Tessa Adams: Flamebound

Again, I think about running away. About heading into work without ever having this discussion. I’ve put it off long enough, though, and it’s not good for either one of us to live in this kind of limbo where we’re uncertain of each other’s thoughts and intentions.

“When I asked what you were going to do, I didn’t mean today,” I tell him. “I was talking about the ACW. What your plans are regarding them?”

His eyes turn cold, flat, hard in an instant. “They need to pay.”

The conviction in his voice is absolute, and it’s exactly what I was afraid of. “What are you planning?”

“Right now?” He quirks a brow. “Nothing.”

I nearly sag in relief. Thank the goddess he’s being reasonable. I know how angry he is, but going after the ACW is suicide. Besides, I’m not ready to fight the war that such a move would invoke. Right now, I have more than enough on my plate just trying to get used to Declan and my new powers.

“You look shocked,” he tells me.

“I am. I thought you’d be more . . . difficult about this.”

“Difficult? Why would I be difficult?”

He’s going for innocent, but all of a sudden I don’t trust the look on his face or the shadows in his eyes.

“Declan, you can’t . . .”

“Can’t what?” Those eyes narrow.

I swallow nervously. Even after everything we’ve shared, it still overwhelms me to have all that gorgeous intensity focused so completely on me. “The Council is too strong. You need to let what happened to me go.”

“Let it go?” He doesn’t bother to hide the incredulity in his tone. “You think I’m just going to let it go?”

He steps away from me to pace the long, narrow length of the bathroom. Though I know it’s stupid, I feel immediately bereft without his warmth wrapped around me.

“They don’t get to do whatever they want. They don’t get to play with people’s lives—with your life—and get away with it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” he says in a harsh voice barely above a whisper. “But I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want to rip them all apart. To kill every Councilor—in as bloody and as terrible a way as possible—for what they did to you. I want to shred the whole fucking lot of them, make examples of them so that no one, ever, thinks it’s okay to come after you again.

“But I can’t do that. Not now, not when you’re in Austin. Because the only thing I want more than their blood is your safety. And this”—he gestures to the bruises still evident on my skin—“isn’t safe. I would never do something that would double back on you. Never do anything that could make you suffer the way this has.”

I hear what he’s saying—of course I do, because I feel exactly the same way about him. But I also hear what he isn’t saying. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Knowing that if I wasn’t around, you would kill every single one of them?”

“What do you want from me?” He’s snarling now. “They raped you. They tortured you. They had every intention of killing you. And what? I’m just supposed to let that go? Let them get away with it?”

He whirls away from me, slams a fist into the wall. Pulls it back and does the same thing a second and a third time, until his fingers are swollen, his knuckles bruised and bloody. And still the rage pours off him.

He thrusts his uninjured hand into my hair, tightens his fingers into a fist and pulls me close, so close that I can see the silver flecks in his eyes. Feel the heat pouring off him. So close that we’re breathing the same air.

Part of me wants to stop pushing. To bury my head some more and pray that it all goes away. But even I’m smart enough to know that’s not going to work.

Gathering my courage, I take a deep breath. Close my eyes. And ask again. “What are you going to do?” Because he has a plan. I know he does.

He doesn’t answer, which only makes me more concerned. “Damn it, Declan. Don’t shut me out—you owe me that much. What are you thinking?”

In lieu of answering, he reaches for me. Pulls me into his arms. Then thrusts me away so that he can glide his fingers over my rib cage, my shoulder, the undersides of my breasts.

It takes me a minute to figure out what he’s doing, that he’s tracing each of the bruises and cuts I still bear from eight nights ago, when Kyle had me strapped to a table in some macabre offering to the sickness inside him and those he worked for. He presses kisses on them all—even ones that have faded or disappeared completely. He knows each and every one of them, and for the first time, I understand just how destroyed Declan is by what was done to me.

“Living like this, for revenge, isn’t healthy.” I brush my lips across his forehead.

“It’s healthier than eating myself up every minute of the goddamn day, thinking that they’re going to get away with what they did.”

“They aren’t going to get away with it. Kyle is—”

“Already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Horror seizes me, cold and all-consuming. “What did you do?”

“What needed to be done. He’ll never stand trial for what he did, never get the chance to walk away from it.”

I don’t want to believe what he’s telling me. “Then why all the safeguards? Why didn’t you just let the ACW have him?”

The look he gives me is pure magic, dark and mystical and filled with unimaginable power. “And give them even a small modicum of peace of mind? Not going to happen.”

I think of all the magic I know of, and all the magic I still don’t understand. There are spells to do what Declan is suggesting—slow, insidious things that creep through the bloodstream and destroy a person from the inside out. I don’t know how they work, have never given them much thought before as they are dark magic. Not black magic, not blood magic, but almost.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’ve known Declan walks the thin and shadowy line between white and black magic. But this, what he’s talking about, is so close to stepping over that line that it might as well not exist.

My stomach cramps and for a second I’m certain that I’m going to puke. Panic, fear, even disgust well up inside me as I think about what he’s done, what he will continue to do.

I don’t want this.

Don’t want to know this dark and driven side of Declan.

Don’t want to understand the things he’s willing to do and the lines he’s willing to cross because of the shadowy rules he lives by.

“They’ve spent centuries fucking around with me, and that’s fine. I’m used to it. But they will never touch you again.” The words ring with conviction even though they’re devoid of emotion. Or maybe because of it.

A hot and angry Declan is dangerous. A cold, emotionless one is terrifying. Not to mention deadly.

“You can’t go up against the Council on your own.”

He can’t pit himself against the ACW; he just can’t. Declan is powerful—terrifyingly so—but what he’s talking about is suicide, even for him.

“Declan, I’m serious. That’s treason. They’ll kill you—if you’re lucky—and hold you up as an example for every witch, wizard and warlock in existence of what happens to people who cross the ACW.”

“For that to happen, there would have to be some Council members left alive. I’m not planning on that being the case.”

Dear sweet goddess. “You think you can kill them all?”

“I’m going to kill them all.”

“That’s crazy, Declan! Even you aren’t strong enough for that. Once they figure out what you’re going to do, they’ll do whatever it takes to stop you.”