Chapter 3
Three
Kaius
I could end him with one quick twist. I could crush his windpipe and watch those silken feathers fall limp with the rest of him.
But he smiles. Of course he smiles. His breath is staggered from the force of my grip and he still smiles.
“Now is this any way to greet an old—”
I cut off the end of his sentence with another squeeze.
Adelasia is here, watching with confused eyes as I struggle internally with the want to end Rowan’s life and finally be rid of him after all these years. I can feel her new magic curling around my own throat. Not so tight that it’s a threat, but tight enough to serve as a warning.
“Let go, Kaius,” she says softly. Her voice is steady, but beneath the calm, a storm of confusion and concern brews. But her concern is not for me.
It’s for him.
And that only makes me want to break his neck more. I narrow my eyes and release him with a shove that sends his back into the dirt of the courtyard. He inhales a sharp breath but comes out of our interaction looking pleased and ready to agitate me.
His wings lift him from the ground and he dusts himself clean of the wilted leaves and dry mud on his shirt while looking to my Adelasia. “Still so affectionate.”
With a quick step, I place myself between her and his wandering eyes. “As I’ve told you before, you are not welcome here. Leave, Rowan, before I lose my patience.”
“Ah, yes, because you’re so known for that.” He tilts his head and cracks his neck, then sighs as if the conversation has already begun to bore him. “I simply came to meet your lovely new flame.”
“He said you made a vow to protect me,” Adelasia says from behind me, causing me to look over my shoulder to face her.
“I made that vow to Cassius.”
“Oh, please, Kaius. You mean to tell me you didn’t suspect even for a moment he was mine? Sweet Adelasia picked up on it the moment she laid eyes on me.”
“Keep her name out of your filthy mouth,” I warn.
“Or what? You’ll rip out my wings? You’ll burn me alive?
You’ll kill me? All these centuries and you haven’t changed a bit.
Your threats were always false.” Rowan begins walking in circles around me and Adelasia.
“And now here you are, with the fury of the entire Coven on your shoulders and a half-mortal girl kissed by magic.”
“You know nothing of her, do not speak otherwise,” I spit.
“I know you made a pact with the Dark Goddess to save her life, only to kill her with your own hands.”
“I was trying to save her!”
“And you failed. You failed, Kaius. You saved her from one grave only to put her in another of your own making. Now she’s back, sin creeping up the veins in her fingertips, clawing at her ribcage—and you’re what?
Trying to protect her? Waiting for that bonfire in her heart to burn out so you can pretend you didn’t drag her to Hell with you?
Did she choose that fate or did you force it on her the way you forced it on me? ”
“Enough!” Adelasia shouts from her place behind me.
Rowan and I turn to face her, her eyes sharp like shattered glass, her voice like a dagger down our spines.
“You two speak in riddles and I am not a battlefield to be conquered with the vile you spew at each other! I want answers. Kaius, who is he?”
Rowan tilts his head and snickers. “Fiery.”
Adelasia is flushed. Not just from anger, but from the lingering spell of his touch. Her lips are slightly parted, her scent laced with wariness and the faintest spark of arousal. I cannot blame her for it, but it still enrages me.
“He’s no one,” I tell her. “No one I wish to know, and no one you should care about.”
She scoffs, and Rowan takes a step toward her, sighing as if I’ve disappointed him. “He’s so flattering, isn’t he? I happen to be his older, wiser, and generally better-looking best friend.”
“Friend,” I scoff out and curl my lip in disgust. “Is that what we were when you left me in the ash for a set of wings?” His smile slips. “You’re no more a friend to me than the sun. Stay away from us. From her.”
His smile slips. Just a little bit. “Oh Kaius,” he says with a honeyed voice, so potent it’s even affecting my own senses now. “You can’t ask the moon to hide from the stars. You forget what I am and how…persuasive I can be.”
“I haven’t forgotten a thing.”
He smiles again. This time, less coy, more dangerous. “Auspicious.”