ALONE
Tenebrous (adjective): causing gloom.
DAY 8, HOUR 14
Mouth open on a silent scream, I jolted awake and sat up straight.
I cracked my forehead against wood.
Sun god help the idiot who had designed the cramped bunk beds, because I was going to hunt them down.
“Oof, that sucks.” Orion was sprawled out on his bunk across the room, reading a book.
We were alone.
I rubbed at my forehead and winced. The clock on the wall showed I’d slept late into the day.
Seeing the question in my eyes, Orion smirked and said, “The twins and demons are bringing you back food from the cafeteria. It’s just the two of us.” He winked seductively. “Wanna hang?”
I flopped back onto my covers. “Yeah—myself.”
Orion laughed loudly, and I startled as I realized he’d been speaking to me at full volume. His voice was as beautiful as his face.
Life wasn’t fair.
“Where are your mates?” I asked as I threw myself out of bed and avoided thinking about warm brown eyes, long lashes, plush pink lips, and a sinful voice.
“They’re doing some important king business, don’t worry,” he said.
Malum’s words from last night came back to me. Orion had earned his cherry blossoms with openmouthed kisses and moans of pleasure. I closed my eyes and tried to rub away the feeling of warm lips devouring me.
Turning around, I walked into a wall of muscle and jumped. My mouth watered at the divine scent of chocolate raspberries.
Orion stared down at me with a strange intensity. He’d moved silently across the room with impossible speed.
His full lips gave him a perpetual pout.
The memory of how soft his lips had felt when he’d kissed me at Elite Academy played through my mind. He kissed differently from Malum. Less rough, but equally passionate.
I licked my lips and swayed closer to him.
A sharp bolt of pain slammed down my spine and brought me back to reality.
Wondrous, I was becoming a pervert like the men.
I staggered away.
“Seriously. Are you okay?” he asked at full volume as he reached for me.
I flinched and kept backing away from him.
“Obviously—I’m clearly thriving,” I said drolly instead of admitting I kept making out with my mortal enemy and I was beginning to suspect that I wanted to bone both him and Malum at the same time.
I grimaced as I made my bed just to give myself something to do.
One day, you were a woman with hopes and dreams, and the next, you were fantasizing about sitting on two men’s faces just to shut them up.
Awkwardness stretched between us.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
I swallowed manic laughter. “Hard no.”
His scent spiked sweeter as he moved closer to me, and I covered my mouth. Head spinning from too many hours of sleep, I staggered into the cramped bathroom and slammed the door shut, then locked it for good measure.
I turned on the water and collapsed into the tub.
Scalding-hot water burned my flesh, and I pretended not to notice that it reminded me of Malum’s kisses.
There was screwed, and then there was screwed. I was the latter.
Pink blotches covered my limbs.
Wet curls were plastered across my face.
I laid my head back.
Orion hadn’t told me where Malum and Scorpius were, but I pictured them walking hand in hand on a date while they gave each other kisses and talked shit about me.
Was I being rational? No. Did that matter at the moment because I was spiraling? Also no.
I lay in the tub under the shower spray like a frigid corpse who was not sexually attracted to her enemies.
Arms crossed over my chest.
Legs straight.
Mouth sewn shut.
The Necklace of Death hot against my chest.
Ice coated my fingers, then receded in the hot water.
For a second, I hallucinated there was snow in the shower. White flakes flurried down, then dissipated in the scalding steam.
A layer of thick cobalt ice coated my feet where they stuck out of the water.
What in the sun god is wrong with me?
When I’d discovered I was an angel, I’d pictured soaring over mountains and brandishing ice swords. I’d imagined poise and frosty control.
I had never pictured this.
The ice coating my feet traveled across the porcelain tub and welded us together.
“Are you all right in there?” Orion shouted through the door. His lyrical voice cracked, and he said softly, “Please tell me you’re doing okay.”
“Do you think I’m part angel, part Abominable Snowman?” I asked, slightly hysterical.
This was my final straw.
“What?” he asked with confusion through the door.
“I read about it in a book,” I said. “It’s this big beastly creature that lives in the ice and snow with thunder thighs and sharp teeth and claws and—uh, a freak,” I finished lamely.
There was a long pause.
“I know what it’s like to be a freak,” he said softly through the door.
My heart twisted at the pain in his voice.
“You aren’t one—don’t say that,” I said fiercely.
I yawned loudly. It seemed impossible that I could be so tired when I’d slept for so long. Panicking over becoming a snowman did that to a woman.
My eyes drifted closed.
“It’s okay,” Orion replied. “The first time I enchanted someone with my voice, I was four years old…” His voice was mellow as he told me stories about his childhood.
I listened with my eyes closed, imagining a cherub little boy with golden skin and white-blond hair crying himself to sleep because he was forbidden from talking to anyone.
My heart hurt as he revealed his parents had given him away to an all-boys home because they’d thought he was defective. Strength and power were the ultimate tenets of devil life, and those viewed as different were discarded.
He talked about living with the other foster boys on an expansive farm. How he’d loved visiting the village’s farmers market.
I struggled to make sense of the world he described.
I’d pictured the devil realm as a dreary, miserable city filled with gangs and violence, but what he described sounded provincial and rural. It was a place of quiet living, apart from extreme tenets regarding strength and personhood.
His voice calmed the panic in my chest.
He talked about how being with Corvus and Scorpius had saved him.
How Corvus secretly had a soft side you would never believe unless you saw him in his home. How Scorpius could make pain feel greater than pleasure ever could.
My stomach flipped, and a whimper escaped my lips.
Orion changed topics, and he talked about the euphoric feeling of unleashing his powers with his mates. He said it felt divine but also like torment because their mating bond wasn’t complete.
There was a painful knot in his chest that wound tighter when they unleashed their abilities. When they lost all awareness, it felt wrong, like they were being punished for not having their fourth.
I listened intently.
What he described was so foreign I couldn’t even imagine it. To have so much power that it felt like euphoria—it sounded like a fairy tale.
Then Orion randomly asked softly, “What’s with Luka?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Uh.” He cleared his throat. “Why’s he always so quiet? I’ve noticed that he seems—intense.”
The tone of his voice was weird, and I couldn’t place it.
“John’s hinted that he’s been through a lot,” I said. “He’s a very protective, intense guy.” I smiled. “But he’s secretly a softie.” I thought about all the times he’d helped me during training, and we hadn’t even known each other.
Orion was silent.
“Why do you ask?”
He cleared his throat. “Just wondering. I’ve noticed him watching me sometimes, and I was wondering if that was something he usually does?”
His words startled me. “No, it’s not—he usually only looks at me and John. Sometimes I don’t think he knows other people exist.”
Orion made a noise in the back of his throat. “Interesting.”
I smiled to myself. “He also has wicked-cool tattoos and a piercing somewhere you’d never expect.”
“Really?” Orion asked, the interest clear in his voice.
Grinning, I launched into a detailed account of every fine-line tattoo that covered Luka’s chest.
As I talked, the ice on my toes didn’t seem like such a big deal.
After a while of objectifying Luka, I asked more questions about Orion’s childhood, and he launched into a captivating tale of survival.
Yet again I drifted off to sleep, but this time in the shower to the sound of an enchanting voice.
The nightmares stayed away.
I dreamed of grassy pastures, rolling hills, cherry blossoms floating on a warm summer breeze, and Orion smiling as he talked to me.
