CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR #2
“No, Nef. You aren’t.” Vesper scrubbed a hand down his face and groaned.
“Look, you just lost Dimitri. I know you and him—you two were getting close. And I was happy for you. I want you to have that.” He took her face in his hands, his raw skin bright red.
“You deserve that. You deserve to be with someone good for you. Not with me. I’m not that person—I’m not even a good person.
You can’t be in love with me. You just, you can’t. ”
“Don’t tell me how to feel. I know. Dimitri gave me attention, and he was nice and sweet and a good man.
He was a good man. But that was it. He didn’t understand me or know who I am.
What I am.” She blinked up at him. “But you know me. You see me fully. Your heart is so uncommonly kind, and you make me smile like no one else. You’ve done so much for me and asked for nothing. And you’re … all I have.”
Vesper grit his teeth. “I’m not right for you. I’m not right for anyone. There’s—I have too much work to do on myself.”
“I wish you could see yourself how I see you,” she murmured. At his exasperated sigh, she said, “You don’t have to be a saviour to be good. I know how much pressure you put on yourself. I’ve seen it. You’re not your father, Vesper. You’re not your father and that’s okay.”
He tried to catch his breath. Those words were simultaneously something he needed to hear but also flared a pain inside him he didn’t know existed.
He started to say her name, but she fisted his tunic and yanked him to her. She kissed him. And because he was a weak, pathetic man who needed to feel something other than this heartbreak, needed release or pain or pleasure, whichever would come first, he kissed her back.
Nef tugged his tunic over his head. As Vesper struggled out of it, he hissed at the pull of his ribs and neck.
Not willing to let his hands wander, he kept them on her face.
He didn’t trust himself, didn’t want to push this.
But when she unbuttoned his trousers and wrapped her fingers around his aching cock, he groaned the most desperate sound he’d ever made. And he fucking hated himself for it.
He hadn’t been touched in a month. That urge he’d denied burst into a raging inferno and, damn it, he was going to burn.
She stroked him, long, slow, gaining speed and sending his head spinning.
He leaned into her hand, thrusted in time with each pump, ready to crumple to his knees for her.
Their teeth clashed and tongues were everywhere, licking her neck and her cavae as she brought him closer to release, knowing exactly how to touch him and what he liked.
But then he tasted salty tears on her lips. Vesper hissed a curse and snapped himself out of it. He yanked his trousers back on and growled in frustration for so many reasons.
He choked out, “We can’t keep doing this. This—” He shook his head and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “This isn’t good for either of us.”
Hurt flared in her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“We can’t keep trying to fix things this way. Can’t you see that this isn’t solving anything? This is—gods, it’s more of the bloody problem.”
“It’s because I’m sick, isn’t it?” she breathed, her voice trembling.
“What? Fuck no.” He fastened the button on his trousers. “Of course not. I can’t believe you would even say—”
“Because I know you thought you made me sick. And you didn’t, Ves. It was those stupid blankets Ottai got from the north. It had all traces of bloodlace on it and that’s what did it. Not you. There was no way.”
Vesper’s jaw slackened and he stared at her so bloody long he was shocked drool didn’t loll from his mouth. Sure, he’d done terrible things and absolutely should’ve never gotten involved with her, but the fact she’d kept him on the hook with his guilt felt so entirely wrong
Deadly quiet, he asked, “Did you know all along?”
Nef refused to answer and clasped her hands together. Then her gaze slid to the drawings tacked to his wall he hadn’t let anyone see. “Is it—” Her voice broke. “Is it her?” She nodded at a sketch he had assumed wasn’t obviously Kyrith. Evidently he’d been wrong.
His brows pulled together. “That’s not what this is. You know we’re not good for each other, and you don’t care about me. You only think you do. But with enough time, you’ll realize it was a mistake.” He swallowed and studied the floor. “And you’ll leave like everyone else.”
“But I’m not leaving.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re sending me away.”
“I’m not. But if you stay, I won’t touch you.” He couldn’t risk falling back into that pattern. That vice. “I can’t.”
Anger saturated her gaze. “If you won’t, Vesper, I’ll find someone else who will.”
He stepped back and gulped a breath. His lungs strained as if they would collapse. “Nef, come on, I care about you. You know that. I’ve tried … I’m trying to fix this. I’m trying to be better—”
“If you don’t want to fuck me, if you think you’re too good for me now, that’s fine. But don’t fucking lie to my face,” she spat. She grabbed his tunic off the floor before she tugged it over her head and stalked to the door.
It slammed behind her.
Vesper braced his hands on the table and squeezed his eyes shut to try and get some godsdamn sense into his brain. She just needed time to calm down. Space would be good. For both of them. He could talk to her tomorrow.
But he found himself pacing, wringing his tunic in his hands, utterly restless. Because there was only one person he wanted to talk to about this. Maybe to give him shit, to get her advice, or—
Ah, fuck.
He tugged on his tunic, sucked in a cleansing breath, and his feet carried him down the makeshift road to his only desired destination.
As his knuckles wrapped against the wooden door, he hoped she wasn’t asleep. He braced for her voice, likely to tell him to screw off, but the sound of shattering glass answered.
Vesper’s stomach sank and he knocked again. “Kyrith?” he called
When she didn’t answer, he turned the doorknob to find it thankfully unlocked.
He slowly edged it open. The few times he’d been in her cabin, there had always been at least a single light, and it was odd to find such darkness.
He called her name again, squinted into the shadows, and received silence.
With a sigh, he slipped through the door.
First, he yanked open a curtain to allow some light from outside.
His heart sank when he spotted her crumpled form on the ground. Her lantern lay beside her, the glass shattered, and matches strewn across the floor. She lay face down, her leather vest in her hand, soaked in blood.
Vesper sprinted across the room and dropped to his knees. As he gently rolled her onto her back, his shaking hands coated in crimson.
She would sock him in the jaw for this, but he lifted the fabric of her shirt to examine the wound.
Blood seeped from it with each sluggish pump of her heart.
“Fuck, fuck, fuuuckkk, I need you to wake up.” He gently shook her as panic seized his chest. “Come on, tell me I’m an asshole. Or a moron. Something. Insult me.”
Nothing lingered within reach, so he ripped off his tunic and staunched the wound’s flow with it. Her eyes flew open and a choked groan followed.
He touched her cheek softly. “I’ll get you a healer.”
“No,” she wheezed and clutched his arm. “Don’t leave. Don’t you fucking leave me like this, you dickhead.”
He almost smiled despite the horrific circumstances. “That’s better.”
But for the first time, she clung to him of all people. He swiped her hair back from her face. “I have to remove your shirt then, alright?”
She tried to sit up and failed. “No, you know what—I’m fine. You’re just trying to get me naked,” she gritted out.
He cocked a brow. “Right. Not to examine your disgusting wounds.”
They stared at each other for so long he thought she might actually drag herself from the cottage to escape, but, finally, she gave a hesitant nod.
“Okay, deep breath,” he said. “This will probably hur—”
“Fuck!” she hollered as he gingerly peeled her saturated shirt from her bloody abdomen. “You shithead.”
“I tried to warn you.” He wrenched a dagger from her belt to cut the fabric away so as to not to jostle her more. The memory of Emmery doing the same with Callias flashed through his mind.
Her hawk-handled blade cut through her tunic with ease.
His eyes flared, his breath hitched, and his world swayed around him, not from the blood loss or his aching wounds, nor the gash up her abdomen.
No, it was the fucking cavae and zvezda nestled under her collarbones.
And the black mark that swam between her breasts, the same one that lived beneath his own skin.
Shadowheart.
Because she was just like him.