Chapter XVII #3
“You’re a foot taller than anyone else in here. And they”—she spun her glass toward a nearby gaggle of witches—“all seem relatively normal.” Vic swung the cup in his direction. “You do not.”
“Many in this world would take that as the highest compliment.”
“Of course they would. God forbid anyone in this castle behave like a normal human being.”
“People in this castle have no interest in normal human beings. I thought you realized that by now.”
“Yes, because it’s so much better to be aloof and sanctimonious all the time.”
“Look at you with the five-dollar words.”
“Big shocker: I’m literate.”
At that, Xan laughed, deep and real, with an edge that pulled at Vic’s nerves like a piano wire.
Strong and casual, as if it belonged to someone else.
A man who didn’t loom around like the prince of darkness all the time, who didn’t live in a castle and spend his days hunting monsters.
Vic wanted to stop, wanted to make him do that again, wanted to figure out what made his laugh resonate in her chest.
She swallowed.
“And what kind of name is Xan, anyway?” Vic demanded, trying to pull the conversation back onto a track that didn’t involve staring at his throat. “I’ve never met anyone named Xan.”
“It’s short for Alexandros, which is Greek.”
“And Alex was taken?”
When he laughed this time, it was harsh and humorless, and Vic had no urge to make him repeat it.
“Alex was far too common a moniker for my parents.”
Vic scoffed.
“Victoria is not such a common name either,” he pointed out.
“Sure it is. It’s one of the most common names in the country.”
“Victoria, Henry,” Xan mused. “It seems your mother had a penchant for royalty. Is your middle name Elizabeth?”
It was.
Instead of replying, Vic turned to the dance floor when a loud electronic song made a discordant shift to nineties R&B. No DJ, she noticed, just someone with a playlist. She smiled to herself and looked back at Xan.
“I thought we came over here to dance,” she said, sending him a defiant look.
“What are you in the mood for? We could two-step, we could waltz, we could grind against each other like middle schoolers. I assume they taught you everything in whatever rich witch finishing school you all popped out of.”
“I think they call that college,” Xan said with a smile.
Vic rolled her eyes and pulled her sweater over her head. It was getting hotter in here by the second, and she needed to shed a layer. She didn’t even think about the movement until she lowered her arms and caught Xan watching her chest, now half covered by a tank top.
He found her eyes a moment too late, and Vic smiled at him, feeling like a cat watching a mouse.
Oh, yeah. How had she forgotten? Xan could pretend all he wanted that he was controlled, composed, perfectly at ease in a situation that would never surprise him. But Vic had seen the desire in his eyes, and she knew at least one way to unbalance him for once.
Vic pulled away from him to approach the dance floor, looking back over her shoulder.
“Will you let me lead?” Xan asked, his voice low and dark and his eyes locked on Vic.
“If you can keep up.”
And then she was dancing. And, oh, how Vic loved dancing.
Xan was right: It was like fighting, like fucking, like any good kind of instinctive movement, and she had almost forgotten how free it felt to be in a place like this, moving her body in time with something outside of herself, surrounded by others doing the same.
Vic pulled her hands through her hair as her muscles grew loose and happy, and she didn’t even jump when a large man slid behind her.
Xan took her hands and spun her around, and Vic twirled in some combination of a more formal dance with whatever reflexive movement lived inside this music.
She laughed mid-spin, and she thought she caught a smile on the perpetually serious man watching her move through heavy-lidded eyes.
Xan pulled her back against his front, and Vic went happily.
He put one hand on her waist and held her close.
His body was hard behind her, his hips rocking hers, and she breathed heavily against the music and the heady smell of him.
His other hand came in front of her, loosely grasping her shirt above her stomach like he wanted to pull it off. In that moment, Vic would have let him.
It felt good. Felt right, like they were always supposed to end up there, two bodies twining in a crowd full of people who weren’t paying attention.
Vic led, and he didn’t try to stop her. Xan followed every movement, and Vic reveled in the touch, the heat, the fact that this man of all men was under her spell. She felt drunk on power and shitty wine.
Emboldened, she pressed her ass against him. His head fell into the crook of her neck, and Xan breathed against her, and Vic felt the brush of his beard against the sensitive bare skin. A wave of pleasure radiated out from the spot, and she shivered.
