Chapter Nineteen
Dorian
My hand caressed her soft skin while she slept peacefully against my chest.
I should let her go; it would be the best for both of us. But I wasn’t ready to give up her taste and touch. She was addicting, and I didn’t want to be without my fix.
Her future wasn’t set yet. Every time I looked, there wasn’t one where she got what she wanted and I got what I wanted.
There were two futures Phillip was playing his games for, and I wished I knew which. One seeming more likely than the other—easier. The other was a very dangerous bet to take. Everything had to line up, and he would have to wager on lives. He didn’t have that in him; I’d had centuries of anger and practice to have that coldness when it came to playing with people’s lives.
I looked down at Esme.
She was falling for me. Not a bright woman, to do something stupid like that.
Her pleas for us to end this between us fell on deaf ears. I wasn’t done with her. I’d warned her before—I wasn’t the good guy.
After our kiss, I carried her over to the bed and showed her exactly why we weren’t over after this little trip. We moved and groaned into necks while chasing our own version of euphoria.
Something inside her had changed, and instead of the fight she’d been giving me lately, I saw hope. I didn’t know what she was up to, but we both knew she wouldn’t change me. She was fighting a battle she would lose.
Thirty minutes later we were back with her parents, chatting about hospital stories and embarrassing tales of Esme’s past. When they talked about Eli, the whole room chilled. Sadness crept in, and it was obvious the family hadn’t moved on from his death years ago. Esme would change the mood from dark to light quickly. I noticed that about her lately—she was like a little ember in the darkness.
But even embers could be put out.
When her parents called it a night, we retired to her room as well, having another bout of quiet fucking so we wouldn’t wake her parents. It was odd, acting like teenagers who didn’t want their parents to hear them messing around. I’d never had that experience growing up.
But then again, things had vastly changed since I was a teenager.
Esme stirred in her sleep, and her arm with the golden vein flopped over, giving me an up-close view.
I’d seen it many times, but never gotten to study it like this.
It was shorter than a few days ago. She’d healed someone recently. My bet was on her unsuspecting mother, who was coming down with something. It was flu season.
My unpinned hand reached out and gently ran a finger along the line.
I wonder why she didn’t save her brother. They were old enough to have gotten their powers. She could have healed him instead of losing him, and I couldn’t figure out why she chose to let him go.
She was becoming a puzzle that I wanted to piece together, but I had no time for that.
Taking a deep breath, I allowed myself to sleep with her against my chest.
The nightmare that was my worst memory started like it always did, and I knew I couldn’t do anything but watch it all play out.
The dead were everywhere…brothers and sisters, my demigod family.
I bent over to check each of their necks for a pulse, but there was none—destroyed by the hands of their brethren and parents.
When I saw the form of Jasmine, I fell to the stone-covered ground and wept. She’d been like me, a good child of the gods. We had used our powers to help mankind. There was not a corrupt bone in her sweet body. We’d been together for a short time, but I’d fallen hard, and so had she. We talked over working in the temples of healing, helping mankind with our gifts. I’d always been a skilled healer thanks to my father, so naturally I would be wanted there.
I remembered seeing our futures together. Marriage, children, and dying together in our bed.
Never would I have thought demigods would turn on their own kind. But they did. And those who had survived the madness were slaughtered by those who gave them life.
I tried to find Jasmine. I’d been in my garden, concocting a tonic for us to drink that would mirror death. We’d escape the killings together. But she had gotten lost in the fray, and I was cornered in the temple. I drank alone and was dead in the eyes of those who were there to kill me.
When my eyes opened groggily, I searched for her, but to no avail.
