Either way, I’d find my way to him, wouldn’t I?
“Uh…” Gethin pulled the knife up between us, and my lizard brain shot out a warning. He held it like he knew what he was doing. It lookedentirelytoo natural, the way he flipped it around in his hand. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. If Sephtis comes, he might try to kill me for… you know… killing you.”
I frowned. “Look, that’s why you need to do it.”
“So youdowant me dead?”
“No, asshole.” I stepped closer—close enough that the tip of the blade he held pressed against my shirt. “But I have to imagine that someone who’s killed as many people as you have knows how toalmostkill a person. I don’t want to die, but I need to be close enough to reach out and touch Heaven.”
Gethin rolled his eyes, putting the knife back on the counter. “Ridiculous. There’s no such thing as Heaven.” He turned his back on me, and in the tank top he wore, I saw what I’d read about in his journal. Scars spilling across his shoulders where wings had once been… deep, ragged things that told me everything I needed to know about why he was the way he was.
“If you don’t want to help?—”
“Shut up, Cole.” He cut me off. “I’m not stabbing you with a kitchen knife. If you want precision, we need something sharper than that.”
Gethin wasreluctant to cross over the barrier. When I asked why, he flipped the absolutely wicked looking switchblade he’d brought with him in his hand and pointed it at me.
“I have a feeling we’re about to attract entirely too much attention. I’m not in the mood for the wrong kind to rain down on my head.”
I knew he had this place guarded for a reason, but I didn’t think his old boss was going to come swooping out of the sky to scoop him up for taunting Death. Even though that wasn’t the only thing I was after here, the only attention I was trying to get.
He still came back to Caiden’s gravestone with me, even if he was cautious when he stepped over the line of the barrier, and I turned to face him.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, and his gaze dropped to my chest. I knew he was looking at the thread. My fingers came up, and if I closed my eyes and brushed them gently over my heart, I could feel the warmth of it there.
“Yeah. I’m sure. Just don’t cut the thread. It’s not about that.” It had never been about that, even though I’d thought it was to begin with. I stuffed my hand into the pocket of my jacket as I opened my eyes, and the warmth of the petal Caiden had left me gave me the resolve to take a deep breath. “I can do this for him.”
“Gods,” Gethin sighed. “Love is such a fucked-up emotion. All it does is hurt us. And Cole…” He pressed the tip of the knife to my chest. “This isreallygoing to hurt.”
Of course it was. I just didn’t know how to explain that I would have let him kill me if it meant I could save Sephtis.
“Just pull me over your barrier if you see those fucking dogs.”
“Right,” he said, and his icy eyes lifted. This close, I could see the fractured spikes of lavender and imagine how pretty his gaze had once been. This close, I could see the slightest bit of pity… of affinity.
I guess our situations were similar. And from the way he narrowed his eyes at me, he knew that I knew.
“Sorry,” I muttered, and he shrugged.
“You’re definitely about to pay for it, so… take a deep breath, and try not to scream.”
Gethin pressed the blade forward, and there was a moment of blinding pain. When I looked down, I saw the first trickles of it—my blood, yes, but mixed in with it was that white, shining essence… those little bursts of black. I could handle the agony. I could handle anything.
I coulddothis for Sephtis, because somewhere in my soul, deep in that place that had always loved him… I knew that he’d save me.
And then there was a rush of wind, a burst of feathers, and a hand grabbed the blade cutting into my chest, yanking it from Gethin’s grip like it was made of plastic.
“You might want to think things through before you go spilling that much Vitality over a graveyard, Gethin. You might end up causing an apocalypse.”
The voice didn’t belong to Sephtis. I turned my head, my vision blurry from the tears that had sprung into my eyes, but I knew I didn’t recognize the man.
He had light blond hair, and he stood tall and lean, with violet eyes even paler than Gethin’s. He looked young… pretty…
Not what I’d expected at all.
“Oh,fuck, you absolute asshole.” Gethin’s voice sounded panicked, and I didn’t realize what was happening as my body flew through the air until I was landing on the ground, and I glanced back to see that Gethin had scrambled back over the line of his barrier. He wasn’t looking at me, though, he was staring at the man who had appeared in front of us with wide, anxious eyes. “Uh… hey, Aiden.”
Aiden.
