other was empty, I knew who’d done it. Adrian.
I got up, taking care not to jostle Jasmine so I didn’t wake her. Not that I should have worried. She just rolled into the middle of the hammock with a nasally snore once I’d extricated myself. I smiled at how contented she looked, then my smile faded as I left the room.
Battle time.
Adrian was at the front of the boat. It was still dark out, but a hint of orange showed where the water and the horizon met, so sunrise was on its way. The constant sea spray combined with the wind made me wish I’d grabbed a jacket before coming up, yet I wasn’t turning around. Aside from a crew member in the glass-enclosed steering room, we were finally alone.
I went over to stand next to him. Without a word, he took off his coat and put it around me. It was still warm from his body heat, and his height meant that it fell to my knees.
“Thanks,” I said as I put it on. Then I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to open with We need to talk or Isn’t there something you want to tell me? We were way past that.
“You’ve been lying to me again, Adrian,” I said, still staring at that faint orange light on the horizon. “Don’t make it worse by denying it. I think I already know most of what it is, but you’re either going to tell me the rest of it, or no matter how much I love you, I am going to leave you.”
He swung me around to face him, the fading moonlight highlighting the shock on his features. “What?”
I pushed his hands from my shoulders, glaring at him through a sudden surge of tears. “I said, I will leave you if you don’t spill right now everything you’ve been hiding and lying about. As Jasmine noted earlier, I don’t have a choice about much, but I can damn well choose not to keep searching for the spearhead with someone who keeps lying to me and undermining my every step. Yes, your bloodline and your upbringing mean that lying’s second nature to you, but you still have free will. Whatever you do now, it will be your choice, so don’t blame anyone but yourself if you don’t like the consequences.”
I was breathing hard by the time I was finished, as if I’d been running. In some ways, I had. I’d been running from this moment by dismissing or ignoring all the warnings that had led up to it. Adrian was breathing harder, too, and the silver rings around his eyes were almost glittering in the moonlight.
“You don’t get it, Ivy. If I tell you everything, you’ll leave me anyway.”
“Then I’ll do it with the truth you should have told me in the first place,” I said, clenching my fists in an attempt to keep my trembling from showing. The thought of leaving him, even temporarily to continue this quest without him, hurt so much that I was shaking, but I wasn’t bluffing. I’d had enough of excuses, lies and rationalizations. Now I wanted the truth, all of it. “You owe me that, Adrian.”
He muttered a foul curse in Demonish and turned away. I waited several moments, but he didn’t speak or turn around.
I took in a shuddering breath, feeling a tightness in my chest that rose to clog my throat. Even now, he still couldn’t do it. I’d warned him of what would happen, and I’d meant it.
I spun around on legs that felt like they’d buckle, but they were still strong enough to carry me away from him. “If you have nothing to say, then this is goodbye—”
“I summoned Demetrius.” The words sounded like they clawed their way out of his throat. Hearing them made me pause on my way back to the hold. “Right after you decided to go after the spearhead, I summoned him.”
I turned around and came back a step. “Why?”
Adrian’s expression was tortured. “I knew there’d be demons left over in this world, and they’d all be gunning for you, Demetrius especially. I needed to keep them off your trail, so I told Demetrius we were soul-tied. That gave him a reason to want you alive, since our tie means if you get killed, I might die, too, no matter what Zach said about my demon nature protecting me. I knew Demetrius couldn’t stand for that. He might want to torture the hell out of me, but he doesn’t want me dead.”
It was so close to Demetrius’s exact words, it was almost eerie. I hated that they sometimes thought alike. In fact, I hated every one of their similarities, yet I couldn’t deny them anymore because they upset me.
My gaze drilled into his as I took another step toward him. “Is that all the two of you talked about?”
A harsh little smile curled his lips. “I also told him that I never wanted you to find the spearhead, let alone use it, and I’d keep you away from the places where it might really be until the countdown ran out.”
The air rushed out of me as if I’d been hit. I’d guessed as much, but guessing it and having it confirmed were two different things. Adrian had tethered his soul to mine in order to prove that he’d never betray me again, but he had. Worse, he’d done so for the exact same reason that fate had predicted.
Many people forget that Judas was guilty of three betrayals. His first had been betrayal of trust after he stole funds from the disciples’ communal purse. His second was greed when he accepted those thirty pieces of silver and the third was death when he identified Jesus to the guards with that treacherous kiss. Adrian might not have accepted money from Demetrius, but he’d been motivated by the same thing that had done in Judas two millennia ago: greed. For Judas, it had been greed for money. For Adrian, it had been greed for me.
An awful sense of inevitability rose to cover my anger and hurt. Despite everything we’d done, we’d still ended up here.
“And Demetrius was okay with that?” I managed to ask. I had to distract from the crushing weight of fate. If I didn’t, it would wreck me, and I was barely holding it together as it was.
His features twisted again. “No. At first, I thought it was because he wanted you to find and use the spearhead, since he knows it’ll kill you, and he wants you dead. He hates you, Ivy. If not for the risk to my life, he would have come through that mirror earlier, ripped your heart out and eaten it in front of you, hallowed ground be damned.”
I winced. That was a nasty picture, and worse, I didn’t think Adrian was exaggerating. For all I knew, he’d seen Demetrius do that exact same thing to someone in the past.
“But after he knew about our tie, he said the reason he wanted you to find the spearhead was so you could keep it safe from other demons. I didn’t buy that, but he said you couldn’t do anything with it except free some trapped humans anyway, and he didn’t consider their potential loss a big deal.”
Adrian paused, another bleak smile wreathing his lips. “He didn’t tell me about the spearhead’s other use, but I didn’t ask. Maybe I didn’t want to know, but now I know why he was so adamant about you finding it instead of another demon.”
“Yet you sabotaged me.” My voice was as raw as my emotions. “You took me to places you knew it wouldn’t be, and you didn’t tell me about the countdown. You were going to let a demon find it and reopen the gateways.”
His fists clenched. “I told you—I wasn’t sure that’s what the weapon would be used for. Besides, if a lesser demon found it, it could kill them. Just like the spearhead would probably kill you as soon as you touched it, it would also kill all but the most powerful demons who dared to attempt wielding it.”
The way he said it made me believe him, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t about to risk the freedom of countless humans on the hope that a weak demon found the spearhead instead of a strong one. He was also ignoring the obvious: that a weak demon would find it and give it to a stronger one. What better way to curry favor with the new “king” than that?
“I promised Demetrius that I would put you on the right path,” Adrian went on, filling the silence that had fallen like a load of bricks. “In return, Demetrius promised to keep the other demons off your trail by directing them away from us.”
A breath of humorless laughter escaped me. “But you didn’t put me on the right path, so you lied to Demetrius, too.”
His gaze never left mine. “Demetrius doesn’t know that being around the spearhead will give you an uncontrollable compulsion to use it, but I do. I saw it with the staff, and I wasn’t risking your life no matter what I promised him. I told you once before, my every action is driven by my undying love for you, and that, Ivy, is the real truth.”