32. The Library
THE LIbrARY
Seraphina
Silver when he’s being Overlord wears authority well, like it’s his armor. Sharp, controlled and untouchable. When he’s brooding and issuing orders in that low, lethal voice, he’s already dangerous enough to make my pulse stumble.
But Silver when he’s kissing me…
By the Sainted Skies and the Seven within them. There are no words, no thoughts, no experiences I can draw upon to even attempt to compare it.
His mouth explores mine like he’s been holding back for far too long and decided he’s done with it. To Hell with whatever invisible shackles usually control him.
That’s when I decide to do the same.
After all, at any moment the shock of what I did will wear off, and he’ll remember I’m a criminal and murderer and he’ll have my head.
So I bury my hands in his dark hair. When a quiet sound leaves him, desire surges up my spine and he tilts his head, deepening the kiss.
His grip tightens on my thighs, then a thumb brushes the sensitive skin there as if he’s worried he was too rough.
He pulls back, just enough to look at me.
His head tilts slightly, breath warm against my lips, and that rare, unguarded smile curves his mouth. Slow and wicked, the kind that could make Kingdoms go to war.
I could stare at his lips forever.
But then you’d never see his eyes again.
The thought is devastating.
I could stare at all of him forever.
His lips, his eyes, the sharp line of his jaw.
The sight of him steals the air from my lungs every morning he walks into the training halls.
My heart reacts before pride can stop it. Like an invisible fist has wrapped around it and squeezed hard enough to remind me how easily he could ruin me.
Now more than ever.
He watched me slit Elias’s throat, and just as I thought I was dead for sure, his mouth was kissing and nipping at mine, and it was better than anything I’ve ever felt.
He knows too much, Seraphina.
I know.
But I can’t remember why that matters right now. Why I should care or be terrified by that thought.
Why was he even here tonight? And why, after everything he heard, everything he saw, would he kiss me instead of kill me?
He asked who trained me, who my boss was in Virtus.
It’s not important.
My first lie to him and it was a bad one.
A really, really bad one.
His head drops to that sensitive part of my neck, behind my ear. Each touch of his mouth against the skin there is like lightning striking flesh.
I moan and he presses his hips forward. I tighten my legs around his waist and gasp when I feel his arousal, his intimidating length straining against his leathers and throbbing against my core. A sensation I’ve never felt blooms there.
Heat floods my body in an overwhelming rush, setting every inch of my skin on fire as his mouth moves down to the raw and tender, freshly tattooed flesh at my collarbone.
His veinlike markings glow and his muscles coil.
Raphaella bless him, he’s healing the sore skin around the tattoo. But rather than channeling the magic through his hands, which remain on my thighs, he must be doing it through his mouth or lips or tongue.
The tingling, sensual assault makes me moan again.
“Fuck,” he growls against my skin, that delicious F harder and more guttural than ever.
I should stop this.
He’s seen too much. He knows too much.
What if he finds out the person who assigns me my marks is the High Seraph of Industria?
What if he somehow learns that High Seraph Helvane and his children, the leaders of the Legion of Light, are the ones who trained me?
What if he finds out they are my father and siblings?
Logic loses me as, apparently done with the healing, he kisses me again.
I kiss him back, not wanting it to ever end.
But it has to.
What if this is all a distraction so he can stab me in the back?
A goodbye kiss before he slides a dagger through my ribs.
Reality emerges through the haze of lust and desire suffocating the library, and when I glance over to where Elias’s body is still cooling, the sight makes my stomach knot.
As though Silver has the same sudden bout of sense knocked into him too, he releases his grip on my thighs, and far later than we should, we break the kiss.
I untangle my legs from around his waist and he lowers me to the ground.
Our breaths are still coming too fast, hot and heavy as he takes several steps back.
Suddenly, Vulcaris has never felt so cold, and so small, like the walls are closing in.
How much did he see? How much did he hear?
What had I said? What had Elias said?
The questions hit me one after another in an assault of more and more of that terrifying reality setting in.
The citadel had been mentioned.
What exactly had I said though?
The angels know I tried to keep the conversation between Elias and I on the tattoo, not our past. But even if Silver hadn’t heard too much in here tonight, how much asking around will he need to do to find out that Elias had been the son of the farmer who grew the food for the citadel?
That the farm was on the citadel grounds.
