7

“WHAT HAPPENED?”

My head snapped up from the book I’d been reading and I found Nathaniel staring at me quite expectantly. The dawn had been sprawling across the countryside when I’d arrived and he didn’t question me when I curled up in the spare bedroom to sleep. He always kept a room for me in case I stopped by. It had taken me some time to fall asleep and when I finally had, it was only to wake and doze off over and over until nightfall. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Nathaniel could tell something was wrong, but I hadn’t yet decided on an excuse to tell him. I couldn’t tell him about Bastian, of that I was certain.

I set down the book. “I don’t know what you mean.”

His copper eyes flashed as he smiled gently at me. “You’ve been bouncing around for a month, happier than a skylark, and suddenly you come home with a rain cloud looming over your head. I can’t remember the last time I saw you sleep so fitfully. Something is troubling you. Has your lover done something? Would you like me to beat him up?”

I drew my face completely blank. “Who?”

He rolled his eyes. “We’ve been friends our entire lives. Did you think I couldn’t tell?”

No matter what I said now, he’d never believe me. He was too clever and he knew me too well. “I saw a different side of him last night,” I confessed. “It was a side of him I always knew he had, I suppose. I didn’t want to wake from the dream.”

His smile faded and he nodded, understanding. “Dreams never last if we’re lucky enough to wake up. The real world is where we ought to be, just you and me.”

Nathaniel was right, though his last words made me wonder if there was more to his meaning. I couldn’t live a lie, but I loved Bastian too much to give up on him that easily. He deserved another chance to prove himself worthy of the love I had for him. “I’d better talk to him,” I said, and stood to gather my things.

“He deserves the right to explain himself,” Nathaniel said. “As much as I hate to say that if he has hurt you. Are you sure you don’t want me to beat him up?”

I offered Nathaniel a smile and a kiss on the cheek. I didn’t want to think of the end result of a fight between Nathaniel and Bastian. It was best they didn’t know the other existed, for one of them would certainly be dead as a result of their first encounter. “I won’t be long. Should we patrol London tonight?”

“It has been quiet lately,” he said. “I fear something’s brewing.”

“Something always is.”

It was later in the night when I arrived at Bastian’s manor. The moon was high in the starlit sky and dawn was still several hours away. The windows glowed with candlelight, but all was not calm within. I hurried to the door, overwhelmed by the sense of anxiety in his power. I pushed the heavy door open and called for him. “Bastian? Bastian!”

I found him in one of the dens standing before a blazing fire. He looked at something he held in his hands, but I did not notice or care to know what it was. I could not stop staring at the splashes of red across his skin and clothing. The scent of blood on him was sickening.

When I said nothing more, he looked up at me, his eyes blazing and glowing in the dim light. “Do I frighten you?”

I did not answer yes only because there was something wrong with him. He was not injured—that much I could tell by reading his power—but he seemed drunk or disoriented. Distant. Unhappy. My voice was barely an exhale of breath when I spoke. “What happened?”

He gazed back down at the thing in his hand. After a moment, he held it up, wagging its sharp point in the air. It was a small dagger made of an old, dark metal and old, dark wood. “I’ve got it.”

I shook my head. An ill feeling spun through my belly, making my limbs weak and heavy. “Got what? What is that?”

He crossed the room toward me very slowly and only seemed to grow more uncoordinated with each step. The scent of blood nauseated me more and more. He was drenched in it as if he’d been in a thunderstorm that rained blood instead of water. “This,” he said quietly. “The blade of Belial.”

I swallowed hard, shoving my fear back down my throat, but it would not stay there. “The demon? How did you get that?”

“Death,” he said, and his poison-blue eyes recaptured mine. “I am Death.”

“What have you done?”

Bastian fell to his knees before me, dropping the dagger to the floor, and he gathered up the folds of my dress in his hands. He buried his face in the fabric and his body gave a horrid shudder. This was not the man I knew. This was a broken creature, crippled by guilt and regret. I lifted a hand, my lips trembling, and I touched his hair. He pressed into my hand and we stayed like that until his body grew tense and froze. He released my dress and pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t look at me as he picked up the dark dagger.

“Please,” he said suddenly, shattering the silence between us. “Don’t ever ask me what I did to get this.”

“I don’t think this is something we can pretend never happened,” I said. The tremble had spread to my fingertips.

“There were no humans involved. That should satisfy you.”

I stared at him, aghast. “It doesn’t matter who you hurt. You hurt people—many, by the look of you. Why would you do such a thing for something so small?”

He lifted the dagger. “This is not small. I have been searching for this demonic relic for two hundred years. Its greatest purpose will not be fulfilled for a very long time, but for now, I am going to kill Evantia with it.”