Chapter 19
Cole
Something was off with Sephtis.
I could tell by the antsy way he kept looking me over when he said he had to go do his job. It took me a solid week to realize it wasn’t really an expression I could see as much as an emotion I could feel.
It came somewhere from the center of my chest and welled up, telling me that even though he was telling me the truth, there was deception behind the intention. I wasn’t sure if he knew I could sense it…
But the more time I spent with him, the more nights I spent dreaming with him in a field of red flowers…
the more I could feel him. And the more I could feel him, the more I was starting to believe that maybe he’d been telling me the truth, that my brother had seen something in him…
that maybe in the middle of all this chaos, in the middle of my world falling apart and my life being flipped upside down… just maybe…
Maybe things could start to make sense.
It didn’t matter if we’d agreed to pretend nothing was happening—I couldn’t ignore it.
Which meant when he told me for the third time that he was going out to work, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Silently inviting him into the room every night, sharing that place in my mind with him…
it almost felt healing. It was as though every part of me that had broken and turned jagged was slowly smoothing over with each day that passed.
Maybe we didn’t acknowledge it in the daylight because I wasn’t ready to face it, but…
I guess I’d thought it meant something. At least I’d thought it meant enough that he wouldn’t lie to me, so the knowledge that he was… made all those jagged pieces of pain and anger come back to the surface. Ready to cut, ready to hurt.
When he started out of the apartment, I followed him.
“What are you doing, Cole?” I’d barely made it a few steps before he’d heard the sound of my footsteps, but I didn’t hesitate. I knew following him meant leaving whatever protection his apartment provided.
It didn’t matter.
I’d told him he had a week to figure things out. I’d been ready to give him some leeway on that, but not now.
Not when he was lying to me.
“I’m coming with you.”
His eyes narrowed—molten gold cradled in a halo of black lashes that was all beauty and lie wrapped together when he glanced back at me.
“You should stay in the apartment. It’s not safe for you to come with me, it—”
“I want to know what you’re doing.”
“I told you.”
Fuck, why did the lie hurt so much? I was the one who told him when we were here, when we were looking each other in the eyes, he needed to know that I hated him.
He didn’t owe me honesty.
That didn’t matter, though, because I was going to take it anyway.
“Don’t lie to me, Sephtis.” And before he could open his mouth to try to defend it, I stepped into his space. “I can tell that you are. I can feel it.”
I had the satisfaction of watching those golden eyes go wide before his expression shuttered. “It’s not important. And I’m not lying.”
“Sephtis, I swear—”
“Taking care of you is my job.” It still wasn’t an explanation, and when he stepped toward me again, I realized what he was doing. He was trying to force me back inside. “I’ll do whatever I have to if it means keeping you safe. You don’t need to know everything that entails.”
It sounded so ominous, and a small part of me could easily guess what he was talking about.
The man in the alley.
The fact that he’d fed me Vitality before.
The way he’d gotten the hounds off my trail.
But…
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
He took another step forward, but I held my ground. Just because he was taller than me didn’t mean I was going to let him intimidate me. And after I’d let him touch me in my dreams, when I woke and remembered what it felt like to lay my head back against his shoulder…
He wasn’t going to scare me. But I could feel something inside me slowly getting more and more angry at the fact that he couldn’t tell me the truth—angrier still that I’d let myself get so wrapped up in the feelings of maybe that he was hurting me now.
He wasn’t allowed to hurt me any more than he already had.
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
“No.”
That one syllable sounded so final, and my eyes narrowed. “What’s the point then, Sephtis?”
Anger. Hurt. Pain. A lifetime when I was younger of dreaming about someone who looked just like Sephtis, of telling Caiden about it when I was small. A year of agony where his face was the one thing that reminded me of everything I’d lost.
A week of standing with my eyes closed, holding his hands and wondering if there was something past all that pain that existed in a field of red.
And now this. A lie. Proof that I was wrong.
“Cole…”
“No, I’m serious.” I brought my hand to my chest, ghosting my finger over that place where the red thread connected us.
“What’s the fucking point? I don’t know why I let myself think for even a second that I could…
what… trust you? I don’t know you. All I know is what you did, and what you are. And I know what you aren’t.”
My fingers opened and shut, clenching and unclenching over that space where the red thread was.
“You don’t understand.”
“It’s just this fucking thread making me feel this way.” My fingers clenched again, and I felt it—the slightest resistance. Heat in my palm.
A thread. A lie. Hope that I couldn’t let myself feel. I’d accepted the pain, the loss, the emptiness… and he’d made me…
Fuck, he’d made me feel something.
“Cole…”
“No.” I shook my head. “If you can’t be honest with me, what’s the point?”
I stepped back as he reached for me, yanking at the same time. I wasn’t even sure what it was going to do, but I didn’t expect it to hurt.
And it fucking hurt.
