Page 41 of Claimed
I turn and throw the glass into the glass wall. It shatters in a rain of scotch and glass.
Fisting my hands in my shirt, I haul it over my head.
Only Tanner’s eyes don’t widen.
He’s seen me nude. He knows about the scars. The ones that mar every fucking inch of my chest, my back. The marks I have to hide with magick unless I’m clothed.
My hands ball the shirt up in my grasp. “Do you know why I have these?” I ask, looking at all of them. “Do you?”
Horan scours my torso. “No.”
“It’s from every bedmate I took in the Abyss. Not the ones I chose. But the ones forced on me.” I close my eyes. “Every god-damn one of them while my master sold me to another. Because do you know what happens to bastard Asmodean’s?” I ask. “To half-breeds?”
No one moves. No one breathes.
“They sell us as whores to whoever will take us.” My laugh is brittle. “And they took me. Fucking kill me now, but they took me.”
“How old were you?” Gage’s voice is soft.
I look at him. “Eight.”
He sways and Tanner grabs him. They both stare at me, and I can see the pity in their eyes. The sadness.
“Don’t,” I say, my voice a croak of anger and pain. “Don’t you dare pity me.”
Their eyes raise, locking with mine. Something hardens in their gazes, and they both nod.
“That’s why you can use magick,” Ruin mutters. “Why you can weave with more than just hellfire.”
“A demon mage.” My smile makes my face feel like it will break. “A rarity in the Abyss, I assure you.”
“Caine—”
I hold my hand up, silencing him. “I’m not full-blood Asmodean. I’m not anything. I get that now.” My head lifts and I square my shoulders. “But I want to be. I want to be more than my circumstance. More than what I was born into. More than this gods-damn existence!” My heart races, and I stare between them as my voice fades.
Ruin watches me in silence. Horan, too.
“I can’t …” I trail off, nearly ripping my shirt in two. “I don’t know how to ask for help. How to not feel like this.” I look at each of them, begging them to understand with my eyes because I can’t get the fucking words out of my throat. “I’m so angry all the time. And I don’t want to be this anymore. I don’t …” My voice cracks.
It’s not Tanner that moves first. Not Ruin.
It’s Horan that grabs me by the back of the neck and wrenches me against him. His arms are like bands of steel as they wind around me.
“Then I absolve you of the sins done to you, Caine,” he says fiercely in my ear, his breath as hot as his body. “I free you of your burden. Of a past that should have never hurt you. Be reborn. Not as a demon. But as a man.”
Heat flares around us and he grows almost unbearably warm. But I do not burn under his heavenly fire. It blankets me, holding me almost as gently as he does.
Something like laughter breaks from me as the flames swirl over my skin, almost tickling what should be tainted, unholy flesh. The sound chokes on a sob. And then another. My legs buckle and he eases me to the floor, following me down, his arms still holding me.
I sob like a fucking newborn as my body remains whole, untouched by the power of God. As I am cradled in purity and the light of Heaven.
Horan strokes my hair. “Be reborn, Caine,” he murmurs as the others crowd around us. Their hands find my skin, cheek. My back. “Be reborn.”
Chapter 15
Onyx
The voices beyond the closed door are softer now. But my heart still races from the breaking glass I heard.
