He let out a long exhale as he stared down at me. At some point, his thumb had begun stroking my fingers as he stared down at me, his gaze seeming to drill into me.
“I like how bubbly and enthusiastic you are,” he said. “But you don’t have to be that way all the time. You can be honest with your emotions.”
That heat I had been willing to keep down flared up again, and this time I couldn’t stop it from spreading to my cheeks, scalding my skin.
“I don’t—”
“Come on, Liv.” He gave a smirk, eyes sparkling in a way that looked unfamiliar on his normally surly face. “It’s kind of hard to hide when I can feel them. Though I appreciated that youtried to block most of them while I was fighting. It was sweet of you to consider.”
He had noticed, then. I glanced away. It still took effort to admit the truth. I didn’t like admitting my fears or negative emotions. Except somehow, he already seemed to know. He knew me better than I thought.
I took a deep breath, hesitated, then finally said, “Okay, yeah, I was—I am afraid.”
Just saying it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, like I could finally breathe again.
Drake gave a brusque nod as he contemplated me. He was still holding onto me. I might have been imagining it, but I could have sworn that I saw genuine concern and worry flickering across his face.
“It’s all right, you know,” he said. “Given what happened, I don’t know if anyone would blame you.”
Why did my heart have to choose right then to start stuttering? Why did he have to elicit this sort of reaction in me? Why did I want to step in and close that gap between us, to let him wrap his arms around me and pull me in close? Why couldn’t I just keep hating him and wanting to keep my distance? Why did things suddenly have to get too complicated?
I tugged my hand out of his, and he let my fingers slide away. They felt suddenly cold after.
“I’m going to get you something to drink,” I said, willing my voice to stay even. “Water? Something stronger?”
“Stronger,” he grunted, and that hard exterior around him began to form, making those few instances of gentleness easier to forget when he kept that stern expression.
I stepped out of the room, my heart still pounding, willing myself to get the rush of emotions rippling under control so that he couldn’t feel them through the bond. Because, no matter what he had said or promised, I didn’t want him to feel the ones currently flickering through me.
I took a deep breath as I ran my fingers through my hair, processing everything. There it was again, that softer side of him. It twisted my insides into a knot. Those bits that had made me fall for him in the first place had started flickering back to life, impossible to notice.
This was bad. Everything I had promised myself I wouldn’t let happen was coming to pass. I kept trying to fight it, but at this point, it felt impossible to ignore.
The truth was, I was falling for Drake again, and that scared me more than any demon.
Chapter 12 - Drake
The next morning, I came into the office to find Oz in the meeting room, piles of books stacked high over his head as he sat hunched over one, pages of notes strewn across the massive table. Dark circles ran beneath his eyes, and a large cup of coffee sat within reach. He yawned as I walked in, giving me an exhausted nod.
“Any sleep?” I asked.
“You know me. When disaster strikes, that’s when I get insomnia until I have something that can be of use.”
I nodded. This had been a thing with Oz since he was a kid. When the wraith showed up last year, he stayed up for four days straight doing research before we forced him to go home until he got at least eight hours of sleep.
“Don’t kill yourself over it at least,” I grunted.
Oz yawned and flapped his hand. “Sleep deprivation won’t kill me,” he muttered. “Side effects, maybe. But one night is fine.”
I shrugged, knowing better than to argue with Oz when it came to his sleep schedule. The only reason we had forced him to sleep last time was that he’d been too tired to come up with a coherent argument. That wouldn’t happen for another two days at least.
“What’d you find?” I asked Oz as I sat next to him.
“A lot, and none of it’s good,” he responded, his face grim. He spread out the pages clutched in his hand across the table so I could look at them. “Azaret’s a nasty piece of work. He’s shown up all over the place, and nothing good ever comes of him.”
I let out a puff of air as I leaned forward to scan the pages. “Let’s see the worst of it.”
He pointed to one page that looked like a print of a journal. “This one comes from England in 1348.” At my blank expression, he added, “The Black Death. Azaret was there when it started. And this one shows him skulking around France in the late 1700s, during the revolution. And this journal here suggests he was probably part of the Taiping Rebellion in China.”
