Chapter 23
Gabriel
Marcus stood from his stool as Gabriel stalked into the kitchen.
“Did you take care of everything?”
“It’s as if we were never there,” his friend confirmed.
“Good.” He filled a glass with water.
“And Kyrin? Do you want me to handle him?”
“No. Leave him to me.”
Kyrin would meet his end, and so would what remained of his organization. But vengeance no longer trumped what mattered most. Plans for retribution would come second to ensuring Nicholas was adjusted and no longer vulnerable without Gabriel’s protection.
He strode past Marcus, nearly levitating in his haste to get back upstairs.
“So I assume Nicholas agreed. He knows the truth and has agreed to you turning him.”
For some reason, that gave Gabriel pause. Maybe it was the surprise in Marcus’s tone. Had Nicholas agreed?
“He understands. He knows what needs to be done.”
Marcus made a sound of curiosity, one that caused Gabriel’s stomach to twist.
“I don’t presume to know him as well as you do, Muharib. I barely know him at all. But easy acceptance doesn’t seem like a character trait of his.”
“What is it you’re saying?”
“I’m saying… I’m asking if he is okay with this. Or…”
“Or what?” Gabriel snapped, the knot twisting tighter.
“Or is that what you want to believe?”
That offended Gabriel. “Of course not.” But now that he’d been asked, doubt trickled in. “Of course not.”
Lightning flashed through the patio wall, and Marcus’s own white light pulsed behind his dark shades. Gabriel read the pity there, the worry too.
Had he wanted to believe that Nicholas accepted his fate? That he’d chosen him?
Gabriel rushed through everything that had been said, filtering through Nicholas’s inflections as he’d delivered every reassuring word.
“I can’t blame you for what you did.”
No, that didn’t sound like Nicholas at all.
Gabriel’s chest tightened, and the world tilted on its axis as he whispered, “He would’ve fought me.”
The Nicholas he knew would’ve fought him tooth and nail.
The glass slipped from his hand, shattering as ice flowed through his veins. Time slowed until it froze altogether, until the steep drop where the ocean bluff narrowed under his balcony filled his mind. Where jagged, cutting slabs of boulders waited at its feet.
The dogs barked frantically, and with his heart in his stomach, Gabriel turned toward the stairs.
“Nicholas.”
Gabriel reached the top step in one leap and was before the bedroom door in the next blink. He found it locked, losing seconds in the process of kicking it down. The bedroom was empty except for the dogs circling near the open balcony doors.
The curtains billowed, blocking Gabriel’s view, but through the cacophony of rain and thunder, he heard Nicholas plummeting, whistling through the air.
With a speed beyond comprehension, he made it onto the balcony, leaping from the stone railing without hesitation.
Nicholas plunged backward to his death, arms outstretched, as though he’d surrendered to it while not wanting to face it head-on.
Gabriel dove for him, reaching for him, willing himself to descend faster.
He wouldn’t make it. He wouldn’t get to him in time, and he’d never forget Nicholas’s serene expression, like somehow, he knew it too.
The black sea whipped and raged, and the sharp, rocky ground seemed to rise faster and faster.
An agonized wail pierced the night, rivaling the fury of thunder. It was Gabriel crying out, howling Nicholas’s name.
“No,” he breathed as Nicholas closed his eyes, and his spine met rock.
The loud cracking of bones momentarily deafened Gabriel, the impact shaking the earth. Or maybe it was Gabriel who trembled violently, landing so hard on his feet that fissures formed in the base of the cliff.
Marcus dropped onto a boulder beside him, turning it to rubble.
“Nicholas.”
Gabriel’s teeth rattled from cold fear, and he didn’t know where to touch him, didn’t know how to save him from this. “What have you done?”
Nicholas made a gurgling sound before coughing up blood.
“He’s in pain, Sayyidi.”
The gentleness in Marcus’s tone panicked Gabriel, and he reacted the only way he knew how—by lashing out.
“Then help me save him!”
There was so much blood, and it tainted the water rising at their feet. The rain pounded against Nicholas, and Gabriel used his body as a shield, unsure of what else he could do to help him.
“Muharib—”
“He can be saved!” he roared, eyes glowing, clothes wet and bloodied.
Nicholas’s heartbeat was weak, but there. Gabriel needed to act quickly, but he worried about what moving Nicholas would do.
The tide rose higher around them, sea water now reaching Gabriel’s calves. He needed to get Nicholas inside.
“Tell me what to do,” Marcus said as Gabriel took time he didn’t have to slowly peel Nicholas off the boulder. Parts of him stayed behind, and he was no longer breathing.
