Page 10 of Darkness and Deceit
Lilith doesn’t answer. Her silence says enough… and too much. When she finally looks up, there’s no armor left between us: just fatigue so deep it swallows the sparks before they can surface. She opens her mouth as if to say more, butthen something like horror sweeps across her face—a sudden realization then dread.
“Kai,” she says urgently, voice trembling again for entirely new reasons. “Where’s Kai?”
She looks around wildly as if expecting him to materialize from stone or shadow right there beside us, which honestly isn’t far from the truth–he often does appear from nowhere. But there is only Vaughn and me.
“He fell. From the seventh floor?—”
As if she had summoned him, the shadows around us shift.
I tense before I even see him. The hallway folds, bending inward toward the dark. And then Kai is there—emerging from it like it spat him back out, bruised and bloodied but alive.
Lilith gasps and runs. No hesitation, only pure instinct. She throws herself at him like the only thing that matters is feeling him, solid and real and still breathing. Her hands grip his shirt and she buries her face against his chest.
Kai freezes for half a second. Like his body doesn’t know what to do with gentleness. Then his arms wrap around her, slow and deliberate. One hand rises, cradling the back of her head like he’s afraid she might disappear.
He holds her like she’s breakable.
Like he’s not.
Vaughn exhales beside me. Says nothing. And neither do I.
When Lilith finally pulls back, she doesn’t let go entirely. One hand stays curled in the front of Kai’s shirt like a lifeline.
“What were you thinking?” she demands. Her voice wobbles, but there’s fire beneath it. “You could’ve been killed.”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says flatly, like nearly dying is just a footnote.
“You fell, Kai.”
He shrugs. “And I landed.”
“On your face?” she mutters, brushing her fingers over a fresh scrape on his cheek.
That’s when Vaughn finally cracks. He snorts. “You know, I’ve been saying for years it’d take a seven-story drop to knock some sense into him.”
Lilith doesn’t laugh exactly, but the tension in her shoulders eases a little.
“I can’t lose you,” she whispers.
“You won’t,” Kai promises.
But I see it—the truth he doesn’t say. The weight in his eyes that knows promises don’t always matter.
Lilith leans into him again, exhausted and angry and undone. And Kai just stands there, letting her, steadying her.
I glance at Vaughn, expecting a sarcastic comment, but he’s watching them with an intensity I’ve never seen before.
There’s a promise in his eyes. He’d rip the sky open for any of us. For her, most of all.
When Lilith finally lets go, she’s steadier, chin lifted stubbornly even as her eyes burn red. The old cockiness isn’t back, but something else is. Something I recognize.
Determination.
Four
LILITH
I don’t realizehow badly I’m shaking until we’re finally alone.
