Page 49 of Incoronate
“Watching the corruption eat you from the inside out while I stood there helpless, pretending I had any control over any of it.” His mouth pressed into a hard line. “I have never been afraid like that. Not of dying, not even of damnation. I’ve made my peace with all of that a long time ago. But watching you slip away…” He stopped, searching for the words. “I realized in that moment that there are things far worse than death.”
My throat burned with grief and guilt as I swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry I put you—”
“You never have to apologize to me, angel,” he cut in, his dark eyes holding mine. “I didn’t say that to make you feel guilty. I said it because I think you ought to know what you mean to me. What you’ve always meant to me.” He paused, looking down briefly before returning his gaze to me. “I’ve spent my entire life carefully curating what I allow myself to care about, and I must say, the list is rather short.”
My chest warmed around his words. I could count on one hand the number of people he’d ever admitted to caring about, and I was pretty sure most of them were dead.
“But you…” He shook his head slowly. “You have slipped past every defense I had without even trying. You have enchanted me so completely that the very thought of existing without you has become incomprehensible. That I should now be bound to you in a way that can never be undone is my most profound privilege and my only remaining weakness.”
A sudden wave of emotion rose up behind my eyes, tears welling before I could stop them. I blinked hard, fighting them back as guilt tangled in with the warmth. Because I hadn’tasked him to do that. I would never have asked him to bind himself to me in a way that couldn’t be undone.
I didn’t even fully understand what it meant yet, what he’d given up, but the permanence of it made my chest ache with a mix of gratitude and remorse.
“I just…I feel like I’ve damned you,” I admitted quietly, my throat thickening as I tried to get the words out. “Like I forced you into something you can never escape from.”
He set his drink down on the end table and sat down on the bed beside me. Close enough to see the way his pupils dilated as he looked back at me. His hand came up to my face, the back of his knuckles stroking my cheek in a touch so gentle and reverent that it made my breath catch.
“This is not damnation, angel.” A faint, crooked smile touched his mouth. “And if it were then I would still choose it a thousand times over.”
“You say that now but what about after you’ve lived with me for a few decades and you realize I’m completely insufferable, especially when I don’t get enough sleep?”
“Then I shall suffer with dignity,” he said with a smirk. “And adore you all the more for it.”
A laugh bubbled up through the tears, watery and helpless. “Well,” I breathed, trying to hold it together and not drown the mood out completely, “if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
“What I feel for you is so much more than love, angel. I love you not as a mortal loves but as something eternal.” He reached up and wiped away a single tear from my cheek. “I love you the way the darkness loves the stars, and the way the ocean worships the moon. Utterly. Irrevocably. And without hope of redemption.”
I stared at him, helpless against the weight of his words, against the certainty in his voice. I didn’t know what to sayto that. How to respond to that level of devotion. Instead, I pushed forward and pressed my lips to his.
He responded immediately, his hand cradling the back of my head as he kissed me with a gentleness that threatened to undo me completely. His thumb stroked along my cheekbone as his mouth moved against mine, unhurried and achingly sweet. When he finally pulled back, just enough to rest his forehead against mine, something warm and certain bloomed in my chest. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt protected, cherished, and utterly safe. Like I had finally found the one place in all the worlds where nothing could hurt me.
“You will always be safe,” he said quietly, his voice dropping to that intimate register that made the rest of the world disappear. “So long as I draw breath, nothing will take you from me. Not prophecy. Not the Horsemen. Not even death itself. Do you understand me, angel?”
I nodded, unable to form words past the emotion clogging my throat. In retrospect, I hadn’t even noticed that he seemed to have answered my thoughts then. I was too wrapped up in the vow, in the moment, to pay it any attention.
His thumb brushed across my cheekbone once more before he pulled back completely, shifting back into his usual confidence. “I certainly didn’t go through all that trouble tracking down the Roderick sisters just to lose you in the end.”
My curiosity quickly climbed to the forefront. “How did you find them anyway?” I asked, still breathless from the kiss and his promise, but curious to know how he’d managed to track them down.
“I didn’t find them, per se.” He paused, the corner of his mouth tipping up. “I called in a favor. Witches are surprisingly easy to get in touch with once you know who to call and haveunlimited funds at your disposal. All I needed was a phone number and one conversation with them.”
“Of course,” I said, shaking my head and fighting back a laugh. “Because everything is just that simple for you.”
“Not everything,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to my lips for just a beat before lifting again. “But I do have my moments.”
“So, what did you say to them?” I asked, unable to fathom what he could have possibly said to the three most wanted Supernaturals in the world that would persuade them enough to come out of hiding and help their sworn enemy.
“I told them the truth,” he said simply.
My eyebrows shot up at that.
“Don’t look so surprised, angel. Lies are tedious when the truth serves you better.”
“And what was the truth?”
“That you are actively working against the Order and the Horsemen and that you have no intention of harming the child. I simply helped them see that you are the only thing standing between the Horsemen and The Son of Perdition, and that keeping you alive serves their interests as much as it does mine.”
I blinked, taken aback by how simple and logical he made it sound.
