Chapter 23
N eela waited for the fear to hit her, for the uncertainty of her situation to send her screaming into a corner as far away as possible from the man blocking the doorway.
Except that fear never came, nor would she categorize what Rhode was doing as blocking . Once the door closed, he just sort of stood there facing it. Sure, tension radiated off his back in gusts strong enough to register on the mortals’ hurricane wind scale, but it wasn’t like he was making strides to ease their circumstances. If anything, he seemed to think she was in the wrong somehow. If that was true—which it emphatically wasn’t , but she’d yet to get to that—wouldn’t he be more . . . smug about it? After all, she’d binged more than her fair share of murder shows in her time, and not a single one came without an arrogant detective or seen-it-all beat cop.
Accusations were one thing. Interrogations were another. And she sure as hell had questions of her own, not the least of which was how he could go from worshipping her with his mouth the way he had earlier to somehow kissing away whatever was killing her. And then, in the very next breath, using that same mouth to call her a liar.
But they were no closer to getting the information they’d come for; he’d dumped her there in the most comfort-meets-value-stay prison cell she’d ever seen and didn’t even have the good sense to at least open up the conversation.
Well, if he thought her weak or complacent, he had another thing coming.
There were only so many personal attempted murders a woman could deal with in her life before she eventually started snapping back.
“Where are we?” Neela asked, no longer giving a rip how much venom found its way into her voice.
Ooh, and Rhode had figured that out, too, judging by the way his back muscles twitched when her question found its mark.
Uh-huh. That’s right. Mama ain’t playing anymore.
But the voice that answered her was filled with so much gravel, she almost missed the words entirely. “My room.”
Neela took in the bare granite surrounding them again. “You-you live here? I thought you said you were taking me to a cell.”
His chin touched his shoulder, but he never lifted his eyes to her. “That is what I did.”
She not only saw it but felt it. The overwhelming sadness of the circumstances that had brought them both to where they were. Truths that were clouded in more questions than either of them had answers to. Pasts that were far too cold to ever truly have a chance at thawing out on their own.
The loneliness. The isolation. Time stolen when you never even realized it was a limited commodity to begin with.
Neela hugged herself at the enormity of the realization. “It makes sense why you would think this place is a cell.”
He scoffed and gave her the full breadth of his body. “What would you possibly know of my thoughts?”
“I know you think I’m a liar.” One of his brows lifted, but she ignored the unspoken accusation. “I know you think I have ulterior motives or that I’m in cahoots with the other charmers.” Then she dropped her arms and stared at him with more gumption than she’d ever needed to muster. “And since you’re so content to draw conclusions without so much as asking me for mine, I’ll grab the floor for myself and say my piece.” She waved a hand in his direction. “Listen or not, I don’t care, but I will not be intimidated by you.” Neela swallowed past a wave of emotion brought on by memories she hadn’t shared with another living soul. So it was fitting, perhaps, that the very soul in question she was about to unload on was also somehow inextricably linked to hers.
Freaking lovely.
As far as deep breaths went, Neela’s next one was pitifully shallow, but there was only so much available real estate in her chest at the moment. So what choice did she have but to finally offload some burdens?
“I won’t be intimidated by you,” she repeated, “because, for more years than I can count, I cared for you.” The truth lifted free from her throat and widened the opening of her heart to let long-buried memories come pouring out like water from a firehouse. “I didn’t know I could die because all my earliest memories following my inception were filled with so much confusion and agony that, even though I was told death wasn’t a possibility for me, I so wished it was.”
Rhode didn’t say anything, just held his stance by the door like some stone gargoyle poised for danger but unable to move. At least she had his attention, though. The way his eyes tracked her as she gained momentum pacing around the room was enough encouragement to continue.
“I won’t insult you by asking whether you have any idea of what it’s like to wish for such a thing. I can imagine you do, but that won’t stop me from enlightening you on my experience regardless.”
His jaw twitched. She’d struck a nerve. Good .
“When Cyro called for me after my inception and we discovered that I couldn’t portal like the others, I had no inkling of what that would mean for me. I only knew him as Cyro, my sire, our leader. Among the charmers, he wasn’t exactly paternal, but he wasn’t not , if that makes sense. When you’re responsible for another life, no matter how that life came about, there’s still an element of care inherent in the relationship. Sometimes that care comes naturally and is nurtured. Other times, that care is acknowledged and then willfully abandoned, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? For a bond to be abandoned at all, it must first exist.” Those words hung there for a moment, heavy and expectant in the confines of the cavernous room.
