14. Asha
Asha
“With the part where you stop asking questions you already know the answer to,” I say, turning back to face him.
Leith stays by the shelves, dark and still. It’s unnerving. “I know you don’t belong in that body. I know your death feels wrong. I know when I looked into your soul, I saw a battlefield.”
“My soul? That’s new.”
“Not really. And neither are you.”
“Tell me more about this battlefield.”
His voice stays cool. “You were at the centre of it.”
The library hums around us, old wards breathing through stone and book-spines. Candlelight drifts over the silver lettering above his head. He brought me to the section on deities. He knows more than he is letting on.
“And what exactly was I doing in this dramatic vision of yours?”
He watches me for a beat too long. “Laughing.”
A thrill cuts through me before I can stop it.
“How unfortunate for your peace of mind,” I murmur.
“And that bothers you?”
“Not at all,” he states, and he’s telling the truth. “If anything, it turned me on.”
“Me laughing turned you on? You’re easy to please.”
“You laughing surrounded by death and destruction. You’re not a low-level witch. You aren’t even a witch.”
“So what am I?”
“A goddess.”
The statement is flat, certain, unwaveringly accurate and unapologetic.
For one rare, perfect second, I don’t breathe.
The words strike through me clean and deep, right into the place that has been forced shut since I landed in this pathetic realm.
I tilt my head and give him a slow, mocking smile. “That’s a bold diagnosis from a male who sees dead things for a living.”
“You are an anomaly, Asha. But not in the way SilverGate thinks you are. The way I see you, feel you, is different to anything I’ve ever known before.
You aren’t dead. You haven’t died and been resurrected.
You are crammed into a body that is brand-spanking new.
You are contained by a vessel that is compatible with this world, yet you are not. How’m I doing so far?”
Better than I expected. Brand-spanking new would explain the virginity issue. Fucking Z-man. I’m going to peel his skin off starting with his dick for that one.
“Annoyingly well,” I say lightly, because if I let even a fraction of what that did to me show, he’ll own too much.
Leith doesn’t move. “What I don’t know is why or how. Did you do this to yourself, or was it done to you?”
I laugh once, cold and sharp. “Now we’re getting greedy.”
His blue eyes hold mine. “You came after me in the lecture hall because you wanted to know what I saw. Now you know. So answer something in return. Leaving me to my own conclusions is more dangerous than you telling me.”
The books up here are alert. Interested. Nosy little bastards. “You realise if I confirm any of this, you become dangerous to me in ways you can’t even imagine yet.”
“I already am.”
“That is not the selling point you think it is.”
He gives me the faintest incline of his head, accepting the blow without argument. It annoys me more than if he’d smirked.
I move to the table, dropping into one of the chairs. “Let’s say your theory doesn’t insult me.”
His brow lifts a fraction.
He stays standing, which I resent on principle.
“Generous of you,” he says.
“Don’t ruin it.” I rest one elbow on the table and tap my fingers once against the wood. “I’m not confirming anything. I’m entertaining a possibility because you’ve managed not to be completely stupid for nearly five minutes.”
“An achievement.”
“Rare in males.”
He narrows his eyes. “I’m sensing a story there, but go on.”
I study him for a moment. He’s too composed. Too controlled. That calm comes from knowing exactly what sort of damage he can do and never needing to advertise it.
Fine. I can work with that.
“Say I am what you think I am,” I murmur. “What then?”
“Then I need to know what level of threat you are to this realm.”
I laugh, low and humourless. “Oh, that’s adorable.”
“You think I’m asking for SilverGate.”
“I think you’re asking because you want to know whether to fear me, follow me, or fuck me.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “I can do all three.”
That hits me in the clit, and it twitches violently. “Confident.”
“Usually the worst kind,” I say.
His expression shifts in intent. It makes the air between us feel narrower.
I sit back in the chair and look him over properly. “Fear is sensible. Following is ambitious. Fucking is clearly a recurring problem in this realm.”
His gaze drops to my mouth for half a second, then returns to my eyes. “Only with you.”
“That sounds dangerously close to flirting.”
“It is flirting.”
