Asterion presses a hand over his chest. The man looks no different, and he’s acting no different, and yet his expression is so hopeful.
“You’re really curing me,” he says, his face shocked. “I can feel it—so much of my bloodlust is gone.”
But not all of it. I’m not going to think too hard about that little detail. I’d like to fall asleep tonight.
I lean back in my chair and suppress a yawn. Asterion notices anyway.
“You’ve over-exerted yourself,” he says, his brows furrowing. “Again.”
I wave him off. “I’ll be fine in a few hours.” I stretch my body, glancing around. “So, what do you do around here for fun?”
Asterion takes me down several passages towards his game room.
I was given a unit with a single bedroom, and this guy has a game room. Before I get jealous, I remember that this same guy is trapped here, in a self-made coffin of sorts.
“Why the maze?” I ask him we head down the passages. I step over a smashed model of the Complex that’s been dragged out into the hallway.
“I thought I’d keep to the myths,” he says wryly, his lips twisting into a smile.
My heart beats a little faster at the sight of it.
“Really?” I say.
“No,” he says, and now his grin grows.
His smile is contagious, and I feel my own grow. I’m more than a little dazzled by those white teeth of his, made even whiter against his reddish-brown skin.
“In all seriousness,” he continues, “the maze is for my own good. When I become mad with violence, I cannot think rationally. People believe the labyrinth is here to confuse the innocents who find themselves trapped. In reality, it’s to confuse me.”
We stop outside the door presumably to his game room. When the two of us enter, I’m not surprised to find that most of the room has been demolished. The couches lining the far wall have been shredded to pieces.
A tabletop airship board is crushed inwards. The shelves have been pulled off the walls, their contents strewn about the room.
I glance at Asterion’s crestfallen face. “I thought I left this room untouched …”
“Why don’t we just talk?” I say.
Still frowning, he nods.
I pick my way through the rubble, gingerly perching myself on the edge of the demolished couch. Meanwhile, Asterion moves to the opposite side of the room, digging through the heaps of debris. From it, he procures a metal flask.
He holds it up. “Consolation prize.”
I smile at that. “And, if we finish it all tonight, I have another container to use. Win-win.”
He laughs a little under his breath and sits at my side.
Asterion opens the flask and hands it to me. I take a swig, the alcohol burning down my throat, before passing it back. He follows my lead.
For several moments, it’s quiet, and the silence is uncomfortable. Only days ago I was running from him, and only days ago he was half mad with violence.
And now here we are. Strangers brought together by circumstance and forced to live together.
I stare down at my hands.
Next to me, Asterion sighs. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he says, turning to face me. “So very sorry.”
I meet his eyes, and it’s almost too much. How strangely handsome he is, how unquestioningly kind he is, how sadly doomed he is.
“It’s not your fault,” I say hoarsely.
Taking the flask from him, I tip back another shot of the stiff liquor. I hiss out a breath, then shake my head, handing the container back to him.
“Besides,” I add, “it’s probably for the best that I’m here. You were set to get a Human victim, and that would’ve likely caused all sorts of problems for the Complex.” Who knows how long Sher would’ve lasted here. At least I have a chance of surviving.
Asterion gives me a curious look, not following my words.
“When I was taken by the Intra, I had just finished removing a curse from a client,” I explain. My lips twist into a mirthless smile. “I forgot my neutralizing vials that day. I was on my way back to my office to purge the curse when I was intercepted by the Intra and taken here.”
“So … it was another curse that brought you here?” Asterion says, piecing my words together.
I nod, somewhat embarrassed. Sloppiness had landed me here, the same sloppiness that caused me to OD on Asterion’s curse. It burns my pride to think about it.
I glance around the room, looking for an escape from my thoughts. “Will you tell me about yourself?” I finally ask.
He rubs his mouth, his eyes distant. “Not much to tell.” He hesitates, and I can tell this man is uncomfortable—no, unused to—talking about himself. “I’ve been cursed for centuries, bound by my very nature. There were some good years—many good years, but the bad years inevitably followed the good.”
And with that vague description of his life, Asterion stops sharing. Apparently, this man is really unused to sharing much about himself.
“And you have always been this way?” I ask, peering at him.
He really is handsome, and I have always been the kind of girl that goes for the tortured soul.
I blink through my thoughts. Shit, where is my mind drifting?
Of course, right then, Asterion chooses to meet my gaze. A snap of electricity passes through his deep brown eyes, and suddenly, I know he feels it too. Something passes between us. Something heated and distinctly unprofessional.
Abruptly, he stands. “You should rest. If you’re serious about removing the curse, then I’ll look for more containers you can use.”
I push off the couch, my heart thundering. I don’t know whether I’m embarrassed by what passed between us, or eager for more. Both, I think.
