Page 23 of Semi-Fallen

He held eye contact with her as he laid his hand gently over her tattoo. He wasn’t sure if her quick intake of breath was fear or nervous energy, or if she felt the same rush of heat he felt when they touched. But it didn’t matter. This had to be done.

He could only pray she wouldn’t hate him when it was all over.

“Take a deep breath,” he murmured. “Keep your eyes on me. I’ll do this as quickly as I possibly can. But if you need to scream, do it. Don’t hold back. Got it?”

She visibly gulped, but did as she was told.

“We’ll begin on three, yes?”

Another nod.

“Alright. One, two…”

And with that, before he even got to three, he hit the Enochian spell on her chest with every bit of angelic grace and power he could.

* * *

Lane thought she’d known what pain was.

She’d broken her arm when she was ten because she jumped off the roof of the Vampire Council headquarters with Haven. They’d theorized they could fly if they flapped their arms hard enough. They couldn’t. That pain had been maybe a four out of ten on the pain scale.

She’d also been singed a bit by a demon’s hellfire when she hadn’t been fast enough to get out of the blast zone once. The small, second-degree burn on her shoulder blade had been a solid six out of ten on the pain scale.

Getting her new tattoo hadn’t exactly been pleasant, either. But it had barely rated above a three on the pain scale.

Whatever it was that Lucien was doing to her now?

Forty. Maybe fifty.

It felt like he was peeling her skin off, layer by layer, with the dull edge of a rusty spoon. All of her skin, all at once.

The light from the energy he was pouring into her flesh was blinding and white hot. It was like he was trying to liquefy her bones.

But the worst part? She was frozen. Her muscles had seized up and refused to do anything. All she could do was hang stiffly in Lucien’s grasp while he burned her alive.

She wanted to scream. Her mouth even opened to do so. But she couldn’t seem to do that, either. Her instinctual need to stay silent, something that had been drilled into her head for as long as she could remember, kept her from unleashing her pain on Lucien.

He looked like he was in pain, too. Sweat beaded on his brow, and he was clenching his jaw so tight she thought it might break under the stress. And he was mumbling something over and over again. Something she couldn’t quite read on his lips. Was it…I’m sorry?

Then he said something she understood down to the depths of her soul.

“Scream, damn it. Do it. Let it out!”

It would’ve felt like an order if she hadn’t seen the look in his eyes when he said it, felt the rumbly rasp of the words in her chest. He was pleading with her. Begging her to unleash her pain. To let him take some of it on for her.

It was his desperation to ease her suffering that broke her. She let the scream she’d been swallowing claw its way out of her throat. And for the first time in her memory, she didn’t hold back.

She screamed until her throat was as raw as her burning skin. Until the ground beneath their feet quaked and the palm trees bent in half like they’d been caught in a hurricane. Until she thought the earth would split in two under the force of her power.

And Lucien took it all, his grip on her never faltering.

It didn’t escape her attention that in this moment, in the worst pain she’d ever experienced, that she’d never been more… herself than she was with Lucien.

From the time she was adopted, she’d been loved. Cherished, even. She’d had every advantage, known true happiness. But she’d always been different. Set apart, even when she was amongst magical misfits. She’d always had to hold pieces of herself back. Pieces that could hurt-or even kill—those around her.

She didn’t have to hold back with Lucien. It was so freeing.

That was why she pressed her mouth to his. That’s why she kissed him like her life depended on it. And honestly? She wasn’t so sure it didn’t.

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