Chapter 88
Chapter Eighty-Eight
APRIL
“Is he awake?”
I know that asking for the hundredth time will not result in a different answer, especially since I’m doing it in the span of five minutes, but I still glance hopefully at Marcus when I enter the room he has claimed for his own.
“Not yet.” Slowly shaking his head, he casts a furtive side-eye at me, probably judging my sanity.
I, on the other hand, choose to pretend nothing happened.
After bringing Andrei back, we placed him on Marcus’s bed so he can keep an eye on him.
Andrei was awake most of the trip home, weakly squeezing my shoulder in reassurance every time I jostled him while trotting across LA.
Personally, I have no idea what happened in that tunnel, and the fact that my barely-alive and tortured friend felt the need to handle me with kiddy gloves spoke volumes.
When I look back, I’m met with static rattling around my skull.
One moment, I am freaking out, first that he is an illusion and then because I won’t be able to get him out of there, and the next I am choking on a mouthful of tainted blood with an almost decapitated mage in my grip.
All I can remember is the whooshing sound from my blood rushing through my veins and the thundering of my heart against my ribs.
The rest is a black, gaping hole full of nothingness.
That is why, like every smart woman—if I can call myself that now—I’m avoiding Sebastian like the plague, and instead of cleaning all the gore and human particles off me, I’m lingering around this room like an idiot. I’m neither in the mood for lectures nor for washing off whatever happened yet.
“Do you want—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Like a jerk, I cut him off, keeping my focus centered on Andrei’s sleeping form.
“Very well.” Marcus lumbers to the only chair in the room, tugging it to the side of the bed and plopping on it.
“That’s it?” I don’t trust this giving up that easy from either of them. “Just ‘very well?’”
“What would you have me say, bella?” The sincerity on his face is like a dagger in my chest. “Ever since the attack, you’ve been avoiding Sebastian, and the harder we try to protect you, the more reckless you are.
So”—with a sigh, he flings his hands in defeat—“‘very well’ it is. Have it your way. I’ll just keep my mouth shut and follow wherever you go to make sure you live. ”
“Why?” The venom in my tone surprises even me. “Because if I die, most of you will, too?”
His room is barely furnished, almost spartan, so the silent way he watches me wearily shoves all the weight of that stare on my shoulders, pressing me down.
My knees buckle and I lock them so I can stay standing.
Various weapons are littered over the floor and one side table, and apart from the chair and the bed, there is nothing else here.
It looks too big from being so empty, even with us inside it.
But that problem is solved as soon as the door behind me opens and Sebastian walks in.
All the air is sucked out of the room. He doesn’t command the space his presence is taking; he owns it as if it owes him a life debt.
I never understood what people meant when they said someone overwhelms them just by being.
Not until I met Sebastian. Even now, with my ancient soul awoken inside me, I still have my breath lodging in my throat when I see him.
“Is that what you truly believe, mia redenzione?” His deep voice sends a shiver up my spine.
Of course he heard me, because why not. Right? Might as well shout the words from the rooftop. For some dumb reason, tears prickle the back of my eyes. Until I said the words out loud, I wasn’t aware how much that bothered me.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore, Sebastian.” The breath that is wrenched from me is so heavy it feels as if it came all the way from my toes.
I lift my hand to rub off the burn in my eyes, but when I see all the crusted blood and grime, a tremor passes over me and I grimace.
One side of Sebastian’s full lips twitches at my reaction, so I shove the offending hand behind my back.
Maybe he wanted to say something, but a scratching sound stops him.
We all glance at the door and the scratching comes again.
“I tried to keep him away,” Sebastian says under his breath, more to himself than me as he pulls the door open.
Mutt catapults inside with all the enthusiasm of a squirrel on steroids, lifting to his full height on his hind legs and slamming his front paws on my chest. I pretend to grunt and stumble, making his tail lash out at a high speed from his happiness, while he mutely pants at me, his tongue lolling to the side.
“There you are boy.” Ruffling his fur, I nuzzle his head with mine, and a slobbery lick cleans most of the grime from one side of my face.
“Eww, don’t do that, you dumb mutt. It’s disgusting.
” The fire is missing from my reprimand, and he knows it.
A soft whimper, more like a wheeze, comes from his maw.
“The dog can only delay this conversation so much,” Sebastian, the killjoy, points out.
“I had a feeling that had something to do with—” My sharp glare stops Marcus from finishing that comment.
“Look at me, Tesoro.” I didn’t see him move, but he is so close I can feel his breath stirring the hair on top of my head. With a hooked finger, he tilts my face up and I have no other option than to meet his intense gaze. “Do you really believe anything I or Marcus and Andrei do?”
“Don’t mix Andrei in this cluster fuck, Sebastian.” Unable to stop myself, I snarl at him, yanking my face out of his reach. “I thought they killed him”—stabbing a shaking finger at my sleeping friend, I can’t stop trembling—“so fuck you and your explanations.”
“Okay, I apologize. I will not mention him.” Him being reasonable pisses me off, but I clamp my mouth shut. “As I was saying. You think I, or Marcus, will do anything to simply use you? Is that what you believe?”
“It’s not like you haven’t manipulated me to get things your way before.” Hating that I sound defensive, I fold my arms across my chest, looking down my nose at him.
The hurt flashing in his eyes stabs me, but I push it down because I’m committed to standing my ground. We stare at each other across the room, Marcus a silent witness to the standoff.
“The woman I believed was my friend, my family.” Almost choking on the word, I have to fill my lungs before I can continue. “Tried to kill all of us.” Mutt bumps his body off my leg, reminding me he has my back, as always, so I thread my fingers through his fur.
“Her brother, who I loved as my own, for whom I almost died many times over while searching for medication I believed he needed to stay alive, turned out to be a mage with his magic bound who had the gall to sit across the table from me and threaten me in my face.” My shoulders want to slump from the weight of betrayal after betrayal I’ve suffered, but I stiffen my spine.
“And I had to hear from his filthy mouth things I should’ve been told before I tied most of the lives in this cursed building to mine.
How’s that for truth and honesty for you? ”
Sebastian’s features harden, and he takes a determined step toward me, but mutt growls deep in his chest, a feral sound I’ve never heard from him before.
It stops the stubborn ass in his tracks, so we end up glaring at each other.
The scrape of a chair being dragged on the floor turns both our heads, and we see Marcus unfolding his body, and with a tug on his shirt to straighten it, he strides right for the door.
Panic stabs me that he will leave me here with Sebastian alone.
“Where do you think you are going?” I hiss at him.
Yanking the door open, he stops with one foot in and one outside the frame, looking me right in the eye with a set jaw.
“I’ll go and try to get myself killed.” When my mouth opens so I can gape at him, he gives me a sharp nod. “Getting himself killed worked for Andrei and he was pardoned from everything you are saying. It might work for me, too.”
And with that, he walks out.