“Bring the blood,” Gabriel ordered before leaping for the balcony.
He raced into the bedroom with Nicholas’s broken body in his arms, blood and rainwater leaving a gruesome trail along the white carpet.
He worked fast, pulse hammering through his fingers as he tore away strips of bedsheet to use as tourniquets for Nicholas’s arms and legs. His wounds were deep, blood spewing from an artery in his thigh.
He started chest compressions, shutting down his brain in the process, refusing to think the worst.
Marcus entered, hauling two trunks of blood with him.
“More!” Gabriel shouted. It would take his full supply.
Blood drenched the bed, and Gabriel couldn’t make out Nicholas’s features in the mangled mess of his face. His eyes were black holes, his nose twice its usual size, and his broken jaw dangled limp.
Gabriel worked harder, ignoring the sunken collarbone.
“Sayyidi…”
The note of defeat in Marcus’s tone enraged him further.
“Bring the blood and leave us!” His fangs dropped, his roar shaking the mural on the wall.
Trunks of bagged blood lined the bedroom walls by the time Gabriel swiftly withdrew the dagger at his ankle, tilted Nicholas’s head back, holding his mouth open as far as his broken jaw would allow—then slit his own throat.
Blood spurted over Nicholas’s face and mouth, soaking through the pillows as Gabriel willed as much of his life force into his body as possible.
He reached into his pocket for another vial of barseem, biting into the stopper with a growl. Glass sliced through his tongue and lips, but he was too focused on the task to notice the pain.
Gabriel cut open his wrist next, pressing it against the hole near Nicholas’s chest as he lowered his lacerated throat to his slackened mouth.
He could sense Marcus’s fear and Hamza’s concern from wherever they were. He mentally blocked them both, prepared to cut his own head from his body if he had to. Nicholas would not die to never return, because if he did, Gabriel would soon follow.
Nicholas’s heart gave a final thud, and never had the world felt so paralyzingly still. With a tormented cry, Gabriel stabbed into the vein at his throat, pouring barseem directly into the wound before cradling Nicholas to him.
The balcony doors battered the walls as the storm intensified alongside Gabriel’s agony.
“Please,” he bartered with whatever divine entity may have been watching down on them. “Do not take him from me. Do not take him from this world.”
It felt as if a hand held the beating organ inside his chest, squeezing with the intent to burst. Gabriel had never experienced this kind of pain in all his life, on the verge of death by heartbreak.
“Live, my love.” He choked up. “Live, and I will die if it so pleases you. Please… just live.”
Had he not gotten something right? Had he forgotten a step? Would Nicholas’s determination to die play a role in whether he’d be saved?
“What have you done, Habibi? What have you done?”
This was one mistake Gabriel would not survive, nor would he want to. He’d done this, not Nicholas. He was the cause of everything bad in both their lives, and he would no longer pretend that anything good could have come from all the harm he’d caused.
It was his fault. He was to blame, and it seemed he was to be punished as well.
He closed his eyes, for once asking the true question. “What have I done?”
The bleeding at his throat eventually ebbed, and it was clear that there was nothing more he could do now but wait. He situated Nicholas on his side and curled himself around him from behind. Nicholas loved it when he held him that way.
Gabriel smiled shakily, kissing the back of Nicholas’s cracked skull as he recalled all the nights he lay awake holding him this way.
He’d hold him through his twitching nightmares, stroking his arm to settle him as he hummed his mother’s lullaby into his ear.
He’d never told Nicholas this, and now he wished he had. He wished he had told him so much.
The cradlesong was about a massas dimae who was rumored to have once ruled Saraad.
Legend said he was the most respected and just massas dimae that ever lived, and that he ruled with the will of a lion and the heart of a lamb.
He supposedly died by betrayal, which made the story a cautionary tale in Gabriel’s eyes, a warning to strive for strength and dominance only. He never wanted to be weak.
His mother would laugh and ruffle his hair, promising that for the right person, he too would be a lamb.
It took over two centuries, but Gabriel finally understood what she meant.
He stared unblinkingly into the lightning-struck night, humming the melody as he waited for Nicholas to come back to him.
The sun rose and set peacefully while Gabriel’s emotional storm continued to rage within the bedroom. The tranquil blue and then the starry night sky were in total juxtaposition to the crime scene he and Nicholas dwelled in.
It hadn’t taken this long for Zayn to come back, but Gabriel wouldn’t lose hope—not completely. Not yet.