Page 44

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Kiss of Death

NYX

J ed’s body jerked along with the ringing shots, his face warping with shock. He turned toward the girl, snarling as he charged at her, but she didn’t relent. Christina unloaded a whole fucking cylinder on him, not stopping until he slumped to his knees, then keeled over completely, blood pooling around his enormous body.

His kinetic hold on me died and I lurched forward as I burst free. A desperate, “No!” flew from my lips, but it was too late.

Solaris rose to his feet, pulling the blade out of his chest. Only half of it was coated in blood.

We stood frozen.

The penthouse was a war zone.

Christina breathed hard and ragged, lowering the pistol shakily. Of course the crazy little mortal had a pistol. Our eyes met, and I gave her a silent order to return to the bedroom at once before I reduced her to ash. Or before Solaris picked her up and hurled her off the terrace. She obeyed hurriedly, her face a desperate plea.

She was only trying to help. Jed had gone fucking feral.

I sank to my knees beside him to assess the wounds. He may have been unconscious but this wouldn’t kill him. No. If I survived demonic bullets, he—

Panic shattered my thoughts into a million tiny little shards.

The bullets—they would need to be removed immediately. My heart slammed in my ears. Had they been regular bullets or demonic ones? I searched hastily, challenged by the amount of blood to get an accurate read.

“OH MY GODDESS!”

His head—he had a bullet in his head.

“Solaris! Solaris!” I trembled so hard I lost my vision, my hands fumbling over his chest and throat to see if he was breathing.

He’s going to die. He’s going to die. Right here, in my arms.

“Breathe, Firefly!” A voice stormed through my hysteria. “Remove it at once!”

I felt as if I were watching a movie as my palm flew to the side of his head, coaxing the bullet from his skull with a frantic kinetic demand. The silver bullet pelted my palm before clinging to the floor, rolling to a stop in a pool of dark blood.

I slumped in exhausted relief when the wound began to close up.

I hadn’t noticed before but Solaris was crouched next to me, eyeing Jedidiah with something I didn’t have the energy to read.

“He’s healing,” he breathed.

I nodded. The movement was jerky and painful.

“Continue,” Solaris commanded. “You must remove every bullet.”

Yes.

Jed’s body was hot to the touch, even through his shirt. His chest moved slightly. I needed to get his jacket off. I peeled back the leather, searching—

An intelligible wail soared from my throat. “He’s got an entire arsenal in here!”

The inside of the jacket was lined with countless weapons. A gun. A collection of daggers and knives. A thin wooden stake. A— “A grenade !!”

I glanced over at Solaris, miffed, but he did not share my surprise.

“I told you,” he muttered, sounding almost bored as he rose back to his feet.

I slumped again, in defeat this time. Jed’s blood continued to expand. I stared down at him, my eyes and chest burning. Images from when I first met him played in my mind like a montage. He’d been so clean, poised. The epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. Immaculate skin, shirts threaded with real gold, that emerald staff always secured at his side. He had the best of everything, emitting pure opulence, always. He’d been steadfast in his earthing power. Solid, like a mountain. Even when we would spar at parties, the way he fought was always controlled.

The madman I was looking at now was a stranger.

Drugs, vampire hunting, secret siblings. Shit—if Solaris and Jed were brothers, did that mean he was also related to Ra’ah? How did she fit into all of this? Solaris had said Jed was hunting for her . I’d always had a hard time grasping that she was his biological sister. He insisted it was the truth, but they didn’t look like they shared genetics.

Him and Jed, though…

My chest squeezed.

“You idiot.” I sniffed, my gaze trailing from his face to his throat. I could see his pulse thrumming gently under the skin. His chest rose and fell with rapid, shallow breaths. Despite being unconscious, his brows were still pulled into a frown. I leaned down and kissed his forehead, my fingers brushing aimlessly through his hair. “You idiot. You idiot.”

“Get on with it,” Solaris demanded. I could feel his patience thinning. “Remove the bullets so he can heal and sleep this off.”

I made a low sound, annoyed that I couldn’t argue. I tore open Jed’s shirt, exposing his blood-soaked skin. It made me dizzy. Christina had shot him eight times, including the blow to the head. She’d been mostly at a sideways angle until the end, hitting him in the shoulder, ribs, stomach, and hip, all on his right side. He had three bullets in his chest, though none of them looked like they’d hit his heart.

I winced at the phantom pains inside my own body as I regarded the damage.

His body was fighting back. Some of the bullets were visible, his skin pushing them out on its own. I held my hand over and assisted, using my kinetic power to summon them all the way. I released a breath of relief when I saw they were all shiny, untainted silver. Regular bullets.