I snort. “Direct. I’ll give you that.”
“I don’t see the point in pretending otherwise.”
“No. You strike me as a creature who walks into a room knowing exactly how many bodies he could leave in it.”
“That depends on the room.”
I smile despite myself. “You see? That. That is why I feel an affinity with you.”
That appears to catch him off-guard. “You do?”
“Yes. Does that bother you?”
His eyes sharpen on mine. “No.”
“It should.”
“Not likely. It reinforces my theory that you are different and not just because of what you are, but who you are. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you didn’t mean to come here, and you definitely didn’t mean to do so in that body.
Which means it was done to you. You want a way back, don’t you? ”
I lick my lips and narrow my eyes. “A way back where?”
His stare stays fixed on me. “Home.”
I laugh again, softer this time, because that answer is smarter than I wanted from him. “Cautious. Very nice.”
“You want to know whether I want to get home, whether home still exists, whether I’d tear a hole through your realm to reach it if I had the chance.”
“Yes.”
“And if I said yes?”
“Then I’d ask whether anyone here survives your attempt.”
He means that. Not as a threat. Not as panic. As calculation. Cold, clean, terrifying calculation.
I like him more by the second.
“I had a realm,” I say at last. “A very good one. It obeyed me. It feared me properly. It understood ceremony, bloodshed and hierarchy. Then an arrogant, treacherous little bastard decided to interfere with matters above his station.”
Leith goes still, but it means attention, not fear. “A god.”
“Not just one.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Several?”
“Lesser creatures. Vermin.”
He nods slowly.
“Now that you have all of this information, what are you going to do with it? Go to Blackridge? Have him imprison me properly and dissect me?”
“Protect you,” he says. “Have you not been listening to me?”
“Protect me how and why?”
“Because you matter. You were driven out of your own realm, and you landed here. I highly doubt that was planned, yet it wasn’t random. You landed in the one place where three terrifyingly possessive creatures would help and protect you.”
“You include them?”
“You don’t?”
I hold his gaze and let silence stretch.
The annoying thing is that he isn’t wrong.
Hale with his soul-bond nonsense and territorial bullshit. Tobin with his sharp little mind and his offers dressed up as bargains, and now Leith with his cold certainty and that unnerving way he sees straight through skin and straight into the ugly truth.
Three possessive creatures.
Three useful ones.
Three potential disasters.
“I include useful things,” I say at last.
His mouth almost curves. “That sounded very close to honesty.”
“Don’t get excited. You’re still all liabilities.”
“Yet you keep ending up with us.”
“That’s because this realm is determined to inconvenience me.”
Leith steps away from the shelves at last and comes to the table. He doesn’t sit. He plants both hands on the wood and looks down at me with those blue eyes that are far too clear for a creature built out of endings.
“If I keep this to myself,” he says, “I need something in return.”
I sigh. “Of course you do. None of you can just do a good deed and leave it alone.”
“I’m not interested in good deeds.”
“No, I noticed. What do you want?”
“The truth when it matters.”
I laugh. “That is far too broad.”
“Then narrow it,” he says.
I tip my head back and look up at him. “You really do like hearing me talk.”
“I like hearing what’s real.”
“That sounds dangerously intimate.”
“It’s practical.”
“Liar.”
His eyes hold mine, unblinking. “Occasionally.”
I laugh once under my breath. “Fine. When it matters, you get the truth.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s what you’re getting.”
He studies me for a beat, weighing whether to push. “And if Blackridge already knows?”
“He knows enough to be irritating.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No, it was a stupider one.” I rise from the chair and step around the table, forcing him to move or have me brush against him.
He moves at the last second. Annoying. “If Blackridge knows exactly what I am, then he’s already decided whether to cage me, use me, or worship me. Those are the only sensible responses.”
“You left out kill.”
I glance back at him. “That would require more confidence than I think even your headmaster possesses.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Interesting.
“One thing I know is that I don’t belong here. But I cannot leave. The wards repel me in this body.”
“They don’t repel me. At least not all of them.”
My face changes instantly. The playful banter we were having has just developed into something as serious as a massacre. I stand and match his pose. “Tell me more.”