“What?”
“Chaotic. Unpredictable. I thought she was paranoid. She was always checking the windows, the locks, setting up traps, and she just seemed so unstable. I didn’t realize there were actually people after her. She panicked a lot when I wasn’t home, and sometimes, I caught her spying on me at school. None of it seemed normal. And she had no sense of what modern kids were like, or what they wore or did for fun, and we were these two strange outsiders in weird clothes…it seemed important at the time to fit in, to have a stable home. So I just became fascinated by other people’s lives. I wanted to know what went on behind their doors, in their pretty houses.” My breath had gone shallow. “I can see now she wasn’t crazy. She was trying to keep me safe from my half brother. I just wish she’d told me what was happening.”
“Why do you think she kept it from you?”
I looked at the beauty around me, the white flowers that bloomed in the night against the stone cottage. “Maybe she thought I would have wanted to come back here. This place feels like home. Especially at night.” I found tears welling up in my eyes, and I didn’t want to look at Orion. “It would have been hard to resist, even if it was dangerous.”
“It is your home,” he said softly, “and so is the wilderness. And the night. We are creatures of darkness—the incubi and succubi. In the old days, we were awake all night. We had festivals of starlight and shadows. We celebrated in the night sky, and we fed from mortal lust. Before the mortals caged us, we were free to race through the night, tearing over the forests and drinking from their dirtiest dreams.” He leaned on his knees with his forearms, his gaze intent on me. “I think you can feel it. You’re drawn to the dark, to the wilderness. You want to hunt like we once did. You feel that wildness trapped inside you, and you want to set it free. We may be Lightbringers, but we were born in the dark.”
I hated how he could read me so easily. He could tell me things about myself I hadn’t even put into words yet. Yes, I wanted to hunt and tear through the wilderness. “Lightbringers born in the dark. I’m not sure I understand.”
He glanced at the sky, and I followed his gaze to Venus. “They say everything began with chaos. Then a light sprang from the darkness, and he was the god Astaroth. Every night, he would return to the shadows, and from the chaos, he’d rise again. They say Astaroth was a fallen god, beautiful as the dawn. His sons were Lucifer and Noctifer—the Lightbringer and the Nightbringer, order and chaos. And Noctifer’s other name is Tammuz. My father.”
“Beautiful as the dawn,” I repeated. “A long day of beating the shit out of people brings out your poetic side.”
“I should probably torture people more often so I’m in top form for the spoken word poetry night I’m starting on Tuesdays.”
“It scares me that I can’t tell if you’re serious.”
The corner of his lips curled. “Scares you, or excites you?”
“Oddly enough, I’m not turned on by brutal violence. Though I have maybe spent more time than I should have looking at the Wikipedia page about medieval torture devices.”
“Of course you have,” he murmured.
“Did you know there was something called the Pear of Anguish?”
“Rowan,” he purred, “are you flirting with me?”
“Orion.” I leaned closer, so our lips were almost touching. “Surely you know that if a succubus were flirting with you, you’d be on your knees between my thighs by now.” The words just seemed to slip out of my mouth before I had the chance to consider them. My heart started to pick up its pace.
His eyes darkened, and his gaze slid slowly down my body, resting at the apex of my thighs. “Well, my Lightbringer, that is quite the image you’ve put in my mind.” He met my eyes again, his gaze molten.
Tension charged the air between us, and I wanted to crawl into his lap so badly, I had to grip the bench to stop myself.
“What?” I asked at last.
“You’re beautiful, that’s all.” His midnight voice wrapped around me.
“Beautiful.” My stomach flipped. “I’m identical to your worst enemy.”
“No, you’re not. You look nothing like her now. The way you hold yourself, your expressions—you’re completely different. The flush on your cheeks when something excites you or angers you. The way you look at me like you actually want to understand me, like you’re trying to see into my soul. How you pull your gaze away every time your heart starts to race. The way you look like you’re overwhelmed sometimes with the responsibility of trying to keep everyone safe, and you retreat into your own thoughts. You are nothing alike.”