The Brightest Embers

by Jeaniene Frost

  “No, but you care about me,” I said at once. “You might have left me in a very dramatic fashion, but you’ve been following me ever since, haven’t you?” He looked away, and I pounced. “Come on, Adrian! You didn’t coincidentally decide to stay in the same tiny arctic village that you told me to check the spearhead for. What, did you use the credit card trail I left behind to figure out which place I was heading to first? Or did you simply follow us the whole way to Sweden?”

  “Both,” he said, the single word sliding out with obvious reluctance. “I lost you when you took Brutus for a ride, but then I saw you coming back in with him and ran to find you when I heard a crash shortly after that.”

  That crash could’ve been me hitting the fence or Demetrius leveling that house. Either way, I was so glad Adrian had decided to investigate it.

  “You sound like you hate admitting the truth. Is it really that hard for you to be honest with me?”

  “Isn’t that the source of most of our problems?” he replied bitterly. “Even at my best, I am still a liar at heart.”

  I took a tighter grip on his shirt. “That might be your default setting, yes, and you’re also a demon in denial, but—”

  “I am not a demon,” he interrupted, incensed.

  If I hadn’t been gripping his shirt, I would have thrown up my hands. “See? Denial, but let’s look at the facts. You love the dark and cold more than the sun and light. Lying is second nature to you, especially when the truth doesn’t give you the results you’re looking for. You have tastes that redefine the meaning of ‘high end,’ and when you want something, you will tear through other realms, this world and even heaven and hell to get it. Sound like any species you’re familiar with?”

  His jaw was clenched so tightly, I could hear the cartilage start to crack. “Fine. I’m a demon as well as a liar and betrayer, so what else could there be for us to talk about?”

  I stared at him as I took a deliberate step closer. “Because unlike other demons or Judians, that’s not all there is to you. You’re also so brave, you regularly risked your life for strangers when you were working for Zach. You’re loyal to a fault to your friends, honest enough to own up to your many flaws, generous to people who could never repay you and understanding even when ignorance would be easier. Most of all—” I took a breath to loosen the new tightness in my chest “—you’re selfless enough to leave the person you love most because you think—mistakenly—that she’s better off without you, and that’s something no normal demon would do.”

  “You are better off without me.” His voice was so hoarse, it was almost unrecognizable. “I tried to tell myself otherwise for a while, but once again, I was lying.”

  “Yeah, you lie when you shouldn’t, and yeah, it’s mostly because of who and what you are, and yeah, it’s caused some huge problems between us.” Now I hauled on his shirt to bring him closer. “But again, if you were only everything you hated about yourself, you wouldn’t have turned your back on your demon family to begin with, let alone rescued Costa and Tomas when you left, or worked with Zach for years rescuing other people, or risked your life for me countless times, and finally, left me when you thought you’d hurt me again. Time and again, you chose to be better than your DNA and your destiny, and that proves you’re stronger than the darkness inside you. Yes, it’s there and it probably always will be. It’s there for me, too, and—”

  “How is it there for you?” he interrupted.

  I let out an exasperated noise. “Everybody has some darkness in them, Adrian! Demetrius says I have some extra now that our souls are tethered together, and he could be right. For starters, I’ve noticed that I’m lying more, even if there’s no reason for it. I’ll have to make amends for those lies, and I’ll have to fight against my inner darkness harder to stop it and worse things from happening, but I’m not afraid of my darkness no matter the source of it. Know why?”

  He gave me a pained look. “Because you’re the Davidian. Unlike me, the darkness will never win with you. It can’t.”

  “It can’t win with you, either,” I said softly. “Not if you accept who you are, all of it.”

  His snort was harsh. “How will that help?”

  “You might be a demon with the extra baggage of Judas’s legacy, but you also have all the light you need.”

  At his doubtful look, I exchanged the crumpled-up hunks of his shirt for his hands, gripping him while I stared into his tortured sapphire eyes.

