Page 109 of Terror at the Gates

The blade, I corrected myself.

Not that I didn’t trust Coco. I just didn’t want to explain how I’d come to possess it. In this case, the truth sounded a lot like a lie, and it would mean explaining other things that might upset her. What was happening to me was new and strange and almost unbelievable. I don’t think I even had words to describe it.

“Just…something Zahariev said,” I explained and then quickly asked. “What’s up?”

“I figure you’ll still be asleep when I leave for work, so I wanted to let you know in case you had plans, you’re on Cherub watch tonight.”

“Got it,” I said. I did have plans, but I’d taken Cherub into the Trenches. I could take her to the docks too. She was turning out to be a true sidekick. “Anything else?”

Coco started to speak but hesitated and then shook her head. “Get some sleep, Lily.”

***

I sat on the ground, knees drawn to my chest. I was cold despite the fire before me. It gave off no heat but burned if touched. I knew because the tips of my fingers still stung,blistered by the flames. I was somewhere deep inside the cave, the sound of the roaring desert wind long gone, replaced by an almost solid silence.

Maybe it was not so much the silence that had mass but the darkness that settled on my back like a heavy stone. I could not escape it, even this close to light.

Somewhere behind me lay a corpse.

She looked like me but was not me.

Not anymore.

Something cold slithered across my foot, up and around my leg.

It was a serpent, but unlike the other, this one did not bare its fangs or bite. It hovered just above my knees, staring. I reached out, touching its smooth skin, just below its rounded head.

It slithered along my arm and then around my back and waist. The firm press of its body became a hand on my belly.

“What do you seek, goddess mine?” he asked, his lips pressed into the hollow of my neck, gliding toward my ear.

I tensed, feeling him all around me now—his chest against my back, his legs braced around mine.

“I seek what calls to me,” I said. “It is buried deep.”

“Is it deep?” he whispered. His fingers shifted beneath the chain of my necklace, raising the hair on the back of my neck. His other hand remained on my stomach. “Or are you afraid to find it?”

I turned my head, but I could not see the man’s face. The light did not touch him, but I knew him. He felt familiar, like the darkness I had woken to in the womb.

The warmth of his mouth hovered near. I wanted to feel him against my lips.

“Only darkness would accuse the light of fear,” I said.

He chuckled, and his hand shifted to my breast. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, yet as he rolled my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, I gasped.

“But you tremble.”

“I tremble out of need,” I said between my teeth.

“Then take, goddess,” he said. “Desire is only a weakness when it’s starved.”

My hand snaked around his neck, and I brought his lips to mine. His mouth was firm, and I parted mine so that I could taste him, but it was not enough. In this moment, I was a desert, and he was the rain. We were two creatures not long meant for each other, yet only he could cool the scorched parts of my body.

It had always been that way.

Goddess mine, his voice rumbled.

He was inside my head.