Page 45 of Heartless Enemy

“I’m sorry,” Eve said at last. Desperation and regret pulsed in her eyes as she turned me towards her so that I met her gaze. “I’m so, so sorry for making you climb into that small wooden lift back when we were sneaking into the alliance celebration. And for even suggesting the tunnel into the parliament building. If I had known…” She shook her head.

I cupped her cheek, stroking her cheekbone with my thumb. “You couldn’t have known.”

“But still…”

“No.”

Her gaze darted around the room again, and that wildfire rage roared up in her eyes once more. “Are any of the people who did this to you still alive? If they are, I will fucking burn them alive while making them beg for mercy that will never come.”

A surprised laugh escaped my chest.

Eve blinked, as if remembering herself. “Unless you want to do it yourself, of course.”

I smiled at her. My spitfire. The one person who had picked me over everything else. The one who would always have my back. And now, she knew everything about me. Every secret that I had kept hidden from the world. The shameful past I had tried so hard to bury.

And she didn’t think any less of me.

Instead, she was offering to help me slaughter everyone.

“One day,” I said, leaning down to steal a kiss from her lips. “I might take you up on that.”

But for now, the madness inside me retreated again as we left this blood-soaked village behind.

Chapter18

Shock and pain still sliced through my chest, even an hour after we had left the village. The thought of what Levi had gone through, the torture he had endured for years, made my heart bleed and my blood boil.

And I understood him now. Understood why he couldn’t handle confined spaces. Understood where the madness I often saw swirl in his eyes came from. And what triggered it. Strong, unbearable emotions.

Levi had confirmed as much when we were riding out of the village. He had admitted that the insanity was still present inside him all the time, and that it rose closer to the surface whenever he was feeling cornered or trapped. Or was confronted with emotions that he couldn’t handle. He had told me that the madness had saved him several times, but that it also left him completely drained. Because that animalistic part of him that took over didn’t care about plans for the future. It just threw everything, all his considerable power, into surviving the next second.

That part of Levi had no boundaries. No limits. It was pure and utter power in its most lethal form.

It was terrifying.

And absolutely breathtaking.

Though the reason for it still made me want to murder someone.

Part of me almost wished that I didn’t know all of this. That I didn’t have the image branded in my mind of a ten-year-old Levi screaming and begging for mercy inside a wooden box.

Fuck. Fury rippled through me just thinking about it.

But now I also understood why Levi craved power and control over others. And I understood why he had destroyed the Blade of Equilibrium.

That blade took the magic from a mage and distributed it into the Great Current so that everyone, including people born without magic, could still have access to power. I had always thought that it was a great system. An equal system. Something with no downsides. But now, since meeting Levi and especially since he told me about his childhood, I had started to see things differently.

The concept of magic distribution wasn’t as simple as people had always made it out to be.

Metal magic was a part of Levi. A part of his personality. His soul. His dreams and hopes and plans for the future. And to just rip that from his soul would have been cruel beyond measure.

By the Current, there really were no easy answers in life, were there?

I glanced over at Levi where he was riding next to me.

Gray light from the overcast sky painted everything in bleak hues, and cold winds tugged at our clothes. And yet, Levi seemed perfectly content.

I studied his features from the corner of my eye.

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