Page 67 of City of the Lost
I gnawed on my bottom lip. “I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s not your fault. It’s me. I don’t know how to do ... gentle. I just ... I don’t want to hurt you.” When he turned to face me, the glow in his eyes had ebbed. He was back in the driver’s seat. He leaned back against the headboard and pulled me against him. “Let me just hold you.”
I laced my fingers with his again. How could this feel so right? How could we fit together so well? “What happened at the Keep? How did you get away?”
“Noir came for me. He had a transponder.”
“But how could he have known?”
“Valance called him.”
The way Noir had reprimanded Valance that time he’d gotten too close to me, the way they’d bantered back and forth, it suggested familiarity, but they’d never admitted knowing each other outside of their association with me.
I sat up, twisting slightly to look into Azren’s face. “Don’t you think it’s strange that Valance has Noir’s digits? I think they know each other from before they got involved with me.”
“There’s only one way to know for sure and that’s to ask them.”
I sat back. “So, Noir got you out using the transponder ... where were you?”
His heart beat a little faster beneath my palm. “It doesn’t matter.”
I closed my eyes, biting back a scream. “She had you, didn’t she? She was ... she was forcing you to be with her.”
Azren gripped my hand, the one that was on his chest. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”
But it wasn’t. It would never be over until she paid for the abuse and the hurt she’d caused him. It wouldn’t be over until I ripped out her evil heart, and he knew it.
“Was she with you when Noir found you?”
“No.” He’d gone all tense beside me.
Oh, God. She’d finished using him and left him alone. My heart ached for him, and impotent fury writhed in my gut. But pushing the subject, forcing him to recall it, to speak about it, wasn’t fair. I forced myself to relax against him, to exhale the rage that was building up inside me, and his muscles unknotted in response.
“What happens now?” We needed to be realistic, prepared. “No lies, Azren. No kidding ourselves.”
He let out a rumbling sigh. “We know her secret. She won’t let us go.”
“But it’s not as if any Shedim will believe us. Balen didn’t even bat an eye.” Safe in Azren’s arms, saying my attacker’s name didn’t evoke the same fear it had earlier. He was dead. He was gone. I was safe. “I don’t think he even heard me.”
“But the neph here will. They may believe us,” Azren pointed out.
“But they won’t care. The Collective won’t get involved in Draconi business, not unless it affects them directly.” Something Elora had said tickled the back of my mind. “Not unless they believe Elora is planning something else, something bigger.” I looked up at Azren. “She said that soon no one would remember me, not you or anyone else. She said nothing we’d seen would matter.”
“You think she’s planning something targeted at this side of the border?”
“How else would she get my loved ones to forget me ...” A horrific thought gripped my mind. “Oh, God. The spell, whatever she did to your people, what if she’s planning the same for us?”
Azren sat forward and the muscles across his abdomen flexed under his shirt. “If that’s the case, then we’ll need proof. We’ll need to find out exactly how she did it the first time to understand how she could do it again.”
“We’ll need someone who was there, someone who can tell The Collective what happened.”
“We need a rogue Shedim,” Azren said softly.
And just like that, we were back at square one, but it was a plan. A fucking good one.
We were on the same wavelength, and it was surreal. “She’ll come for us not just because we know the truth but also because of you. She wants you, Azren. She’s obsessed.”
He went still, his breath hitching. “I’m no longer bound to her will or her lies. If she comes, she’ll have a fight on her hands.”