That the same farmer’s son who was tasked to take food to the ghost living in the turret suddenly disappeared from the farm and the citadel altogether, only to wind up in the academy and subsequently, the island.
Sure, only my father’s inner circle knows I’m his daughter, but I was lonely in that turret and Elias had been there, willing to listen.
He knew I wasn’t some random nephilim girl who happened to look exactly like High Seraph Helvane himself.
I’d hinted as much, even if I hadn’t told him everything outright.
My stomach twists.
If he had worked it out, how many people might Elias have told over the years he’s been here that he was in the Repentance Academy for sleeping with the High Seraph’s estranged daughter?
I gasp. Even if Elias hadn’t told a soul about his past or how he wound up in the academy, what about Lilliana and the journal?
Silver’s jaw tightens as he studies me. “That,” he says quietly, finally breaking the silence, “was a mistake.”
My heart slams hard against my ribs. He’s right, but that doesn’t stop the sting.
“Then why did you kiss me like it wasn’t?”
His eyes darken. “Because I wanted to,” he says simply, not trying to shift any blame from himself onto me, despite me being as desperate for his mouth on mine as the other way around.
“But you’re my cadet,” he continues, voice lower now as he crosses those strong arms over his chest like he’s putting a boundary up between us.
“Oh yes, your rule.”
“My rule,” he agrees. “You’re under my command. I hold power over your future, your rank. Hell,” he rakes his fingers through his hair. “Even whether you survive the games or not, to some degree. That line exists for a reason. Fuck, I already stepped over it when I helped you in the game today—”
“That…” I can’t bring myself to say ‘that kiss.’ “That was you helping me to survive the game?”
Rather than answer the question, he turns his back to me and crosses what’s left of the space between him and where his dagger lodged between two books on the shelf behind him.
He slides it free and tucks it into his belt. “Get some rest, Scarvo.”
Is he dismissing me? Just like that? With a thousand unasked or answered questions hanging between us.
It’s clearly an order though, so formal, so necessary.
I hate it.
“What about…” I glance at the body, the blood, and by the angels… there must be something seriously wrong with me to have been about ready to jump Silver’s bones while my ex’s crimson soaked body lay a few feet away.
The scientists at the Repentance Academy probably reserve a special kind of cell or torture for those with that kind of sickness.
Their psychologists would have a great time trying to work it out.
How many Unrepentable’s must one kill before they become numb to death?
Apparently a lot less than I’ve killed.
“I’ll deal with him. If anyone asks, you weren’t here, you don’t know what happened and when you hear the official story of what happened to Elias, you will be as surprised as every other fucker in this fortress. Understood?”
No, I want to say.
But he isn’t stupid, he knows how best to deal with this and I should trust him to deal with it as he sees fit. I don’t want to, but it’s the least I can do. I still can’t believe he isn’t about to arrest or kill me.
I swallow, then nod. “Okay, thank you. But at least let me help clean up. Believe it or not, I’m trained in that too.”
“I can believe it,” he mutters, then goes to shake his head to decline. A glance at the library floor and the blood seems to change his mind.
He moves toward a cabinet at the back of the room, taking some kind of old rolled carpet out of it before gesturing for me to help.
We work in silence for a bit, then when Silver returns from the kitchens with a couple of buckets, soapy sponges and a mop, he finally clears his throat to speak. “So you killed your ex, someone you’ve known for, what, at least several years, because someone you hardly know told you he raped her?”
I nod, then frown. “You wouldn’t have believed her?”
He quickly shakes his head. “Hell, it’s not that. I mean, I get it. I would do the same as you did. But I thought you virtuous types believed that people could change, that they could be saved? Obviously not my kind,” he rolls his eyes. “But your own.”
“I used to think like that,” I answer honestly, not sure when exactly my mind was changed.
“But if you, and the residents of Vulcaris, and even that crazy hound, Ravi, have taught me anything since I got here, it’s that your kind can be forgiven, or saved, however you want to think of it, as much as mine can be.
Elias though—” I pause. “He’d fallen too far, there was no point saving him. ”
“Unrepentable?”
“You’ve heard of them?” I ask, confused.
He shakes his head. “You said it when you started to clean up. Before you knew I was here.”
I did?
“What does it mean?” he asks, ringing out a blood soaked sponge into what becomes the dirty water bucket before dunking it into the clean soapy water.