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“I have one contact in the city,” I said, breaking the oppressive silence. “An old warlock. Deals in relics, in things best left undisturbed. If Lysanthe’s blood or her essence left any trace, he’d have seen it or have heard the echoes of it.”
He set his empty mug down on the countertop, his voice quiet. “The address Valden gave you. It might be a trap. It almost certainly is.”
I stilled, the warmth of my tea failing to reach the chill in my bones.
“The tribunal sent me to Prague two weeks ago to find a seraph.” His gaze distant, he rubbed the back of his neck with a weary gesture. His eyes, when they met mine again, were clouded with a reluctance that spoke volumes. “I thought I could project the past at the location I was sent to, to find some thread to follow.”
“And?” My voice was sharper than I had intended.
His jaw tightened. “Nothing. It was…too quiet. Too dead. It’s hard to explain. Projection needs life, some lingering essence. But it was clean. Sterile. As if whatever had happened there wiped the very slate of memory bare.”
“Do you want me to try an aura reading instead? My senses are…different.”
“I think it won’t hurt,” he admitted, his voice heavy with a weariness that mirrored my own.
I considered him for a long moment, my lips pressed into a thin line. Every instinct screamed at me to snap, to lash out, and to shut the door on this fragile, unwelcome truce before it cracked again. But I was too tired. And damn him, he was right.
“We’ll decide in the morning,” I said, my voice flat.
“After we sleep.”
“After you sleep,” I said, my tone sharp.
He smiled then, just barely, and then sighed. “I know you spiked my tea, Cassia.”
I froze, my heart fluttering in my chest. My voice was a defiant whisper. “Good.”
“I’m not mad,” he whispered, his gaze holding mine with a strange, unreadable emotion flickering in their depths.
He reached inside his coat then and pulled out two thin silver cuffs—one for each wrist, shimmering in the dim light. I blinked, momentarily thrown, as he stepped close, his presence overwhelming and almost reverent. He took my hands.
My voice was a startled breath. “What are you—”
He slipped them on with a practiced, almost tender ease—each click of the locking mechanism a death knell to my fleeting illusion of freedom. He then lifted one of my newly bound wrists to his lips and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the sensitive skin on the inside.
Before I could pull away, he leaned down and pressed an equally gentle and equally devastating kiss to my forehead.
I jerked back an inch, my eyes wide and my body thrumming with a confused, unwelcomed heat. “What in the seven hells is this, Remiel?”
“Security,” he said. “While I sleep.”
I narrowed my eyes, a cold fury coiling in my gut. “You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust others when you think no one’s watching, Cassia,” he replied, his gaze unwavering. “These will not let you leave my presence. A tether of sorts.”
“So, I can kill you in your sleep?” My voice was laced with a sarcasm I didn’t entirely feel.
“You could try.” A faint, almost sad smile touched his lips. “But then you would forever haul my divine and rather inconvenient corpse around. As I am the only one who can open these cuffs and set you free from my…presence.” He stepped back, brushing a knuckle along the line of my jaw—a touch barely there yet searing me to the bone.
My breath caught. A single involuntary, ragged inhale.
He turned then—as if he hadn’t just trussed me up with celestial restraints and kissed me like a cherished, if dangerous, memory—and walked to the couch.
I said nothing. Couldn’t. He’d bested me and outmaneuvered me. Chained me. And the worst part? The part that made my blood boil and my heart ache with a terrible, familiar longing?
He’d made it feel like care. Like protection. Like something dangerously close to love.
17. Cassia
