And just like that, he was back to lounging, the smile firmly fixed in place as if it had never disappeared. “Now, I want you to tell meeverything.”
Chapter Fourteen
In a bid tobuy herself a little bit of time to compose herself, Petra arranged herself into a more comfortable position. Settled with her spine against the coffee table, she managed to reply, “That’s a tall order, Mr. Cuttcombe.”
The addition of, “and one I’m unlikely to fulfill”went unsaid but not unheard between them.
She thought she detected real amusement in his amber-on-black eyes when he suggested, “Start with how it is a witch of no real rank or power went from a glorified Temple teacher to the head of one of the most powerful cathedrals in the UTA overnight.”
Petra fought the urge to swallow the lump in her throat. “How do you know I had no real standing? The Temple hierarchy is obscure even to those of us in it.”
“I know that someone in charge of initiates is basically the equivalent of a high school teacher,” he answered, “and I know that no one of real power is given a room the size of a broom closet.”
There it is.She knew what he implied when he said he’d taken a trip up the coast, but to hear him confirm that he’dbeen up to Seattle, that he knew where she used tosleep,was a chilling thing.
It was a power play, just like everything else he’d done, but it was also its own form of honesty. He wasn’t trying to entrap her in a lie. Silas was letting her know what he knew — or thought he knew.
Petra watched him closely, cautiously, when she chose her words.What’s it matter? There isn’t much time for him to use it against me, anyway.
And deep down below the fatalistic veneer, Petra just… wanted to tell someone. She’d been playing a character for so long that she was exhausted by the effort. The urge to connect, even shallowly, with another person was a deep, guttural scream in the cavern of her gut.
“I wanted the position,” she answered, “so I found a way to take it.”
Silas leaned forward until he rested his forearm on his bent knee. He tilted his head in that predatory, assessing way she was becoming used to when he asked, “What naughty thing did you do?”
“Nothing horrible.” She hated how defensive she sounded, how quick those words tumbled out of her. Petra had spent years unlearning so many bad lessons from her childhood that she felt a reflexive, cutting guilt whenever she recalled what she’d done to get her place in St. Emaine’s. Even knowing it was the right thing to do, the shame bit at her, ridiculing her for falling back on lessons she’d long ago left behind.
Silas pursed his lips, clearly holding in a laugh. “D’you think I’m gonna judge you? Little goddess, you could tell me you’d castrated someone and it’d only make me want you more.”
“That’s really troubling. You know that, right?”
“You don’t seem too troubled to me.” He bit the tip of his tongue between his teeth and offered her a cheeky smile. “I think you actuallylikeme.”
Petra gave him the look that assumption deserved. “That’s pushing it.”
The demon had been nothing but trouble since she made the mistake of seeking him out. He was crude, cruel, and entirely uncontrollable.
But she could allow that she did feel more comfortable around him than she’d felt with anyone else since Max’s death. This wasn’t because she was particularly fond of him, nor because she was attracted to him. It was because foronceshe didn’t have to hide every little bit of her true self behind layers of masks.
She could never be vulnerable with him, but she could shake a little bit of the weight off. After all, he already knew she wasn’t what she pretended to be. What was the point in keeping up the ruse when she could justbreathefor a second?
Averting her eyes from his ever-widening grin and that annoying beauty mark above his lip, Petra continued, “When the sovereign poked his nose into the High Gloriae’s business, my boss was asked to step in and help him see reason. Unfortunately, my boss’s assistant wasn’t able to make the trip, so I volunteered.”
Petra couldn’t look at him as she told the story, not because she worried she’d see disapproval there, but because she believed he’d like ittoomuch. Instead, she buffed her thumbnail, covered in a semi-transparent pearlescent coat of polish, against her thigh and watched the fire.
“It was pure luck that my boss ate something that disagreed with him as soon as we got to the cathedral and that I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to interceptthe sovereign and his consort when they came by looking for a wedding.”
She’d never forget how her hands shook as she addressed the sovereign like she was anybody worth talking to. She rode on a wave of pure adrenaline as she negotiated with him, even daring to withhold her services as their officiant if he didn’t help get her the seat.
Her,an orphaned street rat. A covenless witch with no connections, no family. All she had was a steely will and the ability to lie through her teeth.
Warm, callused fingers gripped the sides of her jaw. The tips of Silas’s claws pressed into her skin as he turned her face back to him. Petra’s breath caught.
He was close, crouched before her like an animal about to pounce. Those molten eyes held her own, unblinking, when he growled, “Did you poison andlieyour way into your position?”
Petra licked her lips. “Yes,” she answered, soft but without the shame that wanted to force its way into every word. “I lied right to the sovereign’s face and then told him I wouldn’t marry them unless I got the seat. And, for the record, it was only barely a poisoning. They lived.”
“You went from no one to one of the most influential witches in the entire UTA overnight based on a bluff.”