“That tickles,” Vic said, not sure if he could hear her over the music. Not sure she wanted him to stop.
Xan rubbed his jaw over the skin of her neck again, slow and deliberate, and Vic threw her head back with laughter.
When the song ended, she watched Xan out of the corner of her eye.
A smoldering cast fell over his expression, dominated by the hunger she’d seen there once before.
And then he was moving her. Fast, he pulled her across the room, away from the crowd, until he pushed Vic against the rough wall opposite the dance floor.
Vic’s chest rose and fell as she stared at him. The witches behind them were milling about, but some were definitely keeping an eye on the Chief Sentinel, who had Vic pinned.
“You need to leave,” Xan said, his voice almost a growl, and Vic knew he meant the castle, he meant forever. “You need to.”
“You don’t want me to go,” Vic replied, surprised by the breathiness of her own voice.
“Yes, I do,” Xan said, meeting her eyes. His were serious, set, and Vic knew he meant every word. “I know you think you can find a place here, but you’re wrong.”
The words fell on Vic like a bucket of ice water, and she needed to get away from him. She tried to pull back, but he held her tight.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Vic said, pulling harder against him. Between the stone wall behind her and Xan in front of her, Vic thought the wall was more likely to give way.
“Whatever you’re looking for here, I can help you. You want to find out more about your mom—I can help you. But you need to leave when you’re done. Once you’ve got closure.”
Vic thought of the locked door she couldn’t open, the window into her mother’s world she couldn’t see through.
“Meredith had an apartment in the castle,” Xan said. Not for the first time, Vic felt as though he’d read her mind. She knew of no magic that would let him do that, and the fact that he understood her so well made her skin feel itchy and unsettled.
“I know that,” Vic ground out. She got more frustrated with this man by the second. Had she really felt powerful only moments before? “I can’t get inside.”
Xan’s eyes fell from hers, and he looked as though an unpleasant thought had occurred to him. When he looked up, his gaze locked on her wrist. On the mark Vic couldn’t see. She’d forgotten it was there.
“You might try again,” Xan said. “The outcome might be different this time.”
“What are you—”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Xan said. “About the Rite and what it means. You might have had help.”
He must have still thought Max was responsible, Vic reasoned. He must think she had pulled on Max’s power somehow. Of course, if he knew that Aren was behind this, Xan would never suggest what he was suggesting.
Vic didn’t answer, but the horror she felt must have been clear on her face, because Xan’s expression softened.
“I know you think you can find something here, some purpose in all this madness. But you can’t. You’ll die trying to belong.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know a lot about you,” Xan said. “I know you learned to fight because somewhere, deep down, you knew that you were vulnerable. You knew you were born different from your brother, and you thought you could fix it by getting stronger. I know it’s killing you that all that work won’t matter in the end.
You could be the best fighter in the world, and May Lin could set you on fire in the time it took you to throw a punch. ”
His eyes, pale and icy, grew closer to Vic’s.
“I know you like it when I touch you,” he said.
“I know you’ve been wanting me to do this since the night we met,” and Xan drew close enough for his breath to fan across Vic’s face, and the skin on the back of her neck grew hot.
His eyes dropped to her lips, and he was going to kiss her.
And damn her, Vic was going to enjoy it, even when she was furious and humiliated and vibrating with the urge to flee.
Her eyes fell closed as his palm slid up the inside of her right forearm, still trapped between Xan and the wall.
His skin was rough as calloused fingertips teased the soft skin of her arm.
His palm came to rest over Vic’s, like they were holding hands, and he ran the pad of his thumb over the spot on Vic’s wrist where the mark was.
“And I know you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said, his lips brushing hers for an instant, so faint it might have been his breath.
Vic’s eyes snapped open. His face hovered an inch above hers, and Vic seethed.
“I’m going to bite you.”
“Don’t,” Xan said. He dropped her hand and it fell to Vic’s side. “I might like it.”
“Get away from me,” Vic said, and she pushed him.
He took a step back with his hands in front of his chest.
Sarah, sensing the storm, appeared behind him and asked Vic in an unconvincingly chipper voice if everything was okay.
“Xan was just leaving.”
“I was just leaving,” Xan repeated.
But when Xan turned to walk away, Vic saw a darkness had fallen over his face. Eyebrows hard over his eyes, and full lips in a tight line.
He looked miserable.