Page 64 of Alien God

For a grim moment, I wondered if Wylfrael meant to take me out and leave me there.

But I grabbed my boots, and my snowsuit, and went back to him anyway.

He was standing with his back to me, staring into the fireplace, when I walked into the room I’d been pulled into a minute before. This room was a lot like my chamber, only larger, and by the food on the table and the rumpled bedding, I could tell that Wylfrael had been staying here, something I hadn’t been aware of before now. No wonder there’s no lock on my door if he’s right here below me.

In a confusing, heated rush, his voice came back to me, like a physical caress against my ear. Do I need to put a lock on that door? There hadn’t been the fury I’d expected. There had been a note of something else – challenge, maybe. Daring me to make him do it.

I watched Wylfrael become aware of my presence with his back turned. His wings tucked in tighter, his spine straightening. He turned around to face me, his expression smooth and controlled, a stark contrast to the Wylfrael who’d snatched me from the landing outside.

“I brought my boots,” I said, breaking the suddenly oppressive silence. “You’re not planning on leaving me out there to teach me a lesson or something, are you?”

I wasn’t sure I liked the flicker of tension in his tail and wings at my question.

But his answer was precise and certain.

“No. Now put your boots on.”

I dropped my snowsuit then took the bundled socks out of the boots, sliding them on. I didn’t need to look up to know that Wylfrael watched me relentlessly. I could feel it.

I pulled on the white and grey winter boots and then reached for my parka.

“That’s filthy.”

Wylfrael wasn’t looking at me now, but rather the dried, cracked patches of silver marring the white fabric.

“That’s hardly my fault,” I said, frowning down at the parka. “You’re the one who bled all over me.”

I glanced at his bare torso, gobsmacked to see he only had one main bandage remaining, wrapping around his lower abdomen. The rest of him – his chest, his wings – were completely healed. Bullet wounds vanished in mere days.

He wasn’t lying. He really is immortal.

The realization left me awe-stricken. I stared at him, wondering how long he’d lived, how much he’d seen. I wondered about his biology, his genetics, his family tree, his makeup at the atomic level.

My next realization was perhaps even more shocking than that – I was no longer afraid of him.

I could feel it in the way I openly stared at him, in the way I’d just spoken to him, complaining about how he’d bled on my jacket. Even when he’d yanked me out of the hall a few moments ago, I hadn’t been afraid of him or his presence or his hold on me specifically, but more the idea of a lock on my door, of being even more trapped than I already was. My heart had pounded, my breath had been fast under his hands, but that was more due to adrenaline at being caught than actual fear.

When did that happen?

Was it when he told me he hadn’t killed my friends and I’d actually begun to believe it, something instantaneous, a light switched off in my brain? Or had it been slowly ebbing away this entire time?

“Leave it behind,” Wylfrael said, and for a strange moment, I thought he was talking about my fear. But then I understood – he meant the snowsuit.

“I won’t be able to stay out there more than a minute or two without a snowsuit,” I told him.

“What’s a minute?”

“Oh. It’s sixty seconds.”

He gave me a dry look, and I realized that “sixty seconds” probably meant as little to him as the word “minute” had.

“One... two... three. That was about three seconds. I’m saying I can only be out there 120 seconds without protection.”

“I know. Leave it.”

I hesitated, feeling like if I left behind my snowsuit I’d be abandoning some essential mode of protection, and not protection just from the cold. But Wylfrael was watching me, waiting for me, and with a motion that was more like an instinctive reflex than something I’d specifically meant to do, I dropped the parka on top of the snowpants on the floor.

I hope I don’t regret this, I thought as we left the room. But I still wasn’t afraid. If anything, I felt relief. Relief that I’d be outside, even for just one single freezing moment. Even if it had to be with him.

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