Page 76 of The Witch They Crave

"Why not?"

The question lands harder than I meant it to. He goes still, and for a second I think he's going to deflect—but I've already gotten this far, and he knows it.

"Because somebody used my body once without asking me," he says, flat, all the performance gone out of it. "Decided what I'd be and did it to me while I couldn't stop them. That's how I got made." He meets my eyes. "So I won't put my mouth on a living person and take. Not even when they're begging me to. It's the one line I've got. The only thing about this whole cursed existence I actually chose."

I don't say anything. There's nothing that wouldn't cheapen it.

There's a familiar tug low in my sternum—the pull toward him that his blood left in me, the one I’m still not used to. And with it comes understanding. I know now what I walked into.

"And my blood," I say slowly. "My blood is different?"

"Your blood." He laughs, short and without any humor in it. "Your blood makes three hundred years of that line feel like a suggestion I could take or leave. Close range, you bleeding, all of it screaming at me to just—" His eyes roll back in ecstasy and then he shakes his head hard, once. "So yeah. I put you into a wall and told you to run. That was me holding the line. That was the best version of me you were getting, and it still scared the hell out of you. It should have."

I cross the shed.

I take his hand—the right one, the knuckles still faintly scarred from where he split them open against the stone because his own blood was the only smell strong enough to drown mine. He goes still when I do it. His whole body registers the contact like a struck note.

"I'm not going to tell you it's okay," I say. "It's not a thing that needs forgiving. There's nothing to forgive. You held a line most people don't even have." I run my thumb over the ridge of scar on his knuckle. "Thank you. For telling me. I know you didn't want to."

"Hex—"

"I mean it. It's—" I search for it, and land on the true thing. "It's nice. Knowing more of you. You keep so much of yourself behind the jokes and bravado that half the time I feel like I'm talking to a locked door. This was you, unlocked. I liked it."

He looks at our hands. Then at me. And for one second the grin's nowhere, the teeth are nowhere, there's just the storm-blue and something underneath it that's been alone a very long time.

"Careful, Hex," he says, but it comes out soft, without the usual armor. "Say things like that and I'll start thinking you like me."

"Maybe I do.” I bite the inside of my cheek and blink up at him. “Terrible judgment. I'm working on it."

That gets a real laugh out of him—short, surprised—and then he closes the space between us and kisses me, and it's nothing like the storm in his eyes. It's slow. Careful. His lips brush against mine, teasing me to open up for him and I do. He slides his tongue against mine and my magic switches directions in my body, yearning to get closer to him, yearning for more.

I exhale into him, melting a bit, and he holds me up, drinking me in.

"I have to tell you something," he says. "And you're not going to like where it puts me."

I groan, wishing we could go back to kissing and forget everything else. "When do I ever?"

"I’m still digging into Leopold." His voice drops, the play gone out of it. "Tailing his couriers, mostly. Learning the schedule—who he sends where, which drop-offs he keeps off the books. I've been pulling threads for weeks and I finally caught one that's going somewhere. Something about his family, before the house fell. Something he's spent a long time keeping buried." He pulls back enough to look at me. "I'm close, Hex. Closer than I've been to anything."

And I think about the vault. About the drive out to that dead building, the cold coming off the stone, the door with no handle that only I could open.

"Kage." My mouth's gone dry. "There's something I need to tell you too."

“Oh Jesus. What?”

"Leopold took me somewhere. A couple weeks ago—one of his properties, an old one, out past the river. There was a door in the basement. It was sealed by some old magic." I watch it register on his face. “He made me open it. And whatever was behind it, he wanted it badly enough to build the whole night around getting me to that door."

Kage goes still, his brows knitting. His scar bunches up on his cheek. "What was behind it?"

"I don't know. We left before I could see. But—Kage, if you're pulling on his family—" I don't finish it. I don't have to. The vault, the messengers, at some point it’s all going to lead to the same place. The same truth.

"That's the same thread," he says quietly as if he read my mind. "Whatever I'm chasing and whatever you opened. It's the same thread."

"Then be careful. Please. If he catches you anywhere near it—"

"He won't." The grin comes back, but it's thinner now, and I don't believe it. I don't think he does either. He steps back toward the door, already retreating into the armor. "Don't worry about me, Hex. Worrying's my job. I'm very good at it."

He's gone before I can tell him that's exactly what scares me.