into Damon’s face.
“Cassian!” I scream. “Dear Creator! Stop!”
“Stop?” It rips from somewhere deep within him, sounding like an erupting volcano—in the middle of the Antarctic. Fire and ice, fury and pain, laughter and tears all roll from him, sloppy as the steps he traces in a wide circle before wheeling around, honing in again on Damon. “Fuck, I’m just getting started.”
Hodge and Doyle grab Damon by the elbows. Hoist him back up for Cassian’s second punch.
“Cassian! Calmay olmak! Plait! Plait!”
Damon groans. “Christ, Cas. Just—”
“Don’t ‘Christ, Cas’ me. Don’t speak to me until I get to twenty-four on this count, you mother fucker.” He rains two more blows. “One for every year you were gone. Another one for every day you fucked my woman. The last of it’s going right up your ass, you selfish excuse for a human being.”
“By the Creator.” I scramble off the couch. Stumble over and twist a fist into Cassian’s shirt, though the effort feels like trying to use a dinner napkin to stop the Titanic. I throw a beseeching stare to Doyle and Hodge, but it is just as useless. “Cassian, please!”
“Get away, Ella. I’m warning you. Now.”
“For the love of your God, we did not—he did not—”
“I never touched her,” Damon snarls.
He flinches. Just a little. I accept it as a toehold—and after a hard gulp, use his shoulder to swing myself around, directly in the path of his fist.
“He was saving your life, dammit!”
His teeth lock. Seethe. His chest pumps. Heaves. His gaze glitters. Shatters. Turns to heavy, agonized liquid, sliding down over his beautiful, broken face…
As his fist spreads apart. Tremors.
And falls, cupping my face instead.
“We were saving your life.” I lift my arms. Delve my hands into his hair, pulling him down for a shaking, sweaty kiss. “Just let him explain. Let him tell you everything. He—he saved your life fourteen years ago, and he is doing it again now.”
His fingers tighten against my skin, betraying the terrible conflict of his decision…the incriminating toll it already racks from his spirit. Hating Damon has become the default of his heart, a setting achieved through years of such pain and sorrow, that changing it now is unfathomable to him…a darkness I am begging him to plunge right back into…
I pull him closer as he plummets to his knees, rocking into me, pushing his forehead against mine. “I know what I am asking.” I whisper it, hovering our lips close, swiping the salty drops from his face with my thumbs. “I know how deeply this hurts, how terrifying this is…that I am asking you to trust our future over your past. But think about what I am saying. Our future, Cassian. This is for me as much as you. Please…listen!”
Breaths blow in and out of him, rough and desperate and shaking. A low keen echoes up his throat, like a wounded animal begging to simply be killed. “Goddammit, Ella…”
“You must listen to him, Cassian. For the sake of your life.”
He jerks back. Impales me all over again with the fury of his glare. “Why the hell do you keep saying that? My life? What the hell?”
“The people you’re about to sign contracts with for Arcadia…they want to ruin my country from the inside out, and they will not think twice about cutting you down to do it.”
He jolts again. “What the fuck?”
“It’s true.” The croak comes from Damon, released from Doyle and Hodge’s grip and now leaning against the wall, nursing his swollen face. “I know my word means shit to you right now, but I’ve got a wall of proof to back it up.”
Cassian follows the trajectory of his jabbing thumb. “Holy mother of…” He stops, eyeing Damon with new realization. “Mother. Shit. Mom. When she finds out that you’re—”
“And she won’t,” Damon cuts in. “I’m sorry, boy wonder. She can’t. It’s a fluke that you did, and now—”
“You’re going to have to kill me for it?”
I mock-smack him in the jaw. “Can we please stop jesting about your death like it is dryer lint?”
Damon chuckles in agreement, though winces as a finish. I weather another wave of remorse, viewing what damage Cassian managed to inflict on him, before remembering the man has actually survived death already. “Maybe the best way to rectify that is to start at the beginning,” he suggests.
“After we get some ice on your face,” I counter.
“Not too much ice,” Cassian quips. “I sort of like being the prettier one for once.”
Damon snorts. “Oh, you were always the prettier