Darkest Before Dawn (23 page)

“How did you get her in? Did you just drop her off at the door and shoo her inside like you did at my apartment?” She’d been so eager to learn, brimming over with wonderment. The little girl Akil had left in my care with her mismatched socks and tatty rabbit could have been saved.

“I gave her to David Ryder. In this instance, he and I were in agreement. Did you know he has a teenage daughter and an ex-wife?” Akil’s lips tightened as he saw disbelief on my face. “You do not ask enough questions of those around you, Muse. I make it my business to intimately know my enemies. David Ryder is a private man with many secrets. Humans find it difficult to look innocence in the eye and see the potential for madness. He knew Dawn was dangerous but failed to acknowledge the depth of chaos corrupting her young mind. He hesitated to administer the delightful drug they use to subdue demons. Perhaps he listened to you and gave her the benefit of the doubt? As a father himself, I imagine he let his own feelings cloud his impeccable judgment. Regardless, he made a mistake. He is, after all, only human.”

I briefly closed my eyes, understanding the stalwart determination in Ryder’s expression right before he’d pulled the trigger. He’d been the one to take her in. The deaths inside the Institute were on his hands. Maybe he had listened to my incessant belief that she could be saved. I’d asked him not to judge her on what she was, and she’d killed within hours. I should have handed her over when I had the chance, when Ryder first asked me to. It would have been the right thing to do. But I’d let my own past obscure the truth of what she was.

I opened my eyes. “Don’t you feel anything?” I asked quietly. “You sent a little girl to her death.”

He dipped his chin and peered at me through dark lashes. A predator’s glare. “She knew what she was. She acknowledged her fate and accepted it. If I feel anything, it’s a sense of achievement.”

“How could you be sure they wouldn’t use her against you?”

“Chaos cannot be controlled.”

I drew in a measured breath as the truth of his words presented itself to me. “You knew Ryder would hesitate. You knew she’d tear it down around them...” Not a question but a realization. “You handed her over like a Trojan horse.” Ryder was right all along. He’d even said as much to me while standing in my kitchen right after Akil had left her with me. “You used a nine year old girl to bring down the Institute.” It made sense now. “From the second you showed up on my doorstep telling me to
do the right thing
, you thought I’d give her to Adam, or at the very least, that they’d find her with me.” Slippery son-of-a-bitch. This hadn’t been about saving Dawn at all. He’d condemned her the second he stole her from Carol-Anne.
Kill two birds with one stone.
Dawn and the Institute. Both threats to his existence. And to look at him now, his understated confidence and the glint of infinite knowledge in his eyes, you’d think he’d done the world a favor.

He had never looked more reasonable than he did standing on that street outside Stone’s Throw. “I believed you’d do what needed to be done.”

“You don’t know me at all, do you?” How could he think I’d subject any half blood to the Institute’s attentions, especially a little girl? “You thought you’d leave her on my doorstep, and I’d send her to her death? What kind of monster do you think I am?”

“You’re smarter than this, Muse. You are fully aware of the devastation half bloods can summon. Need I remind you of Stefan’s downfall? You must, by now, appreciate your own potential. You should have handed her over to David Ryder. You should have done the right thing. You failed her by filling her head with hope when there was no hope for that half blood.”

“You’re insane.”

“No. I’m right.” He held my glare, eyes midnight black. “I could have delivered her into the hands of the Institute myself, but they’d treat her with less suspicion coming from you. When it became clear you had no intention of doing what must be done, I found other means to achieve the required outcome. Dawn was volatile, a threat. She could not be allowed to remain within Leviathan’s grasp. Any one of the princes would have exploited her. I took advantage of an opportunity and put into motion the only possible outcome. Had I thought I could control her, I’d have secured her in my care long ago.”

The same as he’d done with me: saved a wretched half blood girl from her abusive owner, mentored her, manipulated her “...and groomed her as your weapon later? Is that what you sought to do with me? Is that why you kept me all those years? Were you nurturing a weapon? Is that still your plan, even now?”

