Reign of the Fallen (Reign of the Fallen #1)(48)

I tip his chin up with my fingers, then gently catch his lips with mine. I’m falling deeper into his eyes as he lifts me into his arms and carries me down the stairs to his room.

This is probably a bad idea. Someone’s going to get hurt. But I don’t tell Jax to stop.

It isn’t until we’re in his room, as he’s laying me gently on the bed, that his face shimmers and blurs into Evander’s and I come to whatever senses I have left.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a rush, blinking hard until Jax is Jax again and my head is clear. “It’s still too soon . . .” I kiss his tattooed shoulder before he pulls away to grab the tunic he’d just thrown off.

As he puts it back on and smooths his wild dark hair, my body turns cold all over. Things between us have changed so much now. It’s all my fault. I didn’t mean to make Jax look at me that way. All I wanted was a few moments of selfish pleasure.

Jax starts to rise from the bed, but I grab his wrist. “Where are you going?”

He answers without meeting my eyes. “I don’t know. Anywhere.”

“I can’t kick you out of your own room. Stay.” Even as I say it, he starts to pull away. I squeeze his wrist, startling him into looking at me. “Please?”

Jax sighs, but he turns away from the door. He settles himself behind me on the bed, like he sometimes does when neither of us can sleep, and wraps his arms around me. His breathing has slowed, but his heart’s still pounding hard. Just like mine.

“What’s on your mind?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder to study his sharp profile in the shadows.

“You.” His breath warms my hair as he exhales heavily. “And killing things.”

I quirk a brow and shake my head. “I’m so glad I can’t see inside your head.”

Finally, he grins a little. “I was just thinking, now that the giant Shade is gone, maybe Simeon and I can finally get back to work. Were the others you killed as strong or as fast as . . . the one we’d been hunting?”

He’s gone out of his way not to mention Evander, which is fine by me. Still, this is the first time we’ve talked about what happened that day.

“I’m not sure. The whole thing was strange, seeing three monsters together like that. They’ve never hunted in packs before. And we still don’t know how that one got so strong.” I turn in Jax’s arms to face him. “I don’t want you going back to the Deadlands until we find those missing nobles and figure out what really happened to Nicanor. Then we can go in a group and make sure it’s safe to do more raisings. Just . . . one trouble at a time, all right?”

Jax rubs his fingers across the tattoo on his left shoulder, now covered by his tunic: a lone black wolf like the ones that roam the cold forests of his home province, Lorness. “I can’t speak for Si, but I think we should keep taking jobs. Since we don’t know if the danger’s passed, we could charge a little extra.” He smiles, razor-sharp. “For risking life and all the good things that come with it.”

I immediately think of the little girl I met in the Ashes, sitting outside a crumbling house and clutching her doll, the only reminder of her lost mother. I know she’s just one of many.

“I don’t need all that gold,” I murmur. “Do you?”

“Of course I do.” He blinks like he’s surprised by my scowl. “Mages are like gods among men. It might kill her, but Kasmira could stop a hurricane. