Page 70 of Two Sides of Sin

The mention of her sent a tremor through my body. I buried my face in my hands, my chest heaving. “You don’t understand,” I whispered, the words sounding broken. “You don’t fucking understand. I can’t do this. I can’t fucking be here.”

“Who? Sage?” Noah sounded baffled. “Jules, you’ve never met her. She’s just a random art restorer. What are you talking about?”

I lifted my head, staring at him through eyes that felt like they were bleeding. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him I was over a century old, that my brother and I were men forged in blood, and that the girl in the chapel was the reincarnated soul of the woman I was forced to sacrifice, and watch die. The love of my life.

June.

“She looks exactly like someone I lost,” I lied, though the grief choking me was real. “Someone… someone from a long time ago. It’s her. Noah, I swear to God, it’s her.”

Noah’s expression softened instantly, the soldier’s edge melting into deep, human pity. “Oh, man,” he breathed out, sitting back on his heels. “Jules… I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You never talk about your past.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I snapped, wiping a cold sweat from my forehead, fighting to pull the impenetrable mask back over my face. I had to lock it down. If I let the madness out now, I would destroy everything. I would terrify her. “It was just a shock. That’s all. I’ll handle it.”

“You don’t have to handle it alone,” Noah said quietly.

“Yes, I do.” I grabbed my rifle and used the wall to haul myself to my feet. My legs were shaking, but the terrifying, dark control of the Manor was slowly creeping back into my veins, freezing the panic into something colder and much more dangerous. “Don’t mention this to anyone, Noah. And keep me off her security detail. I can’t be around her.”

Seventy-two hours of suffocating agony had passed since our run in. I had practically lived in the command tent, volunteering for every night patrol, every perimeter sweep that kept me out in the dark and as far away from the eastern chapel as possible.

Noah, bless him, had tried to cover for me. He ran the security details for the civil asset teams, including her. Every time he came back from a shift, I could smell the dust of the chapel and the faint, intoxicating trace of her scent on his uniform. It took everything I had not to rip him apart just for being near her when I couldn’t be.

You’re a monster, Julian, I reminded myself constantly. Stay away. Let her live a normal human life. You don’t deserve her.

But the Manor’s dark alchemy wasn’t built for restraint. It was built for possession. And my control was fraying faster than a rotting rope.

It was dusk on the fourth day. The air was thick with heat and the smell of diesel. I was sitting on a stack of sandbags, methodically field-stripping my sidearm for the third time that hour, just to keep my hands from shaking.

Noah dropped onto the sandbags next to me, tossing a half-empty water bottle into my lap. He looked exhausted, covered in the fine silt that coated everything in this godforsaken region.

“You’re going to wear the finish off that piece, Jules,” he muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a filthy glove. “Give it a rest.”

I didn’t look up, my fingers expertly reassembling the slide. “Keeps my mind quiet.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not working,” Noah said pointedly. He leaned closer, lowering his voice even though the motor pool was mostly empty. “You look like a corpse, man. Even for you. You haven’t slept since Tuesday. The guys are starting to notice you’re vibrating at a frequency that usually precedes an explosion.”

“I’m fine,” I lied, the words tasting like ash.

“No, you’re not,” Noah shot back. He let out a long, slow breath, staring out across the dusty camp towards the silhouette of the ruined cathedral against the bleeding orange sky. “And dodging her isn’t helping. It’s obviously making it worse.”

My hands stopped moving. The slide of the pistol clicked into place with a metallic finality. “I’m not dodging anyone.”

“Bullshit,” Noah said softly. “I’ve run the chapel detail for three days straight because you refuse to step foot in that sector. Sage even asked about you yesterday.”

The sound of her name on his lips was a shot to the heart. My head shot up. “She asked about me?”

The raw desperation in my voice must have been palpable, because Noah laughed before replying. “Yeah. She asked if you were okay. She’s… observant.” He paused, studying my rigid posture. “Who was it, man? The girl she looks like? A sister? A wife?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I ground out, shoving the sidearm into its holster. I stood up abruptly, the need to move, to escape, overwhelming me. “It was a lifetime ago. It’s dead and buried.”

“Dead and buried? Is that why you still carry her name over your heart?” Noah leaned back, his eyes dropping to the collar of my shirt. “That tattoo on your chest… June. Is that who she is?”

The air turned lethal. I felt the ink burn against my skin as if the name itself were trying to scream.

“Drop it, Noah. Seriously.” My voice was a low, vibrating warning that should have made any sane man back away. “Don’t say her name again.”

“Okay, okay, I won’t push,” Noah held up his hands in surrender, though his eyes were sharp. “But you can’t keep avoiding that sector. Captain wants us both on the final sweep of the cloisters tonight. Some of the locals reported movement near the southern wall. The restoration team is working late to finish securing a stained-glass framework before the weather turns. We have to go, Jules. Both of us.”

I stared at him, the darkness inside me surging against its cage. The cloisters were directly adjacent to the chapel. There was no way to secure that perimeter without passing through her workspace.