Page 90 of Villains Never Die

“Would you sacrifice him to kill Death?”

The thought of burning Stewart to ash made me physically ill, but…

“I would do anything to kill her. Anything.”

“Then you have everything you need.”

The way he said it felt real, more like a plan than a rage-fueled fantasy. I could do it. Years of searching would finally pay off. It wasn’t an idea anymore.

“You should stay here tonight,” he said. “If you don’t, you’ll stay up all night making yourself crazy over this.”

“Or I’ll be here and stay up and make us both crazy,” I muttered as I sat up. “I should just go. You said you wanted space.”

He yanked me back when I tried to slide off the couch and trapped me under his arm. “I wasn’t going to last long, anyway.” He kissed my cheek. “Addicted, remember?”

Addicted, but not in love, not that he’d say out loud.

He cocked his head slightly, studying me.

“What do you want out of life, Austin?”

My eyebrows pulled together. My mouth grasped for words to answer the sudden shift in the room’s air.

“I want to kill her, obviously. This has been my life’s work.”

“And then what?”

“I—” I had never thought that far ahead. My goal, perhaps even an obsession, had always been to find and eliminate Death, but on some level it had always felt like a fantasy, an impossibility. I might always chase with no result. Now that had changed, and I wasn’t certain what came next. “I suppose I’ll do what I’ve been doing—the auctions, the deals, Avalon.”

The slow creeping of monotony twisted inside me, but what else was there? I’d worked too hard to get where I was to abandon it to…what? Retire somewhere I could finally relax?

“What do you want out of life?” I asked.

“I do what I do because it’s thrilling. That high I get when I fight? It’s the same feeling I get when I count out the money at the end of the night. I like the way power makes me feel.”

He propped himself on one elbow against the back of the couch, his palm against the side of his head, and traced the bow of my lips with his opposite index finger. “But I’m an opportunist. If a better opportunity presented itself, I’d sell it all and move on. My ambition is flexible. Yours isn’t.”

“Why are you telling me this?” My tired mind drifted as his fingers skimmed my bottom lip, and I struggled to pull it back and focus on our conversation.

“Because I’ll tell you the secret no one tells you about power. You can have a lot, but you can’t have everything. You don’t stay on top without sacrificing something.”

“What did you sacrifice?” I asked.

His throat moved slowly as he swallowed. “Intimacy. You get too close, too attached to anything, and you risk losing it. Too many people want me dead, people close to me get hurt or killed. Places and things can be destroyed. I can’t get attached to things because if I lose them, I risk everything else—everything I’ve built—tumbling down around me. That’s what ambition cost me.”

“Is that why you won’t say it back?” I whispered.

“I won’t say it back because I’m not in love with you. I don’t know how to love someone anymore.” He frowned and his hand fell away. “But it doesn’t matter because you’re very close to getting what you’ve always wanted, and you might think it’s me, but it’s not.”

“I want you.” I tried to force my eyelids open, but I was weak against them. Sleep tightened around me and pulled me under.

“You think you want me,” he whispered as I drifted. “You’ll realize you don’t.”

I tried to argue, tried to stay awake long enough to make him understand, but I had no strength left. He kissed my forehead and pulled me closer, and I lost the battle against my exhaustion.

Chapter Thirty-Three

I picked Rook up and drove us to the Council meeting together. He was still distant in the days leading up to it, but in the car, he chattered and made jokes like nothing had happened. He erased the space between us just thoroughly enough to give me whiplash.