  “You might not believe that, because I love you, but we also have an objective opinion. See these?” I said, shaking our entwined hands at him. “Two out of the three most hallowed weapons in the world are embedded in my skin, yet unlike when other demons are nearby, they don’t react to you. You might have demon blood in your veins, but you are not evil. I know that, and these hallowed weapons know it, too. Otherwise, they’d be glowing gold and burning the shit out of me right now.”

  He stared at our clasped hands. The ancient, braided rope tattoo disappeared beneath his fingers where his hand covered mine, its brown color only a few shades darker than my skin. This was far from the first time that he’d touched the tattoos without them adversely reacting to him, but it was clear from his expression that this was the first time he’d considered the ramifications of that. For the briefest moment, hope lit up his features. Then that hope was buried by doubt.

  “Maybe it’s nothing more than a loophole. I’m the last Judian and you’re the last Davidian, so fate says I’m supposed to get close enough to you to betray you. Hard to do that if these weapons went into alarm mode every time I was near you.”

  “That’s not it,” I said, seizing on his brief moment of hope and trying to make it grow. “Not long after we met, I was worried that demons would win this war because there seemed to be a lot more of them than Archons. You told me numbers didn’t matter when it came to darkness versus light. Remember why?”

  He looked away, muttering, “No,” but that was a lie. He did remember, and so did I.

  “You said, One shadow in a brightly lit room goes unnoticed, but shine a ray of light into even the darkest corner, and everything changes.” I gripped his hands tighter. “If you don’t trust what I see in you, and you don’t trust the hallowed weapons’ lack of a negative reaction, then trust the tethering of our souls. It joined us together, right? That makes you part of the Davidian legacy now, too. You might have a lot of darkness, but you have light, too. You’ve had it for a long time. It gave you the strength to turn your back on demons years ago, and it’ll give you the strength you don’t think you have now. One ray shining into the darkness, Adrian. That’s all it takes to make even the deepest shadows scatter, and you have more than one ray. You have so many of them—”

  His mouth crushed over mine. At first, I thought he was trying a different method to shut me up. Then I felt the desperation in the way he clutched me to him, and the need seething in his kiss transcended simple lust. It broke the dam inside of me, releasing all my boiling emotions in a rush.

  I shoved him back and slapped him with all the pain I’d felt when he left me. Then I was instantly horrified at what I’d done. He only crushed me to him again, his tongue sensually dominating mine. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, that I didn’t know what had gotten into me when I hit him, but other, stronger emotions rose, covering my shock and shame. They replaced them with a need that felt almost feral. I ground against Adrian as if trying to make love to him right through our clothing, and when he clutched me tighter, his arms, mouth and body became a cage that I never wanted to escape from.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I PUSHED HIS shirt up, needing to feel his skin beneath my hands. Then I needed to feel more of it because that warm, muscled expanse was addictive. Within moments, his back wasn’t enough, so I plunged my hands beneath his waistband, reaching for the hard globes of his ass. I could grasp only th
e tops because the large bulge in the front of his pants combined with the formfitting denim meant there wasn’t enough room for my hands.

  I made a frustrated noise and he responded with a low, throaty laugh that made things lower in me clench. I knew that laugh. It promised incredible amounts of pleasure.

  I wanted him to make good on that promise now. I dragged my hands away from his ass in order to lock them behind his neck. Then I pulled myself up to wrap my legs around his waist. His arms immediately supported me, and our bodies met at exactly the right spot. When he ground against me with that thick, jutting hardness, I barely heard his moan from the sharp cry I made.

  His arms tightened until I was plastered to him, then he dropped to his knees. I gloried in the weight and feel of his body as he pressed me against the soft grass, then I made a wordless sound of protest when he pulled away. That stopped when he drew his shirt over his head, throwing it aside to reveal his luscious golden-brown chest. I stared at him, all at once breathless for more reasons than passion.

