Page 194 of Pareidolia

“I ripped Ewan Daniels’ skull from his jaw.” He turns his head and I follow where he’s looking.

Ewan’s blood and thicker things are oozing into the carpet… and his tongue flops uselessly on the floor where the rest of his body lies.

Fuck, his tongue. Is this some strange punishment for being curious?

My gaze flicks to Noah, curled in the corner and unconscious… and then to Nox’s chest.

There’s a scar there…

A scar that pulses a soft red.

“What happened, Nox?” When I ask again, and one of those tendrils snakes out and gently wraps around my waist, dragging my body against his.

“You were dead,” he whispers. “And now you’re not.”

Dead.

I know I was, but hearing him say it makes it more real. My eyes drop to my chest again, to the knife on the floor still stained with my blood.

I was dead.

“And now I’m not…” My fingers find that place on his chest again, press against the warmth of him.

I’m not sure if he’s warm now or if I’m just cold…

Maybe it’s a bit of both. Maybe we met somewhere in the middle.

“What did you do?” I think for a minute that he won’t tell me, but Nox raises one hand to cover my palm at the center of his chest.

He holds me against the thump thump thump there. His wings mimic the tempo, and that line that trails between us pulses a reddish black and makes my tattoo glow in time with the beat.

“Your heart was shredded. Your human body couldn’t repair it, even with my help. I…” His gaze falls between us, and he trails fingers along the thread connecting us. “I fixed it.

“How?” But I already know.

“My body can heal all wounds.”

Except when he was trying to save me. I don’t point that out, but…

“You just… scooped it out of my chest?” My eyes are wide. I don’t feel any more hollow on the inside than before, but…

“Filled you with my shadows and took your humanity into me. I made you harder to kill,” he murmurs, pressing teeth to my skin and biting down hard enough to leave a mark. It aches, but as I watch, my body starts to knit itself together. Not perfectly, but faster than it should. “Immortal, as long as you live inside me.

I frown and lean forward, pressing my lips to the curve of his shoulder to bite down. My mouth floods with a familiar taste that’s tinged with copper now.

Different.

He’s different.

When I pull back, it doesn’t instantly close. The teeth marks are healing at the same pace as the ones he left on me. Fast, but not fast enough for a times-old shadow.

“What about you?”

Nox glances down at the wound, then flexes his wings.

“Humanity is fickle… it will fade in time.” My eyes stay fixed on the bite mark, my fingers pressed to my heartbeat in his chest.

I don’t know if he’s lying to me, and I don’t care.