Page 48 of Eat, Slay, Love

His eyes narrow. He studies Jonah, then me, then Jonah again. A quiet, incredulous laugh escapes him. “Well,” he murmurs. “I didn't think that was possible.”

“What—”

Belvedere ignores me completely. His attention remains fixed on Jonah, who has gone unnaturally, preternaturally still.

“Yours,” Belvedere says softly.

“That’s what I said.” I tighten my grip on my blade. “He's mine.”

Another amused smile curls across Belvedere's mouth. “Interesting.” His gaze moves over us, slower this time. “A demon who has chosen a slayer,” he muses. His eyes flick to me. “A slayer who has chosen to protect a demon.”

He lets a cruel silence stretch between us before looking at Jonah once more, the corners of his mouth lifting into something almost pitying. “How unfortunate,” he says. “What an extraordinary little choice you’ve both made.”

The word crashes into me.

Choice.

It ricochets through every corner of my mind, knocking loose memories one after another. Choice?

Jonah didn’t fight me, didn’t feed from me. Couldn't bring himself to turn his magic against me, even when I was trying to kill him, choosing to protect instead of destroy, even when I stood in front of him with a blade aimed at his heart, even when destruction should have been instinct, he chose restraint.

And I chose him.

My magic had resonated with his from the beginning, reaching, questioning instead of recoiling. The relentless pull to find him again. To touch him. Protect him. Keep him. Even that first night in the alley, when I desperately needed a kill, when every rational part of me wanted my blade through his heart, something deeper had made me hesitate.

I’d thought it was my forte. Thought my magic was simply recognizing his lack of harmful intent.

Maybe some of it was.

But my magic hadn’t made me follow him. It hadn’t made me learn him. It hadn’t made me save his life or trust him with mine. It hadn’t made me stay in his bed, or laugh with him in his kitchen, or choose him when choosing him threatened everything I had ever known.

There was no ancient magic pulling us together. No cosmic force deciding this for us.

There was only him. And there was only me.

And somehow, impossibly, we had kept choosing each other. Both of us alone and finally choosing not to be—our magic agreeing, synchronizing, weaving together.

Mine.

Not because some magic had claimed him for me.

Because I had.

And because somewhere along the way, he had, too.

I lock eyes with Jonah, where something has drained the color from his face, but beneath it, I see the same realization unfolding in his eyes. My magic sings, recognizing its partner and equal—a terrible slayer and her terrible demon.

For the briefest instant, everything else disappears: the alley and Belvedere and the ruin around us.

There is only Jonah looking at me as though he's spent years believing there could never be a place in this world for someone like him, only to find one, choose one, in the woman born to kill him.

Emotions, feelings crash through his expression in a flurry almost too quickly to name: apology for leaving me, soft forgiveness he never owed me, abject wonder and fierce possession. And far, far deeper than that, something so naked and enormous it makes my chest ache.

But beneath all of it, something that looks heartbreakingly like goodbye.

Jonah looks at me like he loves me, and like he has already decided to die to make sure I survive.

Belvedere chuckles, almost reverently, before flicking his wrist.