7 | Silver
Ashaft of morning sunlight crosses my closed eyelids, waking me from a deep, dreamless sleep. My cheek feels vaguely mushed and my shoulder aches, which tells me I haven’t moved in all the hours since I fell asleep. Z’s still behind me, a furnace that’s wrapped around me like a huge, cuddly bear. Clearly he’s a snuggler when he’s sleeping. Something that’s surprising, and I’ll be sure to tease him about it later once he wakes up.
... although there is one part of him that’s definitely awake. His thick erection presses up against my bare ass like it’s seeking shelter.
“Ugh, can you give it a rest with the gross sex talk?”
Ember’s voice fills my head, dumping an unwelcome bucket of ice cold water on my early morning buzz.
“Do you know how much time you all spend naked, or spend thinking about each other naked or getting naked or otherwise are thinking about a bunch of soppy shit? It’s a lot. Like an abnormal amount.”
“Get. Out. Of My. Head.”
“Silver,” he drawls, dragging my name out. It’s annoying how he sounds just like the brother I know and love, and I find myself almost softening toward him.
Fuck that.
Not today. I’m still spitting mad and tempted to tear him a new one.
“What?”
“Things didn’t exactly go like they’d hoped last night.” Even in my head, he sounds exhausted, like he’s barely slept. “They were partying all night and then this morning... let’s just say the revolution has started with more of a splutter than a bang.”
I grit my teeth together, grinding them down. “Ember. I don’t care. I didn’t agree to being involved and you know it.”
“Please, Silver. You need to get back here.”
Back in the room, he locked me inside while the vamp that poisoned Fabian and wanted to make me his pet was having a jolly time downstairs.
Yeah, no thank you.
“No one outside these four walls is talking about what happened,” he continues. “It’s freaky. Anyway, the vamps are not a happy bunch. They planned last night for months and they’ve been low-key planning something for years. Decades, maybe, I dunno.”
I rub my face tiredly and let out a sigh. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we both know they’re not just going to give up. Last night was a success. Kind of. They want to go bigger, though, so that no one will ignore it and sweep everything under the rug like nothing happened.”
My stomach twists. I don’t want to imagine what else they have on their list, if the murders of fifty people and bringing to life a few dozen corpses are just the beginning.
“Do you know what they’re planning next?”
“No.” He sighs. “But, Silver, they won’t forget about you either. About what you can do.”
Fury whips through my blood like flames. “And whose fault is that?”
He sighs again, like he’s finding this entire conversation irritating. “I’ve not told them what you are.”
“How kind of you,” I practically spit the words.
“I—I think I might be in trouble.”
My stomach twists violently until I feel like I might actually throw up. Those damn words are like my call sign, my weak spot.
And he’s pressing right on it.
But I can’t forget what happened last night. What Ember allowed to happen.
“Ro nearly died last night. You know that, right?”
My sweet mage, who’s full of manic joy. The person who brings fun to everything he does, who has no qualms in feeling things deeply and letting you know exactly how much he cares.
I got damn close to losing him, without ever telling him exactly how I feel.
And for that, I can’t forget what Ember did.
“I can’t,” I tell him. “This time, you’re going to have to figure things out on your own.”
After my very unwelcome brain invasion from Ember, I build my mental walls until they’re sky high and as thick as a fortress. I’ll teach the others to do the same since we can’t trust him not to be listening in to our private moments and thoughts.
I’m restless and my mouth is dry as a desert. There’s no way I’m getting back to sleep and Z is still dead to the world, so I peel myself away from him and slip on one of his t-shirts. It hangs over my frame like a dress, falling almost to my thigh and covering the fact I’m not wearing underwear.
Slipping out of the bedroom, I gently shut the door behind me and tiptoe out into the hallway.
... immediately colliding with a wall of warm, damp flesh.
I let out a little ‘eep’ and stumble back as I stare at the wet chest in front of me, belonging to a freshly showered Fabian.
And his rock hard erection.
“Sorry,” he says, dodging out of the way. My eyes are not connected to my brain and have decided to cling to the droplets of water currently trailing down, down his chest, to the treasure trail that leads to the white towel wrapped firmly around his hips.
They lock onto the very visible bulge and I have to take a step away before I’m able to meet his eyes.
Which are flared, his pupils dilated, a slight blush at his cheeks.
“You’re at least partly to blame for that,” he tells me drily.
“The, er, collision or the state of your dick?” I’m not in control of my tongue either as the words drip off my tongue.
“Both.” He gives me a wry grin. “Partly thanks to hearing you moaning all night. Partly because I’ve apparently been fucking conditioned to get hard at the scent of shower gel.”
“Ah.”
He shakes his head ruefully. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be allowed to speak this morning. Not enough sleep, too little caffeine means I have zero filter.”
“Did you sleep at all?” I ask gently. There are dark smudges under his eyes and he looks less gray than yesterday, but not by much.
He smiles tiredly. “A couple hours. Not enough to get through today, but what can you do?” With an awkward grip on his towel, he gestures to himself with his free hand. “I’m, er, going to get dressed.”
“Clothes. Right. I’m gonna... put coffee. Get coffee on, I mean.” I’m a bumbling fool, barely able to string the words together and not in any coherent order. But Fabian’s bare chest is right there and I haven’t been so close to him in so long, I can’t tear my eyes away.
