The soft smile that crossed my lips was almost painful, and I reached out. My fingers trailed across his chest, to the place where the red thread connected us.
“Because it’s my job.”
I still hadn’t kissed him. Was I going to be unmade without ever kissing him? I almost leaned in, almost took it… but I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to leave. My hand lifted, and I brushed my thumb slowly over his lower lip instead—the softest touch—before I turned away. It was the only thing I’d have to sustain me through whatever pain I was about to endure.
If I was going to do this, I had to get out of the house and far enough away from him that the hounds wouldn’t sniff him out after they were done with me. At least I could plead his case to Death, ask him to take his soul whole.
To give him another chance at life after this.
To…
The sound of a gunshot drew me up short—the feel of death made my entire body shudder.
When I turned, Cole was holding the gun, and the man on the ground was groaning as blood blossomed across his chest.
Cole’s face was pale when he looked up at me, and he threw the weapon in his hand to the ground like it burned him.
“What did you just do?”
He looked at me almost helplessly. “You don’t get to kill yourself for me either, you asshole. Fuck, if we’re in this… if we’re really doing this, we’re doing it together.”
“Cole…” I would have kept killing for him without guilt, without hesitation. He didn’t have to do this.
“Do your job, Sephtis.” He glanced at the man on the ground and swayed. His tears streaked freely down his cheeks now, mingling with the droplets of blood. “He’s actually dying now, right? And now it’s not just you…” Cole swayed, falling to hisknees. When he raised his fingers, they were stained crimson. “Red, see? Now we’re both monsters.”
When his hands hit the ground, I saw it—dancing all along the tips of his fingers. Little sparks of black.
Little pieces of Death.
If we were both monsters, it was because I’d turned him into one the moment I was too selfish to let him go. I was still too selfish, because the hounds were getting closer, and I couldn’t let them have him.
I fell beside him on the ground and pressed my hand to the gunshot wound on the man’s chest. His soul came easier than the others had, probably because Cole had made a place for it to escape. When I lifted it into the air and dragged my hand down the middle, splintering it into a dozen broken pieces, Cole shuddered. He fell back when I scattered those pieces as messily as I could around the room. The hounds were close, and we weren’t going to get far. They needed to believe this was what they’d come for.
I leaned down to pull the Vitality hovering on the man’s lips, and Cole caught me by the shoulder.
“I—” His eyes were wide, wet. Wild. The crimson thread between us started to burn the moment he touched me.
Something was happening.
Something was changing.
And it wasn’t me who closed the distance between us. It was Cole who flung himself forward and crashed his mouth against mine as the Vitality I’d been trying to take spilled upward and flooded us both.
He made a low, desperate sound in his throat, and curled his fingers in my hair. Some part of me was faintly aware that he was getting blood on my face, that his fingers smelled like copper, but all thoughts were washed away when he licked at the seam of my mouth and I parted my lips for him.
Cole kissed me like he could find the answers to why his world was falling apart on the back of my tongue, the balm to his pain on the roof of my mouth. His fingers tugged my hair as he came up on his knees, positioning himself so he was taller than me and tilting my head back for better access as he did it.
I’d kissed more mortals than I could remember, taken life with lips pressed to lips so many times it was as familiar as breathing… but this…
This was the first time I’d truly been kissed. Not just a chaste brush—not the soft acceptance of a grateful soul.
This kiss felt like Cole was trying to burn this moment into eternity so that it would be the only kiss that ever existed—the only one that ever mattered.
The only one I would ever remember.
The sound of howling in the distance was probably the only thing that could have pulled me out of what was happening, and the low grunt of protest that ripped from Cole’s chest as I stood was nearly enough to make me forget again.
“We need to go.” My voice was husky, my body warm—flooding with crimson light. The line between us was burning hotter than anything I’d ever felt, and I faintly remembered in the back of my mind how Wren had said soulmates usually felt compelled to consummate the bond.