“The look on Cyro’s face was so different after he realized the flaw in my design. I had always come to know his smooth mask of aloofness as his default setting. He never smiled, nor did he scream and rage. He just always . . . was. Controlled, intentional, even-keeled. Until me.”
Neela paced along the wall farthest from where Rhode stood and imagined, as she sometimes did back home, that there was a large picture window illuminating her efforts. “I had no inkling of what his next step was going to be. No warning signs, no room set up. Nothing. I remember standing before him, unsure whether he was pleased with my performance or not. There had never been any discussion of what the desired outcome should be by me trying to portal. No hypothesis to test. He simply told me to do a task, and I tried to obey.”
Her throat began to tighten, but she pushed through, quickening her steps in response. “His hand came up first, and I remember being mesmerized by how long his fingers were. I didn’t have fingers like that and always wondered how he crafted my smaller hands, or my hair, for that matter. But I stopped thinking that the moment he snapped those long fingers and a hail of green magic leaped for me. My hair, my most identifiable feature aside from my sex, was the first thing to be engulfed in the flames, followed by my more delicate skin—earlobes, eyelids, and such. I don’t know how long I stood there screaming before I finally collapsed and lost consciousness. But when I woke with freshly healed skin and hair still brushing my shoulders, that was when we all knew I was different.” Neela stopped and glared at him. “The wrong kind of different. And it seems I’m still paying the price for that, even from my soul bond.”
Rhode closed his eyes and held the blink for two full inhales before his umber gaze found hers again. The balled fists were new, though, as was the skim-coating of shame that seemed to tighten his features.
“It went on like that. For days and weeks and years and eternities , until, through the power of sheer perseverance and having no fucking choice, Cyro just gave up on trying to kill me. For the first time ever, the demon ruler had to acknowledge true defeat.” Then her voice softened, and she looked around the room, wishing like hell there was something to hold while feeling so exposed—a curtain, a chair, anything. Because with her next breath, she scooped out what remained of those heartbreaking days. “And as a result of his defeat, I found you.”
Rhode’s eyes flashed. “What?”
“I asked you once whether you knew what it was like to care so deeply for something where you were the sole creature in existence truly capable of helping the other.”
“I . . . Yes, you did. I remember.” His voice had lost some of the rasp but none of the enigma.
Neela nodded back her tears. “Well, you want to know what I remember? I remember feeling so alienated, so lost in a universe whose language I didn’t speak and among others who refused to teach it or really talk to me unless they had to, that the only way for me to exist was to find purpose elsewhere. I found that purpose in caring for you, Rhode. I remember you lying on that stone slab as I scraped off and cleansed from you whatever I could of the day’s ordeal. I didn’t know who you were, but given my experiences with my sire and the research notes I’d find each night near your cell, it didn’t matter. I could read between the lines and guess what was happening, what they were doing to you.” Her breath hitched. “What they were trying to make you become.”
“Don’t,” he growled, stepping toward her.
“No, you don’t. It’s my time to talk, my time to stomp my feet and tell you the things you don’t want to hear. Because I remember you ! I didn’t lie to you because I remember! I remember everything of what you used to be, limp and lifeless most of the time, desperate and disoriented the rest. I never touched you then because of what I knew they’d done to you, or how, in your lucid moments when I was in your cell, you would reach for me but never spoke or saw me. Imagine, the one being whose life depended on me for survival, never being able to truly know me or even so much as open his eyes to see that I was right in his cell with him the whole time, that he wasn’t alone the way I had been for so long.”
There was no hope of putting the lava back into the volcano. Neela’s whole soul erupted with pent-up ferocity, and she was powerless to do anything other than rail at him.
“So imagine how fucking elated and devastated I was when you were rescued because I knew you were finally free,” she screamed, “but you were also finally free of me !”
A thundering energy rattled through the stone around them as Rhode lunged for her with furious sparks lighting his eyes. “You want me to be free of you?” he roared, gripping her shoulders.
A pang of hurt struck her at the implication of his words. “That’s what you truly want, isn’t it?” Neela whispered. She didn’t know how to answer him but was pissed as hell that her earlier uncertainty hadn’t left town once her desperation had decided to unveil its narrative. “Deep down, you want to be free of me .”
Then his hand gripped the back of her neck, and the heat of his skin branded her. “I fear I will never be free of you.”
Rhode’s fiery lips crashed against hers, finally claiming what her heart could never truly deny him.