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“Nightshade, for a while. For centuries, I tracked him. I ventured to the bowels of Hell. A place drenched in the blood of angels. I saw things.” With a twitch of his eye, he lowered his gaze and shook his head. The way his shoulders bunched with tension told me whatever he’d seen still set him on edge. “Horrific things that seared themselves inside of my head for the centuries that followed. Things I will never speak of.”
“Did you find your father?”
“No. I spiraled deeper into the pitch-black world of desolation. It was your rebirth which saved me.” He drew in a deep inhale and exhaled an easy breath. “A moment that felt like the first breath after having been buried alive. I will not become like him. I would sooner tear the still-beating heart out of my chest.”
“You’re not like him.”
“But I could choke you while you were in distress? And that I don’t recall a moment of it?” He turned away, as if he couldn’t even look at me.
While I had faith that he wouldn’t have hurt me, the fact that he didn’t rememberwasa little troubling. “With the return of your wings, does that mean you’d be able to better control the demon half?”
“My whole life has been a balancing act between the two. It was the teaching of my mother and an old mentor who helped me learn to suppress those thoughts and feelings. And while the violence was always there beneath my skin, taunting me, it never sank its hooks in me. I could always grasp something good. Losing you shifted that balance for me, and I suspect that more malevolent half of me got a taste of freedom. So, to answer your question, I can only hope.”
Taking his hand in mine, I gave a gentle tug. “Come on. Take a bath with me?”
“I don’t think that’s wise.”
Frowning, I studied his vexed expression, desperately wishing I could read his thoughts right then. “Jericho, what happened … it could’ve been a combination of things. The sexual tension. The urgency. The adrenaline.”
“It is the sexual trigger that concerns me most. It’s a very powerful catalyst for my species.”
“We were together the first night you came back, though.”
“I wasn’t holding you under water, Farryn.”
“Okay, you could’ve easily killed me, and you didn’t. What kept you from doing so?”
“I don’t even remember grabbing your neck, that’s what is so concerning. I don’t know what made me stop.” Brows pinched tight, he lowered his gaze to the floor. “Until I understand whether this is a lingering effect of Ex Nihilo, or something much worse, a little distance between us is best.”
Though my body had warmed from its earlier chill, a cold sensation stirred in my chest. One I knew all too well. I’d first felt it when I was thirteen and had worked up the courage to ask my father about my mother’s death, why he couldn’t seem to let her go. It was the only time I ever recalled my father having yelled at me in a way that felt as if he’d cast me right out of his heart. From that day on, a cold distance had lingered between us–detachment that’d left me feeling like a stranger around him.
Although Jericho hadn’t raised his voice, I could feel it stirring again. The panic of becoming strangers.
“Distance?” The word left a bitter sting on my tongue, as I forced it out of my mouth. My muscles tightened while the all-too-familiar ache snaked behind my ribs like the first sign of frost. It warned that my heart was going into lockdown mode--that the walls which had once encapsulated the fragile little organ, ones I’d spent years trying to deconstruct, would once again fortify into an impenetrable barrier. Against anyone, including Jericho.
I turned to leave before that icy cold feeling had a chance to harden and prod my mouth to say something regretful, but a tight grip of my arm pulled me back.
“Farryn …”
The logical side of my brain told me he was right, because he knew himself better than I did. All these strange things meant something that I couldn’t begin to understand. But my heart didn’t think rationally, or logically. It craved what it had been denied in his absence. The very thing it had been starving for most of my life. “For months, I prayed for your return. Begged that you would come back to me. And now you want distance. I understand your need to protect, but I’m not afraid.”
“If you knew the depraved things that have crossed my mind since my return, you wouldvolunteerto keep your distance, I can assure you.”
“Perhaps I’m naive for saying so, but I know you won’t hurt me. I know the very thought torments you.”
The way his brows came together told me I’d hit a sensitive spot, but then his jaw hardened. “You’re right. It does torment me. But that means nothing when that blackness slips over me and something else takes over. It has happened before. I have awakened from a dreamless slumber to blood on my tongue and death on my hands. Do not doubt the full scope of my potential to harm.” With my arm still trapped in his grip, he rose up from the edge of the tub until towering over me. “If I am concerned, you should be, too.”
I stared him dead in the eye. “If you’re so capable of hurting me, then why keep me?”
With a steely expression, he cupped my face, gaze riveted on my lips while he ran a thumb over my cheek. “Because I’m selfish. Giving you up would destroy me.” Fingers curled around the nape of my neck, he pulled me in for a kiss.“I’m asking you to play along, just until I know what’s going on.”
My head toyed with the impossible calculation of how long that could’ve possibly been. An hour, a day, a week,months? And to what extent? Would he become like my father had, avoiding hugs and kisses? Waving at me when we passed in the hallway? The ache from before pulsed inside my chest again.Get a grip, Farryn. “If that’s what you think is best.”
“It is.” He lowered his hand from my face and backed up a step. Just like that, an unsettling chill slid between us like a jealous lover. “I need to leave the cathedral for some business with an old acquaintance.” He stepped past me, out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, where he rummaged through his armoire for a shirt and pants.
“Business? At this hour?”
After slipping the shirt over his head, he smirked. “Demons do not follow the regular business hours of humans.”
