And if the note was true. If Lao Li’s ramblings weren’t pure madness...that meant my hands would be coated in blood before I was through.
Leaning over her, I brushed my lips over her cool cheek. “I refuse to put you in danger, little ice heart. Not now.”
Not now, when losing her would slaughter me.
If I let my vengeance be the reason she got hurt. If I took her with me into certain carnage and she suffered because of me...
I’ll never forgive myself.
Slipping out of bed, I padded silently through the darkness to the wardrobe.
I didn’t bother showering. I wanted to keep her on my skin—to use her scent as a way to control myself while we were apart. Pulling on my familiar black uniform and black boots, I wished I had a gun or two.
Then again, I was used to knives. I’d taken countless lives with a blade.
Palming a few daggers that I’d been given as a child—heirlooms with dragon-carved handles—I wedged them into my waistband. At least, wearing all black, bloodstains wouldn’t show if I cut someone’s throat tonight.
Whisper prowled toward me, his whiskers flaring as if tasting my burning.
Ducking to my haunches, I grabbed his cheeks. “Once again, I’m going to ask you to protect her.” Pressing my forehead to his, I stayed there for a moment before standing and stalking to the door. “Don’t leave her side.”
I paused on the threshold, my eyes catching Whisper’s as he went to stand guard over a sleeping Rook.
Rook continued to snooze safely.
My hands balled with the vicious need to keep her that way.
The urge to defend her was visceral—an instinct carved deep into my bones. My only purpose was to protect her—even from myself, which meant I would clean up my messes so she no longer had to suffer.
With one last look, I told myself I would return before she woke.
I was wrong.
Chapter Sixty-Three
I SQUATTED IN THE DARK LIKE A DEMON.
Ahead, the cave system of the Eastern Crucible sulked in the night. I’d walked here after trying to figure out how to drive Wen’s jeep—only to give up when the grinding gears threatened to tell everyone in Ashfall Cliff that I was up to no good.
Then again, a vehicle wouldn’t have worked.
It’d taken three hours of mountaineering to get here. The forest was almost impassable; the cliff edges narrow and steep. I’d memorised my father’s map but almost got lost a few times, thanks to the rugged terrain doing its best to turn me back. I doubted the villagers would’ve gone this way while looking for their lost ones—purely because of the risks.
I clenched against the inferno fighting to get free.
One hundred and eighty minutes away from Rook, yet the burning in my blood was unbearable. The firehatedbeing separated from her. It acted like a separate entity—a parasite slowly vampirising my soul the longer I was away from the one person who kept me sane.
Focus.
On the horizon, the moon glimmered brightly. Dawn was still hours away and the croaks of frogs and night insects rang in my ears.
I studied the cave’s entrance. Half-collapsed and covered in vines, it looked abandoned—just like the site notice on my father’s map. A rusted, broken fence hung on rotten, wooden posts—the metal cut in the centre and rolled aside as if explorers had ignored the signs to keep out. A weather-beaten sign with the Brimstone logo had been torn off the fence and left to be swallowed by moss against a tree.
Everything about this place looked forgotten and unwanted, yet...the air tasted wrong.
The fire kept growing, snarling at something I couldn’t see.
The faintest coil of cigarette smoke hit my nose as two men exited the mountain’s mouth.
