Page 92 of Beasts of Briar
I think somehow I was being offered godhood with that weapon. Power that I didn’t dare take. Maybe I should have. ButI didn’t accept the net. I got up, ran from that cave, and didn’t look back.
Chapter Fifty-Two
BELLAMY
Iwoke up curled tight into Kairoth’s side. His shadows floated around him while he slept, but his face was visible like it had been that night in the cave. His chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. I sat up, studying his golden skin, the scars riddling his face, his strong, sharp jaw.
Not able to help myself, I reached out a finger and traced the scar above his eyebrow. He caught my hand, eyes opening.
They were a beautiful amber that reminded me of the harvest moon, halfway between golden and brown, shifting in the sunlight.
“You’ve gotten my schedule turned around,” he murmured, bringing my hand to his mouth and pressing a kiss to my palm. “I’m not supposed to be awake right now.”
“Where did you get these scars?”I traced each one.
They added to his fierceness, made him look so brutally handsome.
He sat up next to me, leaning his bare back against the black headboard. “I got them when I fought Khalasa.”
My brows scrunched together.
He sighed. “I’ve wanted to have this conversation with you ever since that night in the cave, where you revealed so much of yourself to me. You trusted me enough to tell me about your brothers, the curse.” He pushed a hand through his thick brown hair. “It made me realize that I trust you too. That I was sick of hiding things from you.” He tilted his head. “Maybe I was also a little afraid that things would change, become complicated between us once I revealed everything.”
I nodded, understanding what he meant. I’d avoided asking the hard questions for exactly that reason. I liked sitting on the terrace every night, knitting and hearing Kairoth tell stories of his time as a god. I liked telling him my own stories of my time growing up in the Wilds. When it was just us and our stories, everything felt easy. But when it came to the real reason I was here, the real reason Kairoth was allowing me to stay here? Well, that became very, very complicated.
“I don’t want things to change between us,”I signed slowly, a wry smile coming over my face.“Especially not after last night.”
He leaned down, pressing a gentle kiss to my lips that set me on fire. “Then let’s not let it,” he whispered. “We’ll be honest with each other, and then we’ll move forward.”
I let his words roll over me, realizing I trusted him enough to share everything.“I came here to kill you,”I signed.
His eyes widened.
“I was angry with you for what you did to the star court, for what you did to your own shadow court. So I got Spirit Sky’s bolt, and I came here with it to kill you.”
“Fucking fuck,” he muttered. “You’re really not holding back.” Then he paused. “Wait a minute. Did you just say...”
He didn’t have to finish that sentence. I knew what he was talking about. I nodded.“Spirit Sky’s bolt. I have it with mehere. It’s hidden in the garden. You should retrieve it. Add it to your collection.”
He sat there for a minute, mouth open, then he rubbed his jaw. “Since you’re telling me this, I’m assuming you no longer want to kill me?”
It was my turn to lean forward and kiss him. This kiss was slower, drawn out, a chance for us to taste and savor each other. When I pulled away, I hoped that was answer enough.
“You can’t kill me with the bolt anyway.” He quirked a brow. “The plan would have failed. We can’t die. The gods. That’s what I’ve spent the better part of sixty years trying to figure out. How to kill them.”
I frowned, needing to tell him this next part, the part that had been eating at me since I’d started falling for him.“I saw myself stabbing you in a vision. I stabbed you right in the heart. I thought it was with the bolt, butnow I’m wondering if it was with another weapon. I’m scared. I’m scared the vision will come to pass.”
I’d seen it at the same time I’d seen how to save my brothers. It was all jumbled together in bits and pieces and flashes. But I knew what I’d seen.
He pressed a kissed to my head. “Visions of the future aren’t always meant to be. That could’ve been one possible future if you and I hadn’t... well, if we hadn’t started getting along.” He gave me a wry smile, and I pushed him, feeling slightly better about that.
I searched his face.“Why try and kill the gods when they’re already trapped?”
“They won’t stay trapped forever. I got free. The rest of them will, too, eventually. Mortals will come to figure out where they are, they’ll find a way to get the weapons from me. It might take a hundred years or a thousand. Either way, I can’t let that happen.”
“Then what are the weapons for?”I asked.
“I want to collect them all before any other mortals find them and have a chance to free the gods. But also, I think the key to killing the gods has to do with those weapons. I just haven’t figured out how yet. Those weapons are how we originally got our powers. When we pulled them from the stone.”
