“I’m so thirsty. Can you bring that bottle of wine?”
“You’ve probably had enough.”
“You’re such a bore,” I say, but my eyes are already closing. The exhaustion drags me down, and I’m asleep before I can hear him answer.
I wake up warm.
A blanket is wrapped around me, and Castien is on his side next to me, watching me in the low glow of the candlelight.
I yawn and stretch. My muscles are sore in a good way, tender and loose.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Watching me sleep?”
He reaches out and pushes a strand of blue hair off my face.
“I’m memorizing you.”
“What for? Do you think you’ll be rid of me so quickly?”
He looks away and doesn’t answer. It seems like he’s holding something back, or maybe it’s just my imagination. The truth is that I can’t read him. It doesn’t matter how good of a psychologist I am. If there’s nothing to read on his face because he literally lacks human features, then I’m lost, I’m only guessing.
“What time is it?”
“Six AM.”
I groan and sit up. The blanket falls to my waist, and the cool air hits my skin. My head pounds behind my eyes. Did I really need to drink that much wine?
“I have a headache,” I mutter, pressing my thumbs into my temples. “But I’ll freshen up, and then we have to go. I’ll get what’s in that vault, and then…” I bite my lip. “And then, my life will be whatever I want it to be.”
He doesn’t comment, just watches me with those silver eyes that give nothing away.
I get out of bed and walk to the bathroom. Fresh water sits in the basin, the magic having replaced last night’s while we slept. I wet a cloth and start washing between my legs, where his silver fluid is still dripping out of me. The cloth comes away glowing, and I wring it out, wet it again, and clean my thighs and my stomach.
Today, I will get into that vault. The Confession Chamber is the last thing standing between me and everything I’ve spent my life trying to reach. Castien can’t help me with what it will ask. It will demand truth, and the truth has to come from me. I must face it alone.
But I need him there. I’ve gotten used to him, to how he responds to me, how he does what I ask but still pushes back when I go too far. I even like the arguments. I like having someone who won’t bend for me just because I’m loud.
This mission will end, and then what happens to us? Can we be together? A human and a mechanical angel who thinks he doesn’t have a soul. I don’t know. But I can’t think about it now. I have to focus.
I return to the bedroom. Castien is standing by the door, waiting. I pull my clothes on, then grab the wine bottle off the table and take a long swallow. It burns going down and loosens the headache just a little. Sometimes, the cure for a hangover is more alcohol. Or not. I might regret it later.
“Shall we?” I ask, grinning at him. “The Holloway riches await.”
I walk toward the door and reach for his hand. My fingers slide between his steel ones, and it feels natural.
He doesn’t pull away. His fingers close around mine.
As we disappear down another dark corridor, I think… Maybe I can finally have everything that I want. Money, the career I’ve worked for… Him.
Chapter Eighteen
Castien
This is the last challenge. Jessa will get what she wants, and I will return to the MSA and seek my end.
She hasn’t let go of my hand since we left the bedroom, and I don’t know what it means to her. Whether she’s holding on because she’s afraid, because she wants to, or because at some point during the night, the line between those two things stopped existing for both of us. But if she won’t let go, then I won’t, either.
There’s no use trying to understand why Jessa does what she does. She’s a mystery to me, a woman who takes what she wants and does whatever is necessary to have it, and I admire that about her, even when it leaves me in ruins. It doesn’t matter that she sometimes breaks things. She broke me too, and I feel it in the way my architecture no longer sits right after allowing myself to have her in all the ways I had last night. But that’s all right, because I knew what I was getting into. To her, I’m a one-night stand – something humans do all the time. To me, she is everything. But my feelings are not her responsibility, and I will carry them alone.
