Page 46 of Kiss the Dawn
“And I’ll make sure they all die.” His lip curled. “I swear I’ll keep you safe. You trust me, don’t you, Orina?”
If Lorenzo Crescent, one of the most powerful mageri in the city, was telling me that he would kill anyone who tried to take me from him, then I had nothing to fear. This man who’d been at the periphery of my life for almost a year had never let me down when I needed him.
He smiled and asked me again, his tone soft, “You trust me, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes I do.” But there was something more. Something I was forgetting. It came to me in a flash. “You had a plan, though, didn’t you? A solution? You went to see them about it?”
“I did. And they agreed to it, and then I found you almost dead.” His jaw flexed. “Now they can rot for all I care.”
My equilibrium somewhat restored, I could think with a little more clarity, and yes, the witches who’d done this to me deserved to rot, but what about the others…so many others… “They won’t be able to fight the virus without the immunity being passed on.”
“They’ll have to make do until another seventh daughter is born.” He shrugged. “We can fight them off until then. We’ll find a way.”
I believed him. Believed that he’d shield me. Knew that the others back in Dracul would too, but…He’d had a solution ready.
“What was it?”
“What was what?”
“The solution.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me.” I waited as he debated whether to tell me, his attention on the window where afternoon sunlight poured through the gaps in the blinds to paint stripes over his skin. “Lorenzo. I need to know.”
He tipped his head to the side with a sigh. “I suggested that we stop your heart long enough for the contract to think you were dead, but not too long as to be unable to revive you. I would have assembled the best team to do it. Magic and science working together. But we’re no longer going to do that.”
He’d suggested killing me, but in a controlled environment with the intention of bringing me back.
People had tried to kill me lots of times, but usually those people were monsters, and the killing attempts happened during a fight where I too was trying to kill them, but what had happened with the witches had been terrifying because of how cold it had been. How easily they’d decided my life wasn’t worth anything. The memory of that moment when I’d known there was no way out would stay with me forever.
There was a big part of me that agreed with the sentiment ‘let them rot,’ but an even bigger part, the part that was built by the Order, couldn’t stand by and allow innocent people to suffer if I could help in some way.
But I needed time before I willingly brushed shoulders with death in such a vulnerable way, so I kept quiet and ducked my head. But just as I was about to give myself permission to relax, an awful thought occurred.
“My mother? I didn’t get to see her. Oh God, she’s dead now, isn’t she? It’s gone dawn and?—”
He gripped my shoulders and squeezed gently. “She’s fine. I negotiated a stay of execution for her until the end of this year. Daphne has promised to allow a hallomeet between the two of you soon.”
I sagged in his grip, but my relief was tainted because if they’d agreed to hold her for a year, that meant… “They still think I’m going back, don’t they?”
“Yes.” He squeezed me again before letting go. “But you don’t have to. We will figure something out by then.”
But if we didn’t, then I’d have to consider his heart stopper plan.
“No, you don’t,” Lorenzo said, somehow reading the thoughts on my face. “You don’t owe them a damn thing.”
I appreciated the sentiment, and the fire in his eyes warmed that part of me that had been cold for so long. The part that had been taken from again and again.
All my life, people had asked me to do things for them. To do my duty. Even Hemlock and Ordell had wanted something from me at the start. To save their brother. To stop Loviator. To protect the world, and even though I knew they would never give me up to the Isle, that they’d fight to keep me now, I couldn’t help but wonder if things would be different if I wasn’t the curse breaker.
With Lorenzo, and with Kaster for that matter, those doubts were absent. With those two males, it was just us. Except Kaster had taken a step back, and Lorenzo, it seemed, was taking a step forward.
Forward…the way that our bodies were leaning. Angling toward each other as the air thickened with anticipation and a need that had simmered between us for months.
“I’d forgotten what true fear feels like,” he said softly. “But when I saw you lying on that table, gray andlifeless, I was afraid for the first time in a long time.” He brushed a tendril of hair back off my face, his gaze falling to my lips. “I’ve lived too long and lost too much to play the courtship game of ifs and maybes. I want you to know that I’ve guarded my heart for the longest time, but you’ve found your way past my barriers. I want to let you in, Orina. I want to explore this…whatever it might be that’s been growing between us all these months. But I understand if you need time to focus on Ezekiel and?—”
I pressed my lips to his, cutting off his words and the reasoning and logic that I knew would come with them. He gasped into my mouth, momentarily stunned, then he smiled against my lips. His hand closed on my nape, taking control and angling me to deepen the kiss into something hungry, primal, and heart-stoppingly beautiful.