He broke the stare and looked away, perhaps searching for the right words. Whatever he was thinking, he barred it from his face. “Fire—our shared element—consumes. We are forever hungry, you and I. Fire devours, leaving nothing but ash, remnants devoid of life. Fire is the definitive destroyer. The demon you harbor has the potential to be wonderful in ways you do not yet fully understand. I see brilliance in you, but the time has passed where my attentions could be ignored. The princes know you now.” The streetlight sparkled in his eyes and cut shadows across his face, making him appear leaner, sharper, harder. When those fire-lit eyes found me again, he swallowed. “Yes, you were to be my weapon. I am guilty of all those accusations and more. I find myself inexplicably disarmed in matters concerning you. I grew impatient and made mistakes... although those mistakes had the desired effect of awakening your latent abilities. Unfortunately, the resulting incarceration in the netherworld dampened my plans somewhat.” He smiled. I didn’t. With a sigh, he declared, “I admit my original intention was to use you as a weapon against my enemies. Is that truthful enough for you?”

At one time, his confession would have sent me spiraling into rage. The truth should have shocked me. I waited for the gut-wrenching fear to consume me, but nothing happened. The dark touch of Damien wrapped around my soul, gave an acknowledging squeeze. I’d not felt its touch since lying with Akil, but it was there now, an ever-present threat, a beast stalking the remnants of my shredded humanity, waiting, growing impatient.
Hungry.
My head was crowded with dark dreams and impossible wants. Some were my own desires. Others belonged to other netherwordly inhabitants of my body and mind.

I stole a step closer to Akil and would have walked right up to him had he not stepped back. I cocked my head, frowning. “When I saw you at Blackstone, by the fireplace, you were grieving, Akil. You believed me dead, and it cut you up. I know what I saw, and I know what I heard in your voice when you asked me to love you. What am I to you now? Just your weapon or something more?” My tone told him not to screw with me. I wasn’t in the mood for lies, and this wasn’t about hope, or some love-struck fanciful dreams. If Akil felt anything for me, I could use it.

I already knew the answer, but I waited for the lie he would surely tell and scrutinized his expression for any hint of him working to formulate a response. He eyed me steadily, breathing slowly. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. Amber fringed his eyes, revealing the demon poised inside his human avatar. At one time, it might have startled me to realize how he fought with the truth. He wanted to lie. I saw that much, but the foundation of our relationship had changed. Lying was no longer an option. We’d progressed too far beyond lies.

“I...” the words caught in his throat. He dipped his chin and lifted his glare, peering through his dark lashes, his gaze baking me in elemental heat. “You mean something else entirely.” It pained him to say it. He couldn’t have looked more disconcerted if he shuffled from foot to foot with his cap in his hand. As it was, he stood rigid, locking his vulnerabilities behind a mask of stubborn denial. He’d told me once the Prince of Greed didn’t recognize denial
. He does now.

I smiled. There was no need for me to rage at him. It wouldn’t change a thing. It didn’t matter anyway. The past was irrelevant. The wretched half blood girl, the silly little whelp he’d planned to exploit, was now
something else entirely
. I’d outgrown him, and I had him exactly where I needed him: under my control.

From the slight pinch around his eyes, he hadn’t expected to see the slow crawl of a smile slip across my lips. Acknowledgement darkened his gaze. He’d expected me to yell, to accuse him of using me. Maybe he wanted me to beat my fists against his chest. I might have done all those things once, but my smile told him more than he could have imagined. I’d accepted my fate. I knew what I was, what I was becoming, if I hadn’t already crossed that Iine. I didn’t fight the thing inside me—the half of me that danced in the dark—not any more. Cool, hard acceptance shuttered my emotions, sealing them off from my humanity. I stared back at him, mirroring his guarded-yet-fractured mask of indifference. He now knew what it felt like to have a piece of his soul at the mercy of another. I had him. The tables had turned. A fundamental shift in our relationship had altered everything. He was the demon sprawled in front of his fireplace, drowning in grief. Those birds were on the ground again. Waters were once more running up stream. The Prince of Greed was mine.

“New titles are born. Old titles die.” He inclined his head, as though bowing, submitting, subservient. “You are ready.” And with that, he vanished in a burst of static.

