He stared at her ring. “I want to see what happens when you take it off.”
“I don’t take it off. Ever. It’s my good luck charm. Some people have votive candles. I have my ring to keep the monsters away.”
“Doesn’t work, though. After all, I’m here.” He leaned in further, past the dust, and inhaled her scent—mayflower blossoms and oaks. Rainwater streamed down her skin, and it was hard not to touch her, to make her pulse race even faster. His chest ached. Still, even if he couldn’t touch her, he could take a dark pleasure in what he was about to do. What he’d come here to tell her would completely disrupt that simple and ordered world she believed in so fervently.
There was more than one way to make a girl’s pulse race.
He whispered, “You need to run, Rosalind. They’re coming for you.”
Her muscles tensed, and she clutched her weapon tighter.
“Who’s coming for me?” Her breath was hardly a whisper.
He enjoyed drawing this out. “The Brotherhood,” he spoke low into her ear, in his most soothing voice. “They want to watch the world burn, and you with it.”
“Why would the Brotherhood come for one of their own?” Her voice cracked.
This was the moment everything would change for her, and he got to witness it. “You’re not one of theirs. I know what you are. And the Brotherhood will soon find it out.”
He cast one last glance into her stunned face, into those dark, almond-shaped eyes that struck a disturbing chord of familiarity. Her family were the architects of his torment, and they had turned his life into an unending nightmare, yet at the sight of her confusion and horror he felt no triumph. He felt something else, something deeply unexpected: a strange surge of protectiveness.
When he looked into her eyes, the darkest recesses of his memory whispered to him. They offered up those ephemeral images—the dappled hawthorn grove, and the rush of sea grasses under his fingertips. For a moment, he longed for someone he used to be. But those sorts of thoughts led only to madness.
As he turned, he tightened his fists, stalking into the shadows. He pushed the images deep into his mental vault. Perhaps, even for a demon of the night, beauty dwelled all over the living world. After all, demons weren’t merely creatures of death. His senses were more powerful than an ordinary human’s. He could smell the richness of the earth and see the stars’ brilliance in a way that no mortal could.
But in Caine’s case, that sort of simple pleasure belonged to a different time, before his world had shattered. Even thinking of those idyllic days brought danger. He glanced up at the stormy night sky, trying to clear his thoughts. A spear of lightning flashed, searing the sky. The encounter with Rosalind had deeply unnerved him.
Even if he wanted to fight it, he had an unsettling feeling that Rosalind would occupy too much of his thoughts in the near future. Her combination of vulnerability and defiance was intoxicating. In any case, he must keep his distance for his own sanity. For one thing, Erish would tear Rosalind’s spine out of her throat if the succubus sensed his fascination.
For another, he’d seen what could happen to creatures of the night who came too close to the light—and he wasn’t going to let himself burn for her.