Chapter 25
It's Just the Job
A hand clamped over my mouth, and someone pulled me back against a warm, solid chest.
“Shhh,” Soren’s voice was gruff in my ear. “You’ll attract the wrong kind of attention if you get caught in here.”
I thrashed until my body finally realized who it was. My retort was a muffled growl against his hand.
“Are you going to be quiet if I move my hand?”
I nodded twice, unsure if it was true.
He let go and snatched the note from my fingers the moment he did.
“Eliana,” Soren whispered my name as he stared at the sketch.
Then his gaze lifted, his pupils blown wide. He turned toward the open stairwell, took two quick strides to the door, and slammed it shut, locking it with a metallic snap.
Without another word, he moved through the room like a man possessed and unhinged. Lifting candle holders. Flipping papers. Checking drawers. Snuffing flames.
Only two candles remained lit.
I stood there, wide-eyed and watching him because I had never seen Soren like this. He was always perfectly in control or brimming with irritation.
But this? This was different.
This was neither.
That’s not true. Remember the boat ride?
Nope. Shut up.
Soren continued to scour the room, hunting for something I couldn’t even guess at.
I pressed myself back against the desk and whispered, “Why would someone draw something like that? And what does it mean?”
My voice trembled almost as much as my lips.
Three slow, backward steps took me to the wall. I sank against it. My hands washed over my damp face.
I was crying.
Or sweating?
Probably both.
“Did Ezra do this? Am I going to die down here?” I started hyperventilating, panic edging in all around me.
Soren turned, crossed the room in a flash, and placed his hand gently on the side of my neck.
His chest brushed against mine with my every breath.
Dark swirls moored about in his eyes as they searched me. The scent of lime, mint, and ash washed down on me.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said, voice low and knotted.
I craned my neck to look up at him. “But…why would he write that?”
Soren shook his head. Then he spoke more slowly this time, with that depth and timbre that had given me goosebumps in my dreams. “Ezra did not do this. I swear to you. He’d give up his life to protect you. Same as me.”
There was a long pause, during which I could hear Soren breathe in and out three times. I might have heard his pulse, too. Or maybe that was just mine echoing off of him with how hard my heart was racing.
I had to look away.
He lifted my chin back toward him with the gentlest touch.
“I will, Eliana. I will die before I let anything happen to you.”
What the hell? How can he say things like this after ignoring me for a whole week?
And though time had shown me I couldn’t lean on his lovely words, sincerity poured out through this voice and dripped all over me with his gaze.
I suddenly wanted to sink into the floorboards. His one hand shifted from my neck to my shoulder.
With his free hand, he slipped the sketch into his pocket.
Why wasn’t he saying anything else? What was I supposed to do next? And why the hell was he still standing so close to me?
The guy hadn’t even looked at me for a week after biting my tongue in my first real kiss, and now this?
I took a step to my right, but he matched my dance and moved even closer. His hand trailed down to my elbow, his mouth near my ear.
“Why are you out of your room?” he asked with a sharpness that found my fragile heart and threatened to slice it clean open.
The chill returned. Or it had never left.
My mouth was too dry and stuck together. I stared down at his black combat boots, where the laces looped around metal hooks. “I heard—um—I heard someone singing.”
Soren took a step back, and I could breathe again.
“You hear the singing?” he asked.
I looked back up and was startled by the genuine confusion twisting through his features.
“Yeah. I heard it from my room, so I followed it here. You heard it, too, right? I’m not crazy. I’m not making this up.” My voice grew shrill, defending my sanity before he could dismiss me again. “It’s real!”
“We call it Roha,” he said, cutting me off before I could go on about the snake again. “It means wind or breath. It’s from the Creator.”
“I am the breath of life.”
I almost missed the fact that the voice in my head wasn’t his.
“What do you mean?” I asked, shivering against the cold and something else. I hugged my arms but didn’t dare reach past him for the blanket lying uselessly in a heap on the floor.
He moved instead. Lifted the blanket from where I’d dropped it and wrapped it around my shoulders. His hands were too warm in that icebox of a room.
“It’s calling to you.”
“What is?” I whispered.
His gaze sharpened before his tone. “You need to get back to bed.”
Soren held up the book I had dropped, burying another question of mine with this subtle distraction. “But first. Why do you have this?”
“Uh,” I hesitated. “That guy. Um, a teacher gave it…to me…”
The end of my sentence trailed off as Soren’s expression darkened further.
“It’s not for you,” he clipped and tossed it on the desk with a heavy thud.
With one breath, he snuffed out the last two candles. With the next, he wrapped an arm around me and turned us toward the door.
“Let me walk you back to your room. You don’t need to worry about any of this. I’ll take care of it.”
