Page 60 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
ChristI just can’t do it. I feel like I’ve been poisoned by memory and imagination. It’s like a film that coats everything you see, that terrible moment when fears you never even knew you had suddenly unspool before you. Terror that makes your stomach twist until you feel the sickness climb your throat. Your mind throws images at you of what could have been. You see yourself in the warmth of the summer sun, cradling your dream in your arms, and then you watch them rip it away.
I can only shake my head. My gaze drifts into the dark recesses of the room. Ashen lets out a long, shuddering breath. He bends his head. Wings of smoke unfurl to become curtains of sparks and shadow, a beautiful shroud that curls around us. They ripple like a funeral veil drifting in the wind. It’s sorrowful. Haunting.
“I’m sorry, Lu. I hadn’t realized until this moment it could be a possibility, not until I kissed your flesh and remembered your words. All the timing suddenly lined up and came together in a terrible nightmare, as though what you endured was not already more than anyone should ever bear.”
Ashen drags a hand through his hair. His shoulders fall. For the first time, he looks like a man I could break. But I can see he’s already as shattered as me. For as many times lately as I’ve wished I could crush him into dust, I find I don’t want to. I don’t want to fix him either. I just want to exist with someone that knows what this feels like.
Ashen takes one of my hands, turning it over in his palm to trace the lines with his thumb. “What you’re going through… I endured a similar loss once, long ago.”
“You had a child?”
There’s a long beat of silence as the thick smoke drifts around us, heavy as a blanket. “Almost.”
The bones of my chest feel like they’ve caved in. There’s bitterness and sorrow and guilt in the air between us, but a kind of shared grief that ties us together. “I’m so sorry, Ashen. So very sorry.”
Some of those layers of time that accumulate like thick sediment in Ashen’s eyes seem scraped away when he looks at me. And not just at me, butintome, right into my soul like he can see its shape and color. His grip tightens around my hand. “I know I have not given you reason to trust in my promises, my Lu. But I swear to you,I swear, I will do everything in my power to give you your vengeance. If you want to burn every realm, I will hand you the match and stand with you until the last cinders fall. I will pay for this promise with my life if I have to.”
I try to smile but it doesn’t feel quite right in my skin. “That’s kind of a genius plan. If I kill off all the realms, you’ll be the only one left to love.”
“It does have some upsides, as long as you spare me.”
There’s a long and silent moment before we pull one another into an embrace. My body drinks in his warmth. His anger cools beneath my skin. I watch over Ashen’s shoulder as I trail my fingers through the smoke billowing from his back. Glittering sparks follow my hand and Ashen holds me tighter, as though there’s some relief in the touch. “Take us away,” I whisper as his fingertips follow the ridges of my spine. “Make us forget. Close out the rest of the world until there’s no past and future, just us in this room. Just for one night.”
We sway gently, two trees whose trunks have twined together in decades of weathered storms. “All right, my vampire,” he says. When the moment seems ready, Ashen raises us both from our knees. His wings still curl around us in a thick black fog, as though the realms have long disappeared and we stand in our own dimension. “But I cannot promise that one night will be enough.”
And when Ashen sweeps me up in his arms and I twine my legs across his back, the gentle spray of sparks raining down my skin, I know he’s right. One night won’t be enough. When he lays me on the bed and kisses and strokes every inch of my body, whispering adorations in ancient languages, I know a week trapped in this room wouldn’t be enough. When he drags my panties down my legs and kisses his way back to my core to feast on me, and the world and time drifts away as I come apart, I know that a year trapped here would be far too little. And when he pushes into me, looking into my eyes with unguarded warmth as my body welcomes his inside, I know what he’s already figured out. There will never be enough time without the world.
CHAPTER24
It's still dark when I wake up and reach for Ashen, but his place is empty in the bed. I hear his heartbeat in the room, though. I smell his skin, his warm ink. But something else too. Another heartbeat, the scent of another man. And blood.
I push my hair from my face and sit up as I turn on the bedside lamp, my gaze colliding with the terrified eyes of a human.
Alberto.
“What thefuck?”
I clutch the sheets to my naked body as Ashen drops the man on the floor. Alberto’s form crumples as though already lifeless, but he whimpers when his head hits the rug. Ashen’s dagger is lodged into the back of his neck with expert precision. Alberto is conscious, but completely paralyzed.
“What the… what are you, a fucking cat bringing home birds now?”
Ashen lifts a shoulder. “I thought you’d be hungry.”
“So you went and got me takeout?.. And severed his spinal cord?..”
Ashen looks down at the crying man with about as much interest as if he were looking at a bug or a rock. “You said once that things got messy when you didn’t sing. I just thought I would make it a little… cleaner for you.”
“How the hell did you even find him?”
“I took Urtur. He was happy to oblige. The jackal has a fondness for you, it seems.”
My heart swells in my chest as I watch Ashen stare down at Alberto. No one has brought me a meal like this before. Not when I was with other vampires, not even in the days when I was first with my sisters on Anthemoessa, unsure of what I was or how to feed. Even Ediye, she brought me bowls and jugs of blood to nurse me back to health. She didn’t haul in actual douchebags. In so many centuries, no one has ever brought me prey the way that Ashen just did.
The Reaper senses my stasis and turns his gaze to me. “What?”
“That’s very thoughtful,” I say, and Ashen gives me an endearingly warm smile. I glance back down at the man on the floor and clutch the sheet a little higher to my chest. Alberto is looking up at me with his tear-streaked face, sniveling his pleas for help and mercy.
Ashen’s smile disappears as he realizes what the problem is. He mutters something about poking out eyes as he picks Alberto up enough to face him in the other direction. “He has a weird dick,” Ashen grumbles, and I let out a shocked laugh.
