still it. He wanted to. But he couldn’t. Instead he just nodded. She looked like she might collapse. She was staring at him in amazement but now he saw confusion at his silence. He didn’t know what to do. Her fingers just then, tracing his lips, had lit a fragile hope in him that she did still feel something for him.
But he couldn’t forget the image of her lying on top of Cyrus.
‘I came back,’ he whispered softly, raising his hand and wiping away the tears that were sliding down her cheek without stopping to think about what he was doing.
She caught his hand in her own and brought it against her lips, kissing the palm so softly that he took a sharp breath in, as the ache in his chest sprang upwards and released. She looked up at him then and he felt the electricity coursing in currents between them.
He closed the distance, taking her face in his hands, and kissed her as he’d imagined kissing her every second of every day he’d been apart from her. He kissed her as if he’d once been a dead man and she had brought him back to life. He kissed her until he felt her legs give way and he had to pull her even tighter against his chest, until the air around them was sparking with static. And he kept kissing her even when Flic coughed loudly beside him.
And when he finally opened his eyes and looked into the deep, blazing blue of Evie’s he smiled, already knowing the answer, the truth of what she was feeling, of what he still was to her, seeing it reflected in her eyes.
There was no loss. There was only belonging.
Chapter 59
‘Screw fate.’
Cyrus felt the sword hanging heavy in his hand. Around him were piles of chargrilled Original. And Victor. Blood was still flowing down his arm and he thought he might be swaying still. Either that or the world was spinning extremely fast.
But he barely noticed. All he saw was her. Evie. Kissing the guy who needed a hair cut.
Lucas.
He knew it was Lucas, even though he couldn’t recall seeing him before. He looked like Flic. And Evie was kissing him as if …, well, as if he was someone who she’d thought was dead but who’d just waltzed back into her life.
‘It has to be fate. Because no matter what other people throw at them they always end up back with each other.’
He turned to Issa, ready to push her backwards into a steaming pile of Original. Only the look of sadness on her face pulled him up short.
He looked back at Evie and Lucas still kissing, as if the rest of them weren’t standing there picking up the pieces and wondering what to do about Victor’s body, and felt a shard of hot metal stab him in the heart. It made the pain in his arm fade away to almost nothing.
She’d almost been his. She would have been his if Mister Shadow Warrior with the haunted expression and the cheekbones you could sharpen knives on hadn’t shown up. And Evie was falling for this? He kicked the ground.
‘You’re going to be fine.’
It was Issa. Again.
Fine? He was going to be fine? He didn’t want to feel fine. He wanted to take this raging anger that was building inside him and go and project it onto something. He wanted to tear up the streets, finding every unhuman he could and project it onto them. That might do it. Might, just maybe, make him feel less angry.
Though probably not.
It was him she should be kissing. He had been so close. She had been considering it. It would have taken a few more months maybe, but she would have been his. They would have worked on creating prophecy babies. Practising till they had it perfect.
He watched as they finally broke apart for air. Flic and Jamieson stood by them, grinning. Not that the two of them noticed. They were oblivious to anything but each other.
And Lucas was stroking her cheek, tipping up her chin. And Cyrus had to look away. He had never experienced loss before. Never, he realised. Because this hollowing out, this rage and this sadness were completely new to him. Even with his amnesia, he knew he would have recognised this feeling. He guessed that’s what love did to you. And it sucked. Love sucked balls.