If he’d been a normal person insisting I stay in his house after killing someone to keep me safe, I might have accused him of trying to fuck with my head until I fell for him.
If I hadn’t seen the hounds myself, I still might have drawn the same conclusion. As it was, I took a few steps back and lowered myself onto the couch. “Fine. I guess I should order more than pizza if I’m going to be stuck here for a week.” I pulled my phone out and threw him another glance. “Why don’t you call up the witch whonullifiedyour apartment before and tell her to do a better job?”
“I can’t,” Sephtis answered. “She died three months ago.”
It was like a slap in the face. He sounded so casual about someone dying. It was a reminder that I needed to hold close to my chest. As much as he felt like a person, as much as some part of me wanted to believe in that red thread I’d seen before…
I couldn’t.
Sephtis wasn’t a man; he was a monster.
Of courseI wasn’t going to be able to escape my nightmares even though my life had been turned into one. Honestly, I should have realized they’d be worse, given everything I’d been put through over the past few days and the fact that I’d been compartmentalizing it so I could still function.
What I hadn’t expected was to actuallyexperiencethem. It had been so long since I’d spent an entire night tossing andturning, longer since I’d woken up drenched in sweat because of fear and agony, because of pain and memories. Now there were the screams of a soul being devoured added into the mix. There was the knowledge of what it actually felt like to die.
There was the sight of my dead body lying on the ground, pale like Caiden… and…
And I experienced it all.
By the time I showered the sweat off my body and stole a shirt out of Sephtis’s closet so I’d at least have something clean to wear the next morning, I’d worked myself into a silent rage.
Now that I actuallyknewSephtis was here, he was suddenly going to let me suffer? Was this some kind of punishment for what he’d had to do for me? Was he angry after all?
I twisted the handle on the door and tried to yank it open… and then paused.
It was locked.
I’d locked it last night.
I’d been loud about it too, to make sure Sephtis knew I was doing it. To make sure he knew that I wanted privacy… and I…
Oh.
Oh,shit.
When I finally got the door open, he was on the other side of the room, staring at me with an expression of ragged misery painted across his face that nearly made him unrecognizable. Sephtis looked like he’d been swallowed up by the same agony I had last night, only he didn’t know how to put on a mask to hide it.
He’d respected the boundary I set and stayed away, even though it seemed like we’d both suffered for it.
He was almost desperate when he made his way across the room, pausing a few inches from me, his hands twitching like he wanted to reach out, but he knew better. “Are you okay?”
There were so many answers to that question on the tip of my tongue. Of course I wasn’t okay. I’d been kidnapped into a supernatural situation by some monster. I was stuck in his apartment and…
And I was angry because last night showed me exactly how much he’d been taking care of me since Caiden had died. Dreaming about my brother felt like losing him all over again—it nearly broke me just as much.
“I’m fine,” I finally answered, swallowing hard and jerking my gaze to the ground. It didn’t stop him from leaning forward. It was barely a touch… a whisper of fingertips teasing along my skin. That coolness seeped beneath the surface and instantly started to unknot the tension in my chest in a familiar wave of calm that told me I was right.
Sephtis really had been there all along. Not just when I had nightmares—every night.
I pulled away, aware that the motion was more reluctant than it should have been, and went to the kitchen.
“Are you going to pretend to eat again today, or am I cooking for myself?”
When I looked back at him, there was something in his expression that told me he could see through me—he could feel the same swirl of emotion I was trying to swallow down into my chest.
“We can pretend, if that’s what you want.”
Fuck, I didn’t like feeling this seen. But still.
