all.”
She turned her eyes back to his, and tried to stop the tears. Her lip quivered as she pushed words out of her mouth. “What’s going to happen now?” Grace was afraid of the answer, but she had to know.
His stare pierced her with resolve. “Now I wait.”
Frantic, her nerves sparked. Her crossed legs bounced against the ground, and her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. If the council decided to cast him out, it would be because of her. Desperate, she blurted the first thing that came to her. “Let me talk to them!”
Quentin’s eyebrows pulled up and quickly settled into a scowl. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you, Grace.”
“Like hell it doesn’t,” she spat angrily. “This is all my fault.”
A tenderness washed over his features and a smile lifted one side of his mouth. “If I didn’t want to tell you anything, I wouldn’t have. Like I said, you’re worth it.”
Pools of tears collected in her eyes again. Before Darius, she had wanted him to fall for her, but not like this. “You’ll fall.” It wasn’t a question. It was a fact. Understanding of his earlier statement settled painfully on her consciousness.
His smile widened. “For you.”
Her eyes could no longer hold the collection of tears and they streamed down her face. “I don’t want you to fall.”
“It’s my choice,” he said softly.
Angry, she wanted to slap him upside the head for making such an irreversible choice when she couldn’t return his feelings. Take all of her krav maga training and knock some sense into him. “It’s a stupid choice,” she cried out.
His smile turned smug, and he chuckled. “Not to me, it’s not.”
Despite her tears, Grace chuckled back.
They sat quietly until Grace’s tears dried. “I’m not worth falling for,” she whispered.
Quentin’s shorts rustled as he moved across the floor closer to Grace. He kept his hands in view and kept them to himself. “To me you are,” he whispered back.
Staring back at him, she moved her head back and forth slightly. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
He inched closer. The skin around his hands was pulled tight as he struggled to keep them to himself. Her hands twitched for the same reason. “I’ve never been more sure of anything. You’re so beautiful and amazing.”
Grace let out a shaky laugh. “Whatever.”
“Pfft,” Quentin scoffed. “Do you want a list, because I can give you one.”
Out of habit, she shrugged a shoulder.
Quentin held his hand up, bending each finger down as he spoke. “When you knew how your family felt about your grandfather, you kept it to yourself, because you didn’t want him to hurt. You held on to that your entire life. You took care of your mother growing up, knowing how sad and lonely she was, not caring about what you needed from her. The night of the accident, all I could think about was getting you out of there. All you thought of was going back despite the danger to help your friends. Look at how you’ve accepted your dad back into the picture, or how you’ve taken care of Amanda. I can go on, the list is endless.”
Grace managed to smile through the tears that snuck up on her for the umpteenth time that night, and her cheeks warmed from embarrassment. “Okay, I am pretty amazing.” She didn’t believe it, but it was still funny to say. They both laughed, but then another thought struck her. “If you become Fallen, does that mean you have to hunt me?” Actually, the thought caused bile to rise in the back of her throat. She even gagged a little.
Quentin cocked his head sideways. “Why would you even think to ask me that?”
“The rest of the Fallen do.”
The intensity of his gaze heated Grace from the inside. “I would still protect you.”
His answer turned the outer edges of her frown up as she let her gaze fall to the floor. A rush of heat coursed through her body, warming her from head to toe. No doubt her face was burning red. It would be tricky getting through her questions if he continued to talk like that. “If the Fallen are sent to hurt me to get Pandora, then why is Darius here?”
Grace knew the instant his anger spiked, the force of which pushed against her. His anger didn’t frighten her. She knew it wasn’t toward her. “He’s not a hunter. He’s not here for Pandora.”
Grace did not like the sound of that. “Then what’s he here for?”
Quentin answered her matter-of-factly. “He’s