Chapter 25 Cole
Cole
“You know, Wren and Theo didn’t stay here for more than a few days.
” Gethin’s voice was petulant, but he’d brought us groceries for the third time in the span of a week and grabbed us a change of clothes.
For someone who was trying to act like a complete asshole, he kept checking in on us like he was a mother hen.
For someone who said he didn’t give a shit at all, he wasn’t letting me starve.
“Yeah, well… if you want to point me in the direction of books about getting Death to fuck off…” I gestured to the shelves lining his wall. “It’s not like you’re really organized here, asshole.”
“It’s not really what I was thinking of when I started collecting the books,” Gethin snapped, and I pressed my lips together. Even though he hadn’t said a damn word about what the books were for, I’d done enough snooping to find that there weren’t just books written by other people in this place.
He had journals.
Years and years worth of journals. It was wrong of me to snoop through them, but since I wasn’t really in the business of being good after I’d killed a man, I didn’t stop myself. They talked about a man named Liam.
His brother.
Apparently his obsession—a feeling so strong he lost his wings for it, so painful that he killed to fill that void.
Gethin’s books weren’t about avoiding Death, because from what I gathered… he caused it far more often than he should have. He’d been a cupid—the same thing as Wren.
And now…
Well… now it seemed like he killed anyone who got close enough to love Liam.
I could have told him that was a shit way to show affection, that isolating him was probably doing more harm than he realized… but Gethin’s business wasn’t mine, and at the end of the day, I wasn’t actually sure I had room to talk.
Every night, I fell asleep in the arms of the man who’d killed my brother. Every morning I woke to find his golden eyes looking at me and giving me a reason to actually get out of bed and keep trying.
I’d killed for him. Because of him.
So maybe I wasn’t really any better than Gethin, when it came down to it.
Sephtis cleared his throat like he was trying to fill the awkward silence pressing around us with something other than my dark thoughts and whatever was making the man in front of us scowl.
“A lot of these books are about legends of cupids. Do you have anything… older?” How old was Death? Were there books old enough for that?
“I mean, there are a few things. When Wren and Theo were here, they were looking for…” His brows came together and he swallowed the words down, like he wanted to make sure he was keeping their secrets, even though I hadn’t really bothered asking about them to begin with.
Maybe later. Maybe if we could sort all this out and figure out how to let me exist in a world where I wasn’t constantly being hunted down by demon dogs. Maybe then I could have space to be curious about Wren and his monster.
“Thank you.” Sephtis was honestly more graceful than I could ever hope to be.
There was an elegance to him that I couldn’t begin to touch…
a timelessness. Of course, he was old enough that timeless applied to him.
And he offered a gentle smile as Gethin pointed in the direction of a stack of books stuffed onto a shelf behind the couch we’d been using as a fold-out bed.
I was glad we’d figured out at least some of the shit going on between us, or it would have been really awkward to be stuck in here with him.
“That’s what Wren and Theo were looking at when they were here. I have no idea if it’ll help you. They had to go back to Love’s Ace to steal shit.” Gethin’s icy eyes flicked to me. “And before you ask… no. I’m not going. And no, you can’t talk me into it. There aren’t enough favors in the world.”
He turned at that, leaving without bothering to say goodbye, and I waited until the door closed before murmuring to Sephtis, “You’d think between being a serial killer and a cupid, he would have figured out how to be less… emotional.”
I’d learned a lot about cupids over the last few days, which made what was going on with Wren and Theo even more interesting… since I was pretty sure nothing like that was possible, as far as everything I’d read said.
Later, though.
I just needed to make sure there would be time to feed my curiosity about them later.
“He’s full of emotions. I think that makes him more dangerous on both fronts, honestly.” Sephtis turned his eyes to where Gethin had just left, and shook his head. “I don’t want to think about what kind of favor he’ll call in.”
I didn’t either. The fact that Sephtis had so easily agreed to it twisted somewhere in my gut, warring with the rest of the guilt that had built a home there long ago.
If there’d been more space for it, I probably would have felt worse.
Instead, I leaned down and pulled one of the books off a stack that had been dropped behind the couch.
“I have no idea if this is going to be any better than anything else we’ve found, but we might as well keep going.”
Sephtis didn’t bother grabbing anything for himself.
He just settled on the couch beside me, his eyes on the page of my book.
It was just more information on Vitality.
It was strong enough to completely reshape things, to make something new…
but left unchecked, it could turn the world into chaos, which was another reason Reapers gathered it.
Without it, Death wouldn’t have the ability to control when souls were reborn.
