“Elijah?”
His expression twisted and he grabbed me around the throat. “If you tell them about me, I’ll kill you myself.”
It was then that I realised there were two halves of him. One light and one dark, both in constant struggle to dominate. It’d only been a few hours since he’d busted me out of that cage, but I had already noted the times when he’d been gentle, and those times when his mood seemed to have snapped a complete one-eighty to arseholeville.
Now I understood why he’d sought me out. Elijah thought I’d been through the same thing and conquered it.
But I hadn’t…
There hadn’t been one second that I’d been able to switch between two different sides of myself. The mutation had been in control, only allowing me to come out when it wanted to remain hidden—there was never a choice. In the end, it was only Scarlett who’d been able to stop it from taking over entirely.
I gasped as his fingers bit into my skin. “Elijah. Stop.”
“What that Balan did in the cave will pale compared to what I do to you.”
My vision began to explode with black spots, and I pushed a burst of Light through my body into Elijah’s hands.
He grunted as my power zapped him, the air cracking as if he’d brushed up against a live electrical wire. His grasp loosened and he fell to his knees, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
I sat up, the blanket falling away. “Elijah?”
“Can you see now?” he whispered.
I nodded. “I can see.”
The Dark wanted to make me turn again and use the remnants of my mutation for unknown ends. Elijah simply wanted my help and had bound himself to me to make sure I’d follow through. His allegiance to either side was muddy at best, but I was stuck with him until he decided to let me go.
Whatever I chose next—or was forced to do—would put me in a precarious position with Wilder and the Regula.
“You’ve put me in an impossible position,” I said, kneeling in front of Elijah.
My heart thrummed a wild rhythm. I remembered how easily he crushed the skull of that demon back in the cave and swallowed hard. There was nothing to stop him from doing the same to me, but something unspoken said I could trust him. Well, at least as far as not killing me went.
“I still remember what it was like…” he whispered, lost in some memory, “before they took me.”
I reached out and took his hand, unafraid. When our skin met, an image flashed in my mind, transported by Elijah’s link.
A wild, overgrown forest. A ring of standing stones. Smoke from a campfire. Bare feet dangling in a stream. The rest was blood.
I wasn’t sure he meant for me to see it, but I did. How much had he lost at the hands of the Dark? What had they made him do?
“Wait…” I drew my hand away. “How long have you been like this?”
His lips curved into a grimace. “A while.”
* * *
Elijah wouldn’t tell me any more. After he’d composed himself, he was back to being a complete smart arse, but at least I knew the deal between us.
There were gaping holes in his story and a whole heap of unanswered questions, but it was a start.
I slept through the last hours of the night, and when the sun rose, I dragged myself into the shower. Despite knowing the Balan’s visions were bogus, I checked my reflection. My face was fine.
Elijah was waiting for me when I emerged in a waft of steam. My clothes were still caked in mud and Light knew what else, but at least the stench had lessened.
His feet were kicked up onto the dining table and the chair leaned back precariously on two legs. The worlds ‘effortless arsehole’ came to mind.
In the daylight, he looked totally different. He still had his menacing disposition, but it was as if I was looking at him for the first time. His eyes still kept their silver sheen, but beyond the veil, they were a steely blue, almost like a stormy tropical ocean.
In that moment, I was agonisingly aware that at his core, Elijah was a man—the feeling was unsettling and totally foreign.
“We can wait until you’re fully healed or we can go now,” he said, unaware of the internal dilemma going on inside me. “It’s your choice, but I thought you’d want to keep your demonic, whatever that thing is, a secret.”
He was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. I didn’t want anyone to know I might still harbour a mutation after the things I’d done.
“I’m feeling much better,” I said. “It’ll take me a few hours to get back to Camelot, so I suspect the last few bruises will be gone by then.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You?”
I stared at him and shrugged. “I know how to drive a car.”
“That’s nice, but I’m taking you,” he stated. “I have to make sure you get there in one piece.”
I rolled my eyes. “And here I thought you just longed for my company.” He tugged on the invisible link between us and I coughed. “That’s going to wear real thin, real fast.”
“I thought you might want to go,” he declared, kicking his boots off the table. “While you were shaving your legs, the neighbour was nice enough to loan us his car.” He took out a set of keys from his jacket pocket and began to twirl them around his finger.
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “And by loan, you mean stole?”
“You Naturals manipulate things out of humans all the time. Don’t think I don’t know all your tricks.”
“Can Darkness do that?” I wondered. Demons could influence humans, but only subtly. When they wanted more direct control, that’s where possession came into play. Elijah couldn’t possess anyone, but he had Darkness at his disposal
