For a second, I almost didn’t want to tell him. I could just suffer through the darkness—senses stripped away, unfeeling, unseeing, unhearing. My skin prickled with a sharp sense of dread.
Damn him!
“What sense is going to go next, Hellion? Time’s ticking.”
I dug my nails into his arms, refraining from doing something crazy like slapping the smugness from his tone. I shoved the panic crawling up my throat back down, forcing myself to think clearly.
I knew he wouldn’t help me unless I were honest.
“I came over here because… I want you… to train me,” I blurted out, realizing that pausing to think after sayingI want you,after rubbing my hand all over his chest, gave the wrong impression.
I was never drinking again.
My words hung in the air. The silence and tension in his forearms made my palms sweaty.
He pried my hands off his arms and stepped out of reach. I was left clutching the edge of the bar, needing something solid, regretting the anxiousness that came from the sudden absence of his touch.
Something tickled my nose, and within seconds, my vision returned. The tension in my body eased, but the weight of his power swiftly replaced that relief. He restored my senses as easily as flipping a switch. And the thought of how much control he had over the mind made my stomach twist. If he could return my vision in an instant, I could only imagine the horrors his shadows could do in the same heartbeat.
My heart picked up speed, and I stared at the disbelief on his face. He stood there acting like I’d just asked him to wrestle a Hellhound.
“The time I’m required to spend with you is enough as it is,” he said, his voice flat, dismissive.
“What’s your problem with me?”
“Nothing.”
I scoffed, unable to hide my frustration. “Liar.” I took a step forward, meeting his gaze with defiance. “Why won’t you train me?”
“I don’t play favorites. Find someone else.”
“I want you,” I said, snatching his wrist before he took off. My fingers brushed a raised part of his skin. Something was familiar about the shape of it. But without seeing it, I couldn’t be sure what it was.
He jerked his wrist away and waved his hand to the bartender. “Nalini, give her some water. She’ll need it while I go fetch her escort,” he said, before turning and walking away.
I wanted to call after him, to stop him, but his use ofthatname stunned me.
Nalini,not Lini.
I turned around and laid eyes on Aspen’s first love, handing me a glass of water.
I wasn’t sure how I’d forgotten about her. Maybe because the last time I saw her wasn’t in person—it was in Aspen’s memory while I dream-walked to him. And the reason her amber eyes looked different was because I remembered them dull and unseeing—dead.
Now they were filled with life and light, or I suppose as much light and life as a dead soul could have living in Hell.
My muddled brain had no idea how to react to that eye-opening information.
Before I could so much as lift my jaw off the floor, Alexei appeared, and Nalini went to help another patron.
“Causing problems, beautiful?”
I glanced at Alexei’s smile, then at the general, who’d found his way back to Moira and her wandering hands, then to Nalini.
“Hey.” Oliver came up on Alexei’s other side. “You okay, Lucy?”
Was I okay?
My head throbbed inside my skull like it was threatening to break free.
