Page 45 of In Death’s Hands (The Threads of Fate #1)

Nathan

I’m an idiot.

I couldn’t remember why when she was kissing me. When her soft, soft lips were moving against mine. When my fingers were buried inside her, drawing such delicious noises from her mouth. But now it’s all painfully clear again. I’m the biggest fucking idiot on the entire fucking planet.

There. For someone that never used to curse, that flows remarkably well.

I sigh for what is probably the millionth time since I ran from her bedroom like the coward I am. Not her bedroom, actually, but Atys’. I feel my lips stretch as I think of what smell we left on the bastard’s bed. Serves him well for letting her wear one of his shirts.

I catch myself. Right, that’s what’s important right now. Disgust curls my lips, erasing all smugness I may have felt.

“There you are!” Turan’s small hand lands on my shoulder for a second before she settles at my side.

Like me, she’s sitting facing the ocean sparkling under the bright moonlight.

Unlike me, she’s happily burrowing her toes in the cool sand.

The last time I went barefoot on the beach, a dare from the tiny woman currently beside me, a crab pinched me and freed curses long forgotten by even humans.

I will not repeat that experience anytime soon.

“How’s Liv?”

“Resting,” I answer, willing my face to stay blank.

Begging my brain to stop conjuring the memories of her body against mine, the way that stupid flag looked against her pearly skin, the way she trusted me, me , with her body and her pleasure.

When I am but a forgotten speck of dust in the dying universe, I will remember the way her voice broke around my name as her pleasure crested and she tightened around my fingers.

My heart is beating wildly again, and I force the briny breeze to cool me down.

My body is coiled and seconds away from running back to her. I can’t let it.

“I’m surprised.”

“By what?”

“Her.”

I bristle at her side and, judging by the arch of her eyebrows, Turan catches it. Catches me. She’s always seen more of me than others. More than I want her or anyone else to see. It’s deeply annoying.

“How’s that?” I ask, hoping to distract her and needing to know anything regarding the woman who changed everything for me a long time ago.

“By her resting, for one.” She eyes me all too suspiciously, but she doesn’t know.

She can’t know that I caved in to very human desires.

The ones I judged the others for having.

She can’t know that it took everything in me to leave that bed.

Most importantly, she can’t know how close I came to admitting to what I did.

I’ve stayed silent for so long the urge to open up surprised me.

Liv seems to be uncovering parts of me I thought long gone.

It’s a painful process. The feelings and instincts I buried are aching as they come back to life.

“She fought hard,” I answer non-committally. “You healed her; it always takes a toll.”

“Mhm.” I can feel her eyes burning the side of my face but focus mine on the bright moon close to being full. “I’m surprised by you too, you know.” I close my eyes, waiting for the blow to fall, but she shocks me when she adds, “Impressed, even.”

I frown and turn to her so fast she chuckles quietly, clearly delighted to have got a reaction out of me. “What are you talking about?” I know my voice is closer to a growl, but I don’t like being teased.

“I’ve never seen you more alive than when she’s around.”

I huff, already dismissing her. I ignore the pang in my chest that feels an awful lot like disappointment.

For a second, I thought I had surpassed my own role and its limitations, done something worth notice and respect.

But I should know better. Turan too often refuses to see someone’s faults and hold them accountable.

Of course she’d be proud of me—she always is—but I still am what I am. Nothing has changed.

“She’s right, you know.”

I tense as Atys makes his presence known and sits down on my other side. Clenching my teeth, I pointedly ignore them both. I should know better than to think that would work with these two.

“I’m serious, man. For decades you looked down your nose at us, feeling all high and mighty for not succumbing to human emotions. But look at you now, you actually care about some—”

I growl a warning.

“—thing,” Atys finishes with a wink. He seems to have warmed to my presence, and I can’t help but wonder if Liv has anything to do with that.

“What would that something be?” I ask, not knowing why I push. It seems tonight my good sense has taken its leave and gone merry-dancing with the rest of them.

Atys smirks, all too willing to play, as usual. “That particular some thing seems to have a good influence on you, making you a little more human. After all, how are we supposed to do our duties without understanding them?”

“I was under the impression you all shirked those duties.”

Atys’ playfulness disappears in less time than it takes for me to blink. And I find myself ashamed and regretful, and all too quiet in a night that should hear many words of apology from my mouth.

Turan’s head lands on my shoulder. “I know you regret what you did back then. We all know that, but we’ve moved on. So should you.”

Swallowing becomes difficult around the tightness in my throat.

I will never forgive myself. They may all be able to mix pleasure and duties like there are no differences between them, but it’s different for me.