I
fumbled
with my keys outside my apartment. What had just happened? Akil had admitted why he’d kept me safe and why he’d saved me all those years ago. Dawn’s fate could easily have been mine. We’d both been pawns in Akil’s game. I’d survived, whereas he’d led her like a lamb to the slaughter. All those years, I’d looked up at him with wide innocent eyes—the same way Dawn had looked at me. I’d have let him take my hand and walk me to my death once too. He’d only let me live because he believed me powerful yet pliable. I was his means to an end I didn’t yet understand.

None of that was particularly surprising. Typically demon, Akil acted only in his best interests. But his admission that he’d felt something for me wasn’t typical. He should have brushed my death off like a spec of dust on his impeccable attire, yet grief had ravaged him. He was chaos eternal, incapable of feeling much of anything besides hunger. But clearly he did feel. I wasn’t comfortable with that revelation, and neither was he. Chaos demons were deadly enough without adding emotion to the mix.

The terrifying part was how he’d just left me. The finality of his words. The peculiar way he’d bowed out, as though saying farewell, as though his part in this game was over.
New titles are born. Old titles die.
He’d given me the truth, and yet he’d left me with a gut-churning sense of unease. As usual with Akil, his answers revealed more questions. Questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to. The way he’d looked at me: pride, acceptance, lust, love? Maybe even a little fear? A Prince of Hell feared me. What kind of monster did that make me?

With a growl, I shoved all thoughts of Akil into the broiling mass of emotion walled up in my head. I’d deal with it all later, after I’d drowned myself in a bottle of wine and forgotten everything for a little while. Damn Akil and his Machiavellian ways. The dark coiled around my heart gave a tight squeeze in agreement, briefly clenching my chest and shortening my breath. I snarled back at it and grumbled a few colorful words as I worked the correct key into the lock and shoved inside, too preoccupied to notice the door wasn’t locked.

My grumbling curses froze on my lips when I looked up and saw Stefan leaning against my kitchen counter, open tub of Ben & Jerry’s in one hand, spoon in the other, eyebrow raised, licking ice cream from his lips. My heart stuttered, my mouth fell open, and I knew I was dreaming. He could not be there, all smart-ass smiles and dazzling blue eyes.

“There’s no Ben & Jerry’s in the netherworld. It’s a crime.” His gravely demon brogue instantly roused my demon half. She gave herself a mental shake, her visceral hungers and curious anxiety merging with mine.

I dropped the file. Papers spewed across the floor. My keys slipped from my hand and clattered beside my feet. I gawked at him, drinking in the wonderful sight of Stefan in my kitchen. His scuffed red leather coat had darkened to the color of dried blood. The cool blue shirt and loose, low-slung jeans seemed unremarkable beside the sword sheathed at his hip. When I noticed his crooked half smile that said ‘you know what, it’s gonna be okay,’ it was too much. The emotional steel rods I’d driven through myself while facing off with Akil turned to liquid and drained away. My knees buckled. His arms swept around me before my addled brain could register the fact he’d moved. A cool snap of power arced between us and wrenched my breath away. He held me close, body pressed against mine. Wide-eyed, I stared with abandon and found myself falling into his brilliant gaze.

He chuckled softly, the demon turning the laughter wicked. “I’ve always wanted to catch a swooning woman. I just never thought it’d be you.”

I barely registered his words as I reached a trembling hand up and touched his face with my fingertips then slipped them lightly down his jawline. He felt real. Not a ghost, but solid, warm, and very much alive. A spritz of energy fizzled up my fingers. I slid the tip of my finger across his lips. His mouth twitched around a smile. He was really here. I wanted to blurt out how I’d ached deep in my bones to see him one more time, how I’d wanted him back but dared not dream I’d see him again, and even if I did, how I was afraid of what he might have become. But my voice had abandoned me. I couldn’t say a single word.

He raised an eyebrow. “You could have let me know you weren’t dead.”

I slid both hands over his face, committing the slightly abrasive texture beneath my fingers to memory. There were more fine lines than I remembered. My thumb brushed the corner of his lips, lips I wanted to kiss. But I was so afraid that if I did, the spell would be broken, and he’d be gone again. After losing him for the second time, and then losing Dawn, I’d come to understand that hope didn’t belong to the likes of me. If Stefan couldn’t beat his demon and I couldn’t save a lost little half blood girl despite all my shallow promises, then what chance did I have?

