Page 97 of Inflamed By an Incubus

Before she could answer him and tell him that she was sorry, that she hadn’t asked him to do that for her but that she appreciated the pain he had put himself through for her sake, and that she wanted to help him now, he levelled a black look on Fenix.

“And you,” he snarled, flashing his teeth as he sneered at the incubus. “You could thank me too. That little curse on her didn’t trigger because of me.”

She gasped as it hit her that she had been right. She had fallen for Fenix and that was why she had been killed in the Fifth Realm. Only Archer had moved heaven and hell to bring her back, stopping her from being reborn.

He turned on the woman in the sphere again and barked, “Some good you are too. You couldn’t even tell me where you were! Years. Years I’ve spent with you in my damned head and I want you out of it. Do you understand? I want you to leave me the fuck alone, so just tell me how the hell to get you out of this prison of your own damned construction!”

With every harsh word he tossed at the sphere, the ground beneath her shook a little harder, the air growing a little thicker and harder to breathe, and the vibrations grew stronger, until she felt as if they were going to rattle something loose inside her.

Or kill her.

“Archer,” she whispered, as calmly as she could manage, trying to lure him back from whatever dark place he was heading as she struggled to make sense of what was happening.

His gaze whipped to her and his shoulders instantly sagged, his breath leaving him on a long and weary sigh. He pushed his glasses up his nose and his fingers tensed as his jaw flexed and he glared at the sphere again.

“Is she talking to you?” she murmured softly.

He slid her another black look. “Always. Telling me to help her. Wanting me to find her. Plaguing me… Yes, plaguing. It’s what you do. Constantly pushing into my fucking head!”

He hurled those last words at the sphere with so much contempt that she felt as if she was looking at an entirely different person. She couldn’t imagine what he had been through, what it would be like to have someone sharing your head all hours of the day, pestering you to do something but not helping you do it.

“Archer… there’s something wrong with you. We were friends… are friends… let me help you.” She held a hand out to him and tried to ignore the way it was shaking as his gaze slowly slid back to her and darkness bled from his irises into the white of his eyes.

Behind her Fenix muttered, “Friends?”

He huffed and she wanted to glare at him, because she knew it sounded strange to him, and part of her felt she should view Archer as the enemy, but she couldn’t just throw away all the years they had worked together and how close they had been. They had been friends. The best of friends, she had thought.

But he had been using her.

She was deeply aware that he’d had a plan for her, a reason for helping her and doing everything he had done, but she still foolishly clung to the thought that he had changed and that he had wanted to confess everything to her the night Rosalind had hit him with the spell and revealed what he was.

“You’re sick, Archer.” She stretched her hand towards him and willed him to show her that she wasn’t wrong about him.

He regretted the things he had done. He thought of her as a friend too. She needed him to show her both of those things. She needed him to show her that the only reason he had kept things secret from her, had manipulated her, was because he thought she could help him with his problem but had feared telling her about it.

She had embraced life as a hunter after all.

There was a chance that if he had revealed what he was to her, that she might have thrown him in the cells.

Not only that, but he hadn’t known where to find the sorceress. Maybe he had been holding on until the day he knew where Aryanna was before turning to Evelyn for help. She wasn’t sure how she could help him, but she wanted to do it. She wanted to free him of the sorceress.

“I don’t know what’s happening to you, but I want to help you.” She didn’t like how the swirling black that had been seeping back into his irises gained ground against the white again as she said that or how the air seemed to chill around her as the flagstones trembled beneath her boots.

“You can’t help him,” Fenix hissed, voicing the feeling growing deep inside her.

Her brow furrowed as she stared at Archer. She couldn’t just give up on him. He needed help. The sorceress was somehow communicating with him, which made a lot of things over the years make sense at last. All the times Archer had looked crazed, as if he was about to go off the rails, or had abruptly excused himself and forced her to leave him alone. He had been struggling against this witch as she tormented him.

“We can help you, Archer.” Her heart went out to him when the darkness in his eyes disappeared and he cast her a pained look, the same wounded one he had given her before he had teleported away from her in the park. “Just tell me what’s wrong. Talk to me. Let me help you. I want to help you.”

His eyes suddenly narrowed on her, darkness washing across his features as they twisted into a vicious smile and his eyes went all-black. “You can help me.”

She swallowed hard as he advanced on her, his fingers flexing at his sides, his expression pure malevolence that had her instincts screaming at her to teleport before it was too late.

“I’m sorry, Evelyn. If it could be any other way…” He lifted his hands and tiny globes of black and crimson light chased around them.

He hurled his hands forwards and the orbs shot towards her.

No, not towards her.

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