Chapter 2
TWO
KILLIAN
M y father had always told me that there was power in physical appearance. He had drilled it into my head time and time again, from before I could even walk. We were incubi, and as such, we had to be the epitome of perfection and physical health, of good looks and beauty.
I wondered what he would think of me if he could see me now.
I stared in the mirror for the one hundredth time in the last hour, studying my reflection as disgust curdled low in my gut like soured milk. Hesitantly, I reached up and touched one of the horns protruding from my head. I winced as it pricked my finger, breaking skin and causing me to bleed.
Behind me, my tail swished back and forth in agitation.
A reptilian tail. With scales.
Fucking scales .
I turned away from the mirror with a pained sigh…and immediately locked eyes with Z. She stood in the doorway of the room I’d been staying in, her blue eyes aglow with an enigmatic emotion and her golden curls loose around her face.
The past few days, we’d been sailing on Phineas’s ship towards safety. Phineas was a mermaid Dair befriended and procured the help of. He ruled the waters in the Shifter Kingdom, and if anyone wanted safe passage through them, they had to go through him.
Most of us had to share a room, except for me. Originally, I’d shared a room with Bash, but when my tail accidentally bitch-slapped him across the face during a particularly vivid nightmare, Phineas led me to a room at the lowest level of the ship.
As far away from the others as physically possible.
There was nothing here but a twin-sized bed, a nightstand, and a wardrobe devoid of any clothing.
“You didn’t come up for breakfast,” Z said quietly, folding her arms around herself.
I immediately twisted away from her, shame burning white-hot and blistering inside of me. I hated that she had to see me like this—like a monster. A beast.
A demon.
“Wasn’t hungry,” I lied, even as my stomach gave a contradictory grumble.
It took mammoth self-control not to glare at and verbally reprimand it.
Bad, tummy! Bad!
Both of Z’s eyebrows lifted. “You missed dinner yesterday as well.”
“Wasn’t hungry then either.” My tail thumped against the ground, almost as if the bastard was calling me out on my lie.
Logically, I knew I had control of the tail the same way I had control of my other limbs, but I swore it sometimes acted sentient, belying my true feelings. When I was angry or upset, the tail would twitch from side to side. When I was excited, it wagged like a damn puppy’s tail. Just then, it careened off the ground like a gavel and crashed back down, the noise almost deafening in the quiet room.
“You can’t keep hiding away in here.” Z ventured a tentative step closer but stopped at whatever expression she saw on my face.
“Who said I’m hiding?” I laughed awkwardly and attempted to fork my fingers through my disheveled red hair.
Of course, I forgot about my horns and ended up smashing my thumb against the left one. Ow.
“Have you stepped out of your room once in the last few days?” Z asked.
“Um…” I looked away from her and pretended to be fixated by the blankets on my bed. They were still messy from the night before, so I reached forward to straighten them, smoothing out the corners.
“Kill…” Z swallowed audibly, her breath hitching.
The broken sound had me turning back towards her. And…ohmygod. Were those tears? I didn’t know how to deal with tears, least of all hers.
“I am so sorry.” Her voice cracked on that final word, and the last of my defenses scattered away, crumbling until they were nothing but dust.
“P-Please don’t apologize,” I begged, racing towards her but stopping when I stood an inch away.
I wanted to touch her, to caress her cheek or push her hair behind her ear, but I didn’t dare. What woman would want to be touched by a monster like me? Z had just escaped a horde of them, after all. The last thing she needed was to be loved by one.
“Fuck, don’t cry.”
Z blinked rapidly. “I’m not crying.”
Little liar.
“So are those tears just from your allergies?” I asked, my lips twitching.
“Fuck, Killian.” Z’s entire face crumbled. That was the only way I could think to describe it—her upturned lips curled downwards, her eyelids lowered, and her nose scrunched. The sight broke my heart. “This is all my fault?—”
“All your fault?” I stared at her in confusion.
Was it possible that Z was blaming herself? She wasn’t the one who threw me into Lake Meade. She wasn’t the one who poisoned the water. She wasn’t the one who tried to kill me.
She swallowed. “If you hadn’t come with me, you wouldn’t have?—”
Nope. Not happening. I refused to allow her to go down this train of thought.
“I chose to go with you,” I countered immediately. This time, I didn’t hesitate to give in to my baser instinct. I cupped her cheek with the palm of my head, relishing the warmth she emanated in almost perceptible waves. “Nothing that happened was your fault. Have you been blaming yourself this entire time?”
The thought devastated me.
Gutted me from throat to navel.
Ripped me open and pulled out my insides.
Z’s blue eyes ensnared my own. They were entire oceans I wanted to get lost in. Drown in.
“You can’t look me in the eye and tell me that everything that happened wasn’t my fault.” A shudder worked its way through her. “I hurt all of those people…”
I knew exactly what she was thinking of. At her wedding to the assassin, Axel, Z had used a special dagger to drain the insidious magic from the kings—our fathers. However, the magic had entered Z and turned her…dark. Evil. Malicious. She’d killed everyone at the wedding and then left with her sister Aaliyah, the mastermind behind the entire operation. I had chosen to leave with the two of them, wanting to keep an eye on my mate and protect her the best I could.
Now we had Z back, but the war had only just begun. The kings were imprisoned but still alive. And Aaliyah would stop at nothing to get Z back under her thumb.
“That wasn’t you,” I told her gently, grateful that my stutter didn’t come out and contradict those words. Since meeting Z, I’d been doing better at controlling it, but it still popped out when I was stressed or anxious. “That was the dark, corrupted magic.”
“But I still?—”
Whatever Z was about to say was interrupted by the door being thrown open. We both spun around to see Dair standing in the doorway. The mermaid looked haggard, dark circles marring the skin beneath both of his eyes. He hadn’t slept since we rescued Z—not that I blamed him. It was hard to find any semblance of safety when a demon from Hell was hunting our mate.
“We’ve reached shore,” he said, volleying his gaze between the two of us. His eyes lingered on my horns a fraction longer than necessary before he forced himself to look away. “You guys need to see this. Now.”