Chapter 36
Words eddy from my mind. I’m up with my arms around Reid’s neck before he can speak again. He smells better than I remember—lemongrass and evergreen soap. A bright, verdant glade.
“You’re here,” I breathe.
His hand has slipped around to the small of my back, but it’s tense there. As if he wants to pull me closer but knows he shouldn’t.
“Welcome back to the land of the living.” Deacon’s voice is rusty with sleep as he stretches. “Proverbially, of course.”
Oh god, Deacon.
He’s propped up on an elbow on the closet floor, lids heavy, hair mussed, shirtless torso gleaming in a shaft of pale dawn light.
“You son of a bitch,” Reid growls, moving me aside by the waist to lunge for him.
“No, Reid.” I yank him back by the shirtsleeve.
His hair’s a bit longer than it was five months ago but still easily pushed from his face.
His few freckles have disappeared—probably due to weeks without sunlight—but those eyes are still crushing-wave, glittering-sea, ruined-voyage blue.
“We had to hide out up here from the Citadel hunters. We’re just sleeping. Nothing happened. Deacon, tell him.”
Deacon stands, slipping on his shirt and the leather jacket that served as my blanket. “ ’Course not,” he drawls. It’s not convincing.
Reid looks from me to Deacon, jaw tight.
I can’t even imagine. The man who killed the first woman he loved, curled around the closest thing he’s had to a second chance. Guilt skewers me.
“Last time you two were together,” Reid snarls at Deacon, “you almost killed her.”
Deacon makes a perplexed face. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
“I only went to Deacon because I didn’t know who else I could trust after everything went down with Driscoll…Your brother’s been helping me look for you all this time.” I take Reid’s hand in mine. “Nothing happened between us.”
“Come on, brother,” Deacon says, eyeing the way my hand wraps around Reid’s. “You think I’d fuck a hunter? Even I have standards.”
“Watch it,” Reid spits. His punishing eyes have not left his brother.
I know Deacon’s only trying to help, but the words sting. I tell myself it’s just his bruised ego talking, but it doesn’t soothe the hurt. Had he been playing with me all along? All the flirting, all the jokes about being attracted to me…
I squeeze Reid’s hand until he looks at me. “I have been searching for you for months.”
There’s a darkness in his gaze that I wonder if I ever noticed before. It’s hard to tell. When he was just a demon and I was just a hunter, I’m sure I saw all kinds of wickedness in him.
“Hey.” I bring my hands up to his face. “Wherever you were. I’m glad you’re back now.” I look to Deacon, whose scowl could flay off my skin. “We both are.”
“Ecstatic,” Deacon deadpans.
Reid shoots his brother one more nasty glare before pressing his lips to mine.
The kiss is warm and familiar. His hands cup my face, and I release a slight, surprised hum. But soon he’s bringing those hands lower, angling my hips toward his, groaning as he slides his tongue between my lips.
I try to remember how much I’d missed him just a few months ago. How much I’d worried about him. The countless nights I spent bolting through dreams in which he was strung up on a rack or fed his own flesh…And the other ones. Where he was plotting, speaking in hushed tones, hiding away from me.
And yet all I can think as Reid is kissing me—the demon at one time I’d been sure I loved—is how his brother is standing right beside us, watching. I try to pull away but Reid makes no move to let me go. His hands snake around my waist and tug me closer. “Wait—” I breathe between kisses. “Reid—”
“Please,” Deacon says coolly. “Don’t stop on my account.”
When I manage to detangle from him and catch Deacon’s eye, it’s a knife, burrowed into my chest. If I was expecting revulsion or mocking cruelty, or even jealousy, I find none of it. If I was preparing myself for the pain of indifference, there was no need.
Deacon’s pale blue eyes flash with a resigned, bone-deep hurt. It’s worse than all the other outcomes combined.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Reid grunts. His hand slips down my arm, and I wince when it scrapes over my still-bandaged gash. “What happened?”
“Finn happened. I’m okay.”
Reid’s brows crease with concern. “Are you sure?”
Deacon rolls his eyes, that pain still radiating off of him. “She’s fine.”
I wonder if Reid can tell something is wrong with his brother.
I’m not sure if I want to know. If I want to see the pleasure he’d surely derive from that.
It’s an effort to pull my eyes from Deacon, but I do.
Not just to escape this uneasy blend of homecoming and misplaced yearning, but because reality is returning to me. “How did you get in here?” I ask Reid.
“I still had my old key card.” He flashes it from his back pocket. The barricade of furniture in the archive has been shoved apart. The sound that woke me up.
“That’s not really what I meant.” I steel myself, standing taller. “Where were you, Reid? All this time? Why are you back now?”
His eyes grow hard. “I was Finn’s prisoner for some time. Escaped a few months back—”
“You never thought to, I don’t know, call me?”
“And lead the Brood that was tracking me right to you? I sent you the camera. To let you know I was all right.”
“Forget the camera. That was a scavenger hunt, Reid. You were within walking distance. We had a warlock do a spell. We know you were on campus.”
Reid takes a sharp inhale. “And do you know how hard it was to keep away from you then? The nights I had to physically lock my bedroom door to keep myself from hurtling across campus to your dorm room? You were safe here, Viv. Going to classes. To parties. Nobody suspected you. Meanwhile, the Elders knew I’d been at the docks. If I somehow put you in their sights…”
My throat is too tight when I ask, “And where were you hiding? All that time?”