“I can help you look for the containers,” I offer.
He shakes his head. “Please don’t, Skylar.”
“Really,” I insist, now feeling a good buzz setting in from the alcohol. Well, that and a healthy dose of something more heated.
“It’s fine,” Asterion says. “I don’t need help.”
“But—”
Asterion flashes me a pitying look. “I don’t want you to hate me, Skylar, but I can’t be a friend. You and I both know that.”
“Why?” I ask, feeling rejected when I hadn’t even realized I was putting myself out there.
How did this go so wrong?
His face turns grim. “Keep those knives on you, Skylar,” he says ominously. “You might end up needing them.”
Chapter 10
The next morning, it’s painfully silent as the two of us move to his dining room. Like yesterday, his tabletop is full of an assortment of containers. Begrudgingly I’m impressed with the amount he managed to find.
“I’m sorry,” he says now, breaking the silence.
My residual annoyance and embarrassment dissipates at his words.
“I never meant to hurt your feelings,” he continues, gazing down at the ground.
I stare at him. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, he does so. And in his eyes I see … I see real pain—and maybe something else. Something I felt stirring inside of me last night.
“I’m just want to make the best out of a bad situation,” I say.
His voice drops low. “Skylar, you don’t know just how bad the situation is.” He’s begging me with his eyes to understand.
I sigh, slipping out of my seat to grab one of the containers. “Why don’t we just focus on removing your curse for now?” It’s the one safe topic we suddenly have.
Silently he nods, and with that, I begin.
For the next week, our days go like this. They begin with breakfast, always studiously cooked and waiting for me in t
he morning. Asterion is always there waiting for me, being polite to a fault, but also distant, which seems almost impossible, considering how little we know of each other. But I feel it like a physical thing between us, his need to push me away.
And it bothers me, not just because it makes me feel like I’m constantly overstepping somehow, but also because I feel like I’ve started to see him differently. When I’m around him, I bask in his presence. And when I’m not around him, I’m thinking about him.
That … unnerves me. One of the most basic professional rules is: don’t get involved with your clients.
I turn my attention away from my thoughts to stare at Asterion. He’s no longer the monster I met. Over the last week I removed the vast majority of his curse, and now, not only has most of his anger disappeared, his physical appearance has altered.
Curses that have to do with a person’s physical appearance can often be the most tedious to remove because they’re spread throughout the biggest organ of all—the skin. But I’ve slowly whittled away at it. Several days ago I watched Asterion’s claws become blunted nails and his fangs flatten. When he saw himself in the mirror, I could tell he was shaken.
But even that was nothing compared to two days ago, when his skin changed from its burnished red color to a deep olive. At first, Asterion marveled at it, but when the two of us stared at his reflection in the mirror, he bowed his head and said, “I think I’d like to be alone.”
While this wasn’t necessarily the biggest change—no, the biggest change was probably the removal of Asterion’s immortality—it was the most obvious, and thus, the most alarming.
Now I sit with him again in the dining room, a dozens of containers lined up next to us.
“So these are all the containers left?” I ask, chewing my lower lip. The sight of them is deceptive—it looks like enough, but with Asterion’s curse, I use them up fast.
Asterion nods.
Hopefully this will be all I need, but I have my doubts.
The used containers are piled against the far wall of the room, my anti-curse spells still busy neutralizing the removed bits of his curse. Whoever placed this curse on Asterion was powerful. Powerful and determined.
He drums his nails on the table, as I cast my neutralizing charm on each one of the remaining vessels.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. Despite the man trying to keep his distance, I’m beginning to read him.
Perhaps that’s because you’ve been staring at him and thinking about him far too much. I grit my teeth against the thought.
“I’m afraid,” he admits, his eyes reluctantly moving to me.
This is what is so appealing about Asterion. He never says or does what I expect him to.
“Why are you afraid?” I ask.
He holds his hand out in front of him, his completely human hand. “It’s going to continue, isn’t it?” he says, absently touching one of his long, wicked horns with his other hand. “I’m going to keep losing my features until I look as I once did.”
I nod.
“That’s what scares me,” he says with a raw edge to his voice. “This is the body I’ve known for almost as long as I can remember. I hate it, but I’m fearful that I will hate who I am without it even more.”
What do you say to that?
I reach out for his hand, clasping it in my own. His grip tightens on mine, like I’m his lifeline.
“Different is not always bad,” I say.
He takes a deep breath, then nods. “You’re right, of course.” It looks like he’s trying to convince himself of that more than anything else.
It takes hours to peel away today’s section of the curse. The strands of it that have latched to the inside of Asterion’s skin are delicate, and they fight my magic, desperately trying to cling to Asterion. I have to meticulously pull each strand off before I can breathe the curse in. It’s tedious and time-consuming.
