“Or something.”
If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I’d be sitting with a
vampire, in the dark, getting ready for the biggest battle of my life,
I would have laughed. I’m still laughing.
“How can they sleep?” I say, thinking of Marty and my cousin
spread out in the office like we’re at summer camp.
Frederik shrugs. “Sometimes the body wins over the mind.”
My body and my mind are both warring against me.
“Are you going to ask me to rethink my plan?” I ask him.
He shakes his head and tucks a black strand behind his ear. He
leans forward on the railing, fingers touching in that conspiratorial
way of his. “No.”
It would be weird to confess that I want his approval. He’s
ancient compared to me. All of them are. They’ve all had their share
of wars, but here they are, backing me up.
“In fact,” Frederik says, “it’s smart.”
“But-?” It sounds like there’s a “but” at the end of that
compliment.
“But-” He hovers over what he wants to say. My heart tightens like
a fist. I feel like I’m getting dumped or something. “I wonder if
you’ve given more thought to what you will do when it comes to Kurt.”
“I’ve been sort of busy,” I lie. Kurt is in the back of my head,
at the front of my head. He’s there when I hold the Scepter of the
Earth because the ancient weapon is incomplete, and Kurt and Nieve
hold the other pieces. Kurt is there when I look at Thalia because
he’s her brother. He’s there when I look at myself, because we, yeah,
okay, Layla pointed out we have the same nose and the same stubborn
frown when things don’t go our way. He’s there when he’s not there
because I was counting on him and he’s missing.
“You should rest,” Frederik tells me.
“My blood is pumping like crazy,” I say, “not that I should
confess that to a vamp. You should go get some sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“You’re already dead.”
“The dust kind of dead.” He looks behind me and smirks. “Though I
don’t suppose you’ve got sleep on your mind, either.”
And just as quickly as he appeared, he’s gone. I see what he was
looking at before he vanished. Layla. She cut her sweatpants into
shorts. The hoodie she’s wearing swallows her up, covering her so that
all I can focus on are her sun-kissed legs. Her hair is curled from
the humidity, framing her cheekbones in a way that makes my gut fall
like it’s at the peak of a roller coaster.
“You’d be terrible at sneak attacks,” I say.
“Good thing I’m not trying to be sneaky.” She sits beside me and
my body heats up instantly. “We almost maxed out all the guest rooms.
Marty’s going to have a hell of a time laundering the sheets.”
“I’m going to try to sleep standing up.”
She takes my hand. “I think there’s still room upstairs.”
I let her tug on my fingers, and without even thinking, I follow
her up the steps and into an empty guest room. It’s all black and red.
There’s an arched window with a ledge cluttered with old books. I sit
on the bed beside her.
Now that it’s just the two of us, I let my body deflate. She rubs
my shoulder, and some of that pressure eases off.
“That’s amazing.”
“Jesus, Tristan. You’re like overcooked steak.”
“Thanks? I’m a little tense, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
She squeezes extra hard and I pull back. There’s this moment where
I want to reach out and grab her. I want to hold her in my arms and
tell her everything I feel about her. In the dim light of the room, we
reach for each other at the same time. My knee is shaking and she puts
a hand over it. She touches my chest, tracing her finger on my new
tattoo.
“I’m kidnapped for a few hours, and you chop off your hair and get
tatted up.” She edges closer to me, her warm breath right at my ear.
“Any piercings while you were at it?”
I answer with a crooked smile and a wink. She doesn’t believe that
I’d pierce anything. I have to get belted onto the table when the team
does the yearly blood drive. But still, she lets her hand wander from
my chest. I hold her eyes, daring her, as she keeps exploring down. My
heart is stuck in my throat. When she gets to my stomach, I grab her
hand.
It is the most painful thing I’ve ever done to myself. “Wait.”
“Wait?”
“I have to say something.”
She sits back and listens.
“Tomorrow,” I say, “when this all happens, I want you to promise
me, and I mean seriously promise me, that you’re going to stay
somewhere safe. I can’t tell you what to do, because you’re you, and
you don’t listen, even when I’m trying to protect you.”
“Not helping.”
“I don’t care. If something happened to you, I’d-It wouldn’t be
good for me.”
She leans forward, resting her head on my chest. “What about me? I
could say the same to you and it’d be like talking to the wind.”
“It’s different, Layla. I chose this.”
She presses her hand on my face, leading me down so we’re less
than an inch apart. “So did I.”
“It’s in my blood. It calls to me.”
She stands up. The light of the street and the fog fill the room
with a strange glow, like we’re stuck in an old movie. She takes off
her sweater. Her skin is hot to the touch. Her tank top is ripped and
has a black stain I’d rather not think about. She bats those thick,
black lashes and I forget why we’re here and not tangled back at home
on a couch. Or on the beach.
“Don’t ask me to go home,” she whispers.
I smile, pulling on her hands. She sits on me, one knee on either
side of me. I want to jump out of my skin, but it’s best if I don’t
move. “There’s no telling you what to do.”
“Only took you sixteen years to figure it out.”
She traces the lines of my face, like outlining where my hair used
to be.
“You don’t like it.” I keep my hands pressed firmly on her lower
back. “Layla-”
But she doesn’t want me to talk. So she kisses me. It’s so soft
that I open my eyes to make sure it really happened. It’s not enough.
Not when either of us could be gone in a few hours. No, I don’t want
to think like that. I just want to feel her lips on mine. Again.
Again. Again. She moves her face to the side and kisses my jaw, my
neck. I lean in against her. Her breath hitches when I pull her closer
because she’s still too far away. I kiss her cheek and then stop
because her face is wet.
“That bad, eh?” I try to joke, but I’m nervous. I lean back on the
bed and keep my hands at my sides.
She shakes her head, wipes the tears from her eyes, then presses
her wet fingers on my face. “I’m trying to not be mad at you.”
“What did I do now?” I bark out, laughing, and she puts a hand
over my mouth. That pulls me out of our bedroom dream and back to
reality. A vampire’s home. A storm. A battle.
“You waited too long.” She presses her hands on my chest.
“I know.” I brush her hair back with my hand and hold her face so
she won’t look away when I talk. “When I was in the Vale of Tears, I
thought about where you were. That somehow I’d come out of that world
and I’d have missed it. That she would have won. That I’d never see
you again-”
She takes my hands down and holds them. “I’m not going anywhere,
Tristan. Not unless you do something stupid.”
“I’m trying to have a moment here.”
She smiles the kind of smile that makes me forget I’m fighting a
war.
“We aren’t ‘moment’ kind of people.”