Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,7
chain, though. I’d have given it a go anyway, but a twist of uncertainty in my gut held me back.
Fraught emotions always seemed to set my flames veering in unpredictable and sometimes undesirable ways, and I wasn’t feeling all that fine and fancy-free at the moment. I’d say there was a not insignificant chance that if I tried to exude enough fire to reduce those rings of steel into a puddle, I’d become a pile of ashes in the process. I didn’t have anyone around to toss a bucket of water at me if I turned the mattress or, y’know, myself into an inferno.
No, as long as I suspected I wouldn’t be able to escape the prison even if I got loose from the chains, I wasn’t going to risk it. I might laugh in the face of danger, but only when I was reasonably certain I could dance around it at the same time.
It didn’t take long before I started wishing I’d been a little less hasty with my meal. At least eating had been something to do. Being essentially a prison cell, there wasn’t a whole lot to occupy myself with other than counting the ripples in the beige rock walls or mulling over exactly how painfully the Highest would have me killed as revenge for evading their grasp for so long.
After a while, I flopped down on the bed and grimaced at the ceiling. At this rate, my actual cause of death would either be boredom or stomach ulcer.
To try to pass the time somewhat constructively, I considered what new arguments I might make to persuade Omen that I wasn’t anywhere near a big enough threat for him to worry his houndish head about. I mean, I didn’t want to blow up both the realms—or even any substantial portion of either of them. I might have fried a few things I hadn’t meant to here and there, but I’d always been able to rein those over-zealous flames in before I did serious damage. If I got really concerned about my self-control, I could just not use my powers in the first place, right?
But even as I thought all that, the heat in my chest continued churning so furiously that I wasn’t totally convinced. Fuck a flipping flounder. Had my parents gone into this hybrid baby-making scheme with any idea just how much hassle they were inflicting on me as a theoretically impossible being?
They’d loved me enough to pull out all the stops to bring me into this world, but I wasn’t sure they’d thought the whole plan through all that well. No offense to Mom and Dad, may they rest in peace.
It might have been one very long hour or a dozen short ones when the shadows around the door wavered. Omen formed in pretty much the same spot I’d last seen him, standing next to the lantern. He had another plastic bag that appeared to contain food. Apparently it’d been long enough for me to get hungry again without realizing it, because my stomach gurgled at the sight.
Well, I had to assume he wouldn’t be feeding me just to lead me to the slaughter. I held out my free hand, and he threw the bag to me.
He’d ventured farther abroad this time to bring me something more dinner-like: a fast-food hamburger and a carton of fries, as well as a bottle of water. The fries had gotten a little droopy during his journey through the shadows, but I wasn’t going to pick a fight about that or the fact that he hadn’t brought any ketchup to go with them, as grave an offense as that was.
I popped a fry into my mouth, the salty greasy flavor buoying my spirits a little, and waggled another in his direction. “How did all that brainstorming go? Have you figured out the meaning of life while you’re at it? Inside tip: I hear the number forty-two is involved somehow.”
The hellhound shifter glowered at me. “You still don’t seem to be taking this situation anywhere near as seriously as it warrants.”
“Would you rather I was slumped on the bed groaning like I need my appendix out?”
“No. Just—” He cut himself off with a huff, maybe not sure what exactly he would have liked to see.
My life was still in his hands. And until today’s events, I had actually been starting to like and even trust this guy. How could I remind him of the woman he’d been starting to care about