After everything I’d done to avenge Zane and see him again…this was not how I thought our reunion would go.
“Yes,” he echoed. “It’s changed me too. I’m not the same person, Sidney. I don’t know if Iama person. I don’t know what I am, anymore.”
“You’re Zane.” I reached up with my free hand, brushing the fringe of his hair back from his face.
He leaned slightly into my touch. “The temple alwayslabeled vampires as monsters, but I don’t feel like I am one of those, either. I guess I could be me, still.”
“Be you. Everyone else is taken,” I said, quoting one of the trite posters the temple kept in its youth center. He smiled in return, just slightly.
“There’s something else that bothers me. It’s been months, and you never tried to contact me. No messages, no visits, nothing,” I mumbled. My lips felt numb, like I was airing a nightmare to him. “Anythingwould’ve been better than that. Than knowing you wanted me to give up on you and move on.”
“And it seems you have.” The weight of jealousy in that response had my gaze snap to his again. “So, Finn is going to be your devotee? You really care for him?”
“I didn’t come here intending to. He’s a friend I made before I ever escaped from here. We reconnected recently. We have, um, more of a spark than I expected. The Flask of Dominion wants me to…”Rush into it,I was about to say, but that wasn’t right. It didn’t feel like a rush at all. “But I didn’t intend to sleep with him…not when I entered the Trials of Succession for you. I killed Nemeafor you. It’s just…”
“Complicated?” he offered with a sigh. “I’d have to be blind not to see the way you two look at each other. And the way you kissed him. Fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair, the muscle in his jaw taut.
My cheeks burned. Of course, Mathias and the council had to be watching us after we’d survived our brush with death. “And yet, I have kept this on me like a talisman this whole time.” I took my hand back and retrieved my engagement ring, putting it back where it belonged on my finger.
He lifted my hand and brushed little kisses over my knuckles. “It warms what’s left of my heart that you keptit,” he murmured. “But you cannot wear it. Not while you’re pretending to be a vampiress.”
“I know.” My voice cracked.
“You can put it away. I’ll be your talisman now. Your mate, as a proper vampire.” He kissed the curve of the ring, then bowed over my hand like a gallant knight.
My breath caught. “My mate,” I echoed.
“You were supposed to be my wife, but now you can be my forever.” He inched closer. The heat of his body radiated off of him, and I yearned to tug him closer, to brand my skin with his. But those amber-brown eyes, once so tender, were shadowed, hardened.
“That hasn’t changed. I’m still yours.”
“And I’m yours, even if I have to share you.” Pain cracked through his even tone. “If the Flask decreed it, you have to do it. I won’t hold it against you.”
“You’re still everything to me,” I promised.
He released a jagged breath and reached for the ties of my chest piece. He paused, only undoing it further when I nodded. “I’ll share you because you need me to. You’ve entered a fight you cannot win alone, so you must have a Devotion to survive,” he said. With a few tugs, he freed me of the leather and tossed it aside. “All because of…me.”
“For you,” I corrected. I pulled at his shirt, and he removed it after snagging it behind his neck. His Turning had certainly affected his body, further sculpting his chest with defined muscles. I ran my fingertips over his skin. It was him. Finally, here with me again.
He caught my wrists, holding my palms to his skin. “All this revenge and death because of what Nemea did to me.”
“That part…is not just about you,” I admitted, if only to finally say it aloud. “It’s also a long overdue reckoning for all the bloodsuckers that infest this place.”
A hint of his smile returned and his breathing quickened. “Why is your talk of revenge so hot?”
“Now you’ve met the monsters of my past firsthand. You must agree that death is what they deserve.” I drew my fingers down his toned stomach, sliding my hand further down the line of his body. “And…” I let the thought trail off as my touch skimmed the center of his trousers.
He made a soft sound of denial. “And?”
I tipped my head, heart leaping as I offered it to him anew. “And I love you.”
His mouth collided with mine. Our tongues tangled, breath stolen between heartbeats. In one swift motion, he scooped me off my feet, carrying me to the foot of the bed. He said between kisses, “I love you too. I never stopped, not for a moment.”
A sharp rap on the wood splintered the silence. I stiffened, a hiss escaping my teeth. The interruption jarring against the heat rising between us.
Zane let out a breath that was more of a controlled snarl, though the fire in his eyes died down into a grudging acceptance.
He crossed the room and yanked the door open just wide enough to say “thank you” and accept a steaming clay pot from the servant. He set the vessel on the table, retrieved the wax-sealed vial he had liberated from the safe room, and added a large pinch of its contents to the pot.