It always has been. When my role is so crucial in the human experience, how can I take it lightly?

When I close my eyes, all I see are the souls I let down. I know all their faces, all their names. And as usual, guilt and sorrow rip me open. There is nothing to be done for those I failed. And when I realised my mistake, I swore I would never let it happen again.

Shock scatters those faces from my mind as Atys says gently, “We know our duties. But we also learned that we cannot perform them well if we do not partake in humanity every once in a while. It keeps us grounded. But I have a feeling you’re learning that the hard way, brother.”

His kindness, his forgiveness, allows my breathing to slow down and my heart to lose one of its many shields.

I hadn’t realised how much I needed this.

People to talk to. People who understand.

When Atys puts his hand on my shoulder, I don’t shake it away as I usually would.

Instead, I let his offer of friendship warm me.

After all, allowing myself some friends doesn’t have to lead me to my ruin. I’ve learned from my mistakes. At least, I hope so.

“What now?” I ask, tentatively testing this new dynamic of ours.

“Now we hope Celestina listens,” answers Atys.

I frown, not liking the sound of that.

Things had been chaotic, to say the least, when we all woke up.

Our minds and hearts were hollow, hungry for any sense of who we were.

The most powerful of us discovered more quickly than the rest some of the instincts guiding us as a species.

The need to heal for some, the call of the crying souls for others.

There were different opinions; none of us really knew anything about ourselves.

Glimpses and pieces were left in each of us, enough to have a general inkling about what we were, enough that many of us went to work right away after we managed to crawl out of that damned cave.

If what we do can be called work. It’s more a need to follow our calling.

A unique purpose that one should not deviate from.

I know that because I was stupid enough to do so.

In my need to connect, I fell in with a small group that decided that we didn’t fit into this world.

That despite what our bodies and souls called us to do, we didn’t have to follow through.

And for someone with a calling like mine, it felt good to convince myself that I wasn’t really needed.

That things would work just fine on their own.

To say I was wrong would be the understatement of the millennium.

Bigger than saying that Atys likes to walk around naked and flirt with anything that breathes.

Many souls paid the ultimate price because of my selfishness.

That’s why friendships are dangerous. Getting close to someone is giving them power.

My mistakes haunt every step I make, and I cannot condemn another soul.

I cannot get any closer to Liv. She’s too full of life, too bright for me to tarnish.

What will happen when all this is over? She’ll go back to her life as a human, and I’ll go back to haunting them.

“You heard Fenrick,” says Atys. “If what he said is true—”

“It’s not,” interrupts Turan.

I frown, the images of the memory we unlocked too fresh in my mind to readily agree with her.

I know it’s the same for Atys. What we saw, the chaos of the fight, there was no up and down, no way of knowing which side is right.

“ If it’s true,” I say, taking over for Atys, “Celestina has to listen. Because it means we’ve been fighting the wrong enemy all along. ”

Thanks to my mistake, it became apparent we needed a leader.

I was far from the only one who decided to treat their duties as nothing more than a recommendation from the Order, and the souls that were lost because of me were a mere fraction of what we caused.

Without supervision from one of our own, the Earth split and swallowed an entire island.

A mountain grew restless, and its fire decimated an entire bustling city.

Anger and fear grew like an epidemic. Crops refused to bear anything nutritious, and wine turned the humans against one another.

It was a dark period for us, but darker even for those we were supposed to look after.

That’s when Celestina became prominent. The de facto leader that brought us back to the right path.

I’m not sure how it all went about, to be honest. I think I blocked most of that period from shame.

But despite my not liking the woman and her advances, I cannot help but admire that she managed to make a unit out of us. Sort of.

“Well, maybe Liv will convince her. She seems good at that.” Turan’s joke freezes me over.

“Liv isn’t coming.”

Both Atys and Turan turn at the steel in my voice. Atys smirks. “Good luck with that.”

“She is not getting anywhere near Cel again,” I growl. She may have refused to elaborate, but I know all too well what Celestina did to her. Probing, testing her like a lab rat. I will not subject her to that again.

“Th—”

“That’s final,” I snap, cutting Turan off.

“Again, good luck with that. Liv won’t like being excluded. Not when it’s her life that’s on the line.”

I sigh, knowing Atys is right. It doesn’t help that I can’t seem to think about her without feeling a fire in my veins and a tightness in my throat and…

other places. I’m supposed to protect her.

That’s what I set out to do, yet here I am putting her into more and more danger.

Kissing her, touching her, may be the biggest mistake I ever made.

So why can’t I find it in me to regret it?