An ache spreads through my stomach, and I groan in real time. Craving…it? Her?
I press my palms to my temples.Hold on.
Hold on to the memory.
The lollipops.
Pink. Heart-shaped.
“Even monsters deserve love sometimes.”
I've turned those words over so many times in the years since that they should have worn smooth by now. Gone meaningless with repetition. They haven't. They are still exactly as sharp as they were the first time, still capable of doing the same thing to my insides…just like her touch did.
Her hands.
God, her hands. Soft in a way that still surprises me when the memory surfaces—the specific softness of someone who has never had to use their hands for what I've used mine for, who has only ever used them for gentle things, for touching carefully, for meaning well.
She'd touched my face. She'd touched my scar, the raised line of it, not with the careful clinical detachment of someone managing their discomfort, but with her thumb just resting there. Like it was a part of me she loved and adored.
Blonde hair. Green eyes.
She's in Japan. She's in Japan with Ian keeping her safe, and remembering that part of the story produces a swell in my chest that might, in a pleasant moment, be called hope.
“Nazareth. Eat.” Valeria’s demonic whisper starts gnawing at the edges of the memories, slowly eating awayat it. “You need to eat. Once you do, I’ll give you what you need.”
What I need.
Numbing. Relief. Right now, what I need is to get out of my own head for five seconds. Stop thinking about the blonde and the kitchen and the sound her voice made when she laughed against my throat. Stop thinking about the green-eyed woman in Japan with Ian, as if I’m a dog that can nag at a bone and bring someone back to me.
What I need is magic in my veins.
What you need is her. The one who sees you. The real you.
“Goddammit!” I grit out, pressing my hands hard against my skull. Whether I’m fighting the ache for relief, or the pain of losing her… I dunno.
Her name.
Her name.
Her name.
The image wavers. The kitchen fades. The gold of her hair goes thin at the edges, and I reach for it, I press my hands against it in my mind, and for a moment I have it—her face, complete, her green eyes and the compression on the left side of her mouth and the exact specific sound of my name said like it was worth saying?—
Nazareth.
I hold it.
I hold it.
Sophia.
There. The name, finally. The stone at the bottom of the water, reached.
Sophia Sophia Sophia.
I press it into the inside of my skull like a mark I'm tryingto make permanent. She’s in Japan. With Ian, who has the protocol, who will keep her where I put her, who will not let anything?—
My chest does something that isn't quite pain and isn't quite warmth. More like the memory of warmth. Like pressing a hand to a surface where something hot used to be.
