Page 251 of Caelum

“Even though you don’t like that you called me it?” she countered.

Damn, she was too astute for her own good sometimes. Using the need to grab tea as an excuse, I turned my back on her. “It’s all good.”

“Is it?” she pressed softly. “I’m not sure if it is. Ever since Avalina’s translation, you’ve been freaked about going home.”

I couldn’t lie, because I was.

Seven wishes to destroy the Screamer,

Solomon’s ring to lure Drekavac to you,

Bucegi where he sleeps.

Without even thinking about the translation Bartlett and Avalina had given us, the words came to me.

Bucegi. The mountains I’d seen every day through my orphanage window.

It was hard to believe that Eve’s markings were taking me to a place I could never consider home, and yet,was.

“I’ve tried to dissociate myself from the place,” I admitted, grabbing thecanister of tea Eve had bought from the pretty store she didn’t realize was super expensive.

Maybe it was anti-climactic to go grocery shopping after hearing the Creation story from the first of the firsts’ perspective, but we ate a shit ton. Anyway, the memory of watching her in the food store at Harrods was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. Samuel had told her to grab whatever she wanted, so she had.

To the tune of six hundred pounds.

Of course, Frazer could afford it, but it was amusing nonetheless.

Eve was literal to a fault.

Sam had muttered that he’d take her to Aldinext time, even though I knew he’d gotten a kick out of her in that place too. She’d also bought a lot of clothes from there, and that was an expense I could get behind.

She wasn’t wearing one of our shirts for bed now, but a pretty, slinky dress that felt good against my chest when she’d curled into me. The light rose suited her creamy skin and made her hair appear all the darker for it.

Eve hummed as she watched me spoon out the loose leaf into the teapot. “Is there anything you want me to see when we’re there?”

I snorted. “The ‘exit’ sign?”

“You can’t hate all of it,” she countered, her tone mulish.

“I do.” I shuddered. “I was nothing there, and I made myself something. That’s all that matters.”

“If it’s all that matters, then why are you letting it get to you?”

Shit. I hated that she was right on that score.

But forgetting was hard. The abuse, the time I’d lived without food or shelter, where I’d had to…

Fuck. I hated thinking about that time. I almost preferred the abuse to what I’d had to do to survive on the streets.

Everyone sold themselves out there. It was normal. We held out as long as we could, then one day, when your belly was beyond empty and you thought you’d die if you didn’t eat something…

I shuddered.

In contrast, Eve was clean, and I was tarnished. Dirty.

When the kettle whistled, I huffed, poured water into the pot, then grabbed a set of empty mugs by the handles so I could carry two at a time. With the teapot in the other hand, I hustled away from the kitchen and over to the sofa.

Setting the stuff down on the coffee table, I turned and watched, seeing her switch off the kitchen light as she walked toward me like sin incarnate.

---