I didn’t argue with him.
Maybe because when he wrapped his arm around my shoulders, my skin came alive—warm, tingling, and muddying my thoughts.
The moment we stepped into the corridor, the air thawed.
Soren’s hand slid down to my lower back and guided me silently through the web of passageways.
My thoughts kept darting back to the book he’d abandoned on Ezra’s desk, but it mostly stayed on the note crumpled in Soren’s pocket. I mashed my molars together and stared straight ahead, but I knew that my uneven breaths and the involuntary shuddering would betray me.
When we stopped outside the door to room L044, Soren reached for the knob but paused, gaze flicking to me.
“You’re shaking.”
“I think I’m just tired,” I lied.
But my voice quivered, and he caught the millisecond I glanced down at his pocket with the corner of paper jutting out.
He reached up to tuck a strand of my hair behind my right ear, and I wished I hadn’t caught him running his tongue along his top teeth just before he did it. Now I couldn’t stop thinking of what might happen if I did the same.
My tongue pressed against the inside of my lips, but I kept it there. And I didn’t know why Zade’s face flashed in my mind, and a pang of guilt slashed through my chest.
“I can stay. If you’re scared.”
My heart stuttered. “That’s not necessary.”
Please don’t!
The thought of Soren looming over me while I slept?
No thanks.
The unease in my stomach twisted tighter.
But…please do?
“I’ll be fine,” I said again, this time a little more convincingly.
“Then I’ll stay outside.”
“Here? In the hallway?”
“Yes.”
“What is this? Some penance?” I snapped. “Trying to make up for being an ass? It won’t work. I don’t forgive you.”
I slapped his shoulder and immediately winced, remembering this was Soren. He wasn’t someone you could joke around with.
He could kill me with his teeth alone.
Also, we weren’t friends. Couldn’t be. We were enemies, and that was it.
He put a finger over my lips.
“Shhh,” he whispered, warm breath fanning over the cold tip of my nose and then my chapped lips.
I froze. Completely.
Don’t think about his mouth replacing that finger. Or worse.
I batted his hand away. “I’ll be fine,” I repeated more softly now. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
His smile barely flickered to life. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. Strands of dark hair fell forward, and he had to sweep them out of his face again before meeting my eyes.
“It’s technically my job to worry about you.”
My cheeks burned.
Right. It’s just the job.
I’d misunderstood.
Again.
I yawned to fill the silence and give the guy a hint, but he didn’t move his hand from the doorknob.
He stood there staring at me without moving until he licked his own lips. Then his eyes dropped.
Not to my face.
To. My. Chest.
But I knew what he was looking at.
My hand instinctively clapped over the mark.
In one smooth, terrifying move, he opened the door, pushed me inside, shut the door behind us, and cornered me with his body—his face so close to mine that I could smell blood in his mouth like when I’d musted my lip or bitten my tongue too hard.
I tried to squirm away, but one of his palms pressed against the mark on my chest.
I had no clue what was happening and was even more unsure whether I wanted it to continue or not.
His other arm and the opposite knee barred me on both sides (not that it was needed, because he was unnaturally strong and fast, and I never would have stood a chance of escape).
And he just stayed silent like that, his dark eyes barely visible in the light from under the door, but certainly dead on me.
The weight of his palm increased.
Then came the pressure.
First, the skin, and then the bones, and then the organs under them.
My lungs.
Heart.
They ached from the pressure.
Burned under the contact.
Ached for more.
He was going to reach inside and take out the organ beating under his fingers. He’d squeeze it and crush, let my warm blood rush down his arm in ecstasy, all while I faded from existence at his feet.
“You’re hurting me,” I whimpered, confident he’d crack my sternum if he kept going.
Soren’s lips hovered over mine. Then they brushed with the briefest of contact.
He jerked back all at once.
A palm slapped the door beside my ear, and the door shook with impact.
I ducked under his arm and stumbled backward toward the bed. My fingers searched for the lamp on the nightstand.
“Stop putting yourself in danger.”
Another bang.
And a growl.
He was going to lose it.
“Go to bed,” he growled. “Stop sneaking around. And stop letting me catch you.”
Soren opened the door and walked out, shutting it softly behind him, a gesture nearly as threatening as when he’d banged his fist against the inside of it.
I collapsed onto the bed and let out a sob I hadn’t realized I was holding back.
You liked it.
The voice wasn’t the still, small whisper or the hiss.
It was rough, gravel-scraped. Half-thought, half-sin. It was mine.
I tapped the spot where my Visex used to be, forgetting it was deactivated.
I fell asleep curled on top of the covers, watching the sliver of hallway light undeath the door.
A shadow occasionally moved but never disappeared completely.
Always there.
Until I finally closed my eyes.