No matter how hard I try, I can’t hold back my strangled laugh at her bold question. “Do you want to know if I have a cock, Rapunzel?”
Color blooms in her cheeks. “No, I’m asking why your eyes are black and your body bears those demonic marks.”
I heave out a sigh and run a hand through my hair. I contemplate withholding the truth but decide against it. There’s no point in lying. Besides, Rapunzel was honest with us, and she deserves like measure.
“I surrendered my soul to a demon,” I admit without hesitation or emotion.
Rapunzel, however, doesn’t accept my answer with the same detachment. Appalled, her eyes go wide, and she slaps a hand over her mouth. She even backs away. And when she finally drops her hand to her heart, she asks, “Why would you do such a thing?”
I shrug with feigned indifference because I don’t want her fucking pity. “It seemed the smart thing to do at the time.”
She rakes her gaze over me. Takes a step closer. Then backs away again. Slams her brows into a frown. All the while, her every emotion and question play out across her face. “Are you going to steal my soul?”
“Tempting, but no.” I kick my lips up in a smirk. “It’s not your soul I’m after.”
Then her jaw works on empty words before finding her voice again. “What could have possibly happened that would cause you to barter away your soul?” Courageously, she steps toward me and presses her warm hand against my chest. It takes all I have to keep my breath even and my heartbeat steady. “Dear God, Quinn.”
“God can’t help me.” There’s resignation and acceptance in my voice. With her this close, I notice the most minute details of her. The subtle things mortal eyes don’t see. Like the golden metallic flecks almost hidden in the lush green of her eyes. Each frantic beat of her heart echoes in my head. Her rushing blood is louder than a rapid river’s roar. I need to consume her until I don’t know where she ends, and I begin. “I’m no longer in His good graces.”
“The demon gave you strength. I saw as much when you fought those men.” Rapunzel glides her fingers over the black designs that decorate my chest without a hint of concern for her safety. Her touch leaves a fire trail in its wake, melting the ice that’s lived inside me since the day I summoned the demon and offered it the one thing I possessed that had value. “Did you receive other evils in exchange for your soul?”
“Evils?” An apt word if ever there was one.
She shifts her attention to my eyes, and that’s when I reluctantly sense it—a kinship with this woman I don’t want or fucking need. “Sybil calls my ability to heal a gift, but she’s wrong. I could freely share it with the world if it were a gift. Instead, I have to hide lest someone use it nefariously.” She lowers her gaze, shame radiating from her in waves. “So, yes, Quinn, evils, because people like us, the power we possess… It is no gift.”
Rapunzel is wrong, but I don’t correct her misconception. What lives inside her is a blessing. What dwells in me is something ugly.
Something rotten.
But it has its advantages…
“My vision and hearing are sharper. An injury that would kill an average man is a mere scratch to me.” Although I initially had no intention of sharing so much of myself with anyone other than Wren and Dax, the words spill out naturally from my mouth, almost like a confession. “And I have the power to rip the life out of you with the ease of pulling the wings off a fly.”
I leave unsaid how it takes all of my energy to do it, which is why I’ve done it once.
One time.
That moment haunts me every moment of every fucking day.
No son should kill his father—and never the way I murdered mine.
“Will you tell me why you sacrificed your soul?”
The answer is there, stuck at the back of my throat, begging to be set free. What would it matter if Rapunzel knew? But when I open my mouth, I can’t speak of that day. The memory is a blade that cuts through my hollowed chest. It hacks me to pieces. Bleeds me. Leaves me deader inside than the demon did the night it reached into me, tore out my soul, and left me cold and shivering like rancid meat.
“No,” is all I say, and it’s enough because Rapunzel nods her understanding and offers me a comforting smile that doesn’t do a damn thing to quiet the rage that simmers inside me.
“I don’t ever want to return to the tower now that I’ve seen the beauty of the world beyond its walls.” She continues to track the marks on my body, her gentle touch driving me mad. “Does that make me a selfish person?”
Fuck, but this Sybil scrambled Rapunzel’s mind. Warped it to where Rapunzel believes she owes this entire kingdom her freedom.
“You’re never going back.” Unable to resist, I thread my fingers through the silken mass of her hair. Fist it in my scarred hand, the strands snagging on the calluses that ruin my palms.
Whether it’s the wind or emotion that cause tears to well in her eyes, I neither know nor care. “I never asked for any of this, Quinn.”
I tug her head back, my gaze fixed on her plush lips. “That’s the way of war, Rapunzel. We rarely choose the battle, only how bloody we’re willing to get to win.”
Rapunzel’s lips part, and her cheeks flush. Her small breasts rise and fall with each rapid breath. I smell her desire, and it stokes something primal inside me. Has me do something foolish. Something I’m sure I’ll regret.