But Stefan had beaten his demon. He must have. He was here and looking back at me with mild curiosity. The hope I’d given up on sparked back to life. I clutched at his coat, knuckles whitening.

“Speechless?” His words sounded like a purr. “What is the world coming to?”

My mouth moved. I tried to snatch at the words in my head. My tongue tried to wrap around the necessary sounds, but my brain appeared to have detached itself from my vocal cords. All I could do was swallow and blink like a dumbstruck fool.

He lowered his gaze. Fair lashes shuttered his eyes. His smile faded, and a jolt of panic snapped through me. He was going to say he had to go. He would say the words. I knew it. This wonderful moment was already ending. I couldn’t let him go, not again.

I pulled him into a raw, desperate kiss, exposing my soul as my lips met his. I didn’t care that he stilled against me, that his arm stiffened as though he would push me off him in the next breath. I needed to feel him, to taste how real he was. When his lips parted and his responding hunger molded with mine, I very nearly came undone. My legs were all but useless, but it didn’t matter. Stefan held me him like we’d never been apart, as though we’d never part again. I drove my fingers into his hair and pulled him so close I might gladly drown in him. Vaguely, I registered the clatter of the spoon against the floor. He slid his hand down the curve of my back and cradled me against him, hauling me in close enough that the heat of his body warmed the cold in mine.

He broke the kiss, only to roam his lips across my cheek. “You’re crying.” His cool breath tickled across the tracks of my tears.

I really was. “Please, don’t stop. Don’t say... anything.” I couldn’t bear to hear why he’d returned and why now, knowing it wouldn’t be good. I never got a break. My world was one disaster after another—the Mother of freakin’ Destruction—and this would be no different.
Half bloods don’t get happy endings.
But I refused to hear it. I was not letting him go. I would not hear the terrible things he had to say. Instead, I wanted to forget it all: the horror of my own failure to save a little girl and the wretched realization of my own capabilities. Forget that I was cursed. Forget Akil’s prophetic words...

“This is a mistake,” he whispered.

“Don’t.” I growled, the sound borrowed from my demon.

His sharp breath hissed, and his entire body tightened with restraint. He fought even now, struggled with his own demon. I could see regret in his evasive gaze and the guarded expression on his face. He didn’t want this. He would push me away. I fluttered my eyes closed, knowing in the next few seconds he would say something pertinent, and we’d pull apart. But for now—this singular moment—it was perfect. If I could have trapped time in a glass jar and kept it forever, I would have.

“I’m sorry.” He captured my mouth once more, driving his tongue in deep. A demonic growl resounded through him, possessive and wild. Elemental energy simmered around us. A tantalizing quiver of chaos energy skipped across my flesh, sprinkling goose bumps in its wake. Stefan’s hunger mirrored mine. He teased in his maddening way. Our bodies moved as one, thrust together as though inseparable. He tasted like ice cream and chaos. Sweet, delicious, and wonderfully alive. I purred my pleasure, demon and woman, both hungry. The chilling touch of his element coiled around us, igniting the fire slumbering inside me. My demon stretched beneath my skin, basking in the power he radiated.

He pulled away all too soon, withdrawing carefully, his gaze skittish and head bowed away from me. I let him go, even though every part of my muddled mind screamed for him to stay. Slumping against the counter, I touched my lips and tasted the chaos sprinkled there, fizzing like popping candy. Stefan moved away, turning his back on me, shoulders bowed. He didn’t need to say a thing. His body said it for him. He didn’t want this.

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is for an ice demon to light a campfire in the netherworld?” he asked, cool, and calm, as though we hadn’t just tried to devour one another.

“Huh?” The residue of arousal tingled across my skin. I licked my swollen lips and blinked rapidly. Muddled thoughts reeled about my head. Why was he talking about campfires? I swept a hand back through my hair and swallowed hard. Holy hell, he was really there... Not demon, not dead.

