and clawed until she surfaced from that promise of euphoria, half wild with fury.
“No,” she gritted out.
“Good.” His darkness receded as he pushed himself off her and stripped his powers away, leaving her cold and confused on the floor. “Next time you think you care for me, remember this moment.”
She scrambled to her feet as the world seemed to spin around her. Leaving—he was leaving.
Her eyes burned.
Her throat ached.
She was undoubtedly in shock. Too numb to say a word as she watched him go. Those glorious wings caught the light and made her heart tug oddly as she remembered how beautiful he had looked just moments before.
Confusion blunted the full impact of the emotions ravaging her chest, but her body felt everything. The left side of her neck still stung from where the tips of his fangs had dragged. The flesh above her hipbones ached from the deep press of his fingertips. Even her lips were swollen, probably injured when she jerked his arm to her mouth.
To bite him. Bite him.
It didn’t feel real. None of it felt even close to reality.
Even if the soreness from his attack—there was really no other word for it—faded in the next few minutes, the dull throbbing where his fingers had circled her wrists like manacles were already darkening.
A slice of pain tore open her middle as she realized his fingers had once done the same thing, holding her wrists above her head as he took complete control.
But this time there was no pleasure—only confusion and betrayal.
She reached out to rub her wrists and realized she was trembling. From the euphoria he’d infused into her, the adrenaline still slamming through her arteries, or her growing rage, she wasn’t sure.
Probably all of those things.
She didn’t find her voice until he was past the rectangles of silver light and masked in the deep shadows near the doors.
But she didn’t need to see him to call him what he was. “Coward.”
He froze. Every feather seemed to still. Every mote of dust swirling inside the pools of light suspending, if only for a moment. As if this place, broken and ruined as it was, tied to his emotions.
Then Stolas Darkshade prowled through the doors and disappeared.
And Haven forced her muscles to stop trembling. Forced her legs to take steady strides until the Hall of Light was far behind her.
Only then did she let Stolas back into her thoughts, just long enough to decide he was a cowardly bastard. A runeforsaken, Shade-damned bastard and liar.
In one night, he’d destroyed everything she thought they shared between them. The trust. The friendship.
The . . . feelings she’d kept hidden away.
Everything between them—everything—now broken and scattered like the shards of crystal on the floor.
And yet he wasn’t here to pick up the pieces.
34
Haven awoke to pounding on her bedchamber door. Archeron! He’d betrayed them. She sprang from bed, nearly tripping on the sheets tangled around her legs, and searched the pile of laundry on the floor for proper clothes.
Dammit, where were her pants?
A week of peaceful nights had made her groggy and unprepared. She whipped her head to the open windows, searching the sky for signs of the Seraphian guards. A thick tapestry of steel gray clouds greeted her, but no flickering shadows to hint at a battle.
Outside, the world was quiet. Still.
The pounding became more insistent. Demelza snorted, jerked awake, and rolled off the low cot in the corner and onto the dusty floor.
The last time Haven saw Demelza, she was being carried to bed by Surai and Delphine, singing the national anthem from whatever Curse-forsaken northern city she hailed at the top of her lungs. Haven had to help Surai pry a bottle of wine from her gnarled fingers.
“I’m awake,” Demelza cried, using the bed frame as support to stumble to her feet. “Goddess-Born, what do you need?”
Haven was nearly dressed, Demelza clipping on her sword-belt, when the door splintered open with a booming crash. Haven flung up a half-hazard shield to protect Demelza and then lunged for the intruder, sword drawn—
“Haven, wait!”
On the other side of the door frame, Bell waved his hands trying to get her attention through the cloud of dust and pulverized wood. That’s when she noticed the telltale aroma of amateur magick—burnt roses.
Bell had broken down her door with magick.
That couldn’t be good.
“What is it?” she demanded as she ducked beneath a fragment of the door that hadn’t been destroyed.
Sweat sheened his face, and he was breathing hard. His wide-eyed gaze went to her sword.