Page 158 of Shadowblood Souls
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m taking care of it. Nothing to worry about.”
His mouth tightens. “It’s notfine. We haven’t gotten into a fight since Engel’s house—that was days ago. If it’s still bothering you?—”
“I’ll deal with it. It isn’t your problem.”
A shadow of anguish crosses his face, so blatant I can’t miss it. He swallows audibly and then tips his head toward the room behind me.
“Can we talk—just the two of us?”
I could be a brat and point out that it’s just the two of us right now, but we both know that the other guys could walk into the hall at any moment. With those sharp ears of his, Zian might even be able to pick up on this conversation from downstairs if he tried.
If Dominic had demanded rather than asking, I’d have said no regardless of that fact. But the agony in his expression has left my gut all twisted up.
I step into the room without speaking and prop myself against the wall a few feet inside, my arms crossing over my chest.
Dominic follows cautiously. He nudges the door shut behind him and stays poised in front of it, his posture awkwardly stiff.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out in a tone much rougher than his usual measured voice. “I can’t remember if I’ve ever said it this clearly before—I should have. I’m sorry I made you feel like healing you was a problem.”
I glance at the lumps vaguely visible under the shoulders of the new trench coat Andreas picked up for him—so that when he’s only around us, he can cover up with something lighter than the parka. “It is a problem, though, isn’t it? Every time you use your power, they grow.”
“That doesn’t fucking matter. Making sure you’re okay matters a hell of a lot more.”
He pauses and swipes his hand over his face. “I messed up before. A lot. I know that, and you have no idea how sorry I am for everything. I should never have let Jake do his trick with the poison in the first place—I should have figured out that the guardians lied.Younever gave us any reason not to trust you.”
My response bubbles from my throat with a sourness that’s less pleasant than my lemonade. “You still don’t trust me.”
Dominic goes even more rigid than he was before. “What do you mean?”
I might as well spit it out now.
“You’re scared of me because of what I did at Engel’s house. I saw how you looked at me—and on the train, you were worried about me controlling that power. I’ve noticed you flinch like you think I’m suddenly going to scream at you.”
Dominic closes his eyes for a second. His jaw works. When he looks at me again, his eyes have darkened so much they make my chest ache.
“That’s not because of you either,” he says, and taps the side of his head. “I know up here that you’d never hurt me. It was just that seeing you destroying all those people like that… it reminded me of the worst parts ofmypower. It isn’t your fault. That’s my damage to deal with.”
I frown. “What do you mean? You only hurt things when you have to so that you have the energy to heal someone.”
His head droops. “No. It seems like my extra limbs added another new dimension to my original powers. The guardians forced me to test it out plenty of times.”
There’s no mistaking the bitterness in his tone. My body tenses up with instinctive defensiveness.
In so many ways, they hurt my guys. Does it ever fucking end?
“What did they do?” I ask with a vibration of the caustic energy inside me that for once I don’t even totally mind.
Dominic’s voice drops even lower than before. “I can steal the life out of things even if there’s nothing to heal. And it’s the most incredible feeling…”
His expression contorts with revulsion—at himself, nothing to do with me.
“I’ve never done it except when they insisted, when they said they’d hurt one of the other guys if I didn’t,” he adds. “But once I got started—I don’t know if I could have stopped before whatever plant or animal they wanted me to work on that time was dead.”
“Dom.” I don’t know what else to say.
In the back of my head, I can see the quiet, pensive boy who’d always dash in to help if any of us showed the slightest injury. Who used to spend a bunch of the little free time we got poring over the medical books the guardians agreed to bring him.
He always hoped he could get even better at using his talent, help even more. Instead he got saddled with a matching curse.
