Page 78 of Inflamed By an Incubus

Again, he didn’t sound sure.

When his gaze locked with hers, she shrugged.

“Don’t look at me. I’ve never read anything on the unseelie. I don’t think Archangel knew what they had.” She pictured the male. Nothing about him had stood out. He had looked like just another fae—resembling a human. “If they had known, they wouldn’t have been holding him in a regular cell.”

And for some reason, her stomach squirmed as she said that and the knot in it became one made of snakes that writhed and made her feel sick.

She cast her gaze down at her boots and drew in an unsteady breath, trying to calm her mind again and ignore the guilt that wracked her as she thought about Fenix in the cells, about all the ones she had put there. Looking back, she couldn’t find a good reason for detaining most of them. At least seventy percent of them had been like Fenix—reacting to the presence of Archangel. Was that a good enough reason to capture and contain them? To experiment on them? Torture them?

If she were an immortal, as Fenix insisted, and was in a fae town or a club or anywhere and Archangel showed up, how would she react? Deep in her heart, she knew she would feel threatened by the presence of hunters, would go on the defensive and jump to the conclusion that they were there to capture and harm her. How many of the immortals Archangel captured were only reacting to their presence like that, feeling threatened and as if they were in danger?

With good reason.

Archangel had been treading a darker path recently, one she had witnessed with her own eyes. She looked at Fenix. One he had witnessed too. He had been there in Hell. He had followed her to the forward operating base Archangel had set up there and that meant he had seen the things she had.

“Your feelings shifted course. What are you thinking?” Fenix’s deep voice curled around her, soothing her, and she didn’t fight it this time—she savoured it and the effect he had on her.

“Nothing.” She glanced at him and the look he gave her called her a liar.

“If you’re questioning your life choices—”

“I’m not.” She was.

She was questioning them in a big way.

Archer had saved her from non-humans according to what he had told her and had convinced her to join the fight at Archangel, but now everything looked different, as if a cold light was shining upon it. She couldn’t trust that Archer had been telling her the truth. According to Fenix, she was cursed. They both were. If she fell for him, she died and was reborn, and her memories were taken from her.

She forgot everything.

Which was exactly how she had been when Archer had found her and had told her he had saved her from non-humans who had stolen her memories.

The thought that he had lied to her hurt, cut her soul-deep and had her staring off into the distance again, swimming in the pain that filled her. The thought that he had done it to manipulate her into working for Archangel with him, that he’d had a plan for her that Fenix had stopped him from putting into action, made her want to just give up.

And at the same time made her burn with the fire of a thousand suns.

“Evelyn,” Fenix murmured, his tone gentle, soothing. It reached out to her, wrapped her in a cocoon that had her rage falling away again. “You’re hurting.”

She nodded, because there was little point in denying it, not when he could apparently sense her emotions. An incubus trait? Or because they were bound? She was beginning to think it was the latter. She was beginning to believe him.

“Archangel are dangerous, Evelyn. You know it in your heart. You can’t go back there.”

She didn’t want to go back. She didn’t want to stay here either.

Another lie.

She looked at Fenix again, an ache forming in her breast, one she could name. She didn’t want to leave him. Her mind didn’t remember him, but her body did.

Or was it her soul?

Some part of her knew him, a deep and powerful part of her that urged her to trust him, to believe the things he told her and have faith in him.

She had trusted Archer and look where that had gotten her. So she wouldn’t be trusting Fenix. She wouldn’t trust anyone. Whatever was happening to her, she could only rely on herself to get her through it.

Fenix twisted the gold band on his left hand around his index finger, drawing her gaze to it as his expression shifted.

“Pretty soon, Rosalind and Vail, and Hartt, are going to come back, and they’re going to want to know a few things. Archangel are up to something involving a sorceress called Aryanna and from what I saw in Hell… What Archangel are doing with the fae and mapping the portals… I need to know what’s going on, Evelyn. I need answers.” His handsome face was sober as he stared at her, no trace of gold or blue in his irises. His eyes were hard and flat, his lips an unyielding line as he waited for her to speak.

To betray Archangel.

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