Page 156 of Living Legend

"Fuck," Nick mumbled, shoving his sword behind his back.

"Fuck, indeed," I echoed, looking up at him.

He looked back at me with a kind of solace in his eyes that made me a little sad. He reached out and rubbed his thumb over my cheek, causing me to hiss at the sensation of his skin grazing the open gash at my cheek. It was a caring touch, a touch I would have loved hours ago, but he had named his price when it came to moments like this. For me, the price was too high. I grabbed his wrist and pulled it away, placing it back at his side.

"No more of that, alright?" I said, squaring my shoulders back.

He raised his eyebrows slightly, but then quickly lowered them in understanding. "Sure."

I looked to where Reese had wandered off to and against my better judgment, I started moving toward that direction.

"Where are you going?" I heard Nick ask from behind me. I ruffled my hair around the top, moving most of it to the other side of my head. I passed Natalia, who simply gave me a small smile but didn't say anything more than that.

"Taking a walk."

It didn't take long for me to find the blonde angel. He was settled on a large rock near the water that I remembered well enough, his bow was placed next to him. Natalia had found me at this very spot when she brought Elise and I here. The rippling water smelled refreshing, and the smell of sweet whiskey was in the air, as if the pub I had noticed on my way down here had opened its doors, flooding the sky with its finest drinks. Foxgloves grew around the trees in a multitude of colors, and Reese had taken a red stalk of the flower in his hand, pulling at the petals and flicking them into the water, watching as the delicate piece floated away from him.He was angled away from me, but I could feel his tension and his upset. I could practically taste it.

"I know you're there," he finally said after a moment or two of me standing like a fucking creep.

I walked up next to him, taking a seat on a similarly large rock diagonal from his. I had tried to come up with various ways to start a conversation on my way over here, but nothing of merit seemed to come up. The dirt under my boots was a little mushy from where the water must have lapped over it, and I pressed the tip of my shoe into the earth. The silence between us was thick and hard to break through. I had never tried to get someone to talk to me, at least not like this, where there was no real place to start and everything I wanted to say sounded stupid or unhelpful.

I heard him take in a breath, stuttering my thoughts as I waited for him to speak. He plucked another petal from the flowering plant. "You look like shit."

I scrunched up my face. "I'm sure you aren't wrong."

He clucked his tongue, taking a piece of his hair that had escaped his bun and placing it behind his ear. "I don't want to talk about my feelings, Dani, so if that's why you're here, feel free to fuck off."

"What makes you think I want to hear about your feelings? You made yourself very clear back there."

"Good. Glad someone was listening."

I rolled my eyes. "Which part are you more upset about?"

He was mid-pluck when he looked over at me, his eyebrows pulling together. "Huh?"

"Are you more upset that Nick and I had sex, or are you more upset he didn't tell you about what Lilith did to me?"

He blinked, as if this was the first time he was separating them into two different entities. "I don't know. They both kind of suck."

I chuckled. "Are you kidding me? You are actually mad that your best friend got laid."

He threw the foxglove down and placed his hands on his knees, squeezing, clenching and unclenching his fingers. "Nick can get laid whenever he wants. Fuck, I have been begging him to stick his dick in something for a really long time, I just wasn't expecting him to..."

"Fuck a demon?" I finished for him. I wasn't offended; I was actually curious.

"Ah, but no, Nicholas had to go and one up himself and fuck a halfling," Reese sarcastically spat out, finishing it with a halfhearted laugh.

"It's not like he was aware."

He waved a hand in my direction. "Doesn't really matter. He knew you were at least a demon before that and he did it anyway.Male urges and all that, right?"

I tilted my head from side to side. "Okay, fine, but you can't honestly tell me that you don't feel more upset that he completely left you out?"

"Didn't I say something aboutnotwanting to talk about my fucking feelings?"

I let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine! I'll express your feelings for you. You and Nick were each other's right-hand men, until all of this shit happened and we show up and ruin your weird little dynamic. You can live with that at first, but Nick starts wanting us to work together and you don't understand it, but you run with it because he's your best friend. Then Nick has a few lapses of judgment with me and stumbles upon some golden information and suddenly, I'm the first person he tells. Despite the fact that the information isaboutme, but I digress. Now, your friend doesn't see why you would be upset over something like this and you're over here contemplating if your friendship really meant anything to him at all." I hold my hand over my heart, really emphasizing the last line. "Did I get it right?"

He narrowed his hazel eyes at me, swallowing slowly. His throat bobbed with the movement and his chest rose and fell with his steady breathing. "Nick has always been the type to follow the rules. It's laughable that he chose now to go off book. He got veered off course by a demon...hybrid."

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