Chapter 37 #3
I said nothing. I couldn’t. My gaze slipped away, but he said firmly, “Kyrene. Look at me.”
Why did I obey? I didn’t want to. Yet my gaze crawled back to his like a flower to the sun, like an instinct—no, a need.
His stare was steadfast. So sharp it seized my heart and didn’t let go.
“What Ix said to you was a lie,” he said. “Any soul would be lucky to have a lion like you fighting for them. Anyone. A warrior, a priestess, a machinist, or a child.” The corner of his mouth slanted. “Even a vampire prince.”
My heart clenched sharply. My eyes tore away, because his stare—his blatant admiration—was unbearable for reasons I couldn’t understand.
Instead, I watched the sleeping child. His face was so young.
No one told you that vampire children looked just like humans.
Valentina was around his age, when I first met her.
She used to sleep just like that, in all kinds of bizarre positions, face smooshed up against railings or walls.
I wondered if perhaps my daughter would have, too, if she had lived. Or if I would have lost her by now.
“Make sure you tell him,” I said, voice tight. “Tell him all the time, that you love him. Because it’s the worst kind of regret to have, and once someone is gone, it doesn’t matter what you do afterward.”
“It matters,” he said. There was no hesitation—no question in it.
His gaze was strong and piercing. “And if I could see that, I know they could, too. You aren’t as cold as you think you are, lyri.
They felt it then. And wherever they may be in the underworld, they’ll feel it now, when you build a new world in their name. ”
I watched him, a lump in my throat that I couldn’t quite understand. Because right now, he was talking about a mission that had led to the deaths of millions—to the worst days of my life.
And yet—
“Careful, Septimus,” I said. “You’re talking like a hero.”
A soft smile bloomed across his lips. “Monsters recognize monsters, I suppose.”
My heart stuttered in an odd, unwelcome way. And the words were coming before I could stop them, when I murmured, “He’s lucky, too. Lucky to have you to fight for him.”
I was not prepared for the expression on Septimus’s face at that.
The briefest flash of something so startled and tender, as if I’d soothed an open wound he hadn’t even known existed.
Only now did it occur to me that perhaps it meant just as much to Septimus to hear those words as it did to me.
If he went to bed every day questioning them, just as I did.
The rawness of it was viscerally uncomfortable. I cleared my throat and said, “How long do we have until the gods are after us?”
He seemed grateful for the opening. His fingers resumed twirling Alric’s hair. “Not long. Three more gods are dead now, and I’m sure the others are rallying over it. The sooner we leave here, the better.”
Crack, as the fire consumed another log.
His gaze held mine, steady.
“So, Vindica Ultis, it seems we’re at a crossroads,” he said. “I’m no hero. And maybe the riches that I once offered you are a smaller piece of the story, now. But I would still very much enjoy it if you would help me save the world, anyway.”
I was silent. My eyes dragged over his form, lit by the flickering firelight.
I had witnessed so many different versions of him by now.
I had seen the different masks he wore, all of them befitting a calculated vampire prince.
And yet, I had also seen him bloody and injured.
I had seen him grieving and raw. I had seen him hungry and undone—hungry and undone because of me, because of my touch, my body.
All this from a man who had, at first, seemed as smooth and empty as a clean sheet of parchment, ready to embody whatever story needed to be written.
But this version of Septimus, quiet in the firelight, with one hand on his brother’s hair and the other reaching across the armrest to me—this version of him, a little tired, a little sad, a little hopeful, and a little angry . . .
Of its own volition, my hand slipped into my pocket, thumb pressing hard against the metal profile of the goddess I had slain. For some reason, I couldn’t let it go.
My chest was tight and my heart sore. Because the way Septimus was now looking at me was the way that I had seen so many others look at me. Like I was a savior.
I wanted to be the person he saw when he looked at me that way. I wanted it badly enough to try.
I thought of Zefiah’s words. Her insistence that I could not follow this path. I hated her for it, but I also understood it. Perhaps a part of me even thought she was right.
But some tender version of me thought she wasn’t, too. And the call of that little piece of my heart, vulnerable and frightened and yet braver than I had ever been, was so strong I couldn’t turn away from it.
I said, “I suppose I can do that. But only so I can hear how the romance book ends.”
“I suppose I can do that, too,” he murmured. “Just for you.”
And the smile that spread over his mouth made me think of a dawn I had not seen in a decade.