I didn’t need to read a book to know that the stuff was powerful—it was keeping me alive, after all.
I did realize how lucky I was that Sephtis had been there when I’d pulled on the thread in my chest before, though.
I had no idea what would have happened if any of it had actually spilled.
The only thing we’d found about Death so far was something we already knew—his Reapers were his strength. They were an extension of him, a part of him.
Useless.
It was just… more useless information that Sephtis already knew, and my eyes were starting to feel unfocused.
It took me exactly five minutes before I couldn’t resist—my body drifted toward his, until I settled into the curve of his arm. The anxiety I’d been feeling slowly melted away as the coolness of his frame seeped into mine, and my voice sounded less tense when I spoke again.
“I feel like you’ve told me more about Death than anything we’ve read. Greedy for Vitality, stuck in his realm. Sounds like an absolute asshole.”
Sephtis wasn’t even looking at the page anymore.
His eyes were fixed on my hair, and his fingers drifted up, carefully feathering through the strands and drawing a shiver from me.
Since I’d let him touch me—since I was willingly letting him touch me anytime he wanted—it was almost like he couldn’t help himself.
It wasn’t even sexual. He seemed fascinated with the simple act of touching.
.. Of learning what every inch of me felt like, down to the way my hair drifted through his fingers.
I couldn’t really say the same thing about myself.
I knew it wasn’t exactly appropriate, but the way his fascination made me feel was almost as distracting as the impending doom looming over us.
It wasn’t just that it felt good—because it really did—it was the way he looked at me like he wanted to get on his knees and worship me, like I was something holy.
Sephtis touched me with a reverence that made me feel like I could somehow be good enough to be forgiven for all the ways I’d fucked up my life, for all the ways I’d failed everyone who ever mattered to me.
Feeling that just made the guilt circle back through my senses and threaten to pull me under. It was a dangerous cycle, and I could see how easy it would be to get addicted to the sensation of letting him wipe my slate clean, even if it did just come back darker when that touch was gone.
I sighed and dropped my head back on the couch, choosing that bliss for a moment. Sephtis took the invitation greedily, and his fingers drifted, tracing the line of my brows, the curve of my cheeks. It made my voice a little huskier as I spoke.
“We just need someone to kick his ass for us.”
“Mmm.” Sephtis’s hum was far away, and his fingers tracked along the curve of my lips in a featherlight touch that made me shiver.
“He’s never going to come up from his domain to let that happen.
It would be easier to figure out how to wipe your presence from his radar than get him to tempt Fate like that again. ”
That was the problem, though, wasn’t it?
I didn’t know how to wipe anything clean; I didn’t know how to do anything but lean into the touch of his fingers when he used them to curl around my jaw so he could tilt my head back.
I barely felt it when he took my book and walked it to the table behind us.
I did feel it when he stepped up behind me and bowed over my body he’d positioned so carefully.
That guilt tried to crawl up my chest, tried to make its way out of my mouth, but instead the sound of it was swallowed up when Sephtis leaned over me and pressed a kiss to my lips to drink down my protest.
This was easier.
As much as some part of me still wanted to hate him… Sephtis was the only thing in my life, the only thing since the day Caiden had died, that made sense.
I lost myself to the feel of him, to his mouth working against mine and his tongue licking the seam of my lips in a sweet plea for entrance. I drifted on the feel of his fingers feathering along my jawline and dipping down to tickle at my collarbone…
And then I tensed, because Sephtis let out a little sound above me.
It sounded like pain—a low, surprised grunt that shot through my nerve endings and ripped away the little bubble of peace I was letting myself drift into. It couldn’t last for me, could it? It could never last…
When he made the sound again, I jerked upright. The motion made my vision spot like it did sometimes when I stood up too fast after I’d been sitting for a long time.
But this…
The dizzy sensation lingered in the back of my senses, and I looked at him with a frown.
“Sephtis?”
He was focused on my chest, where the line of the red thread connected us together. I hadn’t tried to pull it out again, but he was staring at that spot like I had. I could see it a little better now.
When I looked down, it was more than just a faint flicker of crimson.
There were little spots of black—like the swirl of the soul hounds.
Like the black that ran through Sephtis’s veins.
“Are you okay?” But even as I asked, I knew what the answer was going to be. He shook his head back and forth slowly, leaning forward to press his hand to my chest. There wasn’t a flow of heat, no warmth.
It was just cold.
Cold and empty, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“You need more Vitality.”
What he really meant was that we needed to find someone else to kill.