She wasn’t there, was nowhere anymore.I wonder if she realized what happened to me.Maybe she blamed me, in the end, because I was naïve enough to fall for a handsome vampire and go with him.
“We don’t have to go into the park.I apologize for bringing you here, making you relive that,” Maxim said.
So soft-spoken.So calm.
A sudden urge seized Raven.He wanted to scream at Maxim, at each and every nice thing he’d said and done.He faced him, opened his mouth, but he couldn’t say the words, couldn’t bring himself to.
Or maybe I’m scared that he’ll be angry.What is he going to do to me when he gets angry?
No.Raven tried to make his lungs work smoothly.Laurenzio had been angry with him a lot.Raven had been scared because he could never tell why or when, and there’d been no way of knowing what he’d do.Except it always ended the same.He always raped me in the end and drank my blood.
Raven didn’t scream at Maxim.He did the next best thing and crossed the road, not so much as thinking about whether there was any traffic he was running into.
He walked through an iron gate and into Seneca Park, almost running, never once turning to see if Maxim was there, hoping he was.Hoping he wasn’t.
The park was too big to really know every corner of it, at least that was Raven’s impression.New Amsterdam natives might’ve seen it differently.
In this moment, the unfamiliar nature of the shadows he was walking into was soothing while also being exhilarating.What if there are people here?A fae assassin—someone who knew Prof.LeRoux and hates that she died because of me?
Raven picked up his pace, running along the path before veering off into the trees and underbrush.Something inside of him said “they” were waiting for him there: assassins, the vampire Laurenzio had made him watch.The accusing dead, finally.They’d come and take him away, and then it’d be over.
With his eyes stinging, he forgot what his feet were doing, and with a jolt of air hitting his face, the park passed him by in a strange, forward-jumping leap.Shocked, he stopped.His feet caught on something, and before he was exactly sure where he was, he was falling forward, seeing the gravel of one of the footpaths coming for his face.
“Easy.”
Maxim caught him with an arm across his chest and a hand at his neck.
“I—”
“You ran, but with vampire speed.Nicely done.”
The praise didn’t sit right, didn’t feel right.Raven didn’t know how to brush it off, wasn’t even quite sure what it was for or how genuinely it was meant.
“Th-that was…running?”
Maxim pulled him upright.Raven’s muscles felt tense, unusually so.
“Yes.You’re lucky you didn’t run into anything.I tripped and fell and broke my face when I first did it.Do you want to sit?The first time tends to be oddly exhausting.”
He pointed at a bench that offered a view of one of the lakes that ran through the park and were home to waterfowl, the odd werewolf during a full moon if the stories were to be believed, and, of course, students out on drunken dares.
Raven huffed.No one ever dared me to go skinny dipping in the park.
“Okay.Let’s sit.”
He walked with Maxim, his legs wobbly.He sat and relaxed against the wooden bench, watching out of the corner of his eye as Maxim sat next to him, that silly pajama set doing a bad job of hiding how smoothly he moved, how elegant he was.
Rich, too.What was I even thinking, throwing myself at him?I’m nothing to him.I’m used up, wasted, and he knows that better than anyone.
In the darkness, Raven told himself that he’d rest for a moment and then he’d run, leave, tell Maxim he was going to go to the police or that he was going home.Back to university, even.He didn’t want any of these things.He just wanted…quiet.
In the end, Raven lacked the courage to do anything at all.Maxim said nothing, and they sat there, nothing but silence between them until the sun came up and cast their outlines in copper and rose.
Chapter 15
Maximwasnotanimpatient man.Quite the opposite.He’d once spent three days hiding in a tree with a crime-loving vampire’s hideout in his line of sight.The vampire had never seen him coming, too busy with the poor human he’d wanted to torture and drain.
More recently, Maxim had shown extreme patience when it came to teaching Heath the art of the sword—something neither of them had enjoyed, and yet nonnegotiable.
