Page 22 of Love’s Ace

Chapter 22

Theo

I woke up sore and warm all at once, wrapped in a comfort I was almost afraid of. I wasn’t used to existing in a world where I had more options than just fight or flight.

There was a third option now, one so foreign I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Stay.

The option was to stay .

Wren’s arms around me offered a sense of security that I half-expected to fall apart. I didn’t believe in soulmates. I didn’t believe in finding someone and your entire life changing, your world shifting, falling in love without thought or reason over the span of a few days.

But I didn’t move when Wren shifted on the small couch and pulled me closer in his sleep. I just closed my eyes and draped my hand over his waist, trailing my fingers up the length of his spine experimentally.

He let out a low gasp a second before his wings broke free from the tattoo on his back, the motion enough to jerk him awake.

I probably looked like a deer caught in headlights as Wren searched the room for some unperceived danger before his gaze finally trailed back and landed on me. I couldn’t stop the soft laugh that spilled out, husky from sleep and contradicting my words.

“Sorry.”

Wren’s brows snapped together, and I felt the tension try to find a way back into my body. I expected anger… for him to shove me away. Something.

Anything.

Instead, he shook out his shoulders, rustling his wings and sending a few stray feathers to float down over me.

“Shit way to wake someone up, Theo.”

“Hm. I could think of better ways…”

“Fucking gods.” Gethin’s voice cut off the tease forming on my tongue, and he slammed his bedroom door louder than necessary. “If you leave feathers behind in my living room because of some weird foreplay with your monster boyfriend, I’m never helping you again.”

I wasn’t sure if I was more caught up on the word monster or boyfriend.

If I thought about it, I knew it was the latter.

I’d been called a monster before.

“We’re not fucking on your couch, Gethin.” Wren only paused for a second before sitting up and rolling his eyes. “It’s too small.”

My eyes drifted to his chest, to the remnants of flaking brown blood that hadn’t been washed away in the rain—proof I’d tried to kill him last night.

Again.

And somehow it had turned into…

Heat flooded my body, and a low sound caught in the back of my throat. When purple eyes darted toward me, I groaned and threw my arms over my face to hide whatever expression I seemed incapable of controlling.

The silence only lasted for a second before Gethin broke it with a sweet smile as he turned toward the kitchen.

“Why don't you two take a shower while I make breakfast?”

God, he was an asshole.

There was no way for me to properly navigate how I was feeling. We ate and then Gethin followed us back to his little library where we’d been pulling books at random. He seemed to know exactly where to look, and he sat a stack on the table before snatching one from the top and going to the corner of the room. He didn’t say anything about throwing me out last night, or the way I’d snapped.

I didn’t say anything about the way Wren came and sat beside me on the couch, or the way I leaned so my shoulder brushed against his when he did.

It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t even sexual.

The contact just felt… good. It made me feel calm, and more in control than I’d ever felt in my life. The burning beneath my skin was a distant memory in this place, with him pressed against me. I felt like it could have been a dream, like my entire shitty life could have been one bad dream that I’d finally woken up from.

It was strange how that feeling made me feel less in control, because I wasn’t used to it. I didn’t trust it.

I didn’t know how easy it would be for Wren to change his mind—for me to suddenly become too much of a monster for him, or for him to realize that I couldn’t be saved—and then take it away from me.

Gethin’s words still echoed in my head. It would be easier for Wren if he killed me.

He’d recover.

He could live without me.

But I was horrified to realize that I wasn’t sure I could go back to living without… whatever the fuck was going on between us.

“I need a second.” I pushed myself to my feet, pressing on Wren’s shoulder when he started to stand. “I’m okay. I won’t wander off.”

His eyes stayed on me as I walked to the door, and I could still feel them boring holes into my back as I stepped outside and shut it behind me.

I didn’t dare walk much further than that—the red string between us trailed back inside, wrapping loops around my heart and threatening to constrict the muscle if I went too far. I knew what it felt like, and I didn’t want to experience it again. I didn’t want to lose even more control than I already had.

I didn’t know if I’d survive it. With my back pressed to the door, I could hear the muffled sound of Wren and Gethin talking, though I couldn’t make out the words. I didn’t want to know this time—I didn’t want to hear if Gethin was trying to convince him to kill me again.

I just wanted to find myself in the center of the tangled mess of red threads and want, need and feathers… a sea of lilac and the smell of berries and warmth.

I wasn’t sure I knew who I was anymore, and I wasn’t sure if that was a bad or a good thing.

It felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Fuck, I couldn’t breathe.

I didn’t realize I was having a panic attack until my shoulders hit the wall and I slid down slowly, trying to force oxygen into lungs that felt like they’d shriveled into nothing. Even as I gulped in the chill morning air, my brain wasn’t registering it. My fingertips were tingling, my scalp was prickling—my vision was too bright and hazy at the edges.

