“Just let him do it. He’s like a dog with a bone,” Malik replies, amused.
“Shut the fuck up, Malik!” Logan snaps at him.
“Seriously? This is not the time for jokes, Malik,” a feminine voice intervenes—Ava, I think.
“Yeah, you’re right. Sorry,” Malik sounds sheepish now.
“Do you hear that? We made it,” I tell Emily. She doesn’t reply because, in the next second, she’s out cold. Not ready to withstand her entire weight, my knees buckle. “Logan!” I scream.
Logan barrels through the door, throwing it off its hinges. Angry, fiery amber eyes immediately find Emily. When he takes in her injuries, he bellows, “I’m going to fucking kill them!” He stabilizes me, then bends to take Emily in his arms protectively.
Her eyes crack open a smidge. A lone tear teeters on her eyelashes before it rolls down her cheek. “I never thought I would be so happy to see your dumb face, little bro,” she whispers.
Logan smiles softly at her. “We’re twins, Em. We kinda share the same face.”
“I don’t care, your face is still du—” She loses consciousness again.
Fuck.
Her chest is not moving.
“Malik!” Logan roars, voice drenched in panic as he flies outside.
26
Iris
Idescend the three marble stairs after him. But I’m not prepared to collide with a wall of muscle as Kaiden blinks into existence in front of me. I’m ashamed to admit that I lose my balance. He stops my fall by wrapping a hand on my waist. “You okay, angel?” His touch is a live wire that electrifies my skin and knocks the air out of my lungs for a few seconds. It feels so good to be near him again that I almost throw myself into his arms.
I don’t.
However, I indulge in a few moments of basking in the delicious heat rolling from his body. Only a few seconds in his presence and the frostbite that burrowed to the marrow of my bones is gone. Damn him and his intoxicating scent that I can’t stop inhaling like a heroin addict. It takes everything I have inme to shake his hold as though he’s radioactive—mainly because it feels like my very soul is purring in his presence.
Shit. I’m more concussed than I thought.
Or I’m just pathetic.
Probably both.
“Don’t touch me,” I sputter, refusing to look into his mesmerizing eyes. Or at his annoyingly perfect face. I’m afraid if I do, my resolve will shatter like fragile glass. Of course, he looks like sin wrapped in a deadly package, wearing his usual black attire: straight jeans, a simple tee, and worn motorcycle boots. And those tattoos that are a constant reminder that he carries a part of me with him forever, etched on his skin. “And how many times do I have to repeat myself? Don’t. Call. Me.That.”
Kaiden ignores my barbed words. “Fuck, you’re bleeding. Who did this to you?” he seethes. I might not be looking at his face to see his expression, but I almost choke on the fury emanating from his pores. It’s so potent that I feel it bubbling beneath my skin. Weird. He reaches a tattooed hand toward my throat, where I probably have a big fat imprint from when Cain grabbed me. It stops mid-air when I flinch away. Heaving a weighted sigh, he closes the hand in a tight fist, which he drops to his side.
“Cain, the enforcer,” I retort flippantly. “The blood is not all mine. Actually, maybe only ten percent is mine. The spray hit me when I sliced his carotid.”
“Good.”
Like every time he is near, everything fades away. Being this close to him is equal parts heaven and hell—my insides are being torn to pieces while my soul sings. I need to escape this bubble we have immersed ourselves into to check on Emily. “Yeah, I killed another lightborn. Yay me. They’ll probably burn me at the stake,” I mutter mostly to myself as I push past Kaiden, careful not to brush against him.
There’s also the fact that I’m covered in blood and sweat. Notonly mine but Emily’s, too. I probably smell worse than a sewage pipe in Victorian London during a cholera outbreak.
Ugh.
“I don’t know how he got his hands on a gun with silver bullets dipped in aconite since they’re so rare, but I did my best to shield Emily. He still got her in the shoulder, though. The bullet almost pierced her heart.” My voice wavers. “I’m afraid the infection has spread too much.”
“She’s going to be all right. Malik will heal her,” Kaiden reassures me from my back.
In front of me, Malik is kneeling on the ground over Emily, who lies on a raised marble tomb, a blood-drawn pentagram beneath her. Dark magic flows in the air at the rhythm of Malik’s incantation while his fingers are wrapped around her injured arm.
