doors closing startled me, and I jerked and wrenched my gaze back down to Azazel, who just now turned to face me. His inscrutable expression morphed into a frown when he took me in.
“Are those—” I cleared my throat, made my voice a bit steadier. “Are those trophies?”
I gestured at the wings.
He glanced at the wall, then back at me. “Spoils of war,” he said carefully.
He took a step closer, and I involuntarily backed up. His expression darkened.
“From demons you killed?” I sounded breathy even to my own ears. I couldn’t help it. My heart was in my throat, my head too light.
“Some I killed, some I let live,” he said, his voice deceptively calm. “We can survive amputation of limbs. They grow back.” He moved toward me as one would approach a skittish animal. “Eventually.”
My chest heaved with my breaths, too fast, too shallow. I couldn’t keep my eyes from flicking up to the wings. So many of them. So. Many.
“Zoe.” Azazel’s voice was pitched low, and still it made me jump.
I glanced back at him, rattled, and the sight of him only fueled whatever hindbrain response was in charge of my faculties now. His cutting beauty notwithstanding, he was a specter of darkness, his power humming in the air, his eyes too luminous to be human.
With everything else I’d seen and heard recently, somehow this was the aspect that pushed me over. This callous display of intentional cruelty, the barbaric collection of brutal trophies hung on the walls of his entrance hall, a warning in welcome for every visitor, a clear message of his strength and prowess in battle.
My mind just couldn’t compute. Sure, I’d known he was physically stronger, known he was a demon with a likely very different mindset than humans. But I hadn’t truly understood what he was capable of, not until the evidence of it slapped me in the face.
To think…he’d touched me with those hands, the very same ones that could rend someone limb from limb. Not just could, but did. Repeatedly. And then he displayed those trophies proudly in his home.
“Zoe,” Azazel said again, but I shook my head, frantically.
“I think—I need to—been a lot today—should go back to—my rooms,” I stammered, giving him a smile that was likely closer to a grimace. “If you’d just…point me in the direction?” I flailed toward the archways in the walls leading deeper into the mansion. “Or maybe…someone can escort me back? Hekesha?”
He followed my retreat as I inched away from him. His form vibrated with restrained power, yet his voice was smooth, with the hint of a playful note in it. “How did you get out of your rooms in the first place?”
Whatever distracting effect he might have been hoping for with his question was completely lost on my frazzled brain. All it did was remind me of how I had—yet again—disobeyed his orders earlier, how I kept riling him up, naively unaware that I was poking at a creature who was ostentatiously capable of dismembering those who crossed him and keeping the body parts for funsies.
I’d been so comfortable around him, relaxed enough to let him pleasure me, let him kiss me… Good God, I’d begun to see him as human, hadn’t I? And all this time, I had no idea of the extent of his otherness, that he really, truly could snap me in two with a twist of his hands.
How naive. How dewy-eyed of me.
I should have just stayed locked in my rooms.
Run, run, run, my gecko brain chanted. All I knew, in that moment, was that I needed to put space between me and him. My instincts screamed at me to flee, and for once, my frontal cortex didn’t object.
Azazel took a slow step closer, his features harsh and drawn. “Don’t.”
With my breath stuck in my lungs, I whirled around and ran.
A muttered curse behind me. My pulse roared in my ears, almost drowning out the swish of movement as he gave chase.
I didn’t make it two steps before he caught me.
Arms like steel closed around my upper body as he pulled me back against his chest. My breath left me on a gasp, my heart stuttering.
“Stop,” he said in my ear, his voice still at that pitch used to soothe and coax an animal about to bolt.
I was more animal than human right now. I couldn’t think, couldn’t stop, couldn’t reason. I was all instinct, no sense left, and so I struggled against his hold like something wild and