Everything was collapsing inward. My ribs, my lungs, my body. The world.

Because I realized—I knew— things had changed. Things were different.

I could never go back to who I was before I’d been attacked by the Enmity in the alley, even if we found a way to cure me. Even if we found a way to turn me into a human again.

“Theo?”

Stay with me.

Stay with me.

He’d burned those damn words across my ribs, and somehow they’d stolen away my ability to inhale.

“Theo, are you with me?” I was so caught up in my head that I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes, and so wrapped up in my panic that I didn’t hear Wren coming outside. His fingers were tangled in my hair, and it wasn’t his words so much as the sharp pull of those digits that finally forced me to take a shuddery gasp of air that I felt go all the way down.

“I’m f-fine.” The lie couldn’t have been more obvious.

“Sometimes thinking too hard will do that to a person.” Gethin’s voice from the doorway was as sardonic as ever, but his eyes were fixed on the way Wren’s fingers were tangled in my hair, his brows knitted together. “Probably not used to it, right?”

I couldn’t even summon up a streak of anger around the panic still trying to claw its way from my chest, and my hand was shaking when I raised it to flip Gethin off. He rolled his eyes and held the door open as Wren half dragged me back inside and pushed me onto the couch.

When the ex-cupid flung a blanket at my face, I was still too wrapped up in my head to catch it. Wren glared at him, but draped the plush black fabric across my legs, wrapping me in the warmth of it. At least shivering was better than burning alive from the inside out, right?

“I’m fine.” I finally got out again. “I’m just… tired.”

Lies. Fuck, since when had I been so bad at lying?

“I’ll go get us some coffee. I know I sure as shit could use it.” I barely caught sight of his blond hair whipping behind him as Gethin left the room. As soon as the door closed, Wren turned to me, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t quite convince myself to move back when he ran his fingers through my hair and forced me to look at him.

“What the fuck was that?”

Ah, there was the tone I recognized—a little angry, fucking bossy, but it was edged with concern. How did I recognize an entire spectrum of emotions from a man I’d only known for a week?

How did any of this make sense?

“It’s… nothing. I’m tired, Wren. And this is… Fuck, it’s a lot. I might be turning into a monster. A week ago, I was just a poor fucker trying to decide whether I wanted to spend the last of my money to pay for my room or buy something to eat. Just…” I trailed off, the venom in my voice dying somewhere on the back of my tongue at the expression on his face.

Anger, concern, and buried beneath it all, the same confusion I felt.

The same worry.

The same panic.

Fuck, he’d probably felt every bit of my damn panic attack, hadn’t he? They were so physical for me, so visceral, that I knew he had. There was no point in lying about it. I shook my head and dropped back onto the couch.

“It’s hard for me too.” Wren finally spoke, his voice hushed, like he didn’t know how to give a confession but he was willing to try. “I went from feeling nothing to feeling everything . The entire world was gray before, Theo. Gray with little bursts of crimson when I fought, and the prospect of an eternity where that was all it would ever be.” He sounded soft, maybe a little lost. “And then you were there in that damn alley, and you changed everything. You changed me .” I opened my eyes and found him staring at me, his mouth set in a hard line, his hands fisted and crossed over his chest. Every line in his body was rigid, his jaw sharp with how hard he clenched it.

He looked just as beautiful as he had when I’d first seen him, and the last bit of panic in my chest slowly melted away. I was struggling with emotions, with what this all meant… but Wren was fighting with trying to figure out how to feel any of it at all.

“You’re the one who shot me, asshole.” I leaned in as I spoke, dropping my head to his shoulder. He blew out a shaking breath when I turned my head and brushed my lips against his thundering pulse.

“I might have shot you, but you’re the one who ran us both through. I guess we’re both to blame.” Wren’s fingers snaked beneath the blanket and he took my hand. I let the last of the tension in my body fade away with a few more breaths, with the fact that Wren was saying what he’d said last night.

We were to blame—both of us.

We were in this together.

By the time Gethin came back with three coffees in a cardboard tray, I’d flung the blanket over Wren’s legs and hooked our ankles together, and I was reading again. If he could handle this, I could too. We just had to find the answers…

And when we did, I had to believe that things weren’t going to fall apart.

It was hours later when I felt Wren tense beside me. I didn’t realize my head had drifted to lie on his shoulder until I lifted it to look at him.

“What?”

He spread his fingers out over the page he was reading and frowned. “I might have found something, but I don’t think anyone is going to like it.”

“What?” Gethin echoed my question behind me and walked around—when his eyes landed on the book, his mouth set in a hard line. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Think about it. If there is some source to our power, to their power… it makes sense they could stop it, right?”

“Wren, you’re pretty much saying you want to talk to the things mortals would call God .”

