She glared, arching a brow at me as if she wanted to light me on fire, and by all the fucking stars that kept her, I wish she had. Rinley had it so damn easy; all he had to do was make stupid choices and burn.
“No!” She dug her heels in, and I thought for a moment she might punch through the goddamn phone.
“Daphne.”
“No fucking way,” she said again, this time looking everywhere but my face.
God, I loved her. Stupidly. Succinctly. With everything I was, but most importantly with the pieces of me I wasn’t.
“Please?” I rasped, my voice falling before her in surrender. “Please say it.”
I understood why she refused: no one wants to attend their own funeral. But I needed to hear the words.
“You said you were going to keep me! Put your name next to Thay’s. Thatnext timeyou weren’t going to watch.”
My throat quivered because I meant every word.
“Please, Daph?” I asked again, the shiver in my body dulling to a dissociative lull.
Threx didn’t move; his broad shoulders and crashing expression seemed stuck on his face as he watched me from across the alley.
“Wolfe.” She touched the screen, her fingers dripping off the glass. “I love you, too… with my whole damn heart.”
And there it was, all the reasons a person would ever need to become the monster. I did not know what tomorrow would bring, but I was leaving my humanity with the only person I trusted… inside her love, where I would always be Wolfe, and that would be enough.
“Got to go, beautiful,” I tried to smile, but I don’t think it landed. She only blinked at me when I hung up the phone.
In deafening silence, I slid the phone onto the pavement and buried my face in my knees. It had always been so easy to talk myself through the act of breathing, but my lungs didn’t contract. It felt like forever before the sounds of Threx’s boots stopped in front of me, his shadow devouring what bit of light there was.
“Silas,” he called me, hunching down to pick up his phone. I did not know what he was about to say, but nothing prepared me for the words that came next. “Thank you.”
I looked up over my arms at a man, not a monster. It was Thayor. That little fucking kid who once climbed through Daphne’s window to save our girl.
He offered me his hand, respect, and something else twinkling in his eyes. I looked at the blood-speckled five-pointed weapon, pushing gravity back into my throat before I allowed him to haul me upright.
A truce.
An agreement.
“Does it always feel this way?” I asked, shoving my hands into my pockets.
Threx laughed, turning in the dark toward the light on the street.
“Nah,” we took a step. “It gets so much fucking worse.”
My phone buzzed, and I looked down, expecting to see Daphne’s name light up the screen, but it wasn’t.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Marianne is busy tomorrow. She wants to have dinner tonight.”
I paused on the street, inhaling the grime into my lungs. It was nearly midnight.
Threx was right.
So much fucking worse.
thirty-six