Chapter Thirty-Nine

REMI

When the two Witches die, pain sinks in me. It’s worse than the bite marks on my shoulders and neck. Worse than any pain I’ve ever known.
The last of the Marisa’s is shrieking in a corner. And I think I am, too.

This pain is all over my body. It feels like the milky water against my skin is like glass and fire. Tearing through the very fabric of who and what I am.

I can’t move, it hurts so bad. There is only a bright white light where the sky is supposed to be and a sharp ache.

I’ve never been a fighter in my life. I’ve always given in. Always cried.

I run away from conflict and pain and fights, and all I want to do right now is go into the light. Into the forest of bioluminescent flowers and gentle deer for the rest of my time.
But Reiyna is in my mind. Reiyna, my warrior sister. The one who should be here to fight this fight.

Remi, two hundred and fifty thousand are going to die if you don’t help them. You have to hold on.

“I-I just want to give up, Reiyna.”

*Keiran needs you.

The twins need you. *

“They don’t need me,” I tell her. “None of you ever needed me.”

Reiyna cups her hands around mine. She looks so pale, like liquid starlight.

“You might be right,” she says to me, swirling around, “but you need to be yourself. You need to fight for your life.”

I’ve been so caught up in how other people have treated me my whole life, the dying Island, Kallias, Rhodes, the Forest Dwellers, the City-folk, that I’ve never once thought about saving my own life.
“I’ll say hi to dad for you,” Reiyna says to me, “but it is not your time to go. You have to live for yourself, and not just live, but be truly, fully alive.”

She’s right. It’s not my time to go.

I have to do more than live.

I have to fight to be alive.

And not for anyone else.

“Fuck the forest people, Reiyna,” I say to her, and the spirit of my older sister smiles.

“There she is,” my sister ruffles my hair, “I love you.”

With that, she’s gone. I am saved from drowning by two rough, tattooed arms. I will live for myself.

I cough and choke, but the pain slightly fades, and I collapse into Xaden’s arms.
—
“It’s over,” he says. His voice is a distant rumble above me. I have the distinct sensation of being lifted in the air, cradled against a solid chest.

“Xaden,” Keiran’s voice is a silk-wrapped threat, dripping with authority.

“You heard her, she knows where your Black Pearl is. We’re not fucking doing this anymore.” Xaden starts away.

“You’ll never get past the wards without my help,” the final Marisa calls. “Give her back to me, now, or the whole village dies, including those in the forest.”
Keiran starts towards Xaden.

“You’re not touching a single hair on her head.” He keeps walking, his footsteps heavy on the all stone floor.

“Where are you taking her?” Keiran demands, then, “for fucks sake.”

A portal opens, then slams shut. The sickening feeling of magic travel rattles me to the bone, making me nauseous, and then it is over as quickly as it began.
“XADEN!”

“Offering?” The Demon Slayer’s voice is hoarse above me. “Are you still with me?”

My response sounds somewhere off among Mars. “I-I don’t feel so well...I’m light-headed.”

He lays me down on a bed. The room is dark and warm and it smells like him, like cold, summer nights by the ocean, and honeyed amber.
I can sense him pull away, but I take a fistful of his shirt. “P-please, don’t go.”

Just a few hours ago, Xaden was the last person I would have wanted to see me vulnerable.

Oh fucking well.

I’ve never felt so vulnerable in my life.

I choke on a sob. “W-why did you save me?” I ask, moving my hands from his shirt to grab a fistful of my hair. “Y-you said I was better off–” I hiccup– “dead.”
Xaden looks at me with two demonic, red eyes. His expression is sharp, and for a second he’s going to leave me here until something passes over his facial features that I’ve never seen from a man before.

Only glimpses of it from Kallias.

“Move over,” he finally grumbles and though my body still feels on fire, I do as he says.

The bed sinks beneath his weight and he takes me into his arms and nestles me against him.

I press my cheek into his chest and feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat against my chest. It’s slower than mine, as is such for vampires, but still, steady and loud.
“Drink,” he says.

It takes me a moment to see that the only reason he’s wrapped me up in his arms is so I can drink from his wrist.
I pull back slightly, examining the thin cut he made on his arm.

“A-are you sure that’s safe?” I ask.

Xaden gives me a look that implies he’s debating whether he should tell me to shut the fuck up or just press my face to his skin.
I must look really broken and vulnerable, because, to my surprise, he does neither.

“Just drink it,” he says, and despite the churning in my chest, I do it.

Xaden blood tastes like honeyed liquor. Like dark cherry and olives and somehow wood. It’s delicious, and I drink heavily.

“Good girl,” he says to me once I pull back. I half expect him to leave the bed, but he stays, arms wrapped around my shoulder.

I’ve never felt as safe as I do at this moment, and from Xaden, of all people. He’s tortured me since I’ve come here–physically and emotionally–and now…I don’t know what to make of this.
“Why did you save me?” I ask, again.

“Stop asking questions and just rest,” he says.

“Tell me why.”

His arm comes around me, his fingers sure at my waist. “Because I felt like it, and because I could.”

“A real answer, please.”

Xaden sighs. “I tried to stay away from you, for your own fucking protection,” his hand grips my hair, pulling on my scalp a bit harder than I’d prefer, “but I fucking can’t.”
Tears slip from my eyes from more than the pain. “Can’t what?”

Xaden breathes down the side of my neck. “Where I come from, beautiful little girls like you are broken every single day for no reason other than to make men laugh. And I can’t stand it anymore.”
His breath is warm against my throbbing temples. This is Xaden. Not one of the twins, not the cruel touch of Keiran. He bit me, he used me. “But you said–” I start.
“I know what I said, Remi.”

My name on his lips makes me gasp.

“Rest, now,” he says, and my eyelids grow heavy. His grip tightens and he tilts back my neck. The Demon Slayer trails his fingertip across my forehead, down my jawline, then my neck. Warmth spreads beneath his touch. Heat and magic.

He pulls back as I drift off to sleep. My eyelids are heavy, but I watch him at the door.

“P-please, don't leave me.”

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

"Why not?" I prompt, feeling like I'm in a dream.

Xaden pauses at the doorframe, his shoulders tense. When he speaks, he barely glances over his shoulder. “Because I can’t fucking stay away from you anymore.”