Petra turned her head, which felt a little too heavy, a little too full, in her bed partner’s direction. Smooth skin, satin over muscle and sinew, met the tip of her nose.
Thyme.
“Silas,” she breathed, not entirely sure why her eyes stung with relief.
“Who else would be in your bed? Go back to sleep,” he ordered, not quite gently, but as gentle as she’d ever heard him. “You need to rest.”
But rest was an impossibility as her mind slowly came back online, a bit like an old-fashioned computer bank being booted up. Lights began to flash one by one, and screens flickered to life in the dark, hazy control center of her mind.
A full body shiver coursed through her, a symptom of an all-consuming, unmoored fear. Petra’s muscles seized as if tensing in preparation for a blow. She didn’t knowwhy,nor what she was suddenly so afraid of. Her body acted on its own in response to something that was still too far away for her mind to make sense of.
Petra turned instinctively, curling into a tight little ball under the circle of Silas’s arm, and pressed her face into the hollow at the base of his throat. It was warm and dark there, softly scented like skin and thyme and his particular musk.Safe.
A gentle pressure curled around her neck. It didn’t squeeze, but held her carefully as she began to shake in earnest.
“Hey, hey,” Silas grated, “you’re fine, Petra. You’re okay. Stop being upset.”
He made it sound like she was doing it just to vex him. Of course she didn’t want to be upset. In fact, she didn’t even really understand why her body was going haywire in the first place.
“W-What happened?” Her teeth clattered, making it difficult to speak.
Silas shifted. His arm banded almost painfully tight around her middle. “You don’t remember?” After a short pause, he sighed, “Dad was right. I think you’re in shock.”
Shock?The computer bank came on all at once.
Petra lost all feeling in her limbs when she breathed, “I killed Antonin Vanderpoel.”
The events of the previous night — maybe, she had no idea how long she’d been out, which was its own terrifying thought — came back with all the noise and speed of an m-lev train.
Antonin knew about Max.
Antonin wanted her to bond with himthat night.
Antonin had a gun.
Silas appeared from the stairwell.
Antonin’s finger pressed down on the trigger, the gun aimed right at Silas’s head.
She didn’t remember making any choice or having a coherent thought at all. There’d only been the white-hot rage that overtook her when the Protector threatened to shoot her demon at point blank range.
Things got too bright, too hot, too volatile with magic after that. A blow knocked her down even as Vanderpoel’s body ignited. A luminist of greater power wouldn’t have been affected by the raw wave of magical fire she’d poured over him, but he didn’t stand a chance. The fat in his body ignited immediately, immolating him from the inside out.
It was unfortunate that watching him burnwas a crystal clear memory. She could see him in her mind’s eye, his arms flailing as his fat cooked him from within, the marrow of his bones getting so hot so fast that the bone itself began to splinter and pop long before the flesh of his skin peeled away.
She knew logically that it had only taken a handful of seconds before Silas swooped in, gleefully tearing into flesh already beginning to char, but it felt like a lifetime. In the moments between ignition and beheading, she watched his eyes cook in their sockets and knew the instant his brain became little more than stewed gray matter in the chalky bowl of his skull.
A wave of nausea overcame her.
Petra squirmed so violently that Silas was forced to release her. She threw herself blindly out of the strange bed and stumbled across a wood floor to what she prayed was a bathroom. He called after her, barking orders she couldn’t process, but she didn’t have time to stop. She feared that if she opened her mouth to speak, she’d be sick all over the floor.
Blessedly, there was a bathroom behind the first door she wrenched open. Petra’s knees met cool white tiles as she hunched over the bowl of an antique-looking toilet and expelled the contents of her last meal — the one she’d shared with Antonin.
Her stomach muscles tensed painfully with every convulsion. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her fingers trembled so violently they struggled to grip the rim of the toilet as she desperately tried to hold herself steady against the storm.
While she retched, big hands pulled her hair back from her sweaty face. Silas knelt behind her, his body heat permeating the sudden internal chill that bit into every nerve.
His voice took on an unfamiliar edge of panic when he said, “Easy, easy. I’ve got you. Just try to breathe. You’re okay. It’s okay. I’ll fix it. Everything’s okay.”
