He looked right at Kane.
My pulse soared, nerves stirring in my blood.
If this were a film, this moment would be slowed, catching the flutter of sable lashes with every blink as his gaze moved from one person to the next. And the next. Ominous music playing in the background.
My eyes flew to Cyrus. “Did you invite the Heathens?”
“No,” he whispered loudly, his ice-blue eyes darting from me to the Heathen.
I took Fable’s hand in mine, preparing for the inevitable. A member of Sacred Sea murdered a Heathen, and they would make us pay. And this was the perfect place to do it, too. We were cornered in a chamber with only one exit, the same exit the Heathens were entering through.
Zephyr appeared next, a murderous gaze floating across the room, meeting mine as he followed Julian. His mask was ghostly white, his hair undone and darker without the sun. Zephyr squinted his eyes as he passed, a cold front, a draft, and I knew he was smiling. A contemptuous grin. It was not seen on the hidden lips but felt within the sardonic, deep-set eyes.
Kane stood, bouncing a questionable glare at Cyrus.
Beck walked in, and for a monster who wore his emotions, he crossed the room stripped of them. I looked at Fable, squeezing her hand. A wordless promise that I would rip off their skin with my bare teeth if it meant keeping her safe.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Then ascreechas Kane caught himself on the back of a chair for support.
My eyes darted to the doorway.
Phoenix was walking into the chamber.
And from there, time sped up.
Fable let out a cry, tearing her hand from mine, flying down the aisle, not stopping until she collided with the wall of Phoenix’s chest.
I was preparing to kill one second, then I was looking at a ghost the next.
Cyrus, Kane, and I exchanged horrified glances.
His head was bashed in.
He wasmorethan dead.
He wasdeaddead.
He was deader.
Deadest.
Fable wrapped her arms around his waist.
He was flesh and blood.
Phoenix stood pitiless, muscles tensing under his skin, as Fable clung to him. Her cries of relief filled the chamber.
Phoenix wouldn’t hold her. Phoenix wouldn’t even look at her.
Phoenix’s eyes were cold and set on Kane, a threat braiding his gaze.
Despite the threatening stare, Kane ripped away from it and swung a look at Cyrus. Kane’s shoulders fell, a sigh of relief escaping his chest.
Phoenix unwrapped Fable from around his waist and moved her aside as if she were nothing. I wanted to go to her and pull her into my arms.It’s over, I wanted to tell her. Whatever it was, was done. Love, if it were this at all, could not withstand anger. I knew this all too well. I was once seduced by anger, then adored by it. And at this moment, Phoenix was, too. But at least he was alive.
Fable’s hand suffocated her cries as she left the room, breezing past a fifth and final man who’d arrived. One none of us were expecting. Most of all, me.
I froze, and my eyes were trapped at his waist from ten feet away, in denial. I didn’t have to see his face to know it was him; this feeling was one I recognized. As I knew his every expelled breath, how the earth held him, how the sea missed him, how the world wrapped around him, no matter the setting, the clothes, the year. My soul grazed his, and time became a useless thing. A contradiction. The way it expired. The way it was forgotten. The way it carried on.
