Chapter 17 #2
“No need to be.” Milos strides closer. His halfway-undone shirt reveals clean lines of a defined chest. “But why are you here…now?”
I don’t know how much to tell him. If any of it will matter.
“I’m looking for someone,” I say, throat tight. “A soul. Someone who meant a lot to me in my world.”
One of Milos’s thick eyebrows flexes, intrigued.
“I haven’t been able to find him here.” My tongue feels thick, heavy with uncertainty on whether confessing will hurt or help me. I push on. “I’ve tried.”
“Have you?” He studies me more closely. “Aides is big. There are so many souls. Ones that you cannot reach.”
“But you could help,” I hedge. “You’re the prince. You decide where they all go.”
His eyes narrow, considering.
I hold my breath. My blunt fingernails dig into my palms. Hope is high in my chest, though I know it shouldn’t be. I gave up on hope and wishes a long time ago. But it feels like I don’t have much else left.
Finally, Milos lifts his chin. The light cuts along his smooth smile.
“And what of my brother?”
Fighting a wince, I say, “What about him?”
“Does he know you used him? To get here? To get closer to me?”
The truth of his words sinks sharp teeth into my skin. Shame runs cold in my veins. I used Cary. For his knowledge, his powers. For anything that could bring me closer to London again.
I knew what I was doing every step of the way.
But I didn’t expect him to be more than just a hard, uncaring face. To like him in a way I haven’t in a long time. For it to ache so deeply when he figured it all out and wanted nothing more to do with me.
Milos clears his throat.
“Yes,” I say, a sourness filling my mouth. “He knows.”
His smile is a blade. “You know, Deathless are not supposed to bargain. It’s a silly, archaic rule. My mother believes what happens to mortals is Fate’s decision. We are not meant to make deals to change destiny.”
I watch as his gaze drops to his hands.
“But what good is this power if we do nothing with it? If we do not decide our own destiny?”
In my periphery, Henri tenses. He’s not close enough to read his face. But his breaths are tight, short.
“Fate does not control me.” A quiet, bitter laugh passes through Milos’s lips. “However, the curse of who I am does.”
He touches my bicep. I force myself to stay still.
“I will make a deal with you, August.”
My eyes lift, eager.
“I will find this soul for you. You can be with him. Whenever you are in Aides.” His fingers drag down my forearm, tickling my knuckles. “He is yours.”
That hope I’m not supposed to have throbs against my temples. “What do I have to do?”
His eyes flicker. A viper trapping its prey. “Commit your soul to me. For eternity.”
Milos’s words strike like lightning. I could be with London. Anytime I’m in Aides. He would be mine again. That’s what I wanted, right? It’s why I kept coming back here, isn’t it?
But there is a price. For eternity. I start to step back.
He grips my hand, bones shifting the wrong way. “It is a small exchange,” Milos promises. “His freedom for mine.”
“What do you mean commit my soul to you? I have to…be, like, your—” I can’t find the right word. “Husband?”
He snorts dramatically. “August, please. I do not want your heart.”
My eyes fan over him. Faint red smudges climb up his neck. The aftermath of careless kisses.
Milos leans in. “I want your power.”
A haze falls over my brain as I look down at my free hand. Mellow brown skin, protruding veins. The nail beds rough from lack of attention. I don’t see anything spectacular. Not like I do in Cary.
What is Milos talking about? I don’t have any power. I’m normal.
Just a…mortal.
“My power?”
Henri won’t meet my eyes when I stare at him. There’s a ding behind me at the other side of the room. I whirl around.
Cary steps off the elevator, then stops abruptly. Before I knew him, the expression on his face was unreadable. A blank canvas. But now I can pick out all the vague tells: a small muscle in his jaw shifting, the quiet flare of his nostrils, dimmed light behind his eyes.
Milos barks out a laugh. “No one told you?”
A blend of frustration and humiliation surges through me. As hot as a newborn flame.
This isn’t the first time Milos has said something like this. Mocked my ignorance about their world. As if I should be aware of every secret and understand a place that didn’t exist to me a month ago. I never said anything before. Out of respect, out of need.
But I’m done being his joke.
My glare shifts over each of them. “Tell me what?”
Predictably, Cary doesn’t answer. Neither does Henri.
Milos drops my hand. “How do you think you can come and go from Aides? Or see the souls? Did you not wonder why my brother’s pathetic beast does not harm you?”
I thought it was because Cary told him not to. Because Cerby liked me.
There’s a spark in Milos’s eyes. Gold, twinkling. “You saw my brother in the mortal realm even when his power should have hidden him. How, August?”
I look past him. To Cary’s hardened face. The face that told me so much—his sadness and regret and wants—in my mom’s greenhouse but gives nothing away now.
“I don’t know,” I say quietly.
“Because you are not one of them,” Milos announces. His fingers tip my chin toward him. “Not entirely.”
I blink. Not one of them. How could I not be? My dad is a nurse. My mom works in gardens and sells flowers at farmers markets.
I’m just a boy from Santa Barbara.
Not entirely, he said. Frigid fear wraps around my lungs.
“What am I?”
Somewhere, slightly out of focus, I see Cary step farther into the room, his mouth opened in protest. Henri rests a hand on Milos’s shoulder, speaking first. “He’s not ready—”
Milos jerks free, still holding my chin.
Gleefully, he says, “One of us.”