CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
FOR SOMEONE WHO’D never taken acting classes, I’d done a great job of faking a faint. I even let my head bang on the ground hard enough to give me a headache after I dropped in a boneless heap. Oscar winners, eat your hearts out.
Adrian rushed to my side like I knew he would. He’d let nothing, even his own deep-seated conviction that I was better off without him, come in the way of trying to protect me when he thought I was in danger. I ignored his gentle shakes and repeated calls of my name, opting for a completely limp pose. I even debated letting my tongue loll out of my mouth, but I didn’t because that might be overdoing it.
Of course, Zach could put a stop to this. Even if he’d initially been fooled by my convincing-looking faint, he could hear from my thoughts that I was faking it. Quickly, I sent him a mental directive. Don’t you dare rat me out! Adrian and I need to talk, and this is the only way it’ll happen without him running away again.
I couldn’t see his reaction, since my eyes were still closed, but I thought I heard an undercurrent of amusement in his voice when he said, “Lift her up, Adrian. I’ll pull both of you in together, then come back for the rest of them. You can collect manna for her once you’re there.”
Ooh, that sly Archon! None of what he’d said was a lie, but it also was a deliberate misdirection, since he knew nothing was wrong with me. Not that I was complaining about his subtle subterfuge. This one rare time, it benefitted me. Adrian had me hefted in his arms before I could even give Zach a mental thank-you, and then I felt the distinct stomach-flopping, free-falling sensation of crossing from one realm into another.
I didn’t have to open my eyes to know when we’d arrived. Light seemed to crash past my closed lids, and the bone-deep cold I’d felt was instantly replaced by the soothing warmth of sunshine on my skin and balmy temperatures. Even though it didn’t mesh with my fainting act, I found myself inhaling deeply, trying to see if the air was as sweet as I remembered.
It was even better, like breathing in a combination of fresh spring rain and a flower garden in full bloom. You didn’t realize how tainted our air had become until you breathed in something that had never been touched by chemicals, pollutants, car exhaust or everything else that made our world the modern world. I inhaled deeply again, as if trying to clean my lungs with the pristine air, then let myself lie limply on the ground when Adrian set me down.
“I see manna trees,” he said, then sounded like he ran off.
“Remember, time passes differently in these realms,” Zach called out. “It will seem like hours before I return, yet it will only be minutes as far as Jasmine and Costa are concerned.”
Translation: Adrian and I had time to talk without being interrupted. I sat up and opened my eyes just in time to see Zach disappear through a door visible only to him. Adrian looked startled to see me suddenly upright, then relief crossed his features and he ran back over to me.
“Ivy! Are you hurt? What happened?”
“I tricked you,” I said bluntly. “You were about to refuse to come here and we have things to sort out, so I fake fainted.”
It was almost funny to watch the shock on his face. Really, he shouldn’t be this thrown by my deception. It could more than fairly be said that he had it coming.
“You lied to me,” he said, still sounding stunned.
I wasn’t going to get into a semantic debate about tricking someone versus lying to them, especially when the intent to deceive was the same. So, I said, “Newsflash—you don’t have a monopoly on being dishonest. Go ahead and get mad at me. I deserve that. But with Zach gone, you’re not able to run out on this conversation, and according to him, he’ll be a while.”
Something like alarm crossed his features and he cast a quick, calculating glance around. I flung my arm out, indicating the beautiful stretch of meadow we were on, the river I could faintly see in the distance and the trees with their bell-shaped blooms that, when crushed up, turned into manna.
“Nowhere to go, Adrian, and I’m fast enough to keep up with you if you run. So quit looking for a means of escape.”
“Run? You could barely walk before, or was that an act, too?” he countered.
“Nope, that was real,” I said as I tested my legs by standing up and then hopping up and down. Thankfully, they felt normal now instead of wobbly. “Either I’ve recovered on my own after the effects of using the staff, or being in this realm did the trick. Either way, yes, I’m capable of chasing you now.”
I proved it by walking over and taking two big handfuls of his shirt. His eyes widened, then narrowed as I twisted the material until it resembled handholds.
“Now,” I said calmly, “unless you want to run off half-naked, you’re not going anywhere until we’re done.”
His golden-colored brow arched with a hint of his familiar arrogance. “It’s a shirt, not a pair of handcuffs. You think I care if it rips?”
“No, but you care about me,” I said at once. “You might have left me in a very dramatic fashion, but you’ve been following me ever since, haven’t you?” He looked away, and I pounced. “Come on, Adrian! You didn’t coincidentally decide to stay in the same tiny arctic village that you told me to check the spearhead for. What, did you use the credit card trail I left behind to figure out which place I was heading to first? Or did you simply follow us the whole way to Sweden?”
“Both,” he said, the single word sliding out with obvious reluctance. “I lost you when you took Brutus for a ride, but then I saw you coming back in with him and ran to find you when I heard a crash shortly after that.”
That crash could’ve been me hitting the fence or Demetrius leveling that house. Either way, I was so glad Adrian had decided to investigate it.
“You sound like you hate admitting the truth. Is it really that hard for you to be honest with me?”
“Isn’t that the source of most of our problems?” he replied bitterly. “Even at my best, I am still a liar at heart.”
I took a tighter grip on his shirt. “That might be your default setting, yes, and you’re also a demon in denial, but—”
“I am not a demon,” he interrupted, incensed.
