“We need to talk,” I said the moment we were out on the sidewalk, far enough away to prevent anyone from overhearing us. “Not about Blake—”
“I know.” Hands in the pockets of his jeans, he turned to me. “We do need to talk.”
The nauseous feeling from before returned. I expected him to say something stupid or silly. I didn’t expect him to agree, and instinct screamed out warnings that caused a hundred knots to crowd my insides. “What Daemon said about—”
“How much pain I’ve caused people who deserved so much better than that?” he cut in, and it felt like a knife sliced open my chest. “What he said was true. What you said was true. You’re right. They don’t need to be caused any more pain, but at the end of the day, what you think or what Daemon wanted, didn’t matter. Blake’s alive, anyway. We got to talk to him. I got what I wanted.”
And we didn’t learn much beyond new nightmare fodder. “You did what you needed to do to keep me alive. People got hurt. People died.” I took a step toward him, and he visibly tensed. “I wish they hadn’t. I know you wished they hadn’t, either, but I was dying, and you kept me alive. I can’t hold that against you.”
Some of the coolness seeped out of his crystalized gaze, and a spark of relief eased the knots. “I know, Evie. I didn’t think for one second that you held any of that against me.”
My gaze searched his. “I would do the same if it was you.”
“Would you, though?”
I jerked back, stunned. “How can you even ask that?”
He looked away. “You wouldn’t have done the things I’ve done. You wouldn’t have hurt people. You’re good, Evie.”
Anger crashed into the agony his words were reaping. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to take him in my arms and show him just how grateful I was that he felt the kind of love that ensured my survival. And I also wanted to strangle him—strangle with love, of course, because he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did.
“We need to go somewhere private.”
One eyebrow raised as he turned his head back to me. “Peaches, I don’t think what you have in mind is appropriate at the moment.”
My eyes narrowed. “You wish that’s what I had in mind, but you’re not going to get that lucky.”
“Well, now I’m really curious.”
“We need to go somewhere quiet, because I’m about to yell at you, and we don’t need half this community witnessing your embarrassment.”
Luc’s eyes widened as he stared at me in silence for several moments. “You sounded so much like her right then. Like Nadia.”
“That’s because I am her!” I shouted, sending a lone bird above me into the sky.
He continued to stare at me.
“Jesus,” I snapped, storming forward. I grabbed his hand and started walking.
“Evie—”
“Nope,” I cut him off. “Not until we’re home or somewhere private.”
“I was just—”
“Going to actually shut up?” I suggested. “Wow. Thank you.”
Luc’s answering chuckle set off every one of my nerves, because I didn’t think I’d ever heard him so amused.
“What’s funny?” I demanded, and when he didn’t respond, I looked over at him as we crossed the intersection. “What?”
He blinked. “Am I allowed to speak now?”
I exhaled out of my nose. “You know what? I don’t care about what you find so funny. No, you can’t talk.”
Luc’s lips twitched as if he were fighting a smile or another laugh, but he wisely managed to fight it and to stay quiet the whole entire way back to the house. The moment the door closed behind us, I let go of his hand and swung around to face him.
“Are you going to yell at me now?” he asked. “Not too loudly, though. Daemon and Kat might hear us.”
“If you say one more dumb thing, the entire world is going to hear us,” I warned, and as much as it annoyed me, I also loved that glimmer I saw in his eyes. “I thought you knew me. I thought you knew me better than I knew myself. It sure seems like that most days, but I was wrong.”
His brows bunched together. “I do know you.”
“You know what I used to be like. Actually, I don’t think you even knew me as well as you think you did then,” I said. “There’s no way you can if you really think that I wouldn’t have done exactly what you did if our positions were switched.”
“Evie,” he began. “You wouldn’t—”
“I would put people in harm’s way. I would do it, and I’d hate it, but it wouldn’t stop me if that meant making sure you were okay,” I said. “And I have a feeling even before my memories were taken from me, I would’ve done it then. Does that make what you did right? What I would do if your life were in jeopardy? No. What you did and what I would do will never be right, but it is what it is. It’s not like you don’t care, Luc.”
“See, that’s where you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” he shot back. “I didn’t care enough about others to not set things in motion that led to Kat being tortured and Paris being killed. I didn’t care enough to give you back your phone and let you be. The moment I decided I couldn’t—that I wouldn’t—walk away from you again, everything that has happened since then has happened because of that.”
I gaped at him. “You have no idea what would’ve happened if you hadn’t made that decision.”
“I know Kent would still be alive. Or in the very least, his friends wouldn’t have had to watch him die like that. I know that Clyde would’ve lived to see another day, because my head would’ve been in the game and I would’ve gotten him and Chas out before we were raided,” he argued. “There are more examples, but most importantly, you would never know the amount of blood that drips from my hands from what I’ve done to ensure that you’re standing here, right in front of me.”
My breath stuttered. “You do realize all of what you just said also puts all that death, all that blood, on me?”
“No. It doesn’t. It never has touched you, because you never made those choices. I did.”
“That’s not true!” I took a deep breath. “You didn’t set out to hurt them, or did you?”
