I hadn’t noticed the third blade in his leg. More blood drizzled down his pants and left a stain on the ground as he walked.
He towered over me as I peered up at him, my Phoenix still very much in control. My hands moved without my permission as my beast wrapped my fingers around the dagger and started twisting it free from my chest. I tried to stop him, to give Ajax more time, but it was futile. I was broken in the back of my soul, just as my beast had been mere hours ago.
Touché,I thought at him.But you can’t control me forever.
Which was probably what my animal had thought at me earlier when I’d bound him, too.
“Camillia is okay,” Ajax started. Up this close, his obsidian eyes danced with dark blue flames. There was something else there, too.
I often saw his torment reflected back at me, but this was different.
He’d said that this place was fucking with him, but it was more than that. His emotions were troubled, perhaps because he was seeing relics of his past. Or maybe because of his time with Camillia. Likely both.
Twist.
Ajax had maybe twenty-five seconds before that blade was fully dislodged, so he’d better start talking faster.
Only, he stared my beast down without fear. He should have been terrified. He should have been using these few moments to run for his life. Instead, he was trying to reason with my fucking bird.
“But you asked me if I hurt Camillia. And yes, I did. I watched as snake vines sank their fangs into her and spread their poison.”
What are you doing?I demanded.How do you think this is helpful?
I’d been bitten by a snake vine before. It hadn’t been pleasant. To be bitten more than once suggested Cami must have been in agony. And since I knew that, my bird also knew that.
Thus, his words only fueled my Phoenix’s ire even more.
“But that’s not why she’s angry,” he went on.
Which caused my Phoenix to pause only for a second.
“She’s angry because we—youand I—chose to interrogate her rather than try to talk to her.” His eyes squeezed shut before opening again, revealing more of those conflicted emotions swirling in his dark orbs. “She said she thought there was something between us. But we ruined it through our actions.”
What was the idiot doing? He was digging his own grave. As evidenced by my Phoenix reigniting his efforts in pulling out the dagger.
“But I realized something,” Ajax continued. He lowered with unsteady movements, landing on one knee so that we were at eye level.
Not many managed to be this close to a pissed-off Phoenix and survive.
If Ajax didn’t start running in the next ten seconds, he probably wouldn’t.
But I was starting to wonder if that was exactly what he wanted. If he’d finally given up.
If that damn female had finally pushed him over the edge.
“I realized why she reminds me so much of Emelyn.” A shiver of pain ripped through him at the name.
I knew there was a female in his past that had broken him. But he rarely ever spoke about her.
Unfortunately, my Phoenix didn’t really care about the revelation right now, though. It was only the dagger in my heart that kept my beast from shredding Ajax into pieces.
Ajax worked on a swallow. “I… I loved Emelyn, but she’s gone. Nothing will change that.” He glanced up, meeting my gaze unflinchingly once more. “Camillia is here. She was put on my path for a reason, and as her Warden, it was my job to secure her. When she escaped, I was angry.”
As was I,I thought at him.
As were you,I reminded my bird, too.You didn’t like that we couldn’t find her, that she’d evaded us. Remember?
Although, I was beginning to understand that perhaps it was losing his desired mate that had pissed off my beast, not the fact that she was magically thwarting our efforts to track her.
