But this, this is all of that and more. This is the bitter sting of salt and acid; this is hellfire burning from within me. The excruciating torment of a gash freshly cleaved open; the inescapable ache of an old wound, long healed. Every pain I have ever felt, all at once, ripping through my ribcage.
I sink down into a leather armchair, clutching my chest just as Lucy did.
The pain only eases when Yaelyn scoops her up into his arms and deposits her, kicking and screaming, into the chair across from mine. He binds her wrists with his tail, glaring down at her.
"I have so many fucking questions for you," he says, his voice hard. He can't even look at her. Yaelyn was faster to fall for Lucy, faster to turn his back on our oath, and I know the guilt gnawed away at him, even if this small, slip of a woman brought him more joy than he'd experienced in centuries. She broke him when she left, one of the sacred sun shards in her pocket. To see the incubus I love brought so low, destroyed so thoroughly... and now the woman who rained down this hell upon us is sitting in our loft and swearing up a storm.
"What did you do to me?" she demands. "I was inWales. And now I'm in New York? The fuck did you do?"
"So youweredefiling the body of my fallen brother." I surge up from the chair and stalk over to her, letting my wings fan out behind me, blocking the late morning sun streaming in through the windows and throwing her into shadow.
"I needed another shard," she mutters, looking abashed. A pretty blush paints her cheeks a red almost as bold as that of her hair, her spiky auburn lashes fanning against them as she ducks her head and peers up at me through glassy blue eyes. I have always thought of her as the battle between fire and ice, her beauty a brutal thing that once brought me to my knees. But now she is soft, curled in on herself in the oversized armchair, vulnerable and weak. Or she pretends to be with the demure way she looks at her lap where she wrings her slender hands.
I know this trickster better than that.
Greedy, loathsome woman. She took everything from us, then found even more to take. Yaelyn and I spent centuries mourning our brothers of the Light Guard, sending them to their eternal rest, fortifying their tombs with glamours and spells. Securing their crypts from the ignoble few that would dare rob them.
"To sell?"
Lucy turns away from me, but I won't let this thief escape my wrath. I grab her chin and force her to look up into my eyes. It's a mistake, and a grave one. I had forgotten just how blue her eyes are. But there's something new in her gaze that wasn't there before.
Fear.
I look to Yaelyn and the incubus nods. He's picking up on the emotion, too.
"Are you afraid of us, little thief?"
She laughs. The intolerablemenaceactually laughs. "Of you? Don't flatter yourself."
"But youareafraid," Yaelyn muses, coming to stand beside me, yanking her forward in the chair by her bound wrists. "Of what, I wonder?"
"None of your fucking business is what," she bites out. And there she is, behind all the witty quips and bravado, the spitfire Yaelyn and I fell in love with. The spitfire forever fighting for something just out of reach, the spitfire with the dirtiest, filthiest, most sinful mouth. Dark gods, the things she can do with that mouth.
"Why did you need another shard?" I press, looming over, hoping to intimidate her. I know how monstrous I am, a demon of savage strength and bitter brutality. If she isn't afraid of me, she should be.
Beside me, Yaelyn coughs awkwardly and cuts a look at me. "Not helping. The absolute opposite of helping. You're not scaring her, you're–"
Heat rises in my cheeks and I thank every god I can think of that she won't be able to see the flush against my shadow-dark skin. Fuck, I'm turning the little thief on? Why does that make me want to loom over her even more?
She laughs anxiously. "Uh, hey, big guy. Why don't you tell Yaelyn to let me go and we can work this out like grown-ups? Or he can leave me bound..." she trails off and wets her lips with the tip of her tongue. I have to fight back a groan as she drags her gaze up my body. There's no doubting the intent behind her words as she drinks me in like a woman dying of thirst. Yaelyn has her bound tightly, but not so tightly that she can't press her shoulders back, arch her back, present her luscious breasts to me.
What the fuck iswrongwith this woman? And what the fuck is wrong withme?
"No," I grit out, because I can tell Yaelyn is considering it. She's either unhinged or this is more of her trickery, drawing us in with her body, making me want to take her over my knee and... "No. Absolutely not. Answers, Lucy. Why did you need a shard and what the fuck are you doing back here?"
"Do you think I willingly flung myself back into this pit of vipers? While I may make some questionable decisions, returning to the scene of a crime isn't one of them. I'm not that much of an idiot." She glares up at me, all fire and fury. Regrettably, it stirs something in me. "Iwasafter a shard. I owe on a contract. Nothing personal, boys."
"What happened to the other one?" I demand, looming again.
"Rez," Yaelyn moans. "You need to stop. She's getting all..." He tugs at the collar of his shirt. I don't envy his incubus nature. A woman he loved is turned on and it's hitting him with the force of a tsunami.
I let out an exasperated growl and stalk away from her. "What happened to the last shard you stole from us?" If she's pillaging tombs, it means she either doesn't know about the three shards still in mine and Yaelyn's possession or has determined them not worth the work.
"Th–um, it's safe," she finally says. "Just not safe in a way that I can hand it over to Khadyr."
"You're working for Khadyr Blackmore?" I roar, wings flicking to their full span behind me. All this time and my little thief, my spark, has been working for that monster? Fuck, it's no wonder she's scared. "What does he want with the shard?"
"I didn't ask, and he didn't elaborate on his intentions."
