Page 89 of The Deathless One
There were plenty of people milling about, their faces all missing the dirt and oil of the factories. These people were infinitely better dressed, well fed, but there was a hunger in their gazes as they watched her. They wanted to attack. They wanted to fight. But why?
“How are you going to find this Callum?” Elric asked, her own personal shadow. “It doesn’t look like he’s here, and they won’t allow you to wander through any of these buildings without an escort. You’ve walked into a hornet’s nest, nightmare. And every single one of them wants you dead.”
“I have a plan,” she muttered.
“Is it to use my magic to flatten these buildings? I understand you think you have control over my power, but you don’t have the knowledge to do this yet. All that magic running through you so freely might kill you. You aren’t a conduit. You’re a gravesinger.” He turned toward her, his brow furrowed with worry. “And I’m realizing you don’t know the difference.”
“I don’t.” Jessamine shrugged, knowing she probably looked crazy to anyone who was watching her. She must seem like she was talking to herself. “But I have realized that doesn’t matter. I am angry. And for the first time in my life, I am sitting in this dissatisfaction with no one fixing it for me. I deserve answers, and I am going to get them for myself.”
He looked at her with more heat in his eyes than she had seen, even when he was looking up at her from between her thighs. That expressionsaid he wanted to throw her down in the middle of this courtyard, watchers be damned. He wanted her so much that it made her squeeze her thighs together and hope that no one realized how affected she was by the god they could not see.
“Where have you been hiding these razor-sharp teeth?” he murmured, then licked his lips and looked her up and down. “I would like to see this side of you more, nightmare. The things I want to do to you when you’re like this are positively evil.”
“You are a creature filled with malice, after all.”
“So are you, I’m finding.”
He was right.
She had fought this side of herself for so long. Everyone had always told her to be the dutiful daughter. The kindhearted princess. The girl who gave more of herself than she took from anyone else. And she refused to be that person any longer.
Today, she was going to take. And that came in the form of turning toward the crowd, lifting her gaze up to the highest building, and screaming at the top of her lungs, “Callum Quen! I have come for you!”
Her scream echoed between the buildings, bouncing back and forth until it erupted out of the top like a volcano. Everyone around her stared as though she had lost her mind.
Maybe she had. But damn, it felt good.
She thought there would be a significant wait before someone stepped forward. But it didn’t take very long at all. Perhaps Bones had run to find Callum.
A door into the third building opened up, and a large man strode out. The silver wings at his temples were so familiar it hurt to look at him, as was the expression on his face, the chiding expression one saved for children when they were misbehaving.
He no longer wore the navy uniform that she’d always seen him in. Instead, he wore a white shirt and a high-collared black jacket. He looked better here, like he fit in more than he ever had in the castle, and that made every hair on her body stand up straight.
The people parted around him like a wave around a stone. They didn’t want to be anywhere near him as he approached. She watched all of this, knowing this was bad. This was so bad.
Elric muttered, “I take it back. This isn’t a hornet’s nest. This is a den of vipers.”
“I think you might be right,” she murmured just as Callum stopped before her, his arms outstretched.
“I was so afraid you were actually dead,” he said. “And now look at you! You’ve come home.”
They were the words she’d wanted to hear since the moment she realized she was going to die. And they were a lie.
He didn’t like any of this, but he also knew she needed to do this on her own. He could sweep in and be that voice in her ear, guiding her as he had in the moment with Benji when he had known she would fail. But this time, she would not fail.
She’d walked into this den of hissing snakes with a confidence he had never seen from her before. Was this what she had been like before she died? He could so easily picture this woman upon a throne, ordering around her subjects at a whim.
He could see her ordering him around, too, as she had in the darkness when he’d wanted to lick her from head to toe. She had told him to crawl, and he had. A god. So easily on his knees for a mortal woman, because she had ordered him to do so.
He should probably be ashamed of that. Or at the very least, embarrassed.
Instead, Elric watched with passion and pride as she stared down the man who had raised her. The man who had betrayed her more than any other person in her life. He could only imagine this was about to get worse. After all, Callum Quen was a liar through and through. Elric could see it on him like a slick oil that clung to his skin.
The man was bigger than he’d expected. Jessamine’s memories were that of a child, so of course she remembered Callum as a giant. But as he ushered her out of the courtyard into the central building, Elric took stock of the man who threatened his nightmare once again.
Callum’s clothing was well-tailored, not a speck of dirt on the white shirt he wore. His hair was oiled back; he was clearly a man who cared about his appearance. But the faint wrinkles around his eyes and between them revealed a man who spent an awful lot of time frowning. And then there was his stance. A fighter’s stance, always at the ready, with his gaze flicking from side to side, watching for someone to sneak out of the shadows.
This was no mere guard. This was a man who had grown up on the streets and knew exactly how to keep himself alive. That was a man who was not trustworthy, because he did not trust himself.
