Page 66 of Touched By Darkness

I playfully nudge him with my shoulder. “My point is that duality doesn’t exist in Heaven, and for that reason, I didn’t understand love, peace, or any of those concepts.”

“But you do now?”

“I finally know the difference between sadness and happiness. Now, when I feel happy, I can pinpoint the emotion. And once I found myself back in Eden, I knew I couldn’t return to that state of oneness. I craved the rainbow of emotions. The gray outside of the black and white.”

Dmitriy stays silent while we walk the rest of the way.

As soon as the tall, gothic, castle-looking academy comes into view, I draw to a halt.

Dariana waits for me outside.

She narrows her eyes on Dmitriy when we walk up the path, and with a flick of her hair, she dismisses him as if he’s beneath her and not worthy of her attention. It soothes me that she’s as fierce as I remember. This is the girl I fell in love with. The unapologetic girl who goes after what she wants without hesitation.

“Disappear,” she growls at Dmitriy, who bares his incisors at her on his way past.

His show of defiance also soothes something inside me. To see the evidence of the vicious Dmitriy I have come to know resurface, however briefly.

Dariana regards me for a moment before softening the harsh look in her eyes. “I wanted to apologize about last night.”

“Apologize?”

“Yeah,” she starts, lowering her voice and stepping closer when a group of students walks past us. “The story you told. It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

Her raven hair moves in the breeze, and a few strands get stuck in her lip gloss. The urge to brush them away hits me out of nowhere, so I set off walking to stop myself from acting on my impulse.

Dariana stays hot on my heels, surrounding me with her scent of midnight and exotic flowers. “Can we go somewhere and talk for a moment?”

“We have classes.”

We enter the bustling hallway. I make a beeline for my locker around the corner, but she grabs my arm, steers me down a different hallway, and shoves me into an open, empty classroom.

I stumble back, watching her close and lock the door.

When she turns around and pins me with that dark, intense look in her brown eyes, which sparkle with the stars that shine in the sky visible through the window, I backstep, only to collide with a desk.

“Do I make you nervous?” she asks, her tone as sultry as the look in her eyes and the calculated steps she takes in my direction.

The desk scrapes on the floor when I push off and attempt to round it to escape the intensity in her gaze, but she keeps coming.

“I don’t like it when outside sources threaten the people I care about the most, and you, little witch, are a threat.”

I collide with another desk, then dart to my right, but she’s faster.

The sound of her wings erupting behind me has me spinning around, my hair moving off my lips with my harsh intake of breaths. I’m met with empty air, and then I feel it, a soft tap on my shoulder.

With my heart in my throat, I slowly turn around.

Brown eyes—dark enough to lose myself in—and long, wispy lashes and pouty red lips greet me. “Caught you.”

My hands seek the desk behind me. I lean back, away from her orbit, but she follows, trapping me in with her arms on either side of me.

“Why are you scared?”

My heart thunders in my chest, beating a staccato rhythm I swear she can hear in the tense, crackling silence that settles in the inches of space between our lips.

“Do I scare you?” Her delicate fingers brush my cheek with a whisper-soft touch, then trail over my cupid’s bow.

My breaths cease, and I collapse onto my elbows. Her body follows, draping over mine as her sweet scent envelops me.

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