“The fact that you’re here.” It’s the only way I can word it. I don’t want to mention the prison or what he was there for, as it’ll only remind me of how I’ve ended up here. There’s still a bitterness to all of this, despite what he’s just done to me, the way he’s made me feel.
“After leading my flock into a mission that killed one of them, leaving Adolphe Fortunato completely unscathed and free to run his fucking empire for the past ten years without anyone to challenge him on his depraved morals.”
“Didn’t the Raven Hands seek revenge after you were put away?” I ask.
“I forbade them from it. It was my fault Ed died. There was no way I was putting any more Raven Hands at the mercy of Fortunato.”
“What about now? Do you want revenge? Are you going to go after Fortunato?” My mind races at the thought.
“It’s been ten years, angel. Ten years is a long time to plot revenge.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I say.
“Sometimes I do want revenge. So much so, I can taste it, see his blood on my knife and the whites of his eyes as I drain him of everything he is. But then at other times, I just want my head to stay quiet, to revel in the nothingness and give myself up to dark abandon. And I don’t know which is worse,” he explains.
Darkness pools on his face, his eyes misting over.
His gaze returns to me. “The only thing Idoknow is what I want right now.”
“And that is?”
“Do you want to know the last physical words Ed said to me before he died?” he asks, even though I would like to think he knows me well enough now to know what my answer will be.
The hairs rise on my arms as if nails have been run down my back, a sickly feeling working its way through my stomach.
“Yes.” It’s delivered with little conviction, rather guilt at not having been there to hear his last words, jealousy that Valdemar Montresor was the one to hear them, and anger that they were his last words in the first place.
“After the gun went off, I ran to him and grabbed his head so I could look at him. I told him everything was going to be okay and that he just needed to stay with me. Lies. All of it fucking lies.”
Sadness overtakes his expression as he continues.
“I had two guns pointing at the back of my head—one held by Fortunato’s bodyguard and the other by a very nervous police officer who looked far too old to be in uniform, never mind brandishing a gun. But I never took my eyes off Ed. I told him I was sorry, so fucking sorry, and that I would spend the rest of my life being sorry. I asked him to forgive me. He told me that only an angel could grant such things.”
Tears swell behind my eyes, but I refuse to let this man see them.
“Jesus. You think I’m a fucking angel,” I say.
“I know you are.”
“Well, I’m not, and even if I was, I don’t forgive you. I will never forgive you,” I tell him.
“I don’t expect you to when I can’t forgive myself,” he admits.
Wrapping his shirt closer around my body, I pull my legs up and hug them. “What happens now?” I ask.
“That’s up to you. You can go home, if that’s what you want, or you can stay here with me. It’s your choice, angel.”
Tracing the flock of ravens tattooed up his arm, I know I should be asking for my dress and getting the hell out of here. But the slump in his shoulders and the bleakness of his face won’t allow me to. What has he lived with these past ten years? It’s been hard enough living with the loss of my brother, but how do you live with that loss knowing it was your fault?
“I don’t forgive you, but I won’t condemn you. Stay with me.” I reach my hand out, and Valdemar looks up, a small light shining behind his eyes that’s so far removed from the beast that stalked into the library not thirty minutes ago.
Sliding onto the bed, he takes me in his arms, and I let him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sleep engulfs me.Uninterrupted, dense, and heavy sleep.
I can’t recall the last time I slept so well, no dreams, no night visitors. When I wake, it’s to foreign sheets, an unfamiliar room, and the warmth of a body next to me.
