Page 123 of Demon's Beauty

“They want you to get in trouble?”

“Oh, I don’t know if it’s even that,” she says with a resigned sigh. “It’s more like they just love to have a juicy morsel of gossip to pick at, and I’m sure more than a few of them have also been scheming about how they can use my absence to their advantage.”

“What do you mean?”

“Anytime a witch falls, it makes room for another to rise. It’s constant at the coven hall. They call us ‘sister witches’, make it seem like we’re just one big happy family, but that’s never been the case. One mistake, one misstep, one tiny slip-up that pissesoff Esme Hawthorn or puts you on the outs with the priestesses, and someone is always waiting to step in and dig the knife a little deeper. Everyone is always just waiting for their chance to take your place.”

I hum in sympathy. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to go back to that.”

Apparently it’s the wrong thing to say, because Soleil steps out of my embrace, paces a few meters away, and runs a hand through her tousled black curls.

“It’s not even that, though,” she says, and this time it’s like she’s talking more to herself than to me. “Idowant to go back.”

That terrible, sharp pangpangsagain, hard enough to make me feel nauseous, but I keep my anxieties to myself while she continues working things out in her own time.

“I think I could change things there. I think I could do good there. But it’s something that would take me a lifetime.” She looks up at me with misery and conflict shining in her eyes. “And I don’t know how to commit myself to that. I don’t know how to shake off the doubt about whether it’s the right path for me.”

I’m at a loss for words, so I do the only other thing I can think of.

I go to her.

Hands cupped around her cheeks, my forehead pressed to hers, I allow myself a few moments to simply share space and share breath with her. At least until she grips my forearms lightly and puts some space between us.

“Because I want this, too,” she says—voice steady, eyes blazing. “I want to see what we can be, Finn. I really do.”

Then have it.I want to tell her.Choose me. Choose us.

I swallow the words.

It’s still not my place to convince her.

I still have nothing to offer her other than myself, and I can’t believe I’m enough of an incentive for her to give up her Ascension.

“I never expected to find out I had a mate.” She wraps her arms around my waist, rests her cheek against my chest.

“I never did, either, sunshine.” Lips pressed to the top of her head, I give the bond between us a tug, just to remind her of the wonder of it.

A soft, distressed noise slips between her lips, and I hold her even closer, as if I could get close enough to take on all her pain and fear and uncertainty.

“I have to choose soon,” she says. “Like, really soon. I don’t think Esme’s patience will hold out much longer.”

“I know,” I tell her, because what else is there to say?

My witch holds our future in her hands, though the base, primal, unbearably selfish part of me still wants to beg her, plead with her, fall to my knees and stay there until I’ve convinced her to choose me.

A tear slips from the corner of Soleil’s eye, and I abandon those selfish thoughts completely.

Perhaps the best thing I can do is just this.

Be here for her, as long as she’ll have me.

I catch one finger under her chin and turn her face up toward mine.

Beautiful.

My mate is so painfully beautiful.

The most beautiful thing I’ve seen or ever will see.