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“And fight. Fight.” She jumped in front of me, pressing both of her hands into my chest to stop my forward momentum. “Fight me. That is what we do. We fight.”
Good fucking hell to heaven.
She thought that’s what this was? What we were? Still?
My hands clamped onto the sides of her head, my fingers digging into her scalp. “When are you going to realize it, Ada?” My voice pitched in exasperation. “This isn’t about me fighting you. It’s about us, together, against whatever the fight is.”
She deflated in front of me. I could feel it in the air around her, see all her muscles going slack.
Her jaw slipped open. “Damen…”
I seethed in a breath, my glare locking onto her. “I’m walking away because I don’t want to fight you—I want to get away from you before I strangle you for about a million reasons right now.”
Her hands went up, wrapping around my wrists, her voice cracking. “I…I didn’t mean that you are a monster. I only meant…”
“I know what you meant, Ada.” I jerked my hands away from her face and stepped around her, making it to the bar where I poured a healthy tumbler of brandy and knocked back a fourth of it, my stare on the elegant Murano glass mosaic of swirling greens and blues covering the wall behind the bar.
No matter what she said…
She came for me.
She might call me a monster. Think me a monster.
But she came for me. Came to save me.
True, she brought her asinine uncle and his lapdog with her. But she came.
As much as I hated her for putting herself in danger to save me, with that one action she’d flayed my heart wide open and poured molten lava into it. Forged the muscle into sharp black obsidian that would only ever beat for her.
I already knew I would move heaven and earth for her. But I’d never thought I would be worthy of the same.
My lips pulled wide as the heat of the brandy sank into my belly, and I swallowed another fourth. Setting the glass down, I spread my hands wide on the white marble counter, leaning forward, my head dropping until my chin hit my chest.
I could feel her behind me. Tormented. Not sure what to say to me when she was struggling with whatever demons she suddenly thought she had living inside of her, when they’d been there all along.
“Everyone hides a monster inside.” My voice cut into the room low, haunted. I didn’t turn around to her. “Malefic, panthenite, human. Monstrous thoughts. Monstrous actions. Monstrous emotions. Monstrous extremes when one is driven to desperation—things they never thought they were capable of. Monsters live inside all of us.”
I paused, drawing in a deep breath. “Control. Grace. Circumstance. Those are the things that keep us from being true monsters. They allow all of us to keep our monstrous tendencies hidden. Some do it better than others. But make no mistake—we all have it in us.”
“I didn’t mean to call malefics monsters—call half-breeds monsters.” Her voice cracked on every other word. “You are not less than—I know that to my core. It is just…” She paused.
Paused long enough I had to turn my head to look at her.
So fucking vulnerable.
Her hands twisting in front of her, her black tank and black tactical pants a harsh contrast to her light skin. Her shoulders drooping, her green eyes darkened with agony—darkened with the sadness of recognizing exactly what you are made out of deep in your bones and that there was no escaping it.
I knew that, understood that. Only I knew what I was at a very young age, accepted it, and built my life around controlling it, rather than letting it control me.
Ada had been a slave to her pain for so long, she didn’t understand that she had a choice to accept everything she was. So damn stubborn. She fought me, fought herself, instead of embracing the wonder that she was.
Add that to the list of things I was pissed at her for.
Her bottom lip jutted upward, her words shaking. “It is just that I am a descendent of Hades. I am death. And death has no sides, takes no favors. I am just death, seeping out into the land. I am that true monster. How am I supposed to reconcile that? What do I do with that?”
I turned fully around, crossing my arms over my chest as I leaned back on the edge of the bar, my gaze skewering her. “Why do you have to do anything with it? Why do you have to be any different than the person you were when you walked into that tree room of horrors on the panthenite mountain?”
Her shoulders lifted and they looked so damn frail. So damn defeated.
