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I gave three sharp raps at the door. “Xero?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
I opened the door to find him sitting on his bed. I had never taken the time to really look around his room before, but today it all sort of jumped out at me. Postcards decorated nearly every vertical surface. It was like looking through dozens of tiny windows into the other dimension. Or—world, I guess. The one we had left behind.
Xero was in the middle of his large bed, surrounded by a cluster of them. He sat with his legs crossed and his arms limp at his sides, gazing blankly at the bright colors of California.
Careful not to touch any of them, I climbed up on the mattress beside him and touched his shoulder lightly.
“Hey. You good?”
He shook his head, the movement sharp and jerky. “No. I never wanted to come back here.”
I stroked the back of his neck, running my fingertips over his dark skin. “Of course you didn’t. But we’re going to get out of here.”
He looked at me helplessly. “Are we? If we do, will we stay out? I don’t know, Piper. This place has some kind of sick draw. I never wanted to be part of it in the first place. And now I don’t know if I’ll ever not be.” He buried his face in his hands.
“Tell me what scares you the most and I’ll tell you how I’ll fight it.” I’d never been great with people or had much of a nurturing side, but he brought it out in me. Despite his intimidating size and dauntingly gorgeous features, and the fact that he could definitely handle himself in a fight, I still felt the urge to wrap my arms around him and protect him from the world. He just seemed so terribly lost sometimes.
He let his hands drop and stared into nothing. His galactic brown eyes glittered and his full lips trembled ever so slightly. When he was soft like this, it was almost impossible to remember that he was a full-on cloven-hoofed, horned demon underneath.
“I’m afraid of losing my humanity,” he whispered. “You don’t know what kinds of things Gavriel does to people down here, Piper. You don’t know the shit you have to go through just to survive.”
I crawled into his lap, and he wrapped his arms around me loosely. He didn’t meet my eyes until I held his face and gently forced him to look at me.
“Nobody is going to make you do a fucking thing you don’t want to do, Xero. You know why?”
He raised his brows, his lips quirking into a small smile like he was humoring me. “Why?”
“Because we’re all in this together this time. You aren’t here alone, and I’m not going to let you get lost. You understand?”
“Yes,” he said with the ghost of a smile. It disappeared quickly though, and he looked away again. “But it’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
He shook his head and drew me closer. “Losing your humanity—that isn’t something somebody has to do to you, exactly. It’s so easy to let it happen here. Humans aren’t built for this plane of existence. But the fallen… we are. This place has a hold on us, and it’s just natural that we would eventually succumb to the atmosphere. Retaining your humanity in the underworld is like trying to breathe underwater when you have the option for gills. The baseline is survival.”
“Then survive,” I said defiantly. “And if you ever start to forget your humanity, well—I’ll just have to remind you.”
“Oh? How do you—”
I cut him off with a kiss, and he came to life in my arms. It was like a switch was flipped as soon as our lips met. I could feel his aura strengthen, pushing away the underworld atmosphere as he began to remember who he was. He was no weakling. No one who survived twenty years in the underworld and managed to get away with their humanity intact was weak.
He pulled away with a sigh and gave me one of his slight, gentle smiles. “We’re late for the assembly.”
“Right.”
I kissed him once more and reluctantly slid off of his lap. Honestly, I’d rather stay locked up in Xero’s room all day, with him buried inside me as we worshipped each other’s bodies.
But that wouldn’t get us out of this mess. It wouldn’t help us figure out where exactly we’d been taken, and how to get out of here.
Time to go face the music.
Chapter Two
