Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,29
answer confirmed. “No,” he said. “And the stories I’ve heard have belonged more to mortals than shadowkind, so I have no faith in their accuracy. It could be that only a hybrid can become one. I highly doubt Tempest has ever met one either.”
Okay, I could take a little reassurance in that. She was just spouting off half-baked fables, not speaking from any kind of inside knowledge.
Omen led us through several increasingly narrow passages, which didn’t help with the suffocating sensation, and then up a set of rough stairs that ended at a span of thick wood paneling.
“The sphinx isn’t the only one who knows a few tricks around this city,” Omen said, and pressed a knob in the wood. One of the panels swung open to give us enough room to squeeze out into a small, dusty room stacked with chairs and boxes of tapered candles.
With a waxy scent tickling my nose, I followed Omen out the doorway at the other end and discovered that Versailles hadn’t used up all my capacity for awe.
We’d come out into a cathedral—and sweet chirping cherubs, what a cathedral it was. The stone ceiling arched so high above our heads I could have believed it brushed the sky. High over the altar area, intricate stained glass windows streaked lamplight from outside in patches of color across the tiled floor. The columns that stood at intervals all along the pews were immense enough that I wasn’t sure I could have wrapped my arms around one even if I’d cloned myself for extra help.
I wasn’t much for religion, but if any place could have convinced me of the grandeur of a life beyond this one, this would be it.
“Notre Dame,” Omen intoned beside me, gazing up at the towering stained glass windows. “I’ll never claim that mortals haven’t managed to make a few spectacular things in their time.”
Speaking of surprises… I’d never have imagined I’d hear the hellhound shifter offer any praise to mortals as a general group.
A different sort of uneasiness rippled under my skin, stirring a flicker of fire with it. I willed the unsettled heat down, but maybe it’d be easier to deal with that if I said what’d been on my mind since our confrontation with Tempest.
I lowered my gaze to the floor, feeling unusually awkward. “You know, I’m sorry. For laying into you about your attitude so much. I mean, you deserved it at the start when you were being a real asshole to me, but even after you eased off on the tests and all that—I didn’t appreciate how far you’ve come from who you used to be and how hard that must have been. You’re nothing like Tempest. I don’t know how much you used to be, but you’re not now. Not when you’re being the ice-cold bastard and not when you let your fire out. In case you still worry about that.”
From stray comments he’d made across our conversations over the past weeks, I suspected he did.
Omen sputtered a laugh, which wasn’t quite the response I’d hoped to provoke with my attempt at extending an olive branch.
“You’re apologizing to me?” he said, turning to face me head-on. “I’m the one who had you chained up in anticipation of your possible death less than a week ago.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I’m not saying that was the highlight of my life, but with what you’d heard and the hold the Highest have over you… I get it. It means a lot that you didn’t toss me straight to them—that it was a decision you couldn’t have made lightly.” I paused. “I’m still not totally sure why you didn’t take the free pass I gave you.”
He reached to graze his knuckles down the side of my face, a whisper of a touch that set off a wave of a much more enticing heat. His eyes pinned me in place, incredulous and maybe a little conflicted but not at all scornful. “If you would throw your life on the Highest’s mercy just to save two shadowkind, one of whom hadn’t given you much reason for generosity, I find it exceedingly hard to believe that you’d turn around and tear down the rest of the world on a whim.”
My throat had constricted. “I don’t know if I’ll get much choice.”
“Of course you will. There are always choices. And for all your snark and defiance… you obviously care enough to make the choices that won’t result in mass destruction.” Omen’s