If I hadn’t been gripping his shirt, I would have thrown up my hands. “See? Denial, but let’s look at the facts. You love the dark and cold more than the sun and light. Lying is second nature to you, especially when the truth doesn’t give you the results you’re looking for. You have tastes that redefine the meaning of ‘high end,’ and when you want something, you will tear through other realms, this world and even heaven and hell to get it. Sound like any species you’re familiar with?”
His jaw was clenched so tightly, I could hear the cartilage start to crack. “Fine. I’m a demon as well as a liar and betrayer, so what else could there be for us to talk about?”
I stared at him as I took a deliberate step closer. “Because unlike other demons or Judians, that’s not all there is to you. You’re also so brave, you regularly risked your life for strangers when you were working for Zach. You’re loyal to a fault to your friends, honest enough to own up to your many flaws, generous to people who could never repay you and understanding even when ignorance would be easier. Most of all—” I took a breath to loosen the new tightness in my chest “—you’re selfless enough to leave the person you love most because you think—mistakenly—that she’s better off without you, and that’s something no normal demon would do.”
“You are better off without me.” His voice was so hoarse, it was almost unrecognizable. “I tried to tell myself otherwise for a while, but once again, I was lying.”
“Yeah, you lie when you shouldn’t, and yeah, it’s mostly because of who and what you are, and yeah, it’s caused some huge problems between us.” Now I hauled on his shirt to bring him closer. “But again, if you were only everything you hated about yourself, you wouldn’t have turned your back on your demon family to begin with, let alone rescued Costa and Tomas when you left, or worked with Zach for years rescuing other people, or risked your life for me countless times, and finally, left me when you thought you’d hurt me again. Time and again, you chose to be better than your DNA and your destiny, and that proves you’re stronger than the darkness inside you. Yes, it’s there and it probably always will be. It’s there for me, too, and—”
“How is it there for you?” he interrupted.
I let out an exasperated noise. “Everybody has some darkness in them, Adrian! Demetrius says I have some extra now that our souls are tethered together, and he could be right. For starters, I’ve noticed that I’m lying more, even if there’s no reason for it. I’ll have to make amends for those lies, and I’ll have to fight against my inner darkness harder to stop it and worse things from happening, but I’m not afraid of my darkness no matter the source of it. Know why?”
He gave me a pained look. “Because you’re the Davidian. Unlike me, the darkness will never win with you. It can’t.”
“It can’t win with you, either,” I said softly. “Not if you accept who you are, all of it.”
His snort was harsh. “How will that help?”
“You might be a demon with the extra baggage of Judas’s legacy, but you also have all the light you need.”
At his doubtful look, I exchanged the crumpled-up hunks of his shirt for his hands, gripping him while I stared into his tortured sapphire eyes.
“You might not believe that, because I love you, but we also have an objective opinion. See these?” I said, shaking our entwined hands at him. “Two out of the three most hallowed weapons in the world are embedded in my skin, yet unlike when other demons are nearby, they don’t react to you. You might have demon blood in your veins, but you are not evil. I know that, and these hallowed weapons know it, too. Otherwise, they’d be glowing gold and burning the shit out of me right now.”
He stared at our clasped hands. The ancient, braided rope tattoo disappeared beneath his fingers where his hand covered mine, its brown color only a few shades darker than my skin. This was far from the first time that he’d touched the tattoos without them adversely reacting to him, but it was clear from his expression that this was the first time he’d considered the ramifications of that. For the briefest moment, hope lit up his features. Then that hope was buried by doubt.
“Maybe it’s nothing more than a loophole. I’m the last Judian and you’re the last Davidian, so fate says I’m supposed to get close enough to you to betray you. Hard to do that if these weapons went into alarm mode every time I was near you.”
“That’s not it,” I said, seizing on his brief moment of hope and trying to make it grow. “Not long after we met, I was worried that demons would win this war because there seemed to be a lot more of them than Archons. You told me numbers didn’t matter when it came to darkness versus light. Remember why?”
He looked away, muttering, “No,” but that was a lie. He did remember, and so did I.
“You said, One shadow in a brightly lit room goes unnoticed, but shine a ray of light into even the darkest corner, and everything changes.” I gripped his hands tighter. “If you don’t trust what I see in you, and you don’t trust the hallowed weapons’ lack of a negative reaction, then trust the tethering of our souls. It joined us together, right? That makes you part of the Davidian legacy now, too. You might have a lot of darkness, but you have light, too. You’ve had it for a long time. It gave you the strength to turn your back on demons years ago, and it’ll give you the strength you don’t think you have now. One ray shining into the darkness, Adrian. That’s all it takes to make even the deepest shadows scatter, and you have more than one ray. You have so many of them—”
His mouth crushed over mine. At first, I thought he was trying a different method to shut me up. Then I felt the desperation in the way he clutched me to him, and the need seething in his kiss transcended simple lust. It broke the dam inside of me, releasing all my boiling emotions in a rush.
I shoved him back and slapped him with all the pain I’d felt when he left me. Then I was instantly horrified at what I’d done. He only crushed me to him again, his tongue sensually dominating mine. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, that I didn’t know what had gotten into me when I hit him, but other, stronger emotions rose, covering my shock and shame. They replaced them with a need that felt almost feral. I ground against Adrian as if trying to make love to him right through our clothing, and when he clutched me tighter, his arms, mouth and body became a cage that I never wanted to escape from.