  He was so beautiful, he didn’t look real, yet he felt very, very real, especially when I tugged open the front of his pants to free the hardness straining against it. His breath caught when I wrapped my hands around him, and he briefly closed his eyes. Then he almost ripped my top and bra away. I arched beneath the searing warmth of his mouth as he sucked my nipples, and when he pulled my pants off and his fingers found my center, I couldn’t stop my moans. I was both desperate for more of his touch and desperate for him to stop so he’d be inside me. When his mouth left my breasts to slide down my stomach, I grabbed his head, shoving myself down until his face was level with mine instead of between my legs.

  “Don’t. I want you now.”

  I loved what he could do with his mouth, but I wanted him inside me more. He stared at me, the desire and intensity in his gaze as arousing as a thousand erotic strokes of his tongue. Then, with an arch of his hips that tore a cry from both of us, he thrust inside me, moving deeply and slowly, stoking the fire that already burned within me. Soon, those thrusts became faster.

  My nerve endings sizzled, while my mind spun away from everything that wasn’t him. There was only his kiss, his taste, the feel of his muscles bunching in his back, the sounds he made and the indescribable ecstasy that each new thrust brought. The first time I came, I was breathless. The second time, I was shaking. The third time, when he finally came with me, I was screaming. I didn’t care, either. I’d lost the last of my inhibitions a while ago.

  I grabbed him when he tried to pull out of me, wrapping my legs around him to keep him inside. He smiled, clasping me to him when he rolled onto his side. I kept my leg hooked around his hip and my arms around his neck while I waited until my breathing evened out enough to speak.

  “You’re never leaving me again” were my first words. “I don’t care what you think about me being better off.”

  He sighed, kissing me on the top of my head. “You would be, but even when I left you before, I couldn’t go far.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone at all,” I said, adding quietly, “And I shouldn’t have threatened to leave you, either. I was so hurt by what you’d done, so angry... I wanted to punish you.”

  “I deserved punishing,” he said, his voice equally quiet.

  “You did,” I agreed. “But not that way.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I didn’t only hide what I’d done with Demetrius because I knew it was wrong. I also did it because I knew once I told you, I’d have to let you keep looking for the spearhead. And I didn’t want you to.”

  He rolled onto his back, taking me with him. My hair fell around his face, haloing it in brown swaths as I stared at him.

  “Don’t kid yourself about me, Ivy,” he said softly. “Even now, I’m as greedy for you as Judas ever was for silver.”

  “I love you,” I said, and meant it to my soul. “And unlike your infamous ancestor, I know you loving me is why you did what you did. But you can’t keep taking my choices away from me, Adrian. If I was the type of person who’d let you, you wouldn’t love me, because you’re too strong willed to let anyone make up your mind for you, especially about really important things.”

  “Even if that were true, in this case, I might make an exception,” he said dryly.

  I let out a watery chuckle, then got serious again. “I was half-crazed when I thought you were dying in front of me. Right then, I would’ve agreed to almost anything to save you. And you agreed to terrible things trying to save me. I get why. I do, but no matter what, we have to be better than our instincts to protect each other at any cost.”

  He stared at me, his gaze turning sad. “You can be that strong. I don’t think I can.”

  “I know you can. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have torn your own throat out to take Obsidiana down. Or bluffed Demetrius with a cracker, or had Brutus fly me and Jasmine away so you could face a horde of minions alone, or any of the other countless things you’ve done. I want both of us to stop lying, but that’s changing a behavior. I don’t expect either of us to change who we are.”

  “I should. You shouldn’t.” His voice roughened. “Tying yourself to my darkness might have given you some bad habits, but it can’t touch who you are. You’re the girl who should have crumbled when you lost your parents and your sister within two weeks of each other, but you shoved your grief aside to start your own search for Jasmine. Even when you found out you’d have to go through minions, demons, strange realms and an unwanted destiny to get her, you never wavered. Then you tried to help others by repairing the realm walls despite demons dogging your every step. Now you’re back to going after a weapon that’ll kill you the moment you touch it, yet you’re not letting that stop you, either.”

