J. Ward - Lover Avenged

God, he loved the low sound of her voice. Loved everything about her. They had been promised to each other before they’d been born, and it had been love at first sight the moment they’d met. Destiny had been so kind to them.

He swept his palm down onto her waist, and then…

He stopped, realizing something was wrong. Something…

“Your belly…your belly is flat.”

“Tohr…”

“Where’s the young?” He pulled back in a panic. “You were with young. Where’s the young? Is he okay? What happened to you…are you all right?”

“Tohr…”

Her eyes opened, and the stare he had looked into for over a hundred years focused on him. Sadness, the kind that made you wish you’d never been born, drained the sexual flush from her beautiful face.

Reaching up to him, she put her hand on his cheek. “Tohr…”

“What happened?”

“Tohr…”

The sheen over her eyes and the quaver of her lovely voice snapped him in half. And then she began to drift away, her body disappearing under his touch, her red hair, her exquisite face, her despairing eyes fading so that only the pillows remained before him. Then in a final blow, the lemony smell of the sheets and her naturally clean scent left his nose, replaced by nothing-

Tohr jacked upright off the mattress, his eyes spilling over with tears, his heart aching as if he’d had nails driven into his chest. Breathing raggedly, he clutched at his breastbone and opened his mouth to scream.

No sound came. He didn’t have the strength.

Falling back against the pillows, he wiped his wet cheeks with hands that shook and tried to calm the hell down. When he finally caught his breath, he frowned. His heart was skipping in his rib cage, not so much beating as fluttering, and no doubt because of the erratic spasms, dizziness spun his head in a tight circle.

Pulling up his T-shirt, he stared down at his deflated pecs and his shrunken torso and willed his body to keep failing. The spells had been coming with increasing regularity and strength, and he wished to hell they’d just get organized and help him wake up dead. Suicide was not an option if you wanted to get into the Fade and be with your deceased loved ones, but he was operating under the assumption that you could effectively neglect yourself to death. Which wasn’t technically suicide, like eating a bullet or throwing a noose around his neck or doing a slit-the-wrist special would be.

The scent of food from out in the hallway had him looking at the clock. Four in the afternoon. Or was it morning? The drapes were drawn, so he didn’t know whether the shutters were up or down.

The knock that sounded was soft.

Which, thank fuck, meant it wasn’t Lassiter, who just came in whenever he wanted. Evidently fallen angels weren’t big on manners. Or personal space. Or boundaries of any kind. Clearly the great, glowing nightmare had been booted out of heaven because God hadn’t liked his company any more than Tohr did.

The quiet knock was repeated. So it must be John.

“Yeah,” Tohr said, letting his shirt fall as he pushed himself up on the pillows. His arms, once strong as cranes, struggled under the weight of his wilted shoulders.

The boy, who was no longer a boy, came in bearing a tray heavily laden with food, and a face full of baseless optimism.

Tohr glanced over as the burden was put on the bedside table. Herbed chicken and saffron rice and green beans and fresh rolls.

The shit might as well have been roadkill wrapped in barbed wire, for all he cared, but he picked up the plate and rolled out the napkin and took the fork and the knife and put them to use.

Chew. Chew. Chew. Swallow. More chewing. Swallow. Drink. Chew. Eating was as mechanical and autonomic as his respiration, something he was only dimly aware of, a necessity, not a pleasure.

Pleasure was a thing of the past…and a torture within his dreams. As he recalled his shellan up against him, naked, in lemony sheets, the fleeting image lit up his body from the inside out, making him alive, and not just living. The strike of his mortal match head faded quick, though, a flame with no wick to sustain it.

Chew. Cut. Chew. Swallow. Drink.

As he ate, the boy sat down in a chair by the closed drapes, elbow on knee, fist on chin, a living, breathing Rodin’s The Thinker. John was always like that lately, always with something on his mind.

Tohrment knew damn well what it was, but the solution that was going to end John’s sad preoccupation was going to hurt the kid like a bitch first.

And Tohr was sorry about that. Very sorry.

Christ, why couldn’t Lassiter have just left him where he’d lain in that forest? That angel could have kept right on going, but no, His Lordship Halogen had to be a hero.

Tohr shifted his eyes over to John and his gaze locked on the kid’s fist. The thing was huge, and the chin and jaw that rested on it were strong, masculine. The boy had turned out to be a handsome guy; then again, as Darius’s son, he’d had a good gene pool. One of the best.

Come to think of it…he really looked like D, a carbon copy, actually, except for the blue jeans. Darius wouldn’t have been caught dead in blue jeans, even fancy designer-distressed ones like the kind John was sporting.

Matter of fact…D had often assumed that exact position when he’d been stewing over life, pulling the Rodin, all frown and churn-

A flash of silver winked from John’s free hand. It was a quarter, and the kid was weaving the coin in and out and around his fingers, his version of a nervous twitch.

Tonight was more than John’s usual silent perching. Something had happened.

“What’s doing?” Tohr asked, his voice a rasp. “You okay?”

John’s eyes shot over in surprise.

To avoid the stare, Tohr looked down, speared some chicken, and put it in his mouth. Chew. Chew. Swallow.

Going by the shifting sounds, John was uncurling himself from his wood-burning routine slowly, as if he were afraid that sudden movements would spook away the question hanging between them.

Tohr glanced over again, and when he waited, John put the quarter in his pocket and signed with economy and grace, Wrath is out fighting again. V just told me and the guys.

Tohr was rusty with American Sign Language, but not that rusty. Surprise lowered his fork. “Wait…he’s still king, right?”

Yeah, but he told the Brothers tonight that he’s going back on rotation. Or I guess he’s been on rotation and kept it to himself. I think the Brotherhood’s pissed at him.

“Rotation? Can’t be. The king’s not allowed to fight.”

He is now. And Phury’s coming back, too.

“What the fuck? The Primale’s not supposed to…” Tohr frowned. “Is there some change in the war? Something going on?”

I don’t know. John shrugged and settled back into the chair, crossing his legs at the knee. Another thing Darius always did.

In the pose, the son seemed as old as the father had been, although that was less about the way John’s limbs were arranged and more about the exhaustion in his blue eyes.

“It’s not legal,” Tohr said.

Is now. Wrath met with the Scribe Virgin.

Questions started to buzz in Tohr’s head, his brain struggling with the unaccustomed load. In the midst of the disjointed swirl, it was hard to think coherently, and he felt as if he were trying to hold a hundred tennis balls in his arms; no matter how hard he tried, ones slipped through and bounced around, creating a mess.

He gave up trying to make sense of anything. “Well, that’s a change… I wish them luck.”

John’s low exhale pretty much summed it all up as Tohr unplugged from the world and went back to eating. When he was finished, he folded up the napkin neatly and took a final drink from the water glass.