And the realm was made safer for it.
So no, this hadn’t been the first time I’d taken a life…but it had been a while.
If my memory served me, it had been well over a year now—and maybe that was what I was struggling to stomach.
It was the first time I had killed a criminal since meeting her.
Make no mistake, I had spilled plenty of blood. Plenty ofpainhad still been dealt by my hand in the dark of night since entering Arken’s brilliant orbit, but as I’m sure even my lieutenants had noticed, I was calmer now, steadier since meeting her. I was less erratic. Less prone to the violent outbursts that made our lives more difficult.
And there was another critical difference between this body and those I’d buried in the past…
I hadn’t killed Selwyn Skielg to protect Sophrosyne.
I had killed him to protecther.
Breaking your sworn oath to the gods in defense of getting your cock wet? Disgusting.
No. That voice didn’t belong to me.Fuckthat. Arken was so much more than just some girl I’d been fucking senseless for a few days.
But what would she say if she knew what I had done? Arken, a woman who valued life on a much deeper level than most and believed in the very best of humanity. Arken, whose innocence and Light somehow managed to coexist with her darkness, whose expression of authenticity, vulnerability and joy was unlike anything I’d ever known?
Arken, who still somehow believed I was worthy of her time.
Because she didn’t know. I kept it well hidden. Arken saw so much of me, more than any other—but she still didn’t know who, or what I really was. She had no idea what manner of monster truly lurked beneath my skin, what fed on those Shadows that left her so transfixed. I knew Arken had some semblance of an idea that my work took me to dark places—but I doubt she knew I was a butcher. That I killed, and that Ienjoyedit. She didn’t knowwhyI enjoyed it, either. And she never would.
But I knew.
I had always known, from the very beginning, that Arken Asher was divinity, and I was damned.
If you were a better man, you would stay home tonight,I thought to myself, roughly rubbing myself down with a towel after stepping out of the tub, letting the bloodied water circle the drain.If you were a better man, you’d give her some excuse. You would stay away. You wouldn’t dare touch her with these filthy, blood-stained hands.
I was not a better man.
That much was obvious.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ARKEN
From the moment Kieran walked through the door, I’d felt it.
Something was wrong tonight.
Very, very wrong.
At first, I’d been ecstatic to hear the gentle hum of my wards releasing, followed by the soft click of the lock announcing his arrival. Immediately, I’d leapt up off the floor where I’d been lounging in a comfortable nest of blankets and pillows. He was running late, and I had spent the last several hours waiting up as I sipped on over-steeped tea and read through yet another novel I’d nicked from his library.
A reckless blend of excitement and relief was coursing through my veins. It had been such a long day. Kieran had left for work before dawn, and I had four back-to-back lectures, followed by an exam. We had both been so busy that for once, there hadn’t even been a single mail sprite exchanged between us, and I was aching to be back in his presence, enveloped by that man and his Shadows.
But the Shadows following Kieran as he entered the room tonight felt unfamiliar, shrouding him in an ominous, foreboding energy.
I couldn’t explain it, not entirely. It was something in the way his eyes seemed blank, the tension in his spine wound so tight that his normally fluid and feline gait seemed stiff…mechanical, even. It was in the way he didn’t even look at me when he first walked in, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the hook by the door.
In the way he hardly even seemed to notice as I approached.
“Hey, you,” I said softly, tentatively, as I tried to catch his gaze.
When Kieran’s hands remained at his sides, I reached out, slipping a hand around his waist and beneath his shirt to stroke his back—a casual habit I’d been forming as of late. I was craving the reassurance I always found in the warmth of his bare skin against my own.