“Except we know our powers came from somewhere. Cupids are created . We can—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I was tired of them both speaking like I wasn’t in the room, and I didn’t like the worry I could see slowly spreading across Gethin’s features. It didn’t help when he turned and glared at me, his eyes dropping to my chest.

“Wren wants to find the source of what makes an Enmity and ask them to pretty please, take it back .”

“That’s not what—”

“Even more, I know where I got that fucking book from, and I know you know too. Go on, Wren. Why don’t you tell your monster boyfriend where you want to get more information about this.”

Wren fell silent, dropping his eyes back to the book in front of him.

“What are you talking about?”

Gethin didn’t seem to have the same qualms as Wren, because he stalked around the couch and snatched the book from him. When he flipped the page open, I saw a sketch of two figures, perfectly symmetrical. One light. One dark. Perfect mirrors of one another. The looping, scrawled handwriting said words like power and beginning . Essence and creation.

“We came from somewhere. The cupids are created at birth. We’re plucked from our mother’s arms and our powers are awakened.” Gethin’s expression wavered. “Usually.”

“Okay?” I didn’t understand… Maybe I was too tired, or maybe I didn’t want to understand, because Wren was still tense beside me.

“So if we’re fed power from this.” Gethin’s finger thumped against the page on the figure in white. “That means you were fed power from this .” He slapped the image shrouded in darkness and slammed the book shut. “The problem is, that’s all there is about it in this book. That’s all I’ve ever read about it, because every book that matches this one is back at Love’s Ace. In Aiden’s office.”

“It’ll be fine .” Wren finally spoke. “Aiden isn’t going to do anything to me.”

In a burst of motion, Gethin ripped his shirt over his head and turned—the sight of his bare back stole my breath, made something in my stomach twist. What I’d seen before was nothing.

Scars… all along his spine, all along the places where Wren’s tattoos were… all replaced with mottled, ruined skin. And along the space where the base of Wren’s wings were, that spot I’d touched so many times, were deep gouges.

“Aiden is the one who did this . Do you think if you show up there with him, you won’t get the same, just because you’re his favorite?” Gethin turned and threw the book at Wren’s chest. “It won’t be fine .”

I felt numb. I knew Gethin had lost his wings, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things.

It was…

Fuck.

It was horrible.

I couldn’t imagine that happening to Wren. Especially not because of me. Not for me.

“I won’t get caught.” Wren’s voice was softer than it had been, his eyes filled with pain as Gethin jerked his shirt back on.

“You don’t even know if the answers are there. You don’t know if there’s a source for the Enmity, or if it’s just some fucked-up story. And Aiden isn’t going to just tell you. You’ll have to hope you steal the right book, and you’ll have to hope another cupid doesn’t see you, and hope Theo doesn’t change in the middle of it and start attacking everyone.”

Fuck, he was right. I didn’t understand everything, and even I knew this was too dangerous. I didn’t get a chance to say it though, because Wren stood from the couch, following Gethin around to the other side of the room. I drew up like a puppet on strings, incapable of not following him as he went.

“You don’t get it , Gethin. I can’t just—”

“Sure, Wren. I don’t understand it at all. He’s turning into an Enmity, and as far as I’ve ever seen, there’s no way to stop it. Those books are probably full of shit. And even if there is a source for his power, it would probably just try to eat you both if you found it. Or Theo will just change the second you step over the threshold of Love’s Ace and he’s around all the other cupids. He’ll be a monster, and you’ll lose your wings. You’ll spend the rest of your life loving a creature made to hate you, to destroy you. But… sure. I don’t understand.”

He sounded so furious, but it was a surface-level emotion that had so much depth beneath… He was worried about Wren. Gethin could see just as well as I could that this was dangerous—too dangerous. And Gethin knew just as much as I did that I wasn’t worth the risk.

Wren stopped a few feet in front of his friend and frowned, reaching out to him before he dropped his arms, fists clenching. I couldn’t stop myself from stepping forward so I stood at his side.

“I’m not asking you to help us break in, Gethin.”

“Good. You wouldn’t catch me dead in that place ever again. I won’t have your back, Wren.” His expression wavered, and he frowned. “But I’ll sure as fuck miss you when you’re gone.” When his eyes turned to me, they were full of accusation, a little hate… and a little jealousy as his expression flickered down to the way I’d stepped toward Wren, the way his wings sprang out and spread around us like they meant to protect me the second that gaze turned in my direction again. “Fuck, I really hope he’s worth it.”

I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but Wren’s hand came down instead, and he took my fingers in his.

“He is .”

There was no question, no hesitation. Just his answer, so solid and sure of me.

It made my chest constrict and my heart ache—it made everything inside me threaten to fracture, because as much as he believed in me, I was terrified he was wrong.