“That doesn’t change that it happened. It doesn’t change that there has to be something wrong with me,” he spat out, stunning me. “Do you know what I did all last night? All this morning? I walked and walked, trying to understand what they did to me to make me this way. To make me not care about anyone else—to make it okay for me to do the things I’ve done. Things that have hurt people. Things that have gotten people killed,” he said, his hands opening. “Because there are more moments than not where I don’t even feel remotely human. That if not for what I feel for you, I would be a monster. But I am one.” He drew back a step, his eyes glittering. “I have to be one, because I sleep damn good at night, Evie. Those wounds I’ve inflicted and the deaths I’ve caused weigh on me, but they haven’t changed me. I’d do it all over again. I would.”
Oh my God.
Cracks spread across my heart; the tears crowding my eyes not for me but for him. How could he think any of this about himself?
The worst part was this wasn’t something that just sprang up overnight. What Daemon had said had only pulled the trigger on the loaded gun that had always been there.
Shame burned my skin as I eased my fingers open. He was selfish? Maybe he was, but so was I, and my selfishness was rooted in self-preservation while his stemmed from my preservation. My own immaturity was a shock to my system, and I was well aware of how immature I could be at any given moment, but this was beyond that. It was as if I’d dipped my head under scalding water.
This was the cause of those quiet moments when he looked as if he were caught in some kind of personal nightmare he couldn’t wake from. This was what he couldn’t hide in his eyes even if his features became an unreadable mask. I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems, my own baggage, I didn’t take the time to really check out his, because if I had, I would�
�ve seen this.
Suddenly, I thought I really understood what Grayson had meant when he’d said Luc couldn’t always be unstoppable. I’d thought he’d meant physically, but he was talking about something far more important. I just hadn’t seen it. Grayson had, though.
Hindsight had such perfect vision, didn’t it?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You’re sorry?” He shook his head in disbelief. “What do you have to apologize for?”
“Everything?”
He jerked as if someone had landed a blow, and my body was moving without me even realizing it. I went to him, and when he reared back, moved to put space between us, I wouldn’t allow it. I placed my hands on his cheeks, stopping him. I didn’t use the Source. I didn’t need to. Luc always stopped for me.
I stared up into his eyes as I flattened my palms against his cheeks. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
His pupils shone like bright stars. “Evie—”
“You have done monstrous things, but so has Daemon. So has his brother and half the people we know. So have I.” Dampness clung to my lashes. I stepped into him, until the heat of his body beat against mine. “You do care. I’ve seen the weight you carry, but I should’ve really seen it.”
Luc trembled as his hands folded around my wrists. He could do anything with his strength. Push me away. Hold me back. But the way he held my wrists felt as if he were holding me there. “I want to believe you. You have no idea.” His voice was thick with raw emotion. “But sometimes I think I was more of a success than Nancy Husher ever realized.”
“No.” I leaned into him, feeling him shudder. “If that were true, you couldn’t love me like you do. And that’s why you did what you needed to do. Not because of the Daedalus or because something is wrong with you but because I was the only thing you ever needed in your whole life.”
Another shudder rocked him as he lowered his head to mine. The tips of my fingers were wet from the tears, but not mine.
They were his.
“You’re a gift. You’ve always been the most precious gift life has ever handed me. Can I ever be worthy of that?” he whispered. “Of you?”
Tears had hit my cheeks now, and they were mine. “You already are, Luc. You’ve always been. We just all have a little bit of a monster inside of us. How could we not when we love someone like we do?”
“I love you, Evie. I fell in love with you within the first week I met you. I loved you before I even knew what that meant, and I loved you even when you were gone, and I loved you when you became someone else,” he said—pleaded, really. “And I fell even more in love with you when you walked through the doors of Foretoken. I’ve never stopped loving you. I never will.”
“I love you.” I closed my eyes, losing a breath and then two. “And every part of my heart and my soul belongs to you, Luc. You are a gift.”
I don’t know who made the first move, who kissed who, but our lips met, and everything—everything—was a heated, blinding rush that carried that edge of desperation that was always there. I’d tasted it in his kisses before, felt it in how he held me close at night. I tasted and felt them now as my back hit the door. It fed the greedy way our hands pushed and tore at clothing, the way his hands gripped my hips and lifted me. It was behind the near frenzied way his mouth moved against mine. I’d thought that it was from how close he’d come to losing me before, and I was sure that was a part of it, but I knew now it was also those scars hidden so deep within him.
It wasn’t the only thing that drove us to the floor and to what felt like the brink of death. It was the raw power of what we felt for each other. It was love, the kind that could level entire civilizations, the kind that could rebuild them. Love was the thunder in our hearts, the lightning in our veins, and it was what kept us together where we landed, even after our skin had begun to cool and our breaths had slowed.
We lay there, his head tucked under mine as I stared at the ceiling, smoothing my hand over and through his hair. I made myself a vow, and I hoped he heard it. I hoped he knew how deep it ran.