Solaris, too, hummed with reprieve. “It is as if your Goddess is testing you, seeing how durable you two are. Impressive results so far, I’d say.”

The words made my glare rise to him.

The way he looked down at us woke me as if from a distant dream.

My lips tore back into a snarl, and I shot to my feet with a pointed finger. “ You ,” I hissed. “Just when I think you can’t get any more depraved, you stoop down another level. Truly, I’m amazed. Bravo!”

He only stared at me, looking slightly curious to hear what else I had to say.

I hated the way my eyes burned. “I guess I should have seen it. I should have put it together. How else could your obsession with Jedidiah be explained?”

And his face. The hard, cruel lines. The weight of his stare. Lack of empathy in the eyes. That was all Aries.

I shook my head at him, disgusted. “You better fix this.”

His brows narrowed slightly. “Fix what?”

“What you’ve done to him! You latched onto him like a fucking death leach just like you did me. You’ve drained him of everything that makes him who he is. This is not Jedidiah Stone.” I gestured down to the man on the floor, unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

“He’s your brother .” The word rang off my tongue with vigor. Solaris’s eyes flashed with something I didn’t have a name for. My pulse sped up, my chest heaving. “I know that means something to you. I can see it in your eyes. In your own demented way, you care for him. He deserves better than this. You can toy with me however you want, but you will not do the same with him. I won’t let you. He’s good. Do you hear me? He is good . You will not make a monster of him!”

For a beat, there was only silence.

“Oh, Firefly,” he said at last. His voice was low, rasped. His glare darkened. “It is not me who’s made a monster of him. It’s you.”

My lips popped open, but no words made it through.

Solaris tilted his head, examining me like a painting. “You don’t truly believe he’s in this state because he’s fucked up over me .”

I sucked in a sharp breath that tore me apart and left me a pile of ribbons on the floor.

Solaris watched my face.

“Fine, then.” I stepped back and straightened my shoulders. “I guess the point you’ve been trying to make is becoming undeniable. You’re right, Solaris. I’m just as bad as you.” My focus dropped to Jed. The sight of him and the truth that came with it was staggering. “We both did this.”

The carnage we stood among and the body on the ground was only a taste of the true devastation he and I were capable of. Eventually, the ruin would be the city. The bodies would be of innocents—poor unfortunate souls caught in the crossfire of what Solaris would call Divine Justice. He may have been biding his time, or perhaps his plans were put on hold because of the manacles on his wrists, but I wasn’t a fool. He had an agenda, and it was only a matter of time before he used me to carry it out.

And damn him to hell if he wasn’t right about the Celestial Society. It was as corrupt as the day is long.

But he wasn’t out to save anyone. He wasn’t out to make things better. He was out to destroy. He would have me burn the world to the ground, vanquishing it all just to eliminate a few.

The revelation hit us where it hurt. I could feel the iron weight that balled up in his chest. I could feel it because we shared it. The pain, the guilt, the blame.

My mind found clarity as my eyes lost it, blurring over until I could see nothing but black lace. Bitter tears burned their way down my cheeks.

“You’re right. You’ve always been right,” I admitted, my voice thick. I moved forward, closing in on him, grasping his dark cloak in my hands. “We are the same, you and me. We are everything you promised we are. We are a plague. We have to leave, Solaris. We have to leave this city and these people behind or we are going to destroy everything. And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to destroy it all. Please don’t make me. Take me right now. Fly us as far away as we can go. I’ll be yours. Let’s just go.”

His eyes were wild, darting back and forth between mine as he tried to figure me out. He had his guard up, his wings flexed and long.

“Stop.” His voice cracked on the word.

“What’s the problem!” I shouted, shaking him. His hands flew up to the tops of my arms, trying to hold me steady. His face was a blur behind the film of tears corrupting my vision. “Isn’t this what you want to hear? Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? I have nothing but you!”

“Stop it,” he begged. “Stop.”

I laughed bitterly. “You are so. Fucking. Pathetic. All your grand speeches about how we belong together. How I’m yours because it’s written in the stars or whatever the fuck your delusion is. But now you cower away from me. You beg me to stop. You are so fucking hollow, Solaris. There is nothing to you. Nothing but words and masks and shadows.”

My tears dried. Vision cleared. The winged male before me was a broken image. A forgotten piece of art hanging in an abandoned museum, his face forever twisted in misery.

I scoffed at the sight, refusing to relent. “Take me. Take me away from here, Solaris. Don’t try and act like that isn’t what you want.”

He shook his head. His eyes swam with unshed tears, the shadows under his bottom lashes rippling like rivers of black water. “Not like this.”