It hurt so much my knees felt weak, so much I instantly collapsed. I looked down and saw frayed edges of red, still attached to the center of my chest. The thread was still clinging between us, like it was too stubborn to let me loose from the feelings I didn’t want to feel.
But all around it, white was slowly leaking through.
It bubbled around the frayed edges of the thread, with little tendrils of black snaking through the shimmer.
“Fuck.” It came out on a hiss of pain.
Sephtis caught me before I hit the ground, and his hand instantly pressed over the spill on my chest like he could stop it from happening. And fuck me, I was even more angry that his arms around me felt good.
“Why did you do that?” His fingers stroking my chest made the pain spilling through my body dull, but it wasn’t enough to fix whatever it was that I’d done on an impulse, and apparently the pain made me honest.
“It’s easier to deal with you lying to me when I can hate you.” When I didn’t have the softest memories of him holding my hand, the knowledge that he’d done it every night. When I didn’t have to wonder if every bad thing that had happened to me was happening to get me here.
“The thread didn’t make me care. It didn’t make you…
” He trailed off, his hand sliding beneath my shirt so the coolness of his palm stole away more of the sting.
The frayed edges of the red thread were twisting back together, but that trail of white was still pooling at the edges and streaming out.
I was pretty sure the only reason it wasn’t soaking the front of my shirt was because Sephtis’s hand was there, absorbing the shimmer so it could join the moonlight beneath his skin and press back into me.
Moonlight beneath his skin… fuck, why did he have to be so pretty?
“Stop it.” I sounded far away when I said it, but he was already picking me up and carrying me down the hallway.
“No.” That word again, like it was the only thing he could say to me.
It sounded desperate now, though. Afraid.
“No, Cole. If you want to see where I’m going, I’ll take you.
If you want to hate me even more after, you can…
but you can’t…” His breath shook, like he was trying to find the strength to speak.
“You can’t hurt yourself. You can’t die. Please.”
I was too dizzy to tell him I hadn’t actually meant to hurt myself. I didn’t know what pulling on the thread would do. I hadn’t realized it would… what… make whatever was keeping me alive slowly leak from my chest?
I’d just wanted him to be…
“Honest.” I groaned out the last word. “You have to be honest with me.”
If he wanted this to be something.
If he wanted me to believe my brother really had made him promise to take care of me.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight, or soulmates, or any of that bullshit. But honesty… fuck, it could blossom into fields of crimson, a place we could stay in even outside of dreams.
It could build something real, and I needed real with everything that was happening. With a monster, demon dogs, and Death… I needed something real.
“You don’t understand,” he said again. “But I’ll show you, if that’s what you need. Just…” His fingers twitched in my shirt, stemming the flow of that white stuff like he was determined to make sure I didn’t spill a single drop. “Cole, none of this is your fault.”
He said it like I had a choice—yanking on that thread had been impulsive, and I could feel the edges of my world starting to go fuzzy as he walked us out of his apartment building and down the street to a run-down house.
“What are you doing?” I was pretty sure I asked the question aloud as he turned and ran his shoulder into the door, sending it flying off its hinges with a splintering sound that reminded me he wasn’t human at all…
that maybe I couldn’t expect him to have human reactions to shit like me starting a fight.
Fuck.
I really didn’t know him at all, and I seemed determined to make sure that I didn’t stay alive long enough to let myself.
“This isn’t your fault.” He said it again as a man stumbled into the room. “He’s not even a good person, Cole. He lost custody of his children because of his anger. He’s killed people because of negligence and drugs. You’re worth more than he is.”
Sephtis raised his hand, even though the man’s eyes were all for me. Like he couldn’t see the monster standing at my side.
And I realized what he meant—I knew. I’d known before, but I’d wanted him to tell me.
“You can’t kill people because of me, Sephtis.” I swayed on the spot, but his eyes were all for the asshole in front of us who’d pulled a gun.
“What are you doing in my house?”
I’d never had a weapon pointed at me and felt so little concern.
“Sephtis, you can’t kill people to keep me alive. You can’t just make that decision for me and expect me to live with it.”
He still wasn’t looking at me. “I’d kill the world and everyone in it.
I’d reap every soul and build you a lake of their Vitality to keep you with me.
I’m not human like you, Cole.” He moved his arm, his fingertips barely touching the man who was still saying something about get the fuck out of my house, and I’ll shoot you.
His body went flying, crashing into the wall and sending his gun skittering out of his hand.
“You can’t kill everyone to keep me alive.”
Every time he’d left, is that what he’d been doing? Every time I felt weak and then he held my hand, was he feeding me someone else’s life?
Fuck.
“Watch me,” he said, and stepped toward the prone figure on the floor. As soon as he stopped touching me, I swayed. The flow of white had finally stopped spilling down my front, but there was black still seeping all across the edges of the frayed thread. Black… was that my soul now?
Was that who I was because of what I’d done?
I couldn’t let someone die because of me—I couldn’t let Sephtis do something like this for me.
I wasn’t worth it.