Page 108 of Demon Touched

“Leah…” He sighs, and there’s such a long pause after he says my name that I can’t resist glancing up to read his face. He’s looking down at his hands, and it takes me a beat to realize he’s actually looking at his wrists, at the place Ajax’s runes used to be.

“I’ve wanted to explain myself for so long. To give you what you wanted,” he says, echoing my thoughts about him. “I believed I couldn’t. But if that’s changed…”

He swallows, and something strange happens in my stomach—it feels like it’s tightening up and the bottom’s dropping out of it at the same time.

“Would it make any difference?” he asks, looking at me. “Or would it be too late?”

“You mean telling me why you tried to suppress my powers?” I clarify. “Or why you lied to me about it?”

“Both,” he says, and my heart stutters painfully.

He’s willing to explain the “powers beyond his control” he always hinted at, the thing he said made us all so unsafe.

The truth, within my reach at last.

I’d told myself that ship had sailed, that if I kept wishing for it, I’d only make myself miserable, hoping for something I could never have. And now he wants to hand it to me? Because—what, he’s desperate enough to do anything to have me back, including doing something he swore he’d never do? If that’s the reason, then I don’t want his answers. I want them willingly given because I deserve to know, not because they’re being ransomed.

“And if I said it wouldn’t make a difference,” I murmur, trying to keep my voice cool and even, “would you tell me anyway?”

He closes his eyes, as if the idea frightens him, but his answer is certain. “Yes.” His eyes open again, and he fixes his reddish-brown stare on me. “I owe you that. And so much more.”

I could ask him what’s changed. Why now? What part of earth and sky has shifted so that the impossible has suddenly become possible? But all of that pales into insignificance next to the deep, unspoken desire to learn if he really did have good reasons. Maybe he was right. Or at least, right enough that I could finally forgive him at last.

Maybe I would’ve gotten there anyway. He’s apologized and done things that show me how he’s changed. That he wouldn’t ever try the same thing again—limiting my powers or trying to cage me. I’m very, very far along in forgiving Syrus, but now he’s offering me his hand so I can leap over the last few steppingstones, and I long to take it.

“So tell me,” I say, voice breathy with apprehension. “And then maybe I’ll have an answer for you.”

And there, in the cramped attic of my sister’s house, he gives me a truth I would’ve never expected.

“I did what I did, Leah, because you’ve been prophesied to destroy my kingdom.”

Chapter 29

Leah

“I…what?” I replay the sentence over in my head, thinking it might make sense this time around. But to my baffled brain, it still sounds like a jumble of words thrown together. “Prophesied? What does that mean?”

He sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. I’m not sure where he gets off being frustrated right now.

“The day I made my deal with Ajax, I fought and killed an ephilium. Before he died, he had a vision. He told me that my kingdom was doomed to fall, and I would watch it happen. I thought he was talking about Fenlire at the time, but Ajax was true to his word. The capital was saved, and Fenlire continued to flourish for many years. When the kingdom did come to an end, the conclusion wasn’t violent. It was swallowed up in Strata’s unification. And anyway, I wasn’t there to watch it happen. I was already locked out of the human realm by then.”

I swallow, still at a total loss as to where this is going to start involving me.

“So when the prophecy didn’t come true in the way you expected, you decided it was about Malice instead?” I don’t try to keep the skepticism from my voice.

He looks at me with eyes so sad they make me shift restlessly against the attic floor.

“I believed so, yes,” he says. “But the years went on, turning to centuries. My domain faced challenges, but never a serious threat I couldn’t deal with. I began to hope that maybe that ephilium had lied, or that fate had changed course.”

I huff, impatient. “Okay. But what does any of that have to do with me?”

He closes his eyes, and his face stills, remembering. “Your kingdom is doomed, Syrus Kaldare,” he repeats, an echo from centuries past. “Your kingdom will fall. I see it now. It will crumble into the abyss, and you’ll watch it happen, unable to stop the abomination responsible.”

There’s something unnerving about the wording, so clearly ingrained in Syrus’s mind forevermore. I want to say it’s nothing but bullshit, invented to mess with his head, but it has an odd ring of truth that makes my gut twist.

“What abomination?” I ask, my voice coming out quieter than I intend.

“I asked the same thing,” he says, opening his eyes and settling them on me. “The ephilium said it would be a ‘mixbreed.’ ‘An ephilium with a demon heart.’”