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“Roan?”
I looked back up at her, reeling, and her beautiful face brought me back to the reality of the present moment. “The demon hurt you, though. You don’t have to tell me details. Just please know I’m so gods-damned sorry. I never intended for it to?—”
“It didn’t hurt me.”
I froze.
“It infuriated me. But it didn’t hurt me.”
I couldn’t keep up. “What? But then why…” I shook my head, trying to dislodge a coherent thought and coming up with nothing. “What happened?”
Somewhere in all of this, her anger had faded, and now she was studying me like she wasn’t quite sure who she was looking at anymore. “What are you, Roan? And what’s the demon? Really? Because it wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”
I floundered, amazed the demon had managed to carry on a conversation long enough to spark her temper and not her fear.
Though from the look of it, the creature had still made a wreck of things.
Her brow rose, waiting and questioning.
I didn’t know what to say, and the fact I was standing here naked hardly helped the situation. What were we? A monster. Or, really, a monster and a man who couldn’t protect anyone, least of all from himself. There wasn’t anything more to us than that. No name to define whatever the hell we were.
Yet here I was, learning that the creature who was only good for destroying everything and everyone we loved had just talked to her.
“Roan? Please, just tell me. What are you?”
My mouth moved. “I-I don’t know.”
She blinked. “But surely you?—”
I turned away, though it only brought me to the edge of a tower I couldn’t begin to imagine how we were going to get down. The stairs along the decaying wall looked so unstable, I’d never risk her on them. Whatever roof access had once existed to the tower interior had obviously fallen when the center of the roof collapsed.
We were trapped.
Maybe the demon wanted it that way.
Anger began to boil inside me, making my heart pound harder and harder until my veins felt like ropes tightening around my neck, choking me. That damned demon would do that. Give me hope, only to turn around and pick a place where any decent man wouldn’t take her—and where, if not for the fact she was a vampire, Gwyneira would’ve been trapped with it. No, it hadn’t killed the others. Hadn’t burned the city to the ground. But with every gods-damned choice that creature made, it still only ground home the fact that we weren’t worthy of her.
We were just a fucking monster.
My eyes landed on a collection of stunted weeds and bushes that had taken root between stones of the parapet nearby. I wasn’t remotely as good as Clay at conjuring clothes from thin air, nor as talented as Niko at manipulating nature, but wood responded to me and those scraggly limbs were close enough.
Gwyneira said nothing while I extended a hand over the branches, weaving them together and making them grow by magic until they became a rough blanket to wrap around my shoulders and cover my nakedness.
“Roan.”
I didn’t turn. Gods, I thought I might actually hate hearing my name on her lips. I truly did. It hurt like hell itself was carving red-hot knives into my flesh.
Because I wanted her screaming it. Moaning it. Crying it out while I thrust into her and made her writhe with pleasure. I wanted her gasping it as I caressed her soft breasts and every inch of her beautiful naked?—
I shuddered, shaking my head hard to dispel that disastrous wish.
“I’m sorry.”
Alarm froze me. “What?” When I turned, she was studying me, and the gods only knew why. “What the hell do you have to be sorry for?” I demanded.
Her brow drew down, a cautiously curious look spreading over her face. “You never let on how scared of it you are.”
I tensed, thrown by the shift in topic.
