Bale laughed and stepped away from Magnus. “Don’t push it, or I might still kill you.”
Amusement shone in Magnus’s silver eyes. “You’d miss me too much.”
Bale grunted in response, and Magnus laughed.
“We have a lot to catch up on,” Corson said.
When his eyes landed on me again, hostility shimmered there, but I didn’t anticipate an attack here. They hated me, but they loved Bale more, and they wouldn’t do anything to risk her life.
I despised their do-gooder, follow-the-leader ways, but I grudgingly respected them for seeking to protect my Chosen.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bale
I satin the dark restaurant and stared at the skull hanging on the wall across from me. The two horns curling out of the sides of its head resembled a hell creature, but this was an Earth animal.
As I stared into its empty eye sockets, I felt as if the dead animal was judging me. I’d never been one for imagination, there was no room for it in Hell, but now I was considering taking the judgmental thing and smashing it to pieces.
It wasn’t the skull judging me, but my guilt and uncertainty about myself. I’d given myself to Wrath, and now I was back with my friends, and I had no idea how to handle it, especially since I was fighting against going outside and giving myself to him again.
He left the building shortly after I reunited with everyone. While I settled at the table to tell them what happened, he stood nearby, casually meeting the gaze of every paliton glaring at him.
As the night wore on and the crowd dispersed, Wrath rested his hand on Zorn’s neck and the two of them left without a word. However, he hadn’t gone far as I sensed him somewhere out there.
My gaze shifted to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the other side of the room. The falling snow created a soft ticking sound as it bounced off the glass. When the wind swirled across the land, it whipped up snow from the ground, and the noise became louder, but Wrath didn’t return to take shelter from the storm.
I’d led Fiora to her room over an hour ago, but I hadn’t retreated to mine. I couldn’t settle down yet, not when I felt like I was being pulled in two different directions. So, I returned here and slid into a booth to sip whiskey and wait though I had no idea what I was waiting for; Wrath would not come to me.
A footstep drew my attention to the large double doors leading into the lobby a second before Corson stepped through them. His presence didn’t surprise me as I realizedhewas the reason I was waiting. He stopped by the bar and pulled a glass down from the rack before continuing to me.
He slid into the booth to sit across from me and rested his hands on the table as his citrine eyes studied me. I braced myself for what was to come. I had no idea what he would say, but I deserved his censure.
“Whiskey?” I inquired and lifted the bottle. I’d wiped some of the dust away to reveal the label, and my fingers had cleared some more of the glass, but the bottle was still more obscured than visible.
He pushed his glass toward me. “Sure.”
I filled his glass to the brim with the amber liquid and pushed it back toward him. Compared to mjéod, human drinks were mild, but I did enjoy the taste and burn of the whiskey in my belly.
“So, Wrath,” he said.
“Wrath,” I said.
“You knew after your fight with him in the minotaur’s cave, didn’t you?”
It was so like Corson to strike straight at the heart of things. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“What was I supposed to say? One of our greatest enemies is my Chosen, and I plan to kill him?”
“You can’t kill him, Bale; that will only destroy you too.”
“I can’t kill himnow, but I planned to do it then. I’ve always known I would die in battle, or give my life during a fight, so dying because I killed one of our enemies wasn’t that different.”
“And now?”
“And now….” I looked away from him and back to the empty, judgmental eyes of the skull. “I can’t kill him. I…” I gulped as I forced out words I never thought I’d utter. “I care too much for him.”
