Page 27 of Creatures that Breathe

I shoot him a foul look. “You already agreed.”

“Hurry,” he orders. “Before I lose control again.”

Again? “How many times a day do you collapse?”

Not part of the plan.

“You’re rapidly breaking the record,” he mutters with gritted teeth. “Leni, please.”

Yes. Fine. Procrastination over. “It’s simple, really,” I start, absentmindedly strumming my nails down the teeth of my coat’s zipper, gaze diverted to a crushed cigarette butt on the street. “I’d like for you to uh ... take me.”

“Take you,” he echoes dryly.

Okay, Leni. You prepared for this.

Prepared in a very loose, vaguely understood this conversation would occur. Prepared as in I thought I’d be long dead before I had an audience with the spymaster of the Kingsguard and therefore didn’t need to make flashcards. And even in those amorphous theoretical situations, the circumstances were different. Less awful. The spymaster wasn’t drowning in so much blood. Hail wasn’t pummeling down. The acrid scent of melted plastic didn’t taint the air. I wasn’t craving caramel.

Despite all this, the mortification is worse than anticipated as I confess, “I need you to take my virginity.”

He stares at me like I’m insane. Like I told him a story using the end page of every Stephen King book, and it’s utterly demented, his worst yet. Shyamalan’s adapting it.

“One time,” I clarify, quickly. Desperately. “That’s it. Then I won’t just tell you who’s chasing you, I’ll deliver you a personalized dossier of every suspicious creature I see for the rest of my life.”

My words hang in the air, weightless and mocking.

I’ve puzzled the scenario a thousand times. This is the only way. “Please,” I add, because it worked for him. “Please. That’s the favor I need. You never have to see me again.”

“Never?” Icy. No steam, no warmth. His voice, his eyes, the tendon tight in his jaw. Pure ice.

“Unless you too have plans to sunbathe eternally in Majorca? Never.”

His jaw tightens even further, attention shifting to the empty street so dense with fog, we could be surrounded and not know it. His fingers twitch, as if they long to close around my neck.

“Please.” My hands shake as I wrap them over his jean clad knees, leaning close enough to taste copper.

He watches my lips, opens his mouth, meaning to say something, and then gestures dismissively. Does it again. “I didn’t kill him.”

Not a denial. Not an acceptance. “Oh,” I murmur, our foreheads almost touching. “I know. Someone checked. He’s fine.”

“Fine?”

“The Annihilator.” My turn to wave. “He’s alive.”

He doesn’t take his eyes off me, as he wets his lips, voice rough and low. “I didn’t kill the king.”

Shock slams into me. “But—”

“He was my family. I’d never hurt him,” he says it like he needs me to know it, like he can’t touch me without telling me.

If the The Plan were a ship, he’d have just punched a hole in the hull. Because if he didn’t kill the king, if he’s still loyal ... I won’t need Draven to find me. One slip of the tongue and the Blackguard will haul me into court by my hair and throw me on the marble at Draven’s feet to honor Kadmos’s last wish.

But only if I tell him why I want him, why I need this. Technically, he doesn’t need to know.

We could just ... I tip my mouth up under his.

He’s trembling. Or it’s possible that I am. I’m not sure if we really touch. We might brush lips, his tongue might wet the split on his bottom lip and accidentally tease mine. It could be only shared shallow breaths, but I can feel his pulse drumming so fast, the rain seems to slow its deluge, seems to hover, air particles expanding, slowing it.

The whole realm’s black except for the pierce of his gaze and the brilliant red spilling from the corner of his mouth, like smudged lipstick hastily left behind.

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