Page 64 of Lustling

I lean down until our noses nearly touch, the space between us alive and electric. “Think I deserve a reward?” I murmur.

His eyes darken, slow and hungry. “What kind of reward?”

I let my nails trail lightly down his chest. The motion is casual and wicked, and my voice is flat with honesty. “A woman. For me to play with.”

His eyebrows lift. “That’s what you want, Hellcat?”

I shrug, letting the edge of my smile sharpen. “Maybe. I liked kissing that girl. Women are soft. They taste sweet. And they listen better than men.”

A grin splits his face. “That so?”

“Yes.”

His thumb strokes my thigh in a slow, lazy motion that promises later debts. “We’ll see, then.”

Even as I sit there, straddling him, feeling the buzz of new horns and ancient appetite, there is a fierce new clarity. My skin hums; something inside stretches awake and reaches. The city hums below us, oblivious. Bastion watches me like a man aboutto be devoured, not with dread but with an eager hunger that makes my pulse quicken.

I do not know what I will become. I only know what I am capable of now. I am not scared. I am not sorry. I am hungry. I am budding into something sharp and beautiful and dangerous, and I would kill to protect it.

THIRTY-FIVE

The air tastes of old smoke and older paper. Candle wax beads along the rim of every lamp and the shelves rise and fold into the dark like the ribs of some sleeping beast. The Archives breathe in that slow, patient way knowledge does when it is left to ferment. Every pact, every shame, every bargain that has been kept and every promise that has been broken lives here in ink that smells faintly of iron. I never thought a vault could feel like a throat.

Tonight it does.

Cassiel walks beside me as if the stone under his boots might betray him. His steps are rigid, jaw set into a line that never softens. He knows I am still raw with the memory of what he almost did. He knows I have not forgiven him for offering her up as if she were a thing to be parceled. He almost handed over my mate to the enemy. I let that anger warm me; it is ballast I can use.

A ripple moves through shadow, a small rearrangement of air that reads like a whisper to anyone who knows how to listen. She steps into it: Velora, the remnant of an oracle. Her hair is black as a closed book, braided down one side and threaded with a single black feather. Her skin is the color of old paper, a faintash tint that makes the candlelight look scandalous against her throat. A tarnished silver pin shaped like a closed eye rests at the hollow of her collar.

Her eyes are pale blue, almost silver—soft at first, like mercury—but hold a quiet hunger that pricks you if you hold her gaze too long. A thin, pale scar arcs along her brow and she often lets a stray lock fall over it the way someone hides an old map. Her smile is small and practiced, the sort of innocent tilt that makes you want to confess; when she inclines her head the room leans in as if the Archives itself is listening.

“Back so soon, Deimos?” she purrs. The voice is velvet drawn across metal.

“Why? You miss me?”

She glides closer, the hem of her gown whispering over flagstone, and when her fingertip traces a path down my chest it is not an idle touch. It is a probe. She presses with a nail that catches the fabric and leaves me aware of every thin shiver under my skin.

“You always come crawling back when you need something,” she says in that soft way that is both invitation and instruction.

Cassiel’s disapproval is a thing pressed against my ribs. I know he thinks she is a viper and that anything that smiles this easy must be venomous. I do not offer him a pious look. Velora is a predator, older than her scars, and she keeps dreams the way other people keep gold. She feeds in the dark the way a tide takes the shore.

“We need birth records,” I say. “The last twenty years.”

She arches one perfect brow and lets her finger draw an idle line across the center of my chest. “That’s an interesting request.” Her voice lowers. “How is your father, Deimos?” she asks casually, the question dropping like a cold coin into the pool between us.

“Name your price,” I say, ignoring her question.

She pretends to think, but of course she already has decided. “You will owe me and I will collect when I see fit,” she says. “I know you are good for it.” There is no room in her voice for negotiation. She wants to be owed something. That is the point.

Cassiel’s body tightens. “That’s dangerous,” he says, and the word sits between us.

“What, worried about me?” I ask, because I want to feel something sharp and real between us. He gives no answer. Silence can be an answer that cuts deeper than any blade.

Velora waves a hand and the shelves reply. Books realign like bones settling. Scrolls shuffle as if remembering their places. A seam opens between the stacks and a shadowed corridor reveals itself, hungry and patient. “Have fun,” she whispers, and then she disappears into the dark with the leisurely confidence of a thing that owns the night.

We move in after her.

After a few hours, the bond tugs, a thread in my gut that tightens until it is a rope. “Lustling?” the little voice says in my head, and for a second the world skews.