He gives an awkward nod and then shifts around me, heading inside his bedroom and shutting the door with a firm click.
That sound breaks through my stupor, and I mentally shake myself.
I’m a damn pervert.
Padding into the kitchen, I set about preparing a pot of coffee, filling the kettle with water for Fabian’s tea and digging around in the freezer until I find some bread to toast. I can’t handle anything more complicated this morning. Ro’s the cook around here and I’m far more used to blearily grabbing whatever I can find than creating the elaborate breakfasts he always puts together with a smile.
My chest hurts at the thought I could have lost that. So many little things I’ve taken for granted.
Not anymore, though.
Once I have a massive mug of coffee in front of me and a thick slice of toast slathered in butter and honey, I pull out my cell phone.
Time to check if what Ember said was true.
I’m guessing from what he said, I’m not being heralded as the savior of the city.
What I don’t expect to find, though, is... nothing.
I flick through local news sites, searching for anything about the Solstice Ball, or the zombies, or the chaos downtown. There’s nothing. Not a single mention. I then take my search broader, like that’s going to make a difference.
But when the Arcanum Herald has a story about the Spring Festival, something not happening for months, as its top news story, it becomes clear.
All records of what happened have been wiped clean. As though the night never happened.
It was just my own personal nightmare, a fever dream.
If I hadn’t already heard from Ember, I might be doubting my own grasp on reality.
I’ve been frowning down at my phone for about five minutes when Fabian strolls into the kitchen, making a beeline for the screaming kettle. Whoops.
Once he has a steaming cup of tea in front of him, he drops onto the stool beside me and jerks his head toward my phone screen.
“How bad is it?”
I shake my head, pulling apart the crusts of my toast until they’re a mangled mess and my fingers are sticky. “There’s nothing. I can’t even find anything on the Nexus fires. It’s like last night was a perfectly normal evening where nothing out of the ordinary happened.”
He hums thoughtfully, his thigh pressing against mine as he peers over my shoulder at my screen. “Interesting. I’m guessing the Archarcans paid a lot to bury the story.”
“You think?”
He snorts. “I do, because I did the same thing. That’s why there are no stories about Nexus being burnt to ashes. Can’t let the news spread or it’ll just encourage even more destruction.”
“It was that bad?”
He sighs, running a hand over his face. “Another part of the reason I didn’t sleep. I helped put out three literal fires and people seemed to have collectively lost their minds. The number of brawls I had to stop and the people I knocked out was insane.”
I eye the door like someone’s going to come pounding on it any minute.
Just because the events of last night aren”t splashed all over the papers, doesn’t mean I’m safe.
“They’re not going to come after you. Not after Ember threatened them,” Fabian says, reaching over to squeeze my hand.
“How do you mean?”
His eyebrows shoot up as his eyes dart between mine, like he’s determining everything I’m not saying from my facial expression. “He got into the minds of every person in that room last night. Threatened them with revealing their deepest, darkest secrets.” He hums again, running his thumb gently over my knuckles. “Maybe he did the same thing with the media people who were circling.”
“I don’t think so.” I shake my head and take another deep swig of coffee. “The vamps wanted everyone to see, to know what happened. They wanted the entire city to witness the Archarcans looking like useless, cowardly idiots.”
“The vamps might have,” he replies softly. “But that doesn’t mean Ember did too.”
My stomach twists and I fiddle some more with the crusts in front of me. My head and heart are an absolute mess right now. I don’t know what to think.
Fabian slides off the stool and presses a quick kiss to my cheek. The little affectionate gesture seems to be a surprise to both of us. It’s like we’re a couple that has breakfast together every morning before we head off to do our own thing. As though sitting together like this is normal. Routine.
My insides are in dangerously warm and gooey territory and I swear I’m blushing, which is ridiculous considering what he must have overhead from Z’s bedroom last night.
“I’m going to head down and see Ro and Seb and then see the damage to the district in the light of day.” He smiles, but it’s strained and it occurs to me just how little I’ve seen Fabian smile recently. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh, either.
My heart hurts for him. There always seem to be so many things weighing him down, so much responsibility.
“Want some company?” I ask.
I don’t know exactly when I decided it, but I’m not going to hide away. Not from the Archarcans, or the Bad Vamps, or from public opinion.
I decided weeks ago that Felix wasn’t going to keep me from living my life. And now he’s dead. I don’t have to worry about my glamor not being effective.
I’ve gotten to be an expert on staying under people”s radar, and I’ll take advantage of that today. I don’t want Fabian to have to shoulder his burdens alone. Not when he has me. It’s not like my feelings for him switched off when his memory of me disappeared.
And the look of surprised pleasure on his face is enough to tell me it was the right suggestion to make.
It hits me how lonely he must have been, facing all these major challenges and taking responsibility for so many people.
Today, I’m going to don my glamor and stick by his side. And if anyone wants to come at me, either to arrest me or to trick me into fighting any more unholy creatures, they can have at it.
Last night, my worst nightmare came to life. People who I’d convinced I was dead are likely to be questioning the truth of that right now. Which means if they come for me, I won’t hide away. I’ll fight back. And they might be surprised with what happens when you corner a street rat.
I might just bite.