Chapter Seventeen Darius #2
“And so when you got all lovey-dovey with your little boo thang, it was strong enough to break the spell?” I sneer in disgust. “Just a real-life Cinderella story, aren’t you?”
“I told you before, that wasn’t it. Love came later.
But my reversion didn’t happen when I told people it did.
It started way before then. The second I met Vanessa, I had an attraction to her.
A normal attraction, anyone would have to someone they found good-looking.
But then something happened. It was small.
” His face twists, nose crinkling. He looks away from me, and his tongue presses against the inside of his cheek, like he’s struggling to puzzle through something.
“It was so small it shouldn’t have mattered . . . but it changed everything.”
“Stop being so damn cryptic. The fuck happened?”
“She fell.” His gaze flits to mine, and a bright, bright iridescent white consumes his eyes.
It’s so bright I can’t even see his pupil.
The runes on his skin seem to glow, forming a map that leads to a treasure I don’t think is meant for me.
“She fell and my first instinct was to catch her.” A wind comes from nowhere and gives me the fucking chills.
“I damn near trampled people to get to her, just to slip my palm under her elbow and make sure she didn’t hit the ground.
I didn’t want to see her hit the ground . . .”
A sticky, creeping sensation, like tarantulas migrating, crosses my chest. My memories dance, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot force them to focus on any of the visions I had of my native land.
I cannot recall any of the urgent, pressing things I’ve got going on with the Marduk or my weapon or the fallout I’m going to have to deal with from seeing that terrible post on social media.
I can’t even remember the way Monika’s curves looked, bathing in the bright lights of my bedroom—I didn’t let her dim a single one, preferring to fuck her under a goddamn floodlight because I wanted to see everything . . .
My memories come down to one.
The feeling I had when Cynthia started talking shit about Monika.
All fluttering eyelashes and bright smiles.
Fucking cunt. And how every instinct in my body had been .
. . not to defend Monika . . . but to correct the other woman.
She’d been wrong, flat-out, talking down on Monika when she’s the most impressive woman I’ve met in my life.
And so I’d done something strange and out of character for me.
I . . . said something nice about somebody.
I knew in the moment I opened my mouth that I’d been in situations like this before and done and said nothing. I hadn’t been compelled to. So why then? Why now? Why over this woman who, just days before, I’d felt nothing for?
My memories are tugged to the vision of Monika pulling herself out of the Old Sundale Station tunnel like it was no biggie .
. . And then again, seeing the pictures she’d taken of me.
Then when she responded to my email with two words and, after, showed up at her godmother’s gala in that dress.
And how she’d been living in my apartment building this whole time and never thought to bring it up like it was no fucking thang .
. . She was just—is just—too much. She’s too fucking cool for me.
The sex part hadn’t even factored when I stood up for her against those untruths. Her little camera had more power than a cannon. More power than me too. And so I’d been selfless. Just for a second, less than five breaths. The words I said couldn’t be revoked, and neither could their consequences.
I’m rubbing my chin absently when the Wyvern breaks my focus. “You did something, didn’t you? Something completely different for you.”
I nod.
“It wasn’t torturing Cynthia, either, was it?”
I shake my head. “I said something nice.”
The Wyvern nods. “Not much, but for you, that would do it . . .” He starts to laugh.
“I said something nice about Monika.”
And then the Wyvern’s grin turns absolutely feral. He looks like the cat who ate the canary. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
He chokes. “You and Monika?”
I nod. “She’s mine now.”
“Fuck.” The Wyvern rubs his face. “I can’t decide if Vanessa’s gonna be pissed or find this real cute.”
“Why would she be pissed?”
“You kidding? Monika’s way, way too fucking good for you. You two aren’t even in the same league.”
I send a burst of electrical current to whack the Wyvern in the face.
He curses and rubs his jaw, then sends a fireball flying back.
I feel for his insides—a gift I know only a few of us in the Tratharine army possess.
I find his mind, and I send a little electrical pulse between his temples that causes his entire body to sit up straight.
He blinks at me, shakes his head, blinks again. “Fuck,” he says. “That’s like what the Marduk—”
“Yes.”
He frowns, sitting back. “Has reverting changed sides for you?”
“Like it did for you?”
“Yeah. My girl’s good, so I want to be good too.”
Huh. The way he says it makes it sound so simple, but my situation is more complicated than that. My girl is neutral. She takes pictures of the good and the bad. “Nah,” I tell him. It’s not a lie because I’m not changing sides because of Monika. I was never a hero.
He gives me a dark, skeptical side-eye. “That right?”
“Yeah.”
“And have you found your map?”
“What map?”
He gestures to his arm, to the runes that seem to be lightly carved into his granite skin.
“Led me to my weapon.” He tilts his head as his gaze moves over my bare chest. How the fuck is he sitting here, the better dressed one between the two of us?
He’s a slob, last I checked. “Yours are different.”
I nod, stretching out one arm between us. The glittery patterns that form over my skin only turn bright white in natural light. “Yes. Seems like it. What do the weapons do? Other than open a gate for the Elders to pass through when combined.”
“What weapons do,” he answers with a shrug. “Have you found yours?”
“Map didn’t lead me anywhere,” I tell him, and there’s truth in it.
He picks his coffee cup back up and squints. “Bullshit.”
“Whatever.”
He repositions himself in his chair and cocks his head.
“Look, Taranis, I don’t care if you’re lying to me.
I don’t care if you have your weapon. I don’t care if you’re dating Monika, and I don’t care if you’re a hero or if you’re a villain.
All I know is that if I have to kill you to ensure that the Elders don’t make it here, I will. ”
“You can’t, Sixty-Two.”
He just shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Feeling strangely magnanimous, I decide to give him something. “I don’t want the Elders here either.” My tail lifts to curl around my cup of coffee. My arms remain crossed as I sip from it. “I don’t like having a master. And since you’ve been absolutely annoying, I only have one last question.”
“Shoot.” He tosses some bills onto the table. What looks like forty bucks. I glance at it, and he says, “I’ve got a sugar mama.”
“How do you get the weapons to work?”
“Thought you didn’t find yours?”
“Theoretically,” I say with emphasis, “how would one get their weapons to work?”
“Yours doesn’t?” He’s wearing another damn smile, this one more mischievous than any of the others.
“Theoretically, no. It doesn’t.”
“Then maybe, and I’m just theorizing here . . .”
“Of course.” Fucking annoying monstrous prick.
“Maybe your weapon doesn’t belong to you.”
The Marduk. That fucking dick. I knew it. Why I ever thought he’d give me my own weapon, even though I gave him his, is fucking stupid and so am I for harboring the trust I had in him. After all, he is a villain.
“What?” the Wyvern asks me.
“Nothing,” I hiss, annoyed all over. My cell phone bings with a notification that the meeting request I put in has been accepted. My body tingles from head to toe, and I know my skin is crackling with lightning.
“Damn. Something’s got you hot and bothered.”
“I’m late for a meeting.”
“With who?” he asks as I stand.
“Someone who’s going to get what they deserve.” I pause, glance down at him sitting there smiling while my blood boils in my veins. “Thank you for the coffee. You look like a giant cotton candy.”
He just laughs as I stomp away. “When you’re mad, you look like a grape.”