  I dropped my gaze. “I need to find the spearhead before demons do, but I haven’t said that I’m going to use it—”

  “Ivy.” My name was a sigh. “Yes, you will. You won’t be able to stop yourself, and that has nothing to do with you being the last Davidian. It’s because you’re you. That new darkness might have stalled you, but in the end, it will never stop you.”

  I looked back at him. His sapphire-and-silver gaze reflected torment, then icy determination, then torment again. Not a muscle on his body moved, but I could practically feel the fierce battle within him.

  “But if I’m there,” he said softly, “I don’t know if I can let you. I want to swear that I’ll respect your decision, but I don’t trust myself not to try to save you, even if that’s not what you want.”

  I opened my mouth to argue over his surety that I’d use the spearhead if I found it, but no words came out. It reminded me of when I’d been unable to promise Jasmine that I wouldn’t use it, either. Was he right? Despite all the good reasons why I shouldn’t wield it, deep down, had some part of me always intended to?

  I sighed. “I don’t know if you’re right. So what if neither of us promises the other anything right now? That way, you don’t have to worry about lying, and I won’t have to feel sorry if I hit you over the head later to stop you from doing something against my wishes.”

  “If it comes to that, better make sure you hit me hard,” he muttered.

  “I’ve done it before,” I replied with the same grim humor.

  A dubious truce, but an honest one, at least. I rolled off him, finally disengaging the most intimate parts of our bodies. Then I smiled when his arms shot out to keep me close.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Nature calls,” I said, pushing him away.

  I donned his shirt because it was the closest piece of clothing in the grass around us. Then I trotted off in search of a bush. There wasn’t one nearby, so I settled for going out of eyesight while I tended to my bladder’s needs. When I came back up the hill, Adrian was no longer alone.

  Zach, Jasmine and Costa were now
here. The Archon politely glanced away, but Costa raised an eyebrow as Adrian hastily put on his pants. Jasmine gave me an incredulous look.

  “Seriously? You two were alone here for five minutes!”

  “Your time,” I said, buttoning Adrian’s shirt as fast as my fingers could fly. “It was, uh, a couple hours on this side.”

  “Oh.” Jasmine’s expression went from shocked to mildly censuring. “Better, but still means you’re easy.”

  I snorted. “Get me an Easy Ivy T-shirt, and I promise I’ll wear it.”

  “Speaking of T-shirts, I’m still in soaked jammies,” Jasmine said, turning to Zach. “Got anything other than fig leafs for me to wear here?”

  “I’ll attend to that after I return with Brutus,” Zach said, and disappeared.

  “With the time difference in this realm, he won’t be back for hours,” Adrian said, handing Jasmine my discarded shirt. “Here, wear this. Ivy can keep mine.”

  Jasmine took it, turning her back to discard her soaked top and replace it with my turtleneck. She gave a pointed look at me when she fingered the rip up the side of it. I just shrugged, still too filled with afterglow to be embarrassed.

  “Take my pants, too,” I offered. “Adrian’s shirt is like a dress on me, anyway.”

  “Thanks,” Jasmine said, this time using Costa as her shield when she doffed her sodden pants in exchange for my dry ones.

  Adrian came over, handing me something he’d kept out of sight. My underwear and bra, I realized, and gave him a smile of thanks while I darted back down the hill to put them on.

  Costa was hanging Jasmine’s wet clothes on the branch of a manna tree when I came back. He’d taken his shirt off and hung that, too, but must have resigned himself to staying in the wet long underwear bottoms he still wore.

  “You could take those off to dry, too. Promise I won’t peek,” I teased him.

  Costa gave me an arch smile. “Ah, but if you did, then you’d leave Adrian, and I couldn’t do that to my best friend.”