29. Leah #2
“Yes,” he says, grimacing as if he doesn’t like remembering it. “That’s what I mean about tying my own hands. If I’d just told you before, perhaps you wouldn’t have gone. But after you’d left, I knew I couldn’t risk revealing the truth.”
“Because then I really was an ephilium agent,” I say, realization dawning. The more I embraced the culture of Aradis, the more likely I was to become a weapon that could destroy his kingdom.
“Yes, potentially,” he says. “When you let me back in at last, I wanted to tell you so badly.” He takes a step forward, his tone begging me to believe him.
“But it was too great a risk for my domain. You were at the academy, learning how to annihilate my kind, and every day you were getting more powerful. I didn’t want to think you would betray me, but if I told you about the prophecy, and somehow the pale-bloods succeeded in turning you against me, then that information could’ve sealed both your and Infernum’s fate. ”
I look away, swallowing down a strange mix of emotions.
I want to be offended by the suggestion that I would do that to Syrus or the demon realm, but what right do I have to take offense?
I trained with the ephilium army and went into battle with them.
I killed for Aradis and kept telling Syrus I was planning to make a life there.
What was he supposed to do? Put all of Malice in danger just for the chance that I might forgive him? Risk his domain because he’d fallen for a nephilim and was desperate to have her back? Even I can see that’s not the strategy any decent ruler would choose.
And still, he did take risks. He helped me get stronger, so I could survive. He wanted me to pass the trials, even if that meant me being accepted by the enemy. He put himself in the lion’s den, coming to Aradis, just to protect me.
Goddess. The scale of Syrus’s care for me presses down all at once, and when I look back at him, tears prick the corners of my eyes.
It’s too much, the idea of someone burdening themselves so much for me.
Overwhelming in a way that makes me want to hold him close and bury my face in his chest, until the warmth and weight of his body drowns out everything else.
Instead, I pat the spot beside me.
“Come here,” I say, my voice a little raspy from holding back tears.
He complies without a word, and I feel every muscle in him relax when I reach over and take his hand.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say quietly, drawing his fingers into my lap, threading my own through them. “I’m just wondering why you’re telling me this now. Is it because I chose to leave Aradis with you?”
He musters a wry smile, and he gives my fingers a squeeze.
“Maybe a little, though it’s not like you had much choice in the matter. But when you broke Ajax’s spell, it changed things for me.”
I release his fingers only to put my hands on either side of his face, lightly stroking his jaw.
“Tell me how,” I say. One last explanation, I think to myself. Please. And then maybe I can let myself have this. Have you.
I want it so badly that I’m almost afraid when Syrus starts talking again.
“I don’t think anyone else could’ve done it, Leah,” he says, laying one of his hands over mine.
“If we’d never had the possession bond, you’d never have inherited demon abilities like being able to read Cyrax.
And if you’d not been nephilim, the possession bond would’ve never become what it was, nor would you have had the power to remove the runes. ”
He takes both of my hands and holds them to his chest, like he’s worried I’ll take them away. I won’t; I want to keep holding on, like I’m hanging on to his every word.
“All these things that I thought made our relationship so dangerous suddenly became the ultimate gift,” he says.
“Prophecy or not, fate brought you to me. I have to trust in that, and in what this demon heart of mine keeps telling me over and over—that you’re worth every risk, Leah, in every realm. ”
It’s more than enough. It’s so much that I think I might crack open with the happiness of it. I no longer mind everything we’ve been through to get here, because it all brought me back to him.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” I say, and the huff of laughter from his lips is nothing short of delighted.
“Be my gues—”
The end of his words are cut off by my mouth pressing against his.
He smiles into it at first, caught by surprise at my eagerness.
That quickly changes though, his mouth hurrying to claim mine.
It’s been weeks since I got to have this, the delicious slide of his lips against mine, the taste of him on my tongue as his warm breath ghosts across my face.
The kiss thoroughly liquefies my brain. It swings from being soft and probing to hungry and hard-edged, ending up with a desperate note to it that I know we both deeply understand. Every touch says that we have to experience everything while we can, because who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Syrus’s hands find the back of my neck, his fingers stroking along the nape, then firmly easing me down onto the bed, peppering my cheeks with kisses so sweetly adoring that they drive the breath out of me.
I paw at his clothes, slipping my hands beneath his shirt. I run my touch over the places I wanted to all those hours ago in Aradis. Back when I sat in a cellar, staring at the perfect, chiseled form of his body, knowing I would have to hurt it to save him.
Not now. Now I get to make him feel good. I stroke my fingertips over his back, sucking gently at his lower lip when he leans in for another kiss. Then I arch a little so that we connect in all the important places as I grind against him.
“Leah,” he groans into my mouth, my name a question and a hope, one I’ve been carrying around with me too.
I answer enthusiastically by tugging his shirt over his head.
Like he’s read my mind, knowing I want Syrus in all the beauty of his true form, with every scar and mark, he lets the disguise of the lake slip away, runes blooming across his skin.
Maybe in another time, we would’ve unwrapped each other slowly, but tonight we shed our clothes with all possible haste, the cool air barely having time to brush over my skin before he’s covering it with his huge, warm body.
Just this contact, my skin pressed against his after being starved of him for so long, makes me whimper, and Syrus responds by burying his face against my neck, inhaling as he licks a line across my collar bone.
My mind is so hazy, overloaded with sensation, that I’m only vaguely aware of the words babbling out of my mouth. “Goddess, it’s been unbearable, Syrus. Not being able to touch you. Not being able to hold you. It was torture.”
He lifts his head. His eyes are one of the darkest reds I’ve ever seen, his lips already plump from where I’ve bruised them with my own. He looks handsome, powerful, but also undone in a way that makes me feral.
“I’m glad I wasn’t the only one,” he says. “There were times I thought I might go mad from the distance between us.”
We both know the bond made us desperate. Even now, when it’s gone, its absence is its own problem, resting loudly between us. But that pain is dimmed by the way we tangle into each other, soothing away the ache that came with that denial.
“We’re together now,” I murmur, and he nods, tugging a gasp from my lips as he lowers his head to suck gently at my breast.