Tender? Fond? Endearing?
What?
My mouth opens, and I cut that train of thought off. No good things come from digging through fragile emotions. There’s a pretty good chance what I’m feeling is gas. Just gas. Not even people gas. Probably Brahman gas. Or donkey gas. Or some mythical creature like a unicorn.
“Just so you know,” my mouth kicks in. “I’m not worried about any of that stuff.” I wave a hand to indicate him as being the stuff I’m talking about, just a little bit more aggressively than I’d meant to.
He’s in front of me again, gripping my shoulders, then marching me backward, pushing me until I’m next to the filing cabinets.
“You, stay here,” he says, but he doesn’t let me go.
“You can’t tell me where to stand, Roarke.”
He lifts an eyebrow.
“Okay, so you can,” I admit.
“My full power just pressed into you, and you stopped breathing.”
I make a ‘who cares’ gesture. “Who needs air?”
“You need air! And I almost killed you looking for your memories and telling those Sabers to cease and fall.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask, distracting us both from the escalation.
He lets out a strangled sigh before answering, “When we wish each other safety, we say ‘leave and return’. When a Saber passes into the Aeons, they ‘cease and fall’.”
“That’s a really poetic way of telling someone to die.”
He nods, but I don’t really need him to. I watched those women convulsing and turning blue on the ground. They were dying.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“If they didn’t return to Lithael, others would have been assigned to investigate.”
“I mean – did you want to watch them die?”
His hands are still on my shoulders, his thumbs digging in, and suddenly that feels confining. “My power has an underdeveloped sense of morality. Yes, I would have enjoyed seeing them die – they were standing in the way of something I wanted. I always get what I want.”
“Wow, that’s extreme,” I whisper. And as far from Roarke as I ever imagined. Killian – yes. Roarke – no.
I rub my palm across my forehead, ready to give up for today.
He shakes his head. “Not like that. It’s more complicated than that. Desires forget about logic and reasoning. If you desire chocolate, it’s very easy to eat a whole block and not care that it’s making you feel sick.”
Agreed. I still have blocks stashed in Seth’s bag. At least I hope I do; he better not have eaten them.
“But wanting chocolate is not the same as wanting people dead,” I say.
“It is to my power.”
“Can’t you outsmart your power? You’re the smartest guy I know.”
“That’s the only reason I’m still alive,” he says, a sad little smile on his face.
“You weren’t always the last Allure, were you?”
“No, I was ninety-eight when I became the last one. Lithael’s father, Lucif, just had to dangle a carrot, create a desire too strong to resist, and each one of us fell. There were five family lines when I was young. Now there’s none. Losing my mother almost killed me – the desire to forget that pain. To try and feel whole again. Alive… If I didn’t have my brothers…” He stops to swallow hard. “They kept me alive.”
And now I’ve completely forgotten what we were arguing about. Roarke’s glazed eyes, fading and losing their intense depths, suck the fight right out of me. I throw my arms around him, taking him by surprise enough that I slip through his grip without resistance. Nuzzling into the point where his shoulder becomes his chest.
A jasmine scent fills my nose, washed over by the crisp smell of aged paper so intense that I have to blink twice to be sure I haven’t fallen asleep with my face in one of these old books.
No, just Roarke. Just me and Roarke.
There’s a split second of hesitation. Almost long enough for me to consider that I’ve overstepped my boundaries and should let go of him. Then his arms are around me, and he’s holding me tight.
He buries his face in my hair, and a shudder rakes through his chest. He’s crying – or almost crying. I hold him, and he holds me, and my heart aches badly enough to want to crack open.
“What happened?” I ask, my words almost eaten by the tension in my throat.
“A lot, Kitten. A lot. Mother only trusted her advisor Muinthel, but Lucif had far too much access to her private wing. Access that let him get close enough to assassinate my father. I didn’t deal well. Mother was grief-stricken, and we were in our first year at the White Castle. We were too lost to realize that whole Seed lines were being eliminated – and I blame myself for that. Before we had our wits about us again, we were Sealed to the White Castle, and that monster murdered our mother. Kitten, the world was unraveling around me, and I became a thing of nightmares.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say, muffled by the fact that we’re still holding each other close.
“My Seed wanted satiation, but none ever came. Lover after lover, night after night. Kitten, you know that only Elites survive my power, right?”
My insides clench tight, and all I can manage is a slight nod.
“Then you know what happened to the women I took to bed.”
He’s right, I probably don’t need to hear this – but not because I don’t want to face the demons of his past. I want to face them with him, I’d even face them for him if I could, but that doesn’t ease the knot of fear in my chest.
“Your power killed them,” I manage.
“No, Kitten, I killed them.”
I shake my head against his shoulder. “No, you were stupid for not locking yourself in a cave or something until you got over it, but you didn’t end their lives. I know you. You care too much, and that’s why you break into sharp pieces when
