I’ve been trying to resolve my internal conflict for fifteen years. Whether I am entirely demon or something else… I do not wish to lose you.”
“Don’t make me come over there and kick your ass just to knock some sense into you.” Here comes the snark. He was cutting too deep, too close to raw wounds. “You just need to go demon for a bit—get back in your lava-veined skin.” He came forward, his stride as confident as ever I’d seen it. He didn’t doubt his words, and his smile dared me to challenge him.
I straightened and held fast, refusing to back down. I didn’t do backing down—not any more. “Don’t do this.”
He stopped inside my limited personal space but didn’t touch me. He didn’t need to; his element reached out and encircled me. Lifting my gaze, I flicked my hair out of my eyes and plastered a bored expression on my face. Amber churned in his eyes, and those forbidden lips curved into a seductive smile. “A kiss?” he whispered, somehow closer without moving.
I turned my head away, stepped back, and met his gaze. “Akil, I don’t understand this either, but I do know one thing. Whatever you think you feel for me, whatever I might feel for you, it can never amount to anything. I will never trust you. Do you understand that? What we have, it’s messy and destructive. Maybe it’s demon. It certainly isn’t healthy. In all of those feelings you talk about, you must sense the truth?”
He blinked, and the smile died. “I know the truth better than you, dear Muse. I am inside you.” He settled a warm hand over my chest. “You love him. Stefan.” Fire flared in his eyes.
“Ahkeel…” I rolled his old name on my tongue, tasting the history it carried. “Don’t tell me who I love. I owe you more than I could ever repay. You saved me time and time again. But one day, I will be free.” I hesitated just a little, but I wouldn’t hide from the truth. “To be free, I can’t be with you.”
He pulled his hand back. “Go back to Boston. Face your future. I will be there when you need me.” He turned his back on me and strode to the windows.
I left with the goodbye burning unspoken on my lips.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
The electric tension sizzling between Stefan and me on the ride out to Blackstone vanished before we even began the journey back. Quiet hung over us like a thundercloud, but I let it linger, my thoughts bogged down by impending expectations and Akil’s disturbing admission. Whatever happened, whether Val’s half bloods came or not, the princes would, and I needed to get my head in the game. Besides Stefan, I was one of the most potent weapons on this side of the veil. With Akil’s constant touch glowing inside me, I had a chance at wielding the power of two worlds. It terrified me. Ryder would tell me I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t afraid. But it was my humanity I was afraid of. Demons keep it simple. They want; they act. The part of me that was demon had no problem with the nightmare I was walking into. But humanity, by its very nature, throws a wrench in the works. I doubted my abilities, feared my potential, and secretly anticipated the rush. Being human was a half blood’s greatest strength and greatest weakness.
Rain patted the windshield as we returned to the quiet streets of Boston. Dusk was thirty minutes out, but beneath the blanket of clouds, it might as well have been night. The wipers sloshed, and the empty streets glistened beneath streetlights. I shivered, not cold but disturbed.
“Something’s wrong,” Stefan said quietly, leaning forward to peer through the rain-smeared windshield.
I felt it too. The air had thickened, darkened, as though a photographic filter had absorbed what little natural light there was. My skin prickled, human senses spiking.
“Call Ryder.”
Stefan redialed my cellphone. In the heavy quiet, I heard it ring, and stamped on the gas pedal. No way was I losing Ryder. In minutes, we swung into the dead-end street. Outside Ryder’s place stood something both beautiful and terrifying. Gossamer dragonfly wings branched out from behind a willowy phantom. She hovered a few feet above the road, like an apparition, barely there at all. Half a dozen bodies lay still around her. I couldn’t tell if any were Ryder.
Stefan and I climbed from the car. Slippery air slid across