55. Levi
LEVI
“Touch nothing, you blasted imbecile.” Violette’s voice is an angry hiss as she leads me into her workshop after collecting Azrael’s head.
It’s a mad scientist’s dream. Double the magnitude of what she has going on in her kitchen.
There’s also some kind of strange carpentry workbench on one side of the room, which is directly where she heads.
My body hums with the adrenaline still coursing through my veins after nearly being strangled to death by a ghost or whatever the fuck that was.
Even if he was holding back.
I know all too well what it feels like to have someone truly try to kill you.
And that wasn’t it.
His hand around my throat was nothing more than restrained anger and a display of power to show me what little effort it would take for him to kill me. If the action clarified anything at all, it was that he didn’t want to kill me.
Violette snatches up the collar she gifted me from her workbench and hands it to me, glowering.
“Here. Put this on him.”
I look down at what’s left of Azrael’s neck—a stump of shredded flesh and bone. It’s gruesome enough that even I, as desensitized as I am, don’t want to look at it longer than I have to.
I give her a bored look.
“Hilarious.”
She rolls her eyes at me before turning back towards her workbench. My brows glide slowly up my forehead as I watch her fingers produce flames and she welds a silvery metal with her bare hands into what looks like...
Earrings?
The flames disappear from her hands, only to be replaced with water that she shapes into a ball floating in midair. The earrings hiss and smoke as water bubbles, boils, and then evaporates until nothing remains but a glittering pair of earrings. Two mismatched jewels dangle from them.
“What are those for?”
Violette sniffles as she turns towards me and takes Azrael’s head from my hands.
Oh, fuck.
The bastard’s head is already mostly healed.
She sets it on the workbench, frowning, her gaze settled on his wretchedly handsome face.
“They’ll suppress his magic. At least to some degree. I don’t have nearly enough palladium to suppress his magic entirely, and the jewels have soothing and healing properties. It will help with the pain, among other things…”
She cares for his pain?
“I can’t promise how well it will work, though. I’ve only ever made something like this once.”
Her gaze dips to the collar in my hand. “Go put that on his wrist.”
I can’t help but admire my female’s ingenuity, and I find myself wearing something resembling a grin.
That is, until she begins to brush Azrael’s blood-soaked hair out of his face with tender strokes.
A few tears spill directly from her eyes onto his face as she whispers something in another language. Something that I can only assume is an apology.
Now that I’ve had my vengeance, guilt creeps in, mingling with my jealousy.
There’s no denying that I didn’t want Violette to see this part of me.
Or that this is also part of why I rejected her, and everyone before her.
Because who could possibly love this?
This temper.
This ever-present hunger for violence.
Which is to say nothing of all that I lack.
When I was still on active duty, I’d been encouraged by many of my colleagues and superiors to speak with one of the operational or behavioral health psychologists assigned to our team.
I’d always declined.
No fucking way was I ever going to allow one of them to diagnose me, document any of the shit I’d have to say if I answered a single question honestly, or have anything at all about my ‘mental state’ put on record.
So here I am.
A bomb with a perpetually burning wick.
And the way Violette is caressing Azrael’s perfectly sculpted cheekbones as she continues to cry and whisper to him in words I can’t understand is definitely fueling the flame devouring it.
Violette finally guides the earrings into place—piercing each lobe with a sharp stud, making Azrael’s dark brows pinch almost imperceptibly.
The look she gives me is one of disdain.
“Better hurry.”