Page 127 of Hellbound

Marian’s throat went dry.

“How long?”

He took another step forward into what little light eked through the window.

“Longer than any mortal mind was meant to endure. I didn’t think it possible to survive what you did; it should have destroyed you. You’d gone missing. I looked for you. Found you in your apartment. Alive, somehow, but your mind was not your own. Then I saw my mark, fresh in your skin, and it became clear. You’d become part of my world and the souls the ixyura had devoured, lived their pain and memories. I told you what you would need to become for me. I told you of the impossible—how someone within the ixyura must have delayed your death. But you weren’t ready to hear it.”

He hesitated before closing the last of the distance between them.

“I tried to spare Elio Ramirez’s life by unburdening him of his memories of your revelation. He did not survive the process.”

The absence of remorse in his voice ought to have disturbed her. Maybe it did and she simply couldn’t feel it among the other emotions pummeling her. “You killed Elio.”

“He was an unintended casualty of my attempt to protect you,” Vale replied. “You don’t remember your father; I would have seen his face in your memories and known Arthur Falk and Bennett Meyer were one and the same. But it’s clear to me now that he remembered you.”

“That’s how you knew what Daniel had done to me. That’s how you saw all those files. But you connected the dots I couldn’t.” Her frown deepened. “Wait, what do you mean my father remembered me? He’s dead.”

Vale knelt in front of her and reached inside the towel to pull out her left hand. He bared her wrist with its intertwining black lines to view.

“How else do you think you survived the Remnant when no one else has? Arthur died bearing my mark; the Remnant could never unmake him. He must have found you and shown you my sign, protected you as best he could within the ixyura. He defied oblivion to save a single soul: yours.”

Marian shook her head. Falk died long before Marian received the mark. “That’s impossible.”

Vale exhaled softly. “Marian, you are the proof that it’s not just possible—it was done. There is far too much in this universe that even I do not understand for anything to be strictly ‘impossible.’ Death was once the end. In this world, it is a door.”

Her eyes burned. A terrible feeling washed over her without warning. Fuck, she was going to cry, and if she started, she’d never stop. She stomped on her feelings, drowned them out with a bitter mantra.

Your dad passed you a shit torch. That’s all.

It numbed the newfound ache in her bones enough to let her speak without her voice cracking.

“Give me my memories back.”

The drag of Vale’s fingertips along the underside of her arm as he pulled away almost made her eyes flutter shut. The floorboards creaked as he stood up.

“No.”

Marian glared at him. “Why not?”

“Because there is too much at stake. I could wound your mind in the process. Success would likely break you anyway, and I need you whole.”

There was the anger she needed. Milder and smaller than what typically fueled her rages, but it gave her the strength to stand, her lips quirked in a rueful smile at odds with the acid in her grey gaze.

“But broken things have the sharpest edges. Isn’t that what you want in a weapon?”

To both her disappointment and satisfaction, he said nothing.

The knot in Marian’s chest pulsed once as she let out an exhausted sigh.

“Good night, Vale.”

Smoke curled around his neck, rising above his head to dance in a circle as he hesitated. Then he gave a shallow, curt bow, and left.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Marian cradled a mug of steaming black coffee to her chest. She sat cross-legged on the cushion of a black outdoor armchair on the back patio. Tori sat across from her in a matching chair, her knees drawn to her chest and her eyes shut. A soft, peaceful smile tugged at her lips as she soaked up morning sun like a lizard, her own coffee—pale from half a cup of cream—cooled on the table between them.

After the night she’d had, Marian thought she didn’t want company. She sat up for hours after Vale left her, her heart too heavy and mind too occupied to rest despite how exhausted she was. But sleep came eventually, and when it did, it bore no dreams. But she only got an hour of it.