Page 8 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
I blinked away the exhaustion, the alarmed protests from my body.
I hadn’t realized Kylo’s hand had slipped down from my wrist to intertwine his fingers with mine.
“I’m going to remove these needles now,” I said.
Kylo nodded, his brows drawn tight. “I’ll help you.” Something in him had crumbled.
“Kylo,” Harmony said, with that same tinge of horror in her voice from when she’d called Idris a kid. “Youcan’t. You can’t do this.”
I removed one needle from my arm, and Kylo removed the second one, his touch gentle.
He didn’t look like himself. His eyes were endless wells, seeing too much of me as they always did.
The way he stared at me wasn’t possessive, angry, or cold. He shone with a quiet, all-consuming intensity that burrowed into my chest against my will.
He was terrified.
Blade and Harmony stared at their leader, waiting for him to speak. The room was silent for three long beats.
“I need Evie to live,” was all Kylo said.
The sound of his voice cracking melted my desperate anger, my readiness to destroy anyone who stood between me and Idris.
I reabsorbed my shadows.
Kylo sank to his knees. “I need you to live, angel.”
Harmony and Bladeprotested Kylo’s decision, regardless of his leadership position. Harmony pleaded with me not to do this to Idris, not to do this to myself. Blade ran through a list of possibilities that could go wrong.
What if I killed myself trying?
At this, a tremor had rolled through Kylo—his hold on my hand tightening.
What if it didn’t work? What if I traumatized myself all over again?
To that I said,so what.I was already traumatized.
I held onto Kylo’s arm as we walked to the morgue. Not because I’d forgiven him or had simply moved on from his betrayal—but because his authority and power were helping me save my brother. Without him, this all would be far more difficult and messy for me.
That, and also I was still woozy and needed him to keep me balanced and upright.
“What if he’s not himself when he comes back?” Blade asked from behind us, refusing to let us go so easily. “His skull was fractured, and his soul is already with Helia. This isn’t how?—”
“He didn’t choose this!” Harmony exclaimed.
I stopped walking and turned.
The chandelier above us exploded. Kylo shielded all of us from the spray of glass with his shadows.
After the dust had settled, I straightened.
I faced down Blade and Harmony. “He wasn’t supposed to die.”My voice was venomous, a charge of power that rattled the walls.
When my shadows leaked again, Kylo stroked my hair, soothing me beyond my conscious control.
“Thisis what is supposed to happen. This is what’s going to give everything meaning. Can’t you see that?” I sounded deranged to them—I could see it in their faces—but I couldn’t stop. “Hekate, The Tower card, Princeton, my shadows and my past and all of my trauma, bringing fractured parts of myself back to wholeness, climbing my way back up from death, the orchid in the flower shop telling me tobloom…” I made an exasperated sound and looked at Kylo. “Doyouunderstand?”
I wish I could say I didn’t know why I asked Kylo this question, why I needed him to see and understand me. But of course I knew why. My wounded inner child certainly did too.