I snapped my head back and barked a mocking laugh. “But this is the only way you’ll ever have me, you idiot!”

My fingers clung to his cloak, and I yanked him down so his face was forced closer to mine. His dark hair tickled my forehead. “You are so pathetically broken. So fucking desperate . Jedidiah will never love you. He will never care. You can’t force people to care.”

The silver in his eyes was molten as he whispered, “Force is all I know.”

I stopped breathing.

Five stupid little words and I was shattered . My diseased, traitorous mind reminding me of the boy in the white room.

Of course he didn’t know anything else. How could he?

He searched between my eyes, confused by my sudden shift.

I swallowed the wave of emotion, and sunk lower.

“Even your father doesn’t care.” My voice was venomous, but brittle. “You’re free, you’re dangerous—you’ve proven that several times over. And he. Doesn’t. Care. I saw him at the Clash of Spirits. I saw him looking at you. And guess what? There wasn’t a flicker of anything . Not fear or regret or—”

“ENOUGH!” he roared, his cool fingers wrapping around my throat. He didn’t squeeze. He held me, almost desperately, breathing hard. “Do you feel better? Does my misery chase yours away?”

My heart thundered like the storm outside of the glass walls. “Not even close.”

His palm on my throat was like ice over fire. His eyes had gone bloodshot. His pain thickened the air, tainting it with a charge that made my skin prickle. A white-hot iron had replaced my heart, burning me from the inside out. We stared into each other’s eyes while a thousand unsaid words assailed like arrows between us.

With my fingers still twisted in his cloak, I pulled him down. Crashed my lips to his.

A harsh, branding kiss. One fueled by malice and despair.

He gasped into my open mouth and fell still. Fucking helpless as I injected my venom and wrapped him in my spider silk.

I had promised him that I would be his black widow. This was my best—perhaps my only —true weapon against him.

My fire did not burn him. My words never hurt him, not enough.

But my kiss was death.

He knew it, too. He remained still as I forced his lips open with my tongue. He tasted like snow and sorrow and blood.

And I wanted more. I wanted everything.

With his hand still around my throat, he shoved me away from him. Held me at half-arm’s length, rapidly searching between my eyes while his chest rose and fell.

His glare ignited with something I’d never seen in him before. Something wanton and possessive, yet wholly resentful. Vengeance bled over his features like an oil spill. The look a man might give you when you have him at gunpoint, but he manages to twist it out of your grasp to turn it on you. It made my stomach clench in morbid anticipation.

And then he was kissing me .

He closed in so abruptly that it winded me and knocked my brain out of my skull. Our chests crushed together, hearts firing at each other like machine guns. My body reacted with reckless abandon in the absence of my brain. With a whimper, I parted my lips and tasted his tongue on mine.

His hands were as ravenous as his lips, gripping me hard. I gasped as he hoisted me up to sit on the bar top. My legs parted instinctively and he closed in on me, his mouth still locked on mine.

My eyes flew wide, watching as he left my lips to kiss a line of electricity down my jaw. His enormous wings closed in around us, shrouding us from the world. His hand slid away from my throat so his lips could take over. I panted, tilting back my head as my back arched into him.

His mouth—it—there were no words. Lips like winter against my burning flesh. I swore I could hear the sizzle of hot meeting cold.

My eyes fell shut, my traitorous body shuddering.

He stole the weapon I had formed and turned it against me. The backfire was crippling.

My legs wrapped around his waist as he pushed me down so I was lying on the marble. He was all over me, his mouth ravaging every inch of skin it could find and I didn’t stop it. He kissed my jaw, my throat, my collarbone. Tears leaked silently from my eyes.

I held him, damning us both. And for a moment, however brief or endless, I let myself feel it. The truth of my sickening, corrupt heart. I let it shatter me and brand me and ruin me for life. I didn’t deserve the cloak of denial I hid beneath.

Solaris’s mouth closed over mine once more. The kiss was deep—vehement and possessive, stoked by a century of loneliness and longing.

He groaned into my mouth, maybe even saying my name. I didn’t know. I couldn’t hear over the roar of my guilty blood.

And then the bitter, salty reality leaked between our lips.

He froze.

Pulled back.

His silver eyes, hooded and possessed with desire, instantly drained of heat. The shadows rippling down his cheeks were the only movement between us as he stared at the tears that drenched my face.

I sat up straight at the same moment that he dropped his hands. My legs unwound from his waist and I slid off the bar top, my feet hitting the floor with a harsh crack.

Solaris stepped away from me, appearing to hold his breath.

“I—” His voice broke off.

He didn’t stop me when I stormed away from him, slamming the door to the spare bedroom almost hard enough to bring the walls down.