“In my cottage. Edgar spelled it for me when I first came to Harker. When he feared one of the professors might try to take my employment here into their own hands. It appears empty unless I will it otherwise.”
It’s like a sucker punch. That day…when I’d looked inside his cottage. I’d seen a glimmer—I’d thought I felt him.
“But then I saw the news of the car chase in NTC. I’d recognize that dark hair of yours anywhere…” His brows knit as he takes a few strands between his fingers. “I had to know you were all right.”
My neck heats beneath my hair. My heart rate a steady, focused thud. It’s not enough. None of it is enough. “What were you doing in the city?”
Reid’s features shift slightly, anger taking hold. “I was going to ask you the same thing. Why did you leave campus, Viv? You know Finn’s looking for you out there.”
So Deacon had been right, back at Simon and Son’s. Reid was under the impression I’d been safely at Harker all this time. For some reason, the fact that he thinks I wouldn’t have risked my life to find him—to save him—makes me even angrier. “Answer the question.”
Reid’s eyes shudder. “It’s…complicated.”
“Are you kidding me?” Fury ratchets down my spine. “I thought you were dead. My heart was broken. I was in the city risking my life to save you. And all you have for me it’s complicated?”
“Easy, tiger,” Deacon says quietly.
And he’s right—my vision is starting to blur red. The demons on either side of me begging to be impaled with my blades. The need for the hunt intensifying—
I take a shaky inhale and watch as Reid’s features shift from agitated to alarmed. “What’s going on with you? What’s he talking about?”
“Don’t change the subject.” My fingers find the sleeve of my shirt and twist until they hurt.
“Viv—”
“She’s fine,” Deacon says.
“Stop fucking saying that!” Reid roars at him.
Deacon nods to himself, as if his brother’s outburst is right on cue. “That’s helpful.”
“Reid.” I inhale a bracing, tension-riddled breath and blow it out. “Please. Tell me what you were doing in the city? What you were searching for.”
He takes my hands into his and drags me a notch closer to him. Lowers his voice as he says, “I will tell you everything you want to know. All of it. But not now. Not with him.”
And despite everything, I can’t argue with that.
Reid has despised Deacon for hundreds of years.
If there is any part of me that still trusts Reid—that still cares for him—I can’t force him to share whatever secret he’s keeping with the person he trusts least. “Fine,” I say, looking out the archive windows into filtered morning light.
I take a cleansing breath but still pull my hands from his. “We should leave anyway.”
Now that spring has narrowly arrived, all the Harker students are out in the courtyards by early morning, heading to Lake Hellebore to watch the rowing boys train for the regatta, or pouring into the quads to toss footballs before class.
Despite the navy-clad Citadel hunters milling through them like ants at a picnic, now is the best time for us to slip out.
“Leave?” Reid asks. “To go where?”
I stare at him, trying to make sense of his confusion. “Out of the city. The country, maybe. Have you not seen the hunters swarming the place? Or did you not pay enough attention to what Finn did, chasing after me last night?”
“You’ll be safest here. In the cottage with me. We can…” He scratches the back of his neck. “Make up for lost time.”
Deacon’s snort is cruel. “I’ll leave you two to it, then.” Before he walks past us, he gives me one long, loaded look. “Don’t forget our deal, Vivienne.”
Odette. I know better than to say anything about her to Reid.
“What deal?” Suspicion clouds Reid’s voice.
But Deacon’s already walking toward the barricade before the archive doors.
Deacon doesn’t care that my life is now in Reid’s hands?
Just last night he said he wouldn’t let anything happen to me.
If he gave a shit about my safety then, seeing Reid and me together this morning has clearly shredded that interest. Or perhaps he thinks his brother can protect me just as well as he can.
For every reason imaginable, from ego to rivalry, I doubt it.
“Wait,” I call out to Deacon. “I’ll go with you. To get my things and Hound and say goodbye to Penny.”
I’m going to have to get Pen a one-way ticket somewhere.
Maybe that Euro trip she’s supposed to be on in the first place.
I can’t risk bringing her back to Harker to hide out with me and Reid.
Not when the Elders are actively hunting for me here.
I’m jarred from my planning when I realize both Reid and Deacon are glaring at me.
“Your things?” Reid balks. “You’ve been living in his cesspool of a club? In the city?”
“More importantly,” Deacon growls, “are you crazy? Finn could be waiting outside Fever Dream for you to come back as we speak.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But he must know Harker is in the Windsor now. He knows I’m going to stay here as long as I can. Why would I be dumb enough to go right back to where he last attacked me?”
Deacon scowls at me. “That’s what I’m asking.”
“I have no idea what happens next,” I tell them both.
“But until this syrabraxa is out of me, my time is running out. And the list of people who want me dead seems to get longer every day. Finn knows where Harker is.” I look to Deacon.
“He knows you were helping me. The Elders know who I am. This might be the last time I am sane enough or alive enough to see Penny.”
“Sane enough…?” Reid repeats, horrified.
I take a deep breath. He and I have a lot to catch up on. “I’m not staying here.”
“Then we’ll all go,” Reid relents. “We’re safer together.” The words seem to burn his tongue.
“Good. Let me call Sophia for that wig.”