And boring.
Very, very boring.
But eventually I manage to remove the last bits of the curse from his skin. Keeping my eyes closed, I give the remaining pieces of the curse a final look-over. Over the last week, I’ve removed almost all of the once pervasive curse. The last bits of it are plastered against his brain and embedded in his heart.
That last one worries me most. The others will be tricky to remove and far more complicated than what I’m used to, but the section over Asterion’s heart hasn’t loosened like I hoped it would. If anything, the epicenter of the curse seems to have dug itself deeper into his flesh. It’s not willingly releasing itself, and to be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.
A concern for another time.
Slowly, I open my eyes and get my first good look at Asterion since we began today.
My breath catches in my throat. Gone are his horizontally slitted pupils, gone are his hooves.
Gone are his horns.
All that’s left of Asterion is a man, a ruggedly handsome, intense man.
I feel a flush creeping up my cheeks the longer I stare at him.
“What?” he finally asks. “Did something … go wrong?”
I shake my head. “No, not at all.”
He pauses. “Then, what is it?”
I smile softly at him. “You’re human again.”
Chapter 11
Asterion touches his face, staring at his reflection in the bathroom’s cracked mirror.
For a moment, I’m worried that he’s going to break down. That all his earlier fears are about to rush up and consume him.
Instead he says, “I … had forgotten.” He moves his hand over his head, where his horns had previously been.
His eyes flick to mine in the mirror, and there’s a world of heat in them. “You’ve done what no one else could,” he breathes.
His attention and his praise both make me bashful. “I haven’t gotten it all out,” I say.
He turns to me and, without warning, cups my cheeks, his eyes shining. “Thank you.”
And then his mouth is on mine.
At first, I freeze. He’s been so distant, despite the looks that sometimes pass between us, that I assumed he wanted nothing to do with me. But now, feeling the fire in his kiss, I realize how wrong I was.
Tentatively, I begin to kiss him back, my mouth gliding over his. The touch, the contact feels so unbearably good. And then all those confusing emotions I’ve felt over the last week catch up to me, and suddenly I’m trying to breathe him in like his very essence is a curse I need to take into me.
My arms wrap around his back, my body leaning into his. I can’t get enough of his skin, his mouth, of the masculine smell that I’ve come to recognize as strictly his.
Now all my illicit, embarrassing thoughts about him no longer feel so embarrassing or uncalled for. Not when he’s pulling me closer, groaning into my mouth.
I should break away, I should act modest about this, but my passion is building on itself. It buzzes beneath my skin, demanding more. A kiss should be enough, but it’s not, not nearly.
And then he breaks away, stumbling out of my embrace. The two of us spend several seconds catching our breath.
My gaze meets his, and beneath his smoldering expression I see … remorse.
The look slices through me.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
He’s … sorry?
Discreetly, he wipes his mouth. “That never should have happened.” He straightens, and then, not sparing me another glance, he brushes past me.
For several seconds I stand dumbly there, trying to figure out what happened to make him go from appreciation to passion to, finally, rejection. And then my backbone snaps into place.
I swivel and stalk after him. “Asterion!”
Ahead of me, he strides dow
n the hall, pretending he didn’t hear me.
“Asterion!”
He stops, and I can see the large breath he takes before he turns to face me. The look he gives me levels my heart. It’s equal parts desire, frustration, and despair.
“Please, leave me alone,” he says, all the heat zapped from his words.
“Leave you alone?” I say, my righteous indignation building as I close the distance between us. “Are you kidding me?” I give him a little push in the chest to emphasize my words. “Even if I could, you just kissed me!”
Infuriating man! These mind games are driving me insane.
He runs his hands through his hair and releases a very monstrous growl. “Don’t you of all people understand, Skylar?” His bright eyes plead with mine.
“Understand what?” I say.
And now those bright eyes look so crestfallen. He reaches out and cups my cheek, his face softening. “You really don’t know,” he says, like the revelation only just hit him.
“Know what?” I swear if he keeps speaking in riddles …
“Doesn’t it strike you as funny that you want to be around me so much?” he says.
I give him a bewildered look. “You’re the only other person here,” I say. “Of course I want to spend time with you.”
“Two weeks ago I was a violent beast and you were my frightened sacrifice,” he says, sounding so reasonable. And now that he points that out, it is strange that in such a short time I’ve gone from feeling scared of him to drawn to him.
His eyes move to my lips. “Don’t you feel it? That compulsion to be together?”
I frown. I do feel something. The idea that he feels it too makes an illogical part of me ridiculously happy. But the way he’s telling me this has me eyeing him cautiously.
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