Page 80 of Demon Touched

“Leah, I would cheat every man, woman, and child from here to Infernum if you needed me to. Fuck fair.”

My lips twitch. “Even children, huh?”

“Especially the children,” he gives me a small smile. “Teach them an important life lesson.” He tightens his hold around me and repeats, “What is it?”

I drop my gaze.

“If I asked you to kiss me right now, to make me feel—I don’t know—something other than this awful crushing weight inside me, could it just be that? I don’t want to make things more complicated than they already are.”

He’s gone very still, hand frozen beside my cheek.

“See, I told you,” I say, miserably. “It’s not fair⁠—”

His lips come down on mine like a firebrand, hot and inexorable, and I wrap my hand around his bicep, gripping tight. His hand drops to my jaw, tilting my face up for a better angle to claim me, urging my mouth open and taking his fill of me. It’s exactly what I wanted. All-consuming, igniting a rush of pleasure and desire that seeps right down to my toes. I dart my tongue across his lips, giving him permission, and then his tongue is tasting every part of my mouth as I cling to him.

Eventually, after a few long, exquisite minutes, we pull reluctantly apart. I take a moment to come back to reality, finally starting to forgive myself for all the mistakes I made with Syrus in Infernum. How could I have expected to think straight about anything when he was kissing me like that?

“Better?” he asks, his eyes so dark I almost can’t see the red in them.

“Yes,” I breathe. Because it’s true.

“I have to go,” he says, sounding as unenthusiastic about the idea as I feel. “It’s too risky to be away from the Seraph Seat for long. And I have another stop to make on the way.”

“What kind of stop?” I ask suspiciously.

“The agreement was nothing more, Leah,” he taunts. “That includes what I get up to when I leave this room.”

I roll my eyes, “You just want to avoid giving answers again.” But rather than being annoyed, I’m mostly just relieved that heavy, wrung-out feeling has left me.

“I do,” he says simply. “But that was the deal. I hope it was worth it.”

As he climbs out of my window and disappears into the night, I secretly think that kiss most definitely was.

Chapter 23

Leah

Going to breakfast the next day is like walking into a funeral.

Except instead of caskets to represent the dead, there’s only absence—empty spaces where fledglings should be tucking into their food and laughing with their friends.

I try not to study the crowd too much, not wanting to guess at who’s missing before roll call confirms it. I’m not ready to mourn anyone I don’t have to. I don’t have much of an appetite, but I grab my food and sit down beside Rowan. I can tell he’s trying to do exactly what I’m avoiding—studying the fledglings as they come in, furrows between his brows.

“You’re going to drive yourself crazy, doing that,” I mutter.

“I just didn’t expect so many…” He trails off, straightening up in his seat. “The trials are always hard, but it’s extreme this year.”

“You once said that was a good thing,” I point out, not quite able to keep the sourness from my voice.

“It is,” Rowan says. “It makes us stronger.” I’ve heard him say variations of that countless times, but this time, for the first time, I hear a sliver of doubt.

I wonder if it wasn’t what he expected, going to war. He was excited beforehand, and now…there’s something different about him. He seems harder, toughened at the edges. I notice a line of raw flesh starting at the bottom of his wrist and disappearing beneath his shirt cuff, likely the result of getting splashed with demon blood. He catches me staring and pulls his sleeve down with a wince, looking ashamed.

“Two down, one to go,” one of our fellow fledglings, Neris, says from across the table, clearly trying to inject some optimism into the mood.

Goddess, this place is fucked up.

I grimace at the thought of the third trial. Technically, it could come at any time. My only hope is the brutality of the second test means they give us at least a month until the next one. Because if the third trial is anything as intense as the first two, there’s no way I’m walking away from the oracle unscathed.