Page 66 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
That cocky grin reappears on Ashen’s lips. “Mind-blowing?”
I roll my eyes and his smile only grows cockier, which I didn’t think would be possible. “Wipe that smug grin off your face. You know it was, Reaper. But the point remains: one night doesn’t change anything.”
“But it can, if you let it. The most monumental changes in life seem to happen in an instant,” Ashen says. His deep voice is quieter as his gaze wanders down to my lips and his smile dissolves. His fingers caress the line of my pulse. “Decades of time pass without change. One day bleeds into the next. They flow as a slow procession of memory and regret that becomes static and unchanging, until life is justexisting. And suddenly you find yourself in an alley, face-to-face with a beautiful, brazen, bold vampire and she infuses your world with color and light. One breath of time, and you realize you have been living in monochrome and shadow. One night was all it took to change my life.”
My heart hammers at my bones and I know that Ashen can feel it beneath his palm. We watch one another and all his longing, his desire, his need, it’s unfiltered in his eyes. But there’s something in him that I haven’t seen before last night. A lightness. And determination.
My head finally kicks into gear. I swallow a thick knot and resurrect the hurt that still lives like a creature trapped in my chest. “An instant is all it takes to break a heart. And it takes time to repair something shattered. If it’s even worth fixing at all.”
Ashen leans closer, his eyes not leaving mine until he presses a lingering kiss on my lips. “I told you, my vampire. I have immortal time,” he says when he pulls away.
“Time is not enough.”
“Then tell me what is.”
“Your secrets. Truth.”
Ashen takes a deep breath as though steeling himself. “Anything you ask, it’s yours.”
I pull his hand from the bed and run my fingers over the gold and black tattoos on his knuckles. “Why is the Master of War here in the Living Realm? Alone?”
“To find you and bring you back,” he says, without pretense or delay or any emotion at all. We stare at one another as he assesses my reaction. “You are not surprised.”
“No. I figured that was why you were here. I told you as much at Club Caelum.” I don’t let go of his hand, though the admission still twists a needle of pain in my guts. I want him to know that his honesty is worth the effort.
“I did not say Iwoulddo that.”
“But youcould, once we finish what Semyon started.”
“I could have already, if that’s what I had wanted,” Ashen says, and my brows quirk in a question. “The human scientist that you attacked in the dungeon? You didn’t kill him. The Council believes it was Cole that freed you on his own. They have no knowledge of Dr. Keller’s involvement. But he also has no allegiance to you, all things considered. He will do what it takes to survive, and he is still in the Shadow Realm, still analyzing the sample and working on serums. They are confident he can find a solution to finish the process of your transformation. My only mission from the Council was to bring you back alive, and I convinced them that going alone would give us a better chance of success.”
“If they wanted me alive, why send the snakes?”
“Ningish was supposed to retrieve, not kill. And now that he is dead, Zida will want revenge over any mission. She will be coming to finish you.”
“And how do I know you haven’t decided to extend your mission so you could flush out Cole, or Eryx, or the plans of the Realm of Light?”
Ashen thinks about it for a long moment, watching me. “That would be a logical assumption. But that is not why I stay, and for that the only thing I can say is you will need to trust me.”
I don’t respond to that, and it doesn’t look like Ashen expects me to. He just watches, observes. Learns. The silence stretches on until his keen watchfulness becomes a little unnerving.
“What do you expect to happen if you show up to the Council empty-handed?” I ask in a quiet voice. It worries me, and though I might not want to admit it, I’m nervous about what they would do to him.
“I don’t know,” Ashen says, and looks away as he twirls a lock of my hair around his finger. The spiral curls around his skin and uncurls again, over and over as his thoughts drift away from me. “I don’t know.”
I raise my hand and lay it on his face. For a moment I wonder if I should. But then he leans into my palm and brings his eyes back to me, and it feels right to be trapped by his gaze. “Thank you.”
A wisp of surprise flashes through Ashen’s expression. “For what?”
“For telling me these things.”
He smiles. I smile back. I raise my other hand to Ashen’s face and draw him down to me, kissing him long and deep. Our tongues make languid passes, our breath mixes with a sweet current of air. It doesn’t take long for the heat to build in the pit of longing that seems bottomless between us. Just a few more moments in this room, alone without the rest of the world. That’s all I want.
Naturally, that’s what the world wants to deny me.
A knock sounds at the door and our kiss breaks off abruptly, as though we’re both surprised that reality would find us once more.
“Listen up, sex fiends,” Ediye says from the other side of the door. I groan and drag a hand down my face as Ashen puffs a laugh. “Everything is ready to go for Romania. But we can’t get close to Magura by portal. Valentina has the whole area locked down with layers of spells. We’ll portal to Câmpulung to rent vehicles and drive there. So, finish banging so we can get on the road.”
