Rapture's Edge

“You kept sending her back, every chance you could, too, didn’t you? Pieces of fruit and cheese, bread, candy.”

“You wouldn’t eat any of it. I had to keep trying until I found something you liked.”

He turned to her, staring down at her with all the intensity from before still burning in his eyes. “I liked all of it. I couldn’t eat it because I was on duty, but I liked all of it. You were the only person in that room of thousands who gave a damn about me, the one person with the least reason to. You were kind to me. You noticed me. You looked at me, when everyone else went to great lengths to avoid doing that. Everyone else was terrified of me, and yet you never were. You smiled at me whenever we passed. You said hello.” His voice dropped. “You said my name. Said it like you liked it…like you liked me. That was the beginning for me. Just like that apple, you were this perfect, delicious thing I hungered for with every cell in my body, but was forbidden to eat.”

“Stop,” she whispered, frozen in place. “Please. Stop.”

They stood like that, not moving, a foot apart, his gaze searing, hers trained on some spot in the distance because she couldn’t bear to look at him.

Finally, around the lump in her throat, she said, “You brought it?”

From the corner of her eye she saw him nod. She held out her hand. He placed the paper-wrapped bundle in it, and she closed her fingers around it, hard. “I’m leaving now.”

“If—afterward—I’ll be at the same place I brought you after the police station. The safe house. You remember where it is?”

She glanced at him, her eyes as freezing as the wind. “I won’t come. Don’t wait.”

He said nothing, just looked at her. She slowly backed away, clutching the parcel to her chest. “I won’t come,” she said again, but he didn’t even nod.

Eliana turned and fled.

23 Yes

D did wait, though. His heart gave him no other choice.

He managed to convince Celian and Lix and Constantine that it was best if they left the safe house and returned to Rome. She’d mistake their presence if she did show up, and leaving the Roman colony unprotected for longer than absolutely necessary at a time like this was unthinkable. Celian had brought the journal and gotten him the few days’ reprieve from the confederate colonies that he’d petitioned for, and all he had left to do was see if she would come to him. In only a few hours, his reprieve would expire.

If Eliana didn’t come, he would turn himself in to the Council and let Fate have its way with him. If she didn’t come, nothing mattered anyway. Let them do their worst.

In the meantime, he’d have to find some other way to convince them she was innocent of her father’s treachery. Because he knew she was. He knew it to the marrow of his bones.

He was pondering that, lying on the couch in the dark subterranean living room of the safe house with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, when he heard a noise.

The sound of knocking, angry and loud.

Two stories above, in the furnished and unused house that hid three levels of secrets below, someone was pounding on the front door.

With his heart in his throat, he leapt to his feet, took the stairs four at a time, and ran, literally flat-out ran to the door. He didn’t even bother looking through the peephole to see who was there—he didn’t need to. Now he smelled her, he felt her, and his blood scorched through his veins like liquid fire.

He threw the door open, and a shock of cold night air, sucked in from outside, hit him in the face.

Then a fist hit him in the face.

“You knew!” Eliana shrieked, loud as a banshee. “You knew and you never told me! How could you not tell me?”

She’d caught him square in the jaw with the punch. It snapped his head around but didn’t budge him, but now she gave him a shove with both hands on his chest that actually set him back on his heels. He stepped back to regain his balance, and she was on him before he could, another fist in his face, wild swinging punches that were all fury and no control, snarling like a lion sprung from a cage.

He spun away and managed to kick the front door shut before she was on him again, pummeling him, cursing him. He thought she might actually cause more damage to herself than to him, so he grabbed both her wrists and pinned them behind her back.

“Settle!” he growled, having to use a surprising amount of his strength to keep her contained as she twisted and fought him. He pulled her up hard against his body and said it again, into her ear. After a second, she did settle, though her breathing remained wild, her heartbeat loud enough for him to hear in the silence of the room. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

“You knew,” she panted, halfway between a whisper and a sob. “You knew all along what he was really like, and I…I…God, I was so blind. I was so stupid!”

He let go of her wrists and crushed her to him. Her body shook against his. “You weren’t stupid. He didn’t let you see. He controlled all of us. There was no way you could have known—”

“But you did!” Her voice rose to a near-hysterical pitch. “And you didn’t tell me! I went around in ignorance for my entire life, and you knew he was a monster, and I’ll never forgive you for that, never, never, never!”

She broke away from him and began stalking around the room, wild-eyed and enraged. She tore a picture from the wall and threw it with a scream across the living room. A lamp met her wrath next, destroyed in an explosion of flying ceramic and splintered wood as it was slammed against a desk.

“Everything was lies! My entire life—lies!”

She was beyond herself, beyond rational thought, beautiful and violent like an avenging angel, a whirlwind of destruction. D watched her tear through the room with a calm that didn’t match the circumstances, because he knew on some basic level that this was exactly what she needed at this moment. She needed to get it out. All that rage and betrayal and pain needed to come out.

He’d fix the house later.

She swung around and faced him, breathing raggedly, fixing her livid black gaze for the first time on his face. “Did you kill him?”

His answer was swift and emphatic. “No.”

She took a step closer, eyes unblinking. “Did you and the others plan to take over the colony?”

“No.”

Her lips twisted. She took another step closer. “Did you make fun of me, behind my back? Knowing what a fool I was?”

He took a step toward her, and his voice grew dark. “No, Eliana. No.”

“How can I believe you? How can I believe anything? I can’t trust anyone—I can’t even trust myself. I can’t trust my own judgment!”

She was distraught, working herself up again, her voice rising where only moments before it had fallen. He closed the distance between them, took her roughly by the arms, gazed deep into her eyes, and said, “You can trust this.”

And he kissed her.

She didn’t fight him as he expected. She melted against him with a low sound in her throat and her mouth soft and warm against his. Her arms came up around his neck, and his arms wound around her body, and they stood there like that, tasting each other, fused together in the darkness of the ruined living room, wreckage all around them. It went on and on until his breath was short and his body was hot and inflamed. His fingers dug into her hips, her waist, her bottom. Beneath the cold leather she wore, her flesh was soft and yielding, and imagining it beneath his fingers, beneath his tongue, made him moan into her mouth and kiss her even harder.