Chapter 51
I Wasn’t Alone At All
My hands lay limp in my lap as my eyes danced along the black-and-whites, playing an easy tune.
I’d learned to play the piano with my grandmother and Rui Xi before I could even write my name.
Later, I kept practicing at Babel, but stopped about three years ago when there were no more classes for my level.
Music had never spoken to me the way it did to some.
It was simply another way of proving I was better than anyone would give a dual-blood credit for.
Tonight, however, it seemed the only way I could speak what was brewing inside of me.
“Are you going to sit there until the sun comes up?” Soren’s deep voice slid in from behind me.
I yelped, nearly falling off the bench as I spun to face him.
His lips pressed together, but the rise of his cheekbones gave away his amusement.
“H-how long were you there?” I stammered.
“Long enough to know that you can actually sit very still and very quietly for a ridiculously long time, contrary to what you've demonstrated in the past.”
I should have fired back something sharp. Instead, I kept thinking about whether he might be manipulating me into trusting him just to hand me over to Abadon. He was the son of a Fallen, after all.
Soren rounded the bench and sat beside me.
“Feeling pensive?” he asked.
I turned back to the keys.
We sat in silence, side by side and staring like I’d been doing alone minutes ago. His fingers hovered above the whites. Then he began to move them so that they danced up and down the scale without playing any music.
I watched his hands, but he looked out over the black expanse of the polished lid and somewhere far away. He was playing only for himself.
Then the humming started.
It was him this time. Low and smooth. The same song I’d heard at Chapel. The same song my grandmother used to play for me. The song in my dreams. In my soul.
The song ended, and Soren’s fingers stilled. His hands dropped to his lap, and then one slid over to my left leg.
A warm weight on my thigh.
I hadn’t realized how relaxed my body had become under the hypnotic pull of his humming until it stiffened at his touch. Every muscle seemed ready for him to pounce, anticipating more.
“Will you play for me?” he asked, his deep voice breaking the silence too harshly.
I looked up at him, but he was still staring into the distance.
Did he know about the call? Had he felt my fear?
“It’ll wake everyone else up,” I whispered.
Finally, he looked down at me, but I instantly regretted wishing he would.
Grays and silvers reached out, pulling me in.
“Please,” was all he offered.
I licked my lips and turned away. His fingers caught my chin, bringing me back to him.
“What are you nervous about, Little Shadow?”
Everything. You leaving me. The end.
Finding a place to belong, only for it to be torn from my grasp.
Being betrayed…by you.
I squirmed out of his hold and let my fingers rest on the whites, looking anywhere but at Soren. Then, as softly as I could, I played a haunting rendition of a classical piece from the Ancients: Bach’s Prelude in B Minor.
I was right that the piano was too loud for the middle of the night. But I played anyway.
A song of need and emptiness warped through the space of the room and carried me somewhere else. Somewhere alone.
Somewhere I could still hide my aching under the structure I’d built over the years.
It was a solid, thick prison that kept others out but trapped me within.
I’d constructed it with fear and loathing, fastened its joints with contempt and loneliness.
Lately, I’d mistakenly believed I could escape it.
I couldn’t. I was still there and all alone.
When the song ended, the last note floated out into the space around us.
Us.
I wasn’t alone at all. Soren saw deep beneath my carefully laid foundations to the sins buried underneath. Yet, he still wanted me. Sold his soul for me.
The realization startled me.
Then I turned and saw the expression in his eyes. Silver and black warring over me. I slid away from him and off the bench to stand. “The song you were humming earlier. Where did you learn it?”
“It’s called The Ode to the Daughter. Your grandmother sang it to you, didn’t she?”
I licked my lips again.
Did Abadon send you to watch me?
That’s what I wanted to ask.
“What does it mean?” I asked instead.
“Why do you keep licking your lips?” Soren avoided the question. “What are you worrying over right now, Eliana?”
“I’m not.” Then I did it involuntarily as if my body wanted to take his side instead of mine.
“You don’t need to be nervous around me,” he said. His eyes darkened, and he moved to stand as well. “I’m going to protect you.”
From yourself?
My mouth opened. I closed it.
Cool fingers brushed my neck.
“You’re mine,” the voice in my head hissed sharper than before.
“I’m scared,” I finally whispered.
“I know.” His thumb grazed my lower lip, sending a shiver through my whole body. “Scared of what?”
I shook my head.
“You,” I lied. “Me,” I confessed.
“You shouldn’t be scared of either.” Soren’s fingers brushed up my right arm, waking my skin and igniting a burning at the base of my neck. “Did you know that I can hear your pulse? It’s a little bit high right now. And not just from fear.”
I barely managed to stop my tongue from slipping out to wet my lips again.
He leaned down, and I was on my toes as soon as his hand cupped the side of my throat.
Neither of us waited for the other to move in.
Our lips parted the moment they touched.
Every cell in my skin screamed, and a fire blazed in my stomach, the embers having sparked that first time I’d found his eyes in the crowd.
That pressure between my shoulder blades started again, a part of me attempting to burst out.
Soren's breath was a hot mixture of smoke and mint. Fire and ice. I made a sound I didn’t recognize. His teeth caught my lower lip. My hips rolled into him, and I felt him hard against my stomach.
The growl came from him this time. He pulled away, hands gripping my shoulders. I fought against it, my fingers tangled in his shirt.
“Stop,” he warned. Both hands shifted to my jaw, tilting my head back. Another snarl, and his mouth was gone. “Don’t tempt me.”
I opened my eyes when he gripped my wrists to pull my hands from the hold they had on him.
Soren stepped back, and I could see in the low lighting that his eyes were the brightest silver, like two full moons reflecting the very sun itself.
Could I be his sun?
He stepped forward again, slower now, taking my hand. “Let me be the one to take care of you. You should be careful not to start something you're not ready for, Xiao Ying.”
“Ready for what?” I managed through the deep breaths my body required to keep up with my roaring pulse.
Now, it was his turn to lick his lips. “For me to take you. To lose yourself.”
I swallowed and thought about protesting because who was he to say what I wasn’t ready for? But words failed me.
Soren stepped closer again, his shadow swallowing mine whole.
“Come,” he said.
With a subtle tug, he guided me across the room back toward the spiral stairs. I followed barefoot across hardwood.
“Why wouldn’t I be ready for that?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he let me go in front of him, up the cold metal of the spiral stairs. Every sense narrowed to the heat of his palm against my lower back.
My mind tried to tell me this was reckless. I still didn’t know which side he was on—mine or the enemy’s. But my body was already leaning into his orbit, pulled by his irresistible gravity.
Soren reached past me to open the door. We both slid into the darkness of the bedroom, and the door shut behind us with the softest sound. The only light was the thin spill from a mockery of the moon through the balcony window, silvering the bridge of his nose and the cut of his jaw.
Without a word, he guided me backward until my thighs touched the bed.
“Soren,” I started, but then his hands found my hips, and I had no idea what I’d been planning to say.
“I’m taking care of you, Eliana.” His voice was a soft blade slicing shivers through my skin. “You need to relax so you can get some sleep. I'm going to help you relax.”
Before I could argue again, he knelt in front of me. My breath hitched.
“Sit.”
I sank onto the mattress, heart a wild beast in my chest.
His hands pushed my knees apart, and every ounce of blood in my veins doubled in speed and volume.
His fingers trailed up the insides of my thighs, swimming up my skin in a current too familiar with his touch.
His touch that left a trail of destruction along my nerves, launching my pulse to the stars.
“I can hear it,” he said, lips barely grazing the skin where his fingers had trailed. “Your pulse is climbing. Faster…and faster still.”
He was right. I was going to die like this, in his hands, under his touch my heart dancing to an impossible rhythm.
I licked my lips in the assurance that he wasn’t looking at me anymore to see the action, as he was too busy finding his way up my legs. My hands fisted in the duvet at my sides. “What are you going to do?”
His hands glided up and up, sliding under the hem of my shorts to meet the hem of my panties.
“We can’t afford for me to lose control.
I’ll ruin you if you push me too far. One day, I'll find a way to fully be with you when I can guarantee you'll survive it, but we aren't there, yet,” he said so darkly.
“So, you can’t touch me. Yet. But you can let go just fine. And I'll be there to catch you.”
His hands left my thighs to find the waistband of my shorts and underwear, gripping them together in his fists.
My body betrayed me and lifted without even needing a command. My hips rose just enough for him to draw my shorts and panties down in one slow, deliberate motion, fabric brushing my skin as he watched my face. He guided my feet free, his palms sweeping back up my bare legs.