What I told him hadn’t healed the wounds that were in his soul. What we’d just done wasn’t a magic fix, either, but I now saw the wounds that were there, and I would do everything to heal them.
I’d do anything.
38
It was sometime later that I’d told Luc about Nate and what I’d seen when I’d followed him into the city. I wasn’t at all surprised when he’d sat up and leaned over me, his brows raised as he demanded to know if he’d heard me correctly. I had to repeat that yes, I’d gone with Nate into the city. As I’d expected, he wasn’t thrilled, and I didn’t think hearing that Grayson had followed me had helped. I had a feeling Grayson was going to have to explain why he hadn’t stopped me, and I hoped for his sake he had a better answer than what he’d given me.
When Luc finally was done lecturing me on being safe, he asked, “You think that guy—what was his name?”
“Morton.”
“You think he’s abusing those kids or something? Because if so, how do we sit and wait for them to ask for help?”
Right there.
Right there proved Luc cared more than he realized. “Nate said he doesn’t, so it’s just my suspicion, but either way, he’s most likely using those kids to scavenge food and supplies, and God only knows how dangerous that is.”
Luc settled beside me. “We’re going to have to do something.”
I looked over at him. “I know. I just hope they come to us. If we force them, I think it will confirm their fears. Not only that, if we go there, they’ll run.”
“I have a feeling those kids know where to hide.”
I nodded. “Do you think the others will be okay with taking them in?”
“Cekiah and the others would gladly take them in,” Luc said. “I don’t doubt that for a moment.”
That was a relief to hear, and I hoped it was the case. We stayed there for a little while longer, but the warmth and silence didn’t last long. Dee and Archer returned later that afternoon, having already known about Blake. Somehow Daemon had gotten a message to them. Had he used a carrier pigeon or something?
Almost everyone was at the old library, piled into the main room. Surrounded by stacks of books, the council who refused to call themselves a council took up one of the long conference-style tables. Luc and I sat side by side on one of the smaller tables, our legs dangling as we listened as one hour turned into two hours of them arguing about what to do with Blake and Chris.
Not entirely surprisingly, Dee wanted him dead. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. And also not entirely surprisingly, more than half of the unofficial but totally official council was stuck on the moral wrongness of it all.
I had a headache.
Okay, I didn’t have a real headache, but I had an imaginary one that felt as painful as any I’d ever had.
“We should have a trial,” someone suggested.
“Are you guys serious?” Dee exclaimed, throwing up her hands. Archer had stepped outside at some point, and I had no idea where or why, but I was so envious of him.
So envious.
“A trial?” Daemon scoffed. “And who is the judge?”
“Who would be the jury of his peers?” Zouhour asked. “Do we need to find a handful of people who’ve been in his situation before? A trial seems pointless.”
“We have a jury of his peers.” Cekiah gestured at those sitting at the table. “There are people right here who have been under the control of the Daedalus before. Who could possibly—”
“If you think for one second any of us can sympathize with him, you’re out of your mind,” Kat said. “And if you think we’re going to stay here while he’s here? Not going to happen.”
“We don’t want anyone to feel unsafe,” Quinn, the older Luxen male, said. “And we understand your history.”
Vibrant, enraged green eyes flicked to the Luxen. “I don’t think you do.”
Quinn leaned forward
. “We have to take Chris into consideration. I’ve spoken to him. He’s been nothing more than a hostage.”
Slowly, I looked over at Luc. A moment later, two purple eyes met mine. I sighed. One side of his lips kicked up.
I can’t take much more of this, I told him.
They just keep talking in circles, he agreed, glancing back to where Daemon looked like he was seconds away from flipping a table. At least that would be something different. Why don’t you head out of here? No reason for you to be in here.
If I go, you go.
The other side of his lips curved up as he leaned over, kissing my lips. I would love nothing more. Maybe we could have a repeat of this afternoon. A pause as he leaned back. Not the deep, dark part. But what came after. I think I got rug burns on my back.
My face flamed with heat. “Nuh-uh,” I gasped.
Cekiah looked over at us with a slight pinch to her face.
Running his hand over his mouth, he muffled his laugh.
I hate you.
That was not what you were saying earlier.
I looked at him.
He managed to wipe the grin from his face. But I need to stay. I have a feeling Daemon is going to go Full Daemon, and I need to be here to stop him. He placed his hand on my knee and squeezed. Not that I really want to see Blake live, but that might actually get him kicked out of here, and even though they both were willing to leave if you weren’t accepted, they need this place.
Glancing over to Daemon and Kat, I thought of baby Adam. He was at home, being watched by Heidi and Emery, who apparently were all about watching babies. They did need this place.
I can stay.
Go. He squeezed my knee again. Let me live vicariously through you.
That made me grin. I wanted to check in with Viv. I haven’t seen her since you returned. I totally bailed on her.
I’ll look for you there.
I started to slide off the table, but stopped. Leaning over, I gave him a quick kiss as I thought to him, You do care.
Luc didn’t respond, and that was okay. I knew he heard me. I knew he knew I believed in what I said, and if he didn’t believe in those words yet, I would until he could.
The Brightest Night Page 46
