Page 74 of A City of Smoke and Demons
It was furious and hard, like she wanted, and he knew he wasn’t going to last, so he sat back, pulling her with him, her arse in his lap, thighs either side of his. He let her have control, let her do what she wanted, and when she came, her whole body shook so violently it dragged him over the edge with her. They collapsed in a sweaty heap, Ezra’s arm around her waist. His head was spinning, body buzzing, his face tucked into the curve of her spine.
Analise bucked back against him. ‘Get off me.’
He rolled onto his back as she dressed quickly, and left him staring at the ceiling.
Fucking Ezra didn’t cure Analise’s need— if anything, it made it worse. Before it had been an annoyance, but now it was a fire in the depths of her stomach. Release had been glorious, but once it was over, the emptiness came flooding back. She hadn’t meant for it to happen. She wanted to drink away her failure, but he’d taken her bottle, and her anger—herfear—had nowhere else to go.
Analise hadn’t been able to concentrate on a darn thing since she’d left his room. She’d hidden in the lab with Charles for days, reading his textbooks, trying to work out where she went wrong with the Familiars, searching for something that would allow her to find a reason for what happened. She’d dived back into Blackwood’s book on death magic, but nothing stuck. The words swam around her head, not finding purchase, and she woke that morning with the overwhelming desire to hurt something.
She wanted her life back. It mightn’t have been much, but it was hers.
Whenever Analise closed her eyes, she saw the Familiars she hadn’t been able to save. She felt her magic ploughing throughthem, hungry for the life that lingered there. It had been different with the rat, and she hadn’t been able to work out why, until it hit her like a punch. Her emotions let her down. The fact she’d been trying to save human beings and not a scrawny rat that thought about nothing but its next meal interfered with what she was trying to do. With the rat, it had been clinical. But with a human being, it was different because she wasn’t handing back life, butalife. Those people possibly had families who loved them and wondered what had happened to them.
Analise was sitting at a table in the front bar when Jem strode in. Her eyes were glued to the bottles behind the bar. She’d spent the last hour since the club opened watching people come in, the men in their work clothes and the women with them, wondering if any of them were like her. She wondered where they’d been, what their day had been like. Her mouth was dry, her head hurt, and she’d barely slept for two days. The others were in the basement, but despite wanting to hit things, Analise hadn’t gone down there.
Jem spied her. She watched him hesitate, then decide to approach and when he’d sat opposite her, the words were out of Analise’s mouth before she could stop them. ‘You knew where he was—you could have turned him in, but you didn’t. Why?’
Jem raised his eyebrows. ‘He’s my friend, Analise.’
‘It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?’ She wasn’t sure how she knew, but looking at Jem’s face, she was certain of it.
Jem waited for two men to pass them, before he nodded. ‘Ezra was fantastic at what he did. The golden boy of the Unseen. He could do no wrong—no one got away from him. But he, I don’t know … lost interest. No, that isn’t right. Something happened—something changed. But he wouldn’t tell me what.’
‘He grew a conscience?’ Analise snorted.
‘He’s always had a conscience.’ When she raised her eyebrows in disbelief, he went on. ‘Ezra is honourable, loyal. Iknow you don’t see that, and I don’t—he doesn’t—ever expect you to.’
Her chest was suddenly tight. ‘What happened?’
‘Ezra was caught trying to help a death witch escape.’
Analise opened her mouth, then promptly closed it. She wasn’t sure what to think about that, at all. It was a lie, surely, but Jem’s expression was serious. He watched her closely, perhaps waiting for her to argue, and when she didn’t, he went on.
‘As you can imagine, he was not overly popular after that.’
‘What would have happened to him?’
‘They’d have hung him,’ Jem said bluntly, and her breath caught. ‘Publicly, with a lot of fanfare. He disobeyed the Crown, broke the vows he took when he joined the Gendarme and then the Unseen. He committed treason.’
‘But why?’ she asked. ‘Why did he do that?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I smuggled him out before they could go through with their plans. No matter what he’d done, or why he’d done it, I wasn’t going to stand back and let him be hung for it.’
This was not what Analise was expecting. ‘Why didn’t he tell me this?’
‘He wouldn’t have seen the point,’ Jem said gently. ‘Ezra puts on a convincing show.’
Her words, the horrible words she’d said to him, floated around her brain. Ezra could have told her the truth, but instead he let her stand there and say terrible things to him. He would have let her kill him. ‘I …’
All the speculation about Ezra’s mysterious disappearance hadn’t come close to the truth. She was still mulling over it when Jem stood, brushing his hands over his dark coat. ‘No matter how much you hate him right now, it’s nothing compared to how much Ezra hates himself.’
She swallowed. ‘Jem—’
‘This conversation stays between us,’ he said sharply, and she nodded. ‘I betrayed my friend’s confidence in the hope that it might help you see he's not a monster. He’s a good person, for all his faults.’
Jem left her, disappearing down to the basement.
Analise chewed on her bottom lip until she could taste blood, then followed Jem, head spinning. She knew it was the truth because it hadn’t been Jem of the Gendarme, or Jem the Order member, speaking. It was Jem, Ezra’s friend.
