“That doesn’t mean you should waltz out of here on your own, trying to be a fucking hero.”
He cupped my face, his gaze fierce. “I won’t risk taking you out in this storm. You’re too important. End of discussion.”
My heart fluttered at his words, at his touch, but I shut that nonsense downrealquick.
I wasn’t important tohim. I was important to his mission. The war. The magick.
He’d said Melantha wanted to use me, but so did he.
After all, he’d told me that from the very start.
Haley Barnes. A weapon the enemy could never defeat.
I turned away from him and stared into the fire, frustration simmering inside me. I felt him shifting on his feet, opening and closing his mouth as if he had more to say. But then, after a few tense moments, he returned to his packing, stripping out of his shirt and digging through the bag for a clean one. When he stood up again, the map of scars across his torso shone in the firelight, the sight softening my heart.
“I know how you got those scars,” I said quietly. “The bite marks, anyway.”
“Then you know more than I.”
I crossed the small space until we were standing close once more, so close I could smell the scent of him, the sweet roses, the spice. But Evander kept his back to me, still fumbling with his shirt.
“Elian told me that when you were boys, you saved him from a silver wolf attack.” I ran my palm over the bite marks alongside his ribs, and he hissed, but didn’t flinch or pull away. His skin was rough there, but red-hot, his muscles taut beneath it.
“Is that what he said?” he asked, turning to face me.
I nodded. “He was bitten too, but you nearly died fighting off the beast, protecting your twin.”
“Such abraveboy,” he snapped, but the softness in his eyes belied the venom in his voice.
“Do you really not remember?”
He put his arms through the sleeves of his shirt, but didn’t button it, the scars harsh and terrifying in the firelight. But they were beautiful, too. His stories, just like I hadmystories.
When I lowered my gaze to take in the rest, he didn’t shy away. Didn’t tell me to stop.
The smooth, hard planes of his abs gave way to a trail of soft, dark hair that dipped down below his beltline, and in that moment, all I wanted to do was run my hands down his chest, trace the story of his life with my fingertips, with my tongue. My heart pounded behind my ribs, my breath catching, the fire making everything impossibly hot. Impossibly close.
Evander took a step closer, and I dragged my gaze up to his face. To the deep violet of his borrowed eyes.
He reached for my hand and placed it against the bite marks, holding it there, his heart thudding just as wildly as mine.
“It’s said that when one suffers a traumatic event,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “the mind will sometimes block out the memory as a way to keep us from reliving the trauma, from experiencing that pain over and over.” He touched the scar on my wrist with a delicate stroke of his thumb, making me shiver. “I suspect you might know something about that.”
I nodded. There was no point in denying it. In hiding it. My scars were part of me, the history that had shaped me into the woman I was now, just as his history had shaped him.
Pain and understanding flickered in his violet irises.
“In my case,” he continued, “my mind did the opposite, magnifying the traumatic experience until it wasallI knew. All I’deverknown. Until those incomprehensible brutalities became so large in my memory, they choked out anything that had ever existed before.”
“But you survived,” I said. “You fucking survived. The worst possible things, you survived.”
“I survived, Haley, because I took all of that fear, that pain, that helplessness, and I channeled it into a weapon. Almost as soon as I arrived in Midnight, I began plotting, and I continued to do so, year after torturous year, enduring all manner of sadistic abuse and suffering that had me begging for death more often than not, all in the hopes that when Keradoc finally made a mistake, I would have my opportunity. Every time he laid a hand on me, every time he…” Evander closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, struggling with the memories of his oldest, darkest pain, his anger radiating from him in waves. “Every time he did those unspeakable, unconscionable things to me and the others, it was as if he’d tossed another log onto that fire raging inside me. Eventually, he’d built an inferno. And then, when he finally slipped up, when I finally saw my opportunity, I took it, unleashing the fire that he himself had stoked to terrible life.”
I pressed my cheek against his bare chest, sliding my arms around his waist, holding him tight. He was stiff at first, but then I felt him relax, his arms coming around to embrace me, his head resting on top of my head.
And for a long moment, we just stood there, holding each other, keeping each other company, having each other’s backs.
Like friends were supposed to.