“Try impossible.” His coat buckles rattled as he reached down and scooped up the ice cream tub, placing it on the side. “Which is a problem when trying to cook demon meat. You don’t wanna know what raw Sasori demons taste like. Also, don’t eat the dark meat. It’s poisonous. I found that out the hard way.” He leaned back, hands braced against the countertop either side of him. “You’d think after a few years there, I’d have learned a few things about surviving in the netherworld.” A glint of light reflected off an elaborate fractal-etched rapier at his waist. Seeing him armed with a sword reminded me of how my brother likes to appear tooled up and ready for battle. “I’m craving food, real food, like ice cream. And coffee. And French fries.” He ground out a restrained groan and raked a hand through his hair. “But mostly ice cream.” The heated look in his eyes when he finally met my gaze told me food wasn’t the only thing he craved, so why push me away?

“I don’t think those things are classed as real food,” I said in a quiet voice, bumbling along with the bizarre conversation while my thoughts still spun, and my body burned to have him close. His kiss hadn’t been a half-hearted response to my advances. It could have gone further. I wanted it to. But apparently, he didn’t. Like an idiot, I’d forced myself on him.

I averted my gaze and busied myself scooping up the contents of the file from the floor.
Your father is the Prince of Lust... You and Akil deserve each other...
I could guess why he’d stopped things before they spiraled out of control. His words from months ago still wounded me, even after all this time. It shouldn’t matter. Coming from anyone else, those words wouldn’t have mattered.

I dumped the file on the coffee table, aware that a quiet tension simmered between us. He still threw off power—nothing like the embrace I’d felt minutes before when he’d been pressed against me, but enough to distract my demon.

Facing him, I flicked my hair out of my eyes and planted a hand on my hip, grateful for the kitchen counter between us. I didn’t trust myself not to pounce on him and couldn’t bear it if he pushed me away again. Who was I kidding? Stefan wasn’t meant for the likes of me: the Mother of Destruction. He was better in every way. A shining star. I’d already ruined his life, killed his sister, and condemned him to hell. The longer he stayed with me, the more I’d destroy him.

“I think you should go.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. He’d see the truth there. I wanted him in every way a woman wants a man. My demon wanted him in ways I couldn’t even wrap my thoughts around. The intensity of my own desire terrified me. Was it lust? Was that all it was? My father’s legacy living in me? No. If it had been just lust, I could have escaped it. Lust was simple. Yes, it was madness, but it was an uncomplicated madness. This need to have Stefan close, to bury myself in his embrace, to hide in his arms and snowflake kisses, it wasn’t demanding, or selfish, and it definitely wasn’t simple. I wanted to share everything with him, to spend precious time with him, time when demons weren’t trying to kill us, and the Institute wasn’t watching. Just the two of us. I couldn’t escape these feelings, and that made them all the more terrifying because clearly he didn’t feel the same.

“Is that what you want?” he asked. “You come back from the dead, kiss me like the world’s ending, and then tell me to leave?” He managed to sound amused.

I bit my lip and nodded. “It’s not safe here... with me.”

He wove around the kitchen counter and stopped in front of me, a wall of red leather and cool temptation. Light glinted off the sword’s guard and I realized I’d seen it before. Kira-Kira.
His mother’s sword.
I flicked my gaze up through my lashes and immediately lost my thoughts under the intensity of his eyes. The cool touch of power was back, prodding at my demon, taunting her with its proximity.

“I came back to warn you.” Severity hardened his voice and dragged it down to a deep demon growl.

A knot of dread tightened in my gut. “How long have you known I was alive?” I didn’t want to hear his warnings. Whatever it was, it would ruin everything. I knew it as certainly as I knew he would leave me again. He stood so close, and yet there was a chasm between us. He was already gone. We just hadn’t said the words yet.

“A few weeks—netherworld time. I wasn’t going to come at all. But the Princes…”

“Why?” My emotions bled through that one word. “Why weren’t you going to come? I needed you. Everything is falling apart. I’m... I’m out of control, or I’m terribly in control. I can’t tell which. I nearly killed Adam. I could have. I wanted to. You’ve no idea how I ached to see that bastard burn. And before, there was... Something happened... I thought I’d killed people.”

He held my stare, his expression guarded, bordering on resigned. When he brushed my bangs from my eyes, an electric shower of sparks shivered beneath that lightest of touches. “But you didn’t do either.”