Page 7 of Sorrow & Strangers

“Get the fuck out of my house!” she demands, and whirls away from me, heading for the stairs.

Not so fast, little fae. You forget who your opponent is.

I wave my hand, my power wrapping around her and lifting her. She struggles and hisses, her toes dragging against the floor as I pull her to me.

When her face is inches from mine, I remind her. “You don’t order me.” I grab her jaw, forcing her eyes to mine. “You want to fight me? Get strong enough to make it a challenge. You want to torture yourself in dreams? You’ll have to work to keep me out of them.” Live to spite me. She shoves weakly at my chest. “You want to be pathetic and weak?” I growl, my fingers digging in, bruising her. “Fine. But you’ll be pathetic and weak within my control.”

Her fingers wrap around my wrist, and she pulls at my hand, but there’s barely any strength left in her. She’s used the summer to wallow in every single self-destructive fantasy. No longer.

I yank her against me, her body hitting against my avatar, finding little softness. “Is this what you want? For me to control your dreams and your waking world?”

Tears form in her eyes, and she doesn’t even try to keep them from falling down her cheeks. Tears of hatred or sorrow? I brush them away, my touch soft. “You want to fight me? Hate me? Kill me? You want your revenge?”

Live! I demand it. I will not go back to what I was before. I need you. So you will live.

She bats my hand away, snarling, “Don’t touch me.”

I move my hand back to a punishing grip on her jaw. “Make me.”

Even as she groans in pain, her eyes spark with defiance. I’ll fucking take it. No matter how minuscule.

“Make. Me,” I repeat.

But the anger leaves her in a rush, her eyes turning lifeless again, and without words, I know what she’s thinking.

I deserve this.

How many times had I believed the same?

I release her, feeling burned and frustrated . . . agonized. It destroys me to see her this way, but she needs to live, to breathe. The one thing that has kept me going for so long, through the losses, the betrayals, the blood, the death, is spite. Spite is a significant motivator that made me who I am. Revenge is second, and power, third.

“You won’t get your pathetic little life. You’re going to fight and live, even if I have to drag you.”

She looks at the floor, and I can feel her wrapping that despondency around herself again. Now my own anger rises at her surrender.

“You must have hated him,” I hurl at her.

Her eyes lock on mine, anger intertwined with despair. “Get out.”

“You hated him,” I hiss, towering over her. “You’d have to in order to justify ‌spitting in his face like this. Like he was nothing to you.”

If there was one thing I knew about Connor Azrael Morningstar, it’s that he would not have hesitated to sacrifice himself for her if it came down to it. The crux of the difference between Connor and me is that he’d easily burn himself to save her. I’d burn everything to save her.

“You are nothing,” she spits out, her words dripping with venom.

I’d built up immunity to poison a long time ago. Her words do nothing to me.

“I’m not the one hoping to die.”

Footsteps echo from the second floor. I narrow my eyes at her and slowly release the avatar. “This is not over.”

Chapter Five

Summer

“Sum?” Alice’s sleepy voice travels down the stairs, preceding her along with the sound of a large yawn. I look up at her as she appears, sitting in the middle of the floor. The stranger has left no lingering signs of his presence, no scent, no residual power, nothing but the throb of the pain leftover from his grip on my jaw.

“Why are you on the floor?” Alice asks carefully as she approaches me.