Chapter 23 #2
I didn’t say anything, my mouth dry and body tensing with every inch he grew closer. I found myself caught between the familiar urge to fly to him and assess him for wounds, or demanding that he put as much space between us as physically possible.
“Figures Delilah would be into the whole moody paintings thing,” he remarked, nodding at the oil paintings framed on the emerald green walls.
Each gilded frame boasted ethereal landscapes, some including scantily clad women with their faces tipped up to the soft glow of the full moon.
The brush strokes were often hazy and visible, giving the art a beautiful but vaguely unsettling aura.
Some looked ancient, and knowing Lee’s proclivity for white-collar thefts, I wondered if he’d gifted a few of these to her in a grand, romantic gesture.
Cliff spent a few tense seconds dragging out the inevitable, picking at the edge of a dusty frame—anything but looking at us directly.
“I know I’m the last mug you wanna see right now, but I wanted to clear the air between us. The things I said…” He rubbed his face with both hands. When he surfaced, his red-rimmed eyes were fixed on me like I was the only person in the room. “I’m sorry.”
I knew every second I didn’t answer wounded him, cutting deeper. But even looking at him still hurt.
“You’re a better actor than I gave you credit for,” I finally said. “Did you get what you needed in the end?”
Cliff nodded. “His phone is packed with evidence on this Spencer Price fucker, and I got a good look at the location of the facility they were routed to, in addition to everything we heard.”
Ben released a shudder at the very mention of the facility, and I could hardly blame him. After he’d dodged that fate for years, we had nearly found our death at that place tonight.
“Good,” I clipped out. “That’s good.”
Cliff’s jaw tightened, like he was swallowing back words. I’d rarely seen him like this—so unraveled, so fragile. He mustered the courage to inch closer to me, pulling an ottoman to take a seat next to the table we were perched on.
“You can stay mad at me.” His voice was low and unnervingly gentle. “It’s alright, I get that. Hell, I deserve that. But I need you to hear me when I say this: I would never, ever hurt you, Sylv.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t help it.
I kept picturing that iron bar in his hand, but more than anything, I couldn’t unsee how he’d been treated at the hands of his father, how he had flinched at his nearness and those vile words.
All that violence, and he could still be gentle with me. Chose to.
“Maybe next time, you can take a turn in the ‘chained up and terrified for your life’ role,” I said, swiping at my eyes.
His fond smile was achingly genuine. “There’s not much I wouldn’t do for you.”
I sniffled, mortified to be crying in front of everyone again. “So, I’m not some annoying pest?”
“Sylv, you’re everything. And more family to me than almost anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah. You too,” I croaked.
That look he was giving me pinned me, a storm of affection that burned at the memories of the cold, unfeeling glances he’d shot me during the transport.
And suddenly, I couldn’t bear it—the idea of not having him in my life. I needed my friend back, even with oceans of hurt between us. Aches that would mend in time.
I extended my hand to him. Cliff’s eyes widened slightly, but he put his hand next to me, brushing his knuckles against my much smaller one.
“It’s good to have you back,” I said.
“Very touching,” Rowan drawled. “But you’ll forgive me if I sleep with a defense rune on our door.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Zia said, hastily wiping her tears. “Truly, there’s no need for an apology, hunter.”
“It’s Cliff,” he corrected.
Her rosy lips curved slightly. “Right. Cliff, then. Look, I won’t lie, our first impression was… Well, you—”
“Scared the daylights outta you?”
“Terrified the shit out of us, I was going to say,” Zia finished.
I turned sharply—profanity, from her? Even Cliff seemed disarmed, if not thoroughly amused.
“But you saved us,” Zia went on, rising to her feet. She fanned her wings, putting the healed membrane on proud display. “We have our lives and freedom back because of what you did. That’s worth everything.”
She beamed at him, and I wondered if she had any possible notion of what a gift she was giving him—to provide evidence that he wasn’t cursed and hated.
“I wish there’d been a cleaner way,” Cliff muttered.
Zia scoffed, folding her arms over her chest. “You’re not making a big enough fuss out of this. Theatrics aside, you risked your life for us. For people you don’t even know.”
“What, are you gonna order me a damn parade?” Cliff drawled.
“Maybe.”
He scoffed out a soft laugh, rolling his eyes.
Zia walked closer to him. “You’re still hurt, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine,” Cliff said—words he’d recited to me countless times in our journey together.
“Don’t lie. I can feel it clouding you. A sharp, aching pain.” She narrowed her attention to his abdomen, a furrow creasing between her eyes. “If you remove your shirt, I can tend to it.”
“I’m flattered, princess, but you should save your magic.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Don’t call me that. It’s just Zia, please. And don’t be a child, remove your shirt.”
“Are you ordering me?”
“I’m about to,” Zia said, lifting her chin at him as though she couldn’t see the terrifying differences measured between them, or hadn’t witnessed the armored guards he’d incapacitated with his bare hands.
Cliff blinked, glancing at me as if I might save him.
But it was Rowan who stepped in—and certainly not for Cliff’s sake. He put a hand on Zia’s shoulder. “You need rest, my lady. One of the others can heal this one.”
Zia shrugged his hand off and met Rowan’s flinty gaze. “I will not budge on this,” she said, not unkindly but surprisingly firm.
Although she had no tone of apology, Rowan’s hesitance made it abundantly clear that she rarely threw the power of her nobility around. He stepped back with a huff.
Waving an expectant hand at Cliff, Zia insisted, “Shirt.”
Another beat of astonishment dragged out before Cliff began to comply. He attempted a familiar, suggestive chuckle. “I gotta say, this isn’t the most subtle method someone’s used to get me to take my clothes off.”
Zia lifted an eyebrow. “And do you always put up this much resistance?”
I buried a laugh into my hand when Cliff’s cocksure attitude stumbled.
As his shirt came off, however, both Zia and I were shaken to see the harsh red bruising on Cliff’s torso.
Parts were already purpling, especially around his abdomen.
It could have come from being brutalized by the guards and Rhett or from the vehicle flipping.
Whatever the case, I was once again confronted with the knowledge that he was far too skilled at hiding his pain.
“Cliff,” I hissed. “If you’ve been walking around with bruised ribs—and what’s that?”
My horrified glower set upon what I quickly recognized as Delilah’s cat bite. Around the swollen needle-like punctures on the back of his hand, the freckled skin was aflame with some kind of rash.
Cliff’s mouth became a sharp slant as he inspected the bite wound. I suddenly remembered how he’d been so quick to dodge the amiable felines at Gwen and Hannah’s shop—and what he’d admitted to me there.
“Oh stars, that’s right. You’re allergic to cats!”
“Even witchy ones, I guess,” Cliff said.
I instinctively spread my wings to move toward him like I had done dozens of times by now, following hunts, but Zia gently took my wrist and brought me back down.
“Rest,” she told me, and I found that I couldn’t argue.
“Damn. She’s pushier than you, Sylv,” Cliff said. “And that’s saying something.”
I had half a mind to direct his attention to his easy laughter and flushing face in Zia’s presence—because he certainly didn’t seem aware of it.
When Zia took to the air, I was once again entranced by the way her voice weaved through the incantation like it was music.
Cliff held perfectly still, eyes fixed on her misty teal magic with a new kind of bewilderment, utterly vulnerable and enchanted.
After the bloodshed tonight, I understood how unraveling it was to take in something beautiful, something that existed only to be gentle.
Rowan glared stoically at the display, and I swore the flames in the fireplace were licking dangerously high.