Page 47 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

Shit . “Yeah, about that,” Nathan tried to think of how to defend their ruse, “just, ummm…let me explain—”

“You fed it so it would be strong enough to escape us,” Solrin accused Sasha. “You let the real killer get away because it was like you. Truly an act of love for Nathan, I’m sure.”

“It’s not what you think,” Nathan jumped in.

“I knew what Sasha was doing. We were working behind your back, okay, I admit it, because we wanted to save that other incubus. He was just a kid. He didn’t mean for all that to happen.

The deaths were accidents. How else would the first one have created a nach?

We just needed to find the kid and try to help him.

It was too late when we did, too close to frenzy for him, so…

so Sasha took one for the team,” he said, cringing at his choice of words.

“I may be a stranger to the kind of love you think you have with him,” Solrin said with a stern, steady voice, “but I have never heard it said in any loving relationship that fucking someone else is a worthy sacrifice.”

The clatter and clang of the dentist chair was more than enough for Nathan to realize that they were way past things slipping from bad to worse.

He whipped around to see Jim holding Sasha back by the arms, the dentist chair totally toppled. Sasha’s eyes were red again, his fangs bared despite the fatigue still so present in his body.

“You don’t know anything!” Sasha growled. “Do you think I wanted that!? To hurt Nathan like that!? I had to save that boy! I had to! You don’t know a fucking thing about me!”

“ Sasha ,” Jim tried. It was easy for him to hold the redhead back, but Nathan knew by the expression on Jim’s face that he was only doing so for the incubus’ sake.

Nathan tried not to let his own feelings on the matter cloud his thoughts. He understood why Sasha had done what he did, it just didn’t make him feel any better.

He looked at Sasha pleadingly, heart-brokenly before turning back to Solrin.

“Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t nice for everyone,” he said, “but it can still be right. He was a kid, not a monster. We were just trying to help.”

“Help? They twist everything so you believe it. That is how they lead you astray. I will prove it to you.” Solrin’s stern glare moved once again to land behind Nathan.

When Nathan whipped around, Sasha’s eyes were still red and dangerous but they began to shimmer differently, his struggling against Jim stilling as he growled low and animalistic, a warning that there was not enough time to heed.

He turned in Jim’s hold and plowed forward before Jim could react, ramming Jim into the opposite wall and snapping his head back against it with a crack.

“Solrin, stop! Don’t!” Nathan cried, at a loss between the two sides.

Solrin had already fallen from his pinned position.

“Solrin, please,” Nathan tried again, taking a step back as Solrin came toward him, and keeping one eye on the others to be sure Sasha wasn’t doing anything more than holding Jim stationary.

“Nathan!” Jim cried, a half-formed clawed hand squeezing his neck. “I can’t—” He cringed, helpless against strength Sasha shouldn’t even have right now. But Nathan understood what Jim couldn’t say: Solrin’s power was too much for him this time.

“I was warned, Nathan, warned that should I ever find you it was likely you would be in the company of monsters trying to sway you from your true purpose. I cannot allow that when you are so important.”

“What…what do you mean you were warned?” Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “By who ?”

“You want so badly to convince me, Nathan. That’s all I want in return. Let me prove it to you. Your light is all the final evidence I need to know when I see darkness.” Then Solrin stepped up to Nathan, right in his space and placed a hand on Nathan’s chest. “Let me show you.”

“Sol…”

“Please.”

Nathan hated playing Devil’s advocate, but maybe if he could beat Solrin’s test it would make all the difference. He glanced at Sasha and Jim again—Jim was pinned but Sasha’s grip had loosened enough that he was breathing easily. So he sighed, “Okay.”

“Nathan!” Jim shouted in dissention, but Nathan ignored him for now.

“The evil uses your brother because it knows you will listen to him,” Solrin said, pressing his hand to Nathan’s chest only slightly more firmly.

“And Sasha as well. Nathan, you said yourself that you were resistant but fell to his influence and seduction anyway when normally you never would have. What you feel for him is a lie they have fabricated. It isn’t love.

It is corruption .” Solrin looked over at Jim and Sasha, his expression cold, his grey eye shimmering, and Nathan knew he was meant to do the same.

The first thing Nathan saw was Sasha blink awareness, back to his normal self, and yet he was unable to release Jim or step away.

He looked to Solrin and seethed just as Jim was.

Then something seemed to flicker over their forms. Nathan shook his head, thinking he must have imagined it. Until it happened again.

“Think, Nathan, could you have ever fallen for a man if he wasn’t an incubus?

” Solrin spoke on, sounding farther away even though they hadn’t moved.

“He lured you and seduced you with the power of his kind, twisting your reality until you thought you were falling in love when you were merely falling prey to a trick.”

“No,” Nathan didn’t hesitate to counter, even though those damn flickers over Jim and Sasha were becoming more frequent, “pheromones can’t do that. They’re not mind control, they’re just suggestion.”

Solrin huffed, the sound derisive enough that it almost sounded like a laugh. “And who told you that?”

Well…okay, so Sasha had told Nathan that, but…

Nathan shook his head harder. The flickers across Jim and Sasha weren’t just some nondescript ripples. As it continued to happened, Nathan saw something in the cracks, in between the lines, something he didn’t want to see.

“And Jim did not question it, how you fell for him? Not once? Gave his complete blessing, didn’t he? Strange. But not if his blood corrupts him too. He may have been your brother once, Nathan, but the darkness has him and he will take you into it too if you let him.”

“Nathan, stop listening to this,” Jim said. “It’s not getting us anywhere.” The snarl on his face was different now, the flickers and shimmers pulling out a different face, one that reminded Nathan too much of the Veil.

Nathan tried to move back from Solrin’s hand but the other man followed him, keeping their connection. “Stop it. That’s enough.” Nathan looked back at Solrin, grabbing his wrist and pulling at it roughly but it didn’t budge. “I said that’s enough .”

“You see it, don’t you? You see what they are. I know you see it,” Solrin pressed, his eyes wild, looking back at Jim and Sasha, which pulled Nathan’s head to look at them again too.

It wasn’t just Jim but Sasha as well, a flickering image making the incubus look large and monstrous the way he had been in the Veil; so cruel, so much the evil thing Solrin wanted Nathan to see.

But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t reality. How could Solrin see and project into Nathan the very images of Jim and Sasha from the Veil?

“You see them for what they truly are. Evil. Corrupt. Monsters .”

“Stop!” Nathan threw Solrin’s hand from his chest finally, stumbling back from him and shivering as bad as he had when he first returned from the Veil for real.

Worst of all, when he dared glance at Jim and Sasha again, he saw them plain as day, no longer flickering but whole and real the very awful versions of themselves that Nathan had known for the longest year of his life.

The sight of them marred, changed like that, lingered. And Nathan knew why. Solrin saw things just as Nathan once had—garishly clear and terrible because it was through Malak’s eyes . Nathan saw the Veil when Solrin touched him because that cursed grey eye was connected to Malak .

“Nathan?” Solrin cocked his head, staying back but obviously concerned, regretful even that he might have caused Nathan pain. “Forgive me, but I know you saw the truth. You see it now. You see the darkness in them.”

Nathan clenched his eyes closed. Opened them. The marred images remained.

“I see it.”

“Nathan,” Jim called, offended and angry.

“Nate?” Sasha echoed more sorrowfully.

“I see it,” Nathan said again, turning to face Solrin once more, “but the difference between you and me, Sol…is that I know that that ,” he pointed at Jim and Sasha, unable to look and see the awful vision of them again, “that is the lie. Not them. Not me loving them or them loving me. Whatever you think you know, it’s not true.

Whoever set you on this path, it’s wrong .

Who warned you, Sol? Who told you I needed to be protected? Was it Malak ?”

“You know of Malak?” Solrin asked hopefully.

Nathan felt utterly defeated, just what Malak had wanted, no doubt. “He’s already come to you.”

“Yes, many times,” Solrin said, grabbing up Nathan’s hands as if they had some marvelous connection now. “He told me of you. The power you could have if you became one. With him, Nathan, you will bring order to the world.”

Nathan clung to Solrin’s hands in return.

“Sol…no. He’s the one who’s lying. Whatever he told you, that’s the lie.

He’s the evil, the enemy, the damn darkness .

He’s the fucking Devil, the honest to God, Big Bad, I swear.

You have…to…” but Nathan trailed, because Solrin was smiling as wide as Nathan had ever seen, and then he was actually laughing .

“Nathan. The name he gives us is Malak. Of course I know he is the Devil.”

The floor was falling out from under Nathan and he suddenly really wanted his hands back. “What…?”