28. Leah #3
“They know I’ve seen you and had a letter. I’m sorry, I had to tell them something. I didn’t get into any of the nephilim stuff, but I may have hinted about your scavenging. They think you’ve run off and joined some gang.”
This startles a laugh out of me. “That’s probably for the best. If they knew what I’ve actually done in the last six months, Ada might have an aneurysm.”
Evie’s eyes flick to Syrus, her face a little tense with worry, then she focuses on me again.
“Well, it was enough for Mother to swear off having anything to do with you. It’s safer that way. They had too many questions after they found out about Hathwell.”
I stiffen. “Found out what about him?”
Evie’s hand shoots to her mouth, and she looks guilty again.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Leah. I thought you’d know. But of course,” again she glances at Syrus, “you haven’t been in Pax. Um…they found Hathwell three months ago in the Sideris. They said he’d been there for a while—a terrible accident.”
Syrus and I exchange a loaded look. We were both there the day I killed Hathwell, and I certainly didn’t drown him.
But if whoever disposed of the body beat it up enough first—made it look like it really had been dragged around in the river’s currents—perhaps that would hide the stab wound and starvation he endured.
Evie reads the surprise on my face and chews on her lip, something she’s picked up from me. “I’m glad you didn’t know about Hathwell,” she says. “I was worried that—”
She stops herself, and I’m glad, because I think I know the direction of her thoughts, and she wouldn’t be totally wrong.
“Never mind.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to think about it. I’m just glad you’re here now, and safe.”
Evie and Jeremy bustle around, getting ready to go, and then I see them out the door. When I close it behind them, I slump against the frame, letting go of some of the tension in my muscles.
“Your sister is a lot more polite than you,” Syrus says smugly.
“Fuck off,” I say, and he laughs, which makes me feel lighter, even if I have proven his point.
We decide waking Viz by trying to move him upstairs wouldn’t be very kind.
He seems perfectly comfortable on the couch, and Syrus promises to check on him later like Martha ordered.
Instead, we investigate the other sleeping options.
The nursery is a tiny box room, big enough for a cot and a narrow single, which Evie will probably use on the many night feedings to come.
The attic is surprisingly clean and warm, and we find some bedding and blankets in the storage boxes by the spare mattress.
Syrus and I don’t discuss who’s going to sleep where but together start pulling the blankets out and tucking them around the mattress.
Maybe my brain is just fried from everything we’ve been through—breaking the bond, the Seraph Seat attack, using my magic to undo Ajax’s spell, and getting Viz fixed up in my own sister’s house—but the sudden, intense domesticity of the moment gets to me.
I look up to see Syrus—the demon lord of Malice—carefully folding and tucking a sheet corner, and I start giggling.
He looks up, confused, and the bewildered look in his eyes just makes me laugh harder, until I’m collapsing on to the mattress clutching my stomach.
“What’s so funny?” he asks, but my laughter’s gotten to him already, and he’s smiling. Or maybe it just makes him happy to see me happy.
“N-nothing,” I say, catching my breath. “I’m feeling a little loopy after today, I guess.”
“I wonder why,” he says, sitting down beside me, close enough that my thigh is touching his.
My eyes drift to that spot. We’ve been casually touching since we had to flee the Seraph Seat.
Syrus kissed me when he thought I was going to leave him behind, and I let him.
Now we’re not in crisis mode anymore, it feels like I should have thoughts about that—conflicted, tangled-up ones.
Except I really don’t want to. I want to just sit here on this mattress and feel him beside me and not think about tomorrow.
But because he’s as annoying as he is beautiful, Syrus doesn’t let me get away with that.
“What?” I ask, when I see him watching me.
“When you said we’d leave in the morning…are you planning to come with us?” he asks.
I twist uncomfortably, unable to meet his gaze. “I’m not sure.”
This is what I meant to Evie when I said I had to figure things out.
Now that I know I can hide my wings, I could pass for human in Strata, but the ephilium will surely send people after me now they think I’ve been working as a demon spy.
Like Syrus said, the Concords don’t protect mixed breeds like me.
But I don’t belong in Infernum, either. And if I go there, I’ll always have to hide a part of myself from every person I meet.
I don’t say any of this out loud. I can’t make Syrus be my sounding board as I decide whether to choose his realm or this one—to give him what he’s been asking for but for none of the right reasons. I think he can take a wild stab at what I’m grappling with right now, anyway.
“Leah…” He sighs, and there’s such a long pause after he says my name that I can’t resist glancing up to read his face. He’s looking down at his hands, and it takes me a beat to realize he’s actually looking at his wrists, at the place Ajax’s runes used to be.
“I’ve wanted to explain myself for so long. To give you what you wanted,” he says, echoing my thoughts about him. “I believed I couldn’t. But if that’s changed…”
He swallows, and something strange happens in my stomach—it feels like it’s tightening up and the bottom’s dropping out of it at the same time.
“Would it make any difference?” he asks, looking at me. “Or would it be too late?”
“You mean telling me why you tried to suppress my powers?” I clarify. “Or why you lied to me about it?”
“Both,” he says, and my heart stutters painfully.
He’s willing to explain the “powers beyond his control” he always hinted at, the thing he said made us all so unsafe.
The truth, within my reach at last.
I’d told myself that ship had sailed, that if I kept wishing for it, I’d only make myself miserable, hoping for something I could never have.
And now he wants to hand it to me? Because—what, he’s desperate enough to do anything to have me back, including doing something he swore he’d never do?
If that’s the reason, then I don’t want his answers.
I want them willingly given because I deserve to know, not because they’re being ransomed.
“And if I said it wouldn’t make a difference,” I murmur, trying to keep my voice cool and even, “would you tell me anyway?”
He closes his eyes, as if the idea frightens him, but his answer is certain. “Yes.” His eyes open again, and he fixes his reddish-brown stare on me. “I owe you that. And so much more.”
I could ask him what’s changed. Why now?
What part of earth and sky has shifted so that the impossible has suddenly become possible?
But all of that pales into insignificance next to the deep, unspoken desire to learn if he really did have good reasons.
Maybe he was right. Or at least, right enough that I could finally forgive him at last.
Maybe I would’ve gotten there anyway. He’s apologized and done things that show me how he’s changed.
That he wouldn’t ever try the same thing again—limiting my powers or trying to cage me.
I’m very, very far along in forgiving Syrus, but now he’s offering me his hand so I can leap over the last few steppingstones, and I long to take it.
“So tell me,” I say, voice breathy with apprehension. “And then maybe I’ll have an answer for you.”
And there, in the cramped attic of my sister’s house, he gives me a truth I would’ve never expected.
“I did what I did, Leah, because you’ve been prophesied to destroy my kingdom.”