“Why are you here?” My voice sounds more solid now. More blunt, less hesitant.
His face goes back to a cold mask as she shrugs. “I heard someone singing and was wondering why there was someone still in here.” His eyes rove down me and lock somewhere around my neck and chest where my necklaces are. His dark red eyes start to slightly glow. I blink and he’s now standing directly in front of me. It makes my heart jump again and when I try to step back his hands grip my arms and hold me in place.
“What. The. Fu– “
“Who is he,” he growls. His voice so low and gravely I almost couldn’t make out the words. I’m about to go off on him when he growls again, “Who is he. Who put a mark on this body.”
He doesn’t ask it, hedemandsit. So much power rolls off him it reaches every corner of the room instantly. His aura is so deep and thick I can almost see it. The red wisps weaving in and out of visible sight.
A cold sweat breaks out over my skin that causes my scars to itch. I forgot about that scar still visible. He can see it clear as day.
His hands tighten and I squeeze my eyes shut against the rumbling power of his magic. It feels almost suffocating. So much death.
“He’s dead,” I choke out. Keeping my eyes firmly shut and head slightly turned away. His aura is more than the devil’s ever could be. “The devil, he’s already dead.”
Long been dead, too bad I’m still haunted by him.
So much, too much, too all-consuming his magic is. More than I have ever felt before. Emotions can heavily influence the power of your magic but his anger is unwarranted.
Clearly my words don’t satisfy him because his aura is still visible when I crack my eyes open. One of his hands leaves my upper arm to grip the collar of my shirt and it snaps me out of my frozen state. I take both of my hands and grip his wrist to stop him from pulling my shirt even further down. If it gets pulled down another inch the top of one of my other scars will be seen and if this is how he’s acting from just seeing one of the bite marks I don’t want to imagine how he’ll react seeing the other scars.
Not that he has any reason to act in any sort of way towards them. He has no reason to be angry or demanding or anything else he could be feeling in this moment.
So why the fuck is he making a big deal about it?
“You said he bit your wrist,” he growls. “Where the fuck else did he bite you?”
He tries to tug my collar but I plant my feet, tighten my core, and hold his arm in place. His eyes flash in rage but I cement myself where I am and don’t budge. My body has waned since I haven’t trained in the last two months, but that doesn’t mean that I’m weak.
“Take your hands off of me. Now.”
Slow, deliberate words. There’s no power or aura to back my words up but my tone holds an air of deadly energy anyway. It’s enough to make Thorne pause and actually look at me. Dark red eyes shining with an inner light behind them focus straight on mine. His pupils are blown making his glowing iris’s look like thin rings of red light.
A breath passes before he takes a measured step back and releases me. Immediately I take several steps away from him as I pull the neckline of the jumpsuit up. His eyes don’t leave mineas I do it and I wonder what is about to happen next because why does he freakin care.
Heshouldcare less about me. I am no one to him. I amno. One. And that’s the truth of it. So insignificant am I that a lone fucking scar shouldn’t matter. Even if I were to strip to nothing right now it shouldn’t matter. The scars that cover my body. They. Don’t. Matter.
You don’t matter.
Your worth is designated by what I say it is.
Curling my nails into the collar, I squeeze my eyes shut and block out the words. His voice fracturing within my mind the same as if he was right here in front of me speaking aloud. An echo etched into my skull, his voice a sound I’ve never been able to forget. His deep timber, the rumble that comes from his chest, the instinctual knowing I always got when is tone darkened signaling he was about to sink his fangs into my flesh.
It’s trapped in my head. The voice, the words, that same instinctual knowing.
“You can’t bite me,” I whisper out loud. Because I know in this physical space I am not six years old in that manor standing beforehim. I am nineteen, stronger than I was before, standing within the grounds of Syngenia University on Miy before Thorne. Before a blood demon who cannot bit me, cannot mark me, cannot drink my blood or force me to drink and mark him.
I open my eyes to gold. White threads of light flicker through with a ring of black around golden iris’s. They look like twin suns.
People forget the power of a sun. We need them for life. For warmth and growth and stability. But get too close and you burn.
Everyone forgets that message of Icarus. People like to romanticize the story. They say he may have fallen, but to fall is to know what it was to fly. That doesn’t help a dead man. That doesn’t save you as the wax melts and the wings break.
Thirteen
Callahan – August 17
I was supposed to be meeting Thorne for a training session. He didn’t care to attend any of the parties tonight and I haven’t cared to attend any after last weekend.