I roundhouse-kicked him in the knee.
“Fuck,” he grunted as he buckled to the ground. “You need to listen—”
I aimed another kick at his head. His hand snapped out, and he caught my ankle, holding my foot up high enough I had to balance on one foot.
“Let go!”
“Listen to me!”
I pulled on my foot, ready to use the leverage to hop and kick him in the head with my other foot, but he saw the move coming, shoved my foot away, and gained his feet so fast, he was a blur.
Both hands shot out, grabbed my wrists, and then his leg was around mine, our bodies locked together as he pressed my back against something smooth and hard and warm. It felt like sun-warmed marble.
“Just.” He slapped my hands above my head, his incredible weight pinning the rest of me. His hands squeezed my wrists and the walls heated just at those points becoming liquid enough to flow up and over my skin, wrapping my wrists.
“Let me go.”
“Not until you listen.” He pressed my legs back and the wall heated there, flowed out and caught both of my ankles no matter how much I struggled.
“There,” he said, breathless, still pressed against my body, his hands over the stone covering my wrists. “There.” He swallowed, stared at my eyes, then let his gaze wander over my face.
I didn’t know what he was looking for. I hoped it was anger because I had plenty of that to offer.
“Just, hold still long enough for me to get this out. Right?” He pressed down on my wrists one more time as if making sure the bindings were going to stay. “Right,” he answered himself.
He paced away, limping heavily. “Balls, woman, you can kick.”
“Come here, and I’ll show you how I can break bones.”
He paused with his back to me, and dragged his fingers through his hair, resting his hands on top of his head, fingers laced together, elbows out.
“It’s not going to take your sisters long to find us. I’m sure they’ll have some way to break this. If Delaney can do it once, I’m sure she can do it again.”
I frowned, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Something Delaney had done before. Some place he’d been with her.
“We’re inside a stone, aren’t we?”
He turned, his hands still on top of his head, and there was a look of desperation in his eyes. “Yes. It’s one of the things I control. Stone. One of the other things I control is moving a person from one place to another. You used to know that about me.”
“I still know that about you.”
“But for the last year the only thing you’ve seen about me, theonlything, is that I hold your sister’s soul.”
“Because you do.”
He nodded. “That is true. She gave it to me. That’s within the laws and rules of human-demon contract. But ever since I’ve had it…no, even before that…ever since I started listening to your father talk about humanity, about the laws of the universes, the worlds, about gods and monsters and blood and family—family, Myra—things changed.”
He dropped his hands, but didn’t move any closer.
“I changed.” Here he shook he head and laughed softly. “You have no idea. I am not the creature I once was. Possessing a Reed soul for so long, your father’s soul, was like being a candle in the sunlight.
“Wax melts, given enough time in the flame. Light reshapes it. I’ve been reshaped by light. At first by your father’s words, then his soul, but then Delaney’s…” He inhaled, exhaled, and it was as close to awe as I’d ever seen on him.
“Holding her soul—that light—has changed me. Taught me. Some days I don’t even know what I am supposed to—” He shook his head again. “No, that doesn’t matter. We’re here for you and for Delaney. Here, where my mother won’t hear me. Here, where my father can’t hear me. But I don’t have very much time. Because your sisters…”
“…will find us and break this cage.”
He nodded. “I need you to hear me, Myra. I am giving you the truth as I know it. And if you hear me, you might find a way to save Delaney’s soul. Because gods know, I don’t know how to do it.”
