I will never leave you.
Forever, in every lifetime.
The memory hits me like a blinding light behind my eyes and I sink my nails deeper into my palms instead of flinching. A rush of pain echoes in my body that I don’t let show. I keep my hold on how fast my heart beats and blood flows. I keep my energy even and my aura nonexistent. I let nothing fluctuate until the memory fizzles away.
“Because,” I grit, my eyes still burning a hole through the wall. “Why would youstay?”
I can’t look at him. I refuse to look at him. I.Refuse.
I will not be trapped again. I will not be locked in a cage within my own body again. I will not be bound.
Already I’m a slave to the sun. I’m a slave in my own skin, unable to have the contact needed for life. I’m a slave to my mind and the nightmares and a monster who should have stopped having an impact in my life the moment his heart stopped.
I will find a way to rip my soul from my body. If Callahan wants it so badly, if fate has been written and our souls are connected, then he can have it. I have no need for it if that is the case.
The scent of embers and cedar fill the room until it smells like I’m sitting before a fire in the middle of a forest. Warm and comforting and calm. Despite all the burning I have always loved fire. I have never been afraid of fire and flame scorching me. Flames of red and orange and blue in the center marking thehottest part. So hot the lines of burning and freezing blur. That burning never felt the same.
“Mavyn.” His voice is quiet and his breath whispers along my jaw. So close that I’m sure if I turned too quickly I’d smack my head with his. “Look at me.”
It pulls stronger than before. As if someone took their hand, curled their fingers around my soul, and jerked to towards him. So much need to heed to his words. Towantto turn my head and lock my eyes with his.
His breath whispers along my jaw again with his exhale. “Please.”
Berry and floral burst through the embers and cedar. The scents twining together as my nails puncture past the barrier of my skin.
Power pulses from him and I’d grin but for a moment it jars me. For a moment it feels too consuming. But instead of allowing my mind to make me cower, I slowly shift my head and burn raging eyes at gentle gold ones.
It makes me flinch.
A half of a breath gasped into my lungs as my expression drops. He is close, close enough that I can see the individual threads of white through his eyes. Close enough that if I even breathe there will be some form of contact. Not that I could move anyway.
I was expecting him to be glaring at me. His eyes slitted, brows lowered, gold eyes darkened. Instead, he’s watching me with a sort of softness I’ve never experienced before. The kind Asher has for Jullia, and Caleb has for Ana, and unfortunately. . . that sun devil for his mage.
It had been the only time he had looked humane. When he didn’t look like a monster. Staring down at his fated with their twisted souls and mangled love for each other.
Something flickers. Past the color, behind his eyes, at the heart of himself. . . I see it.
His soul.
So much like his aura. Black and white. Light and dark. A contradiction and yet balanced.
Without meaning to I trace his jaw with my fingertips. On the surface, his pupils expand. Swallowing up his color as I skim over his cheek to the corner of his eye.
There’s another presence within too. The window showing past his physical body to within allowing me to see everything. A thing – shadow, monster, beast,true devil– shrunk so small but wrapped tightly around the same thing pulling within me. A single flickering flame the color of a midnight sky.
The line between burning and freezing.
Warmth floods over my heart in the shape of a hand. His lips ghosting words over my own.
“Your heart has never beat this fast before.”
He’s right. I lost my grip on my blood. It’s now rushing through my veins, heating me from the inside with a need. My body battling with my mind about pressing closer to him. That electricity in the air that twined with tension draws taunt. A single line that is about to snap at any moment.
It feelsright.
And that’s the problem.
He must see it. Hehasto see it. Thisthingwill not be lasting.
