Page 36 of Incoronate
Apparently, it no longer mattered that she’d mostly hated him since the moment she met or that she’d spent yearslooking at him as though he was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe.
“You’re the only one who can—” She stopped and swallowed hard, her eyes brimming with tears that were seconds from falling. “You’d burn the world down for her.”
Dominic didn’t blink. “Without question.”
“Then do it,” she choked out, her voice cracking open on the words. “Burn it the fuck down.”
My breath hitched.No.
She didn’t know what she was asking of him, what she was giving him permission to do. She was too afraid of losing me and wasn’t thinking straight.
A cold chill crept down my spine.
Or maybe she did know. Maybe she knew exactly what she was saying when she begged him to take this into his own hands. To stop playing by anyone else’s rules but his own. To take the leash off and let the monster decide.
Either way, it made the hair on the back of my neck lift. Because I knew that if he let his monster loose, there would be no leashing it again.
Gabriel started in about letting calmer heads prevail as Carly said something else about going to the Council—that if we just explained the situation, they’d surely help. They all seemed to be talking at once, their voices blurring together and becoming nothing more than white noise.
Because I wasn’t hearing any of them anymore.
I only saw Dominic.
The way the fury drained out of his face. The way he was looking at me like I was the axis upon which his entire world spun. Like every breath he took was measured by whether I was still taking mine.
His eyes traced the black lines across my skin, following them with a focus that felt almost reverent. The muscle in his jaw ticked as his fists slowly unclenched at his sides.
In that moment, I saw past the violence and the desperation that had driven him all night. I saw something truer beneath it. Something fierce and terrifyingly tender at the same time. It made my chest ache, even through the fog of pain and the suffocation of fear.
‘Hold on for me, angel,’ he said to my mind, his voice caressing the edges like a lover’s touch.
I wanted to tell him not to go. To beg him not to risk his humanity on a pipe dream for me. But he was already looking at Trace now, and I couldn’t muster up the strength to speak.
“Keep her breathing if you don’t want to find yourself in the ground next to Caleb,” he said calmly as he pulled his coat from the chair and slipped it on.
“And just where in the hell do you think you’re going?” asked Gabriel, stepping forward as if to block him.
“Where else, brother?” he answered evenly, almost jovially. “To light the match.”
Gabriel all but groaned at his brother. “We need clear heads right now, not chaos and destruction!”
“I beg to differ.” A slow smile pulled at Dominic’s mouth. “It seems to me that if playing by the hero’s rules is what got us here, then perhaps what she needs isn’t another savior at all.” He glanced back at me once more, the look in his eyes daring the world to try and take me from him. “Perhaps what she needs now is a villain.”
And with that, he was gone.
12. THE DEVIL’S BARGAIN
The hours blurred together like watercolors left out in the rain. I slept. Woke. Slept again. Each time I surfaced, the room looked the same. The same amber glow from the fireplace, the same worried faces, the same faint smell of burned rosemary from Caleb’s failed attempts still threading through everything. But each time I sank back under, the darkness pulled a little harder.
People came and went though I felt them more than I saw them. The shift of air when someone entered the room. The careful hush of footsteps. Hands brushing my arm, my shoulder, my hair. Carly’s quiet sniffle. Morgan’s restless, pacing energy that never quite left the room even when she did. Gabriel’s unwavering, watchful silence. Tessa hovering close, checking my temperature over and over again like it might suddenly be okay again.
Their eyes said everything their mouths couldn’t say.
I’m sorry.
This isn’t fair.
We don’t know how to fix this.
