“How can you promise that?” I question them, my voice small and frightened sounding. I fucking hate it. A sigh escapes my lips when a palm cups my cheek, and a forehead presses against mine. The scent of clean cotton, vanilla, and sandalwood tells me it’s Aeron.
“Because we are the motherfucking Tailors, and no one touches or hurts, what belongs to us.”
I’m left speechless as he presses a light kiss to my lips, and then cool air hits me once more as his body heat no longer reaches me. His steps sound across the floor, followed by his light tread up the stairs.
“Lie back down, Nightingale,” Jude softly orders, and a large hand—Knox’s, I think by the callouses—helps me to lie back, grasping my elbow.
Tears sting my eyes, forcing their way past my closed lids and soaking into the silky fabric, and I can’t seem to swallow past the lump in my throat.
“It’s okay, Little Bird,” Knox soothes, taking my hand in his and interlacing our fingers. “You will never be alone again. We’ll always be here to protect you.”
A sob escapes past my lips, and once that’s out, I can’t seem to stop the flood of grief that washes over me like a waterfall. I grip Knox’s hand tightly as I let it all pour out of me for the first time since that awful day.
My mother had just died, shot down at my twelfth birthday party when she’d taken Rook and I to the local diner to get burgers and milkshakes. Not much of a party, but enough for me as we got so few happy times, always under the thumb of my tyrannical cunt of a father. We were just leaving, and I remember the loud sound of a car backfiring, only my mom fell forward onto the asphalt, red spreading in a puddle around her.
I held her as she died, begging for help, but they came too late, and I watched as the light left her eyes, her mumbled words of love faint. I was numb as my sperm donor drove us home, unsurprised when he locked me in my room. Her death was my fault. After all, we wouldn’t have been at the diner if it wasn’t for my birthday.
They left me alone in my blood-soaked grief for twenty-four hours, not even allowing me a shower to wash the stain of my sin off. I remember the feeling of relief when the lock clicked, my door swinging open. But no angel stepped in, instead my father’s second-in-command, Sherman. A man I’d known since birth.
Only, he didn’t look at me like someone looks at a child. The devil was in his eyes as he told me I had myself to blame, that what he was about to do was just punishment for what I did to my mother.
I come out of the memory screaming as hands pin me down, desperate voices calling my name, but they can’t reach me, and all I see is Sherman’s leering grin as he forces his way inside of my unwilling child’s body, feeling the agonizing pain of being torn apart by his twisted desires.
“Little Bird! Lark! Calm down, baby, please!” Knox’s face appears, only to be taken over by one of the Soldier's faces.
Then another.
And another.
They keep coming, filling me with their lust and depravity until I truly am the broken bird that Jude accused me of being when we first met.
“I’m so sorry, Pretty Bird,” Tarl’s deep melody reaches my ears right before I feel a sharp pain in my neck a second later.
Then nothing but blissful darkness.
I open my eyes, the black of my blissfully dreamless sleep fading to be replaced with the light of predawn that fills the room. It’s a struggle to get them to open fully, like great weights are trying to pull them back down.
“‘It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale,’”
I look to the side to find Jude lying beside me, his chest bare, all of his beautiful ink and tattoos on display. He reaches out a hand, pushing sweat-slicked hair away from my face as he leans down and brushes our foreheads together.
“Did you just quote a line from Romeo and Juliet?” I ask him, my voice hoarse and scratchy, as if I’ve been screaming for hours.
“I’m not just a pretty face, Nightingale,” he murmurs against my lips, rubbing our noses together. “And it’s one of the great romances. Plus, it seemed fitting.”
“But it’s so sad,” I say, swallowing past the sudden lump in my throat. “They die, Baby Devil. All because they fall in love, and their families hate each other.”
“I told you it was fitting, Nightingale.”
“Are you telling me you’re in love with me, Jude?”
My heart races and my blood thrums in my veins as I wait for his answer. He takes my hand in his, pressing it to his exposed chest, all the while keeping our foreheads touching.
“It hurts here whenever I’m apart from you,” he confesses in a whisper, and I can feel the thud of his heart as it pounds against my palm. “I feel rage here in my soul when I think about anyone hurting you.” He moves our hands down to his diaphragm, to the place that’s often associated with someone’s soul. Next, he moves them up to his temple. “It feels calmer here whenever you are near. You chase the darkness away, Nightingale. Now tell me, is that love?”
My breath stutters as I think of his words and I open my mouth several times, only to close it again. I blame the fogginess that lingers in my brain for the truth that comes spilling out.
