The Sweetest Burn

Again, his almost casual way of describing this bothered me on many levels, but I had to focus on getting out of here.

“What if I’m wrong?” My voice was soft in case I wasn’t, and supernatural ears might be close by. “What if there is no demon, and the only people in that castle are a bunch of terrified humans?”

Adrian took my right hand and slid the jacket farther up my arm. “Do you see anything?”

It was very dark, but with the residual glow from the nearby castle, I could make out enough to see that the slingshot had faded back to its normal brown color, not to mention that my arm no longer hurt. “No. Not anymore.”

He let me go, and I thought I glimpsed a small, tight smile. “Exactly. The slingshot was glowing and now it’s not. To me, that means the demon is no longer near enough to active it.”

Activate it. I glanced at my arm again. That was one way to describe what had happened. Then I looked back at Adrian. If I concentrated, his features become clearer.

“I think it, ah, activated before, when you first came back and took out Snake Hands,” I told him. “I didn’t see the glow because of my long sleeves, but I felt the same pain. Maybe the slingshot embedded itself in my arm as a sort of...demonic early-detection system?”

Adrian looked at my arm, and this time, I was sure I caught a glimpse of a smile. “Maybe. Figures Zach wouldn’t have given us a heads-up about that. He does love his surprises.”

I let out a watery laugh. “Archons, right?”

Adrian laughed, too, and a thread of hope wormed its way through my depression over this area’s future. I’d gladly take the pain that came with the tattoo’s “activation” if it was warning us that a demon was near. We needed all the help we could get when it came to fighting demons, and if we won, no other place would have to suffer this same fate.

Adrian began to rummage through his jacket pockets. After a moment, he handed me a plastic bottle and something rectangular.

“Water and a power bar,” he said, his tone turning wry. “Hardly the romantic dinner I’d planned to have with you, but the jackets only have room for necessities.”

I gratefully uncapped the bottle and took a long swallow, then paused before my next one. “Where’s yours?”

He waved a hand. “I don’t want any right now.”

I knew him well enough to recognize a deliberately vague answer, and I gave him a look that he should’ve had no trouble deciphering. “That’s not what I asked you.”

With an unintelligible mutter, he pulled out an identical water bottle. “See? Happy now?”

I waited, drumming my nails for emphasis. “And?”

This time, I made out what he said under his breath, and it was a Demonish curse word. “And what?” he finished with.

“And you don’t have any food, unlike what you tried to get me to believe,” I pointed out.

“No, I said I didn’t want any right now, with ‘any’ referring to my water. I can’t help it that you assumed I meant food, too,” he countered smoothly.

I gritted my teeth. Why couldn’t men just admit it when they were busted? “Lies of omission are still lies, Adrian.”

His look said that he disagreed, and I wanted to shake him. We were only talking about chocolate now, but if he still didn’t believe that lies of omission counted, what would he do when the stakes were higher? The same thing he’d done months ago when he’d hidden the truth of my real destiny from me? “Your chocolate is getting cold,” he added with infuriating glibness.

If we weren’t in a subzero realm with a demon possibly in the nearby castle, I would’ve given him a piece of my mind about the entire subject. But now wasn’t the time. So instead, I gave him an arch smile as I split the power bar in half. “No, our chocolate is getting cold.”

“Ivy,” he began.

“Oh, who’s assuming now?” I mocked. “You thought I wanted the whole thing, but I never said that, did I?”

Maybe my eyes were adjusting even more to the dark, because now I could see him glowering at me. “Don’t be stubborn.”

I laughed at that. “You of all people should talk.”

“There’s more in the car, I’ll get some later—”

“Then we’ll get some later,” I interrupted, quiet but firm. “If it comes to a demon fight, you’ll need your strength because you’re the only one who can take them down. My skills have improved, but minions are hard enough for me. I couldn’t win if I faced off against a demon, and we both know it.”

That sealed the deal. Adrian was trying to be chivalrous—an admittedly unfamiliar characteristic for him—but no one would know more than he about the importance of keeping himself at his lethal, fighting best.

“Fine,” he said, accepting half of the power bar.

I clicked the tip of mine with his. “Cheers.”

A smile hovered over his lips. “That’s usually reserved for drinks, so save it for one of the bottles of Cristal I intend to crack open as soon as we’re back on the bus.”

My eyes widened. “You brought champagne on a relic-hunting trip where our best hope is to end up ass-deep in demon ash?”

His smile spread into a grin. “I’d break out every kind of liquor ever invented to celebrate being ass-deep in demon ash.”

“Good point,” I said, with a little laugh. “I really need to start looking at the bright side of things.”

His expression changed, that grin fading. When he spoke, his tone had changed, too, becoming darker and more luxuriant. “I had other motives behind the champagne. One of those bottles is just for us, and we’ll open it to celebrate what will happen after I fulfill my promise to you.”

I glanced away. Once again, he’d skipped the “chance” part of my conditions and gone right for the panty-dropping expectation. Given my reaction to him this afternoon, I couldn’t really blame him for being confident, but did I really want to risk my heart again? I’d agreed to give him another chance only because I thought it was impossible. Since then, he kept talking about it as if it were a sure thing. I’d brushed it off, but now, I had to deal with the possibility that he might pull it off. And if he did...

I looked back at him, asking the questions I’d been wondering about for the past several days. “Then what? Let’s say you do prove that you won’t betray me again, and I agree to celebrate with lots of sex and champagne. Is that all you want?”

It was as close to asking him if he still loved me as I dared, but the need to know burned as much as my tattoo had before. Adrian set down his half of the broken chocolate bar, then turned to face me fully.

“For longer than you can imagine, I thought I existed only to betray and to kill.” Not even his controlled tone could mask the fierce resonance in his words. “And I loved being the weapon that would save Demetrius and the rest of the demons. They had raised me, rescued me and my mother from the Archons, or so I thought. Then I found out that my mother had been murdered by Demetrius and he’d used his shape-shifting abilities for decades to fool me into believing that she was still alive. Everything Demetrius and the other demons had told me was a lie...well, everything except for my fate as the last Judian.”

He paused, a small, bitter smile curling his mouth. “After that, I couldn’t stand to think of the future, and I couldn’t stand to remember my past. The only thing that numbed my pain and rage was fighting the demons who’d once been my people, so I resigned myself to doing that for the rest of my life. Then, months ago, that same pain and rage compelled me to spend time with the one person I most wanted to avoid. The last Davidian.”

He took my hands, twining his fingers through mine, and when he spoke again, the harsh bleakness had left his tone.

“I didn’t want to know you, like you, need you, or most of all, love you, but I did. I still do. You are my destiny, Ivy, just not how everyone predicted. Now, when I think of the future, I think of spending it with you. The past still tears at me, but I can’t change it, and if I help you find the staff, then I’ll save more people than I’ve harmed. That’s what I’m fighting for, and as you can see, it’s a hell of a lot more than just champagne and sex.”