Eternal Sin (Primal Sin #2) - Ariana Nash Page 0,1

Samiel was beside him, his hand hot on Severn’s trembling, bloody thigh.

“You aren’t feeding,” he said, sadly.

Severn laughed. “Feeding?” His voice cracked and wheezed. He didn’t care. What the fuck was he supposed to feed on? He looked over and found Samiel facing him, watching him, concern pinching his handsome face. “I’m tied here, they come, and they cut pieces off me, and you tell me I’m supposed to what... enjoy it?” He panted. Stringing words together took too much effort.

“You used to.”

Severn thumped his head back down. It was true. He had enjoyed being restrained, but only with Samiel. And a little knife-play never bothered him. But this wasn’t that. He could not harvest from those who cut him because they did not enjoy it. This whole situation was fucked up and wrong. “Free me or kill me. I can’t…” His voice cracked again, coming apart like the rest of him. “I’ll die here.”

“Some think you’re already dead,” he said in the same soft voice he’d used to tell Konstantin he loved him.

Gods, that hurt. He’d known his kin either thought or wished him dead, but hearing it made it real. “Then end it.”

Samiel stood and leaned over Severn. His warm hand cupped Severn’s cheek, turning his face toward him. This ghost looked just as Severn remembered Samiel. He had a gentle manner, always quick to smile. But he was no pushover. Too many made the mistake of thinking Samiel weak. He’d never been that. His glare bored into Severn’s, drilling deep, seeking the truth. He smelled of warmth and heat and spices, like an open fire, and Severn suddenly ached to feel him close—to feel anyone close—just so the pain ended.

“They say you and Mikhail fucked. You’re mated? Is that true?”

And there was the hardness Samiel revealed only to his enemies.

Severn swallowed. He was never getting off this table. He knew that now. They’d never let him go free, not while he looked like the enemy. If he wanted to live, to somehow get through this, and maybe… maybe make Mikhail see it hadn’t all been lies, then he’d have to lie through his teeth. Again. Gods, it seemed lying was all he was good for. “The allyanse is an excuse for angels to fuck,” he said, hearing the lies and hating them. “It’s not a mystical bond or some shit. So yes, I fucked him, Sam. To feed. Because I could. Because ten years was a long time. Because angel tastes like a dream, and because afterward, he trusted me. I was going to ruin him. I just…”

“Then you’re not bonded? It wasn’t true?” he asked, eyebrows raised in hope. “We have to be sure.”

“Fuck, no.” He mustered a smile up from somewhere. They thought he’d turned completely angel. And well, he couldn’t blame them because he had. Every word Samiel spoke of Mikhail made Severn’s heart hurt. He wanted to go back to Whitechapel, to explain to Mikhail that everything had changed—they’d changed. He’d see, eventually. He just needed time to come around. But that couldn’t happen while Severn was tied to a damn table.

Samiel withdrew his hand and dragged it over his mouth. “Shit, it’s hard to look at you like this. You smell like angel.” But there was no disgust in his words. Regret, perhaps.

“Try walking around inside this thin, pink skin for ten years.” He’d grown to love this skin and remembered how sensitive it was beneath Mikhail’s mouth, but that memory couldn’t help him now. Neither could love.

“I missed you,” Samiel said softly.

How… He wanted to ask. How are you alive, Samiel? He’d given up a memory to make this damned illusion stick. Had he given up the memory of Samiel surviving? It would have been powerful enough. He’d believed him dead. He’d used that to drive his passion for vengeance, to set him on the path of destroying Mikhail. But what if he’d been wrong all this time?

“They don’t trust you,” Samiel added.

Severn looked over and found Samiel’s face full of concern. “If you’re all afraid of one little angel, shit must have changed since I’ve been gone.”

Samiel smiled, and Severn’s heart skipped a beat to see it. He’d kissed that smile a thousand times. He’d loved Samiel. Loved him completely. But now… It was different. He was different. All of this… none of it made any sense. Samiel had died. Severn had fallen in love with an angel, and now he was here, his own kin butchering him while Samiel