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She thought she knew. She thought she saw me. Hell, before the last couple of weeks, I thought she knew me, too.
But all of this was a show, a false reality. I was pretending to be someone I could never, ever become.
I was pretending to be good.
I waited until Lyra was deep asleep before carefully and delicately untangling my body from hers and slipping out of the warm nest of our bed.
My stomach lurched as I stood over her, my shadow cascading over her perfectly soft body and her cherry-red hair that splayed over the silk pillowcase. After last night, I was desperate not to hurt her, not to make things worse.
Fuck. Lyra had already been through so much pain. She didn’t need any more of it, and she sure as all hell did not need it from me.
Without making a noise, I pulled on my black jeans and a matching clean shirt before slipping out of the bedroom and creeping down the hall, making my way toward the front door.
“I need to talk to you,” Wrath said from the dark shadows of the hallway.
I froze. “At this hour?”
“It can’t wait.” Wrath pushed himself off the wall where he had apparently been waiting and made his way to the kitchen.
I followed, not really seeing a choice in the matter. Running away from him again was only going to create more issues for myself, ones I couldn’t explain.
“You should be sleeping,” I chided. “You have a long day tomorrow.”
“So should you,” he replied with a shrug. His voice held a certain edge that I wasn’t used to. Wrath was the kind one, the nice one. But something sharp laced his words. “It seems you haven’t been sleeping much at all lately.”
“I sleep.” I pulled out a chair and sat at the tall counter placed in the center of the kitchen.
“Really?” Wrath pushed. “When you’re sneaking around the city or when you’re lying to Lyra about it?”
I stilled.
He scoffed. “Don’t look so shocked, brother. I may have been dead for years, but I know what goes on around here.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I argued. Fuck. Getting defensive was only going to make him more suspicious. I took a breath and tried to calm my raging temper.
“I don’t?” Wrath cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms over his chest. “Then why did you come home last night reeking of human blood and cigarettes?”
I pushed myself up from the chair and glanced over my shoulder quickly before leaning toward him. “Keep your voice down,” I hissed.
“Why? Afraid Lyra will hear about your late-night journey? What were you doing, anyway? Distracting yourself with other women?”
“I would never betray Lyra, dammit! This isn’t about her!”
The thought alone made me want to vomit. Even looking at another woman made my stomach curl.
“Isn’t it, though?” Wrath’s voice dropped to a dangerously low level. “It’s all about her, brother. I can see it in your eyes.”
“You’ve been gone for years, Wrath. You don’t get to show up here and pretend like you know everything after a few weeks of living on this side of the veil.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. A few torturously slow seconds passed, and my heart rate increased with every one of them.
“You were on the other side of that veil for a few minutes,” he started, “but I was there for years. Whatever you saw, whatever happened to you over there, I can assure you that I saw it, too.”
No. There was no way Wrath experienced what I had experienced on the other side of that veil.
If he had, he wouldn’t be walking around here like everything was fine, like he had just reappeared and suddenly everything was okay.
He would be falling to his knees every damn morning and praying that the gods take his life, because living through that was simply not an option.
