Page 128 of Obsidian and Frost
“Then you can’t. You can’t do that anymore. Your vigilante work… it could literally kill you.”
“I was foolish last night. I didn’t take a backup syringe with me. That’s all.”
“Sylas.”
“I can’t just stop. Things are required of me. And to gather intel—a great deal about the cure Kai and I are trying todetermine—payment is required. Me doing jobs for people, jobs that only somebody of my magical caliber and specific skillset can do. I’m in high demand, and that’s something I use to my advantage.”
“That’s what you were doing last night?”
“Using it to my advantage, yes.”
“No. I mean, were you doing somebody a favor to acquire intel on this cure?”
“Last night’s job wasn’t about that. It concerned something else.”
“Like what?”
“Lazriel.”
“Yes, I know you have your secrets and you have people to protect because you clearly operate in the supernatural underground more than I even realized at first, but I can’t know what nearly killed you last night?”
“Not the specifics. Let’s just say that I owed somebody a favor and that’s what last night was about.”
I shoved my hands in the pockets of his robe he’d conjured on me. “Fine,” I muttered.
He gritted his teeth. “I hate it when you say that. Because it means you’re the opposite of what you’re stating.”
“Well, what do you expect?”
He was across the space between us in the next moment and shoving me against the wall. “You can be absolutely infuriating, you know that?”
“Right back at you.”
He grunted. “Last night was about me looking intoyoursituation. The threat out there that your mother is so concerned about that she hired protection for you.” He gestured through the open kitchen door and through to the living room. “Protection that I can feel right at the edge of my ward that I re-erected the moment I awoke to feel a Dark Fae ward in its place from Velra.”
“Yeah, they’re likely pissed that I evaded them for a good portion of the night, including the alcove sex with Velra.”
“Alcove? That’s where you took her?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of our spot.”
He winced, then pulled from me. “Better make this breakfast a good one, then.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You fucked her in a dirty alcove like an animal.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Not in the moment, I’m sure.”
“Not at all. She won’t see it like that.”
“Let’s make sure of it then. And, yes, that’s why I’m making the breakfast rather than merely conjuring it. Manners and a sprinkling of chivalry for the morning-after.”
“Morning-after? I don’t… oh, what you did for me that morning I woke up here after we were together, that’s… protocol?”
He frowned, then stilled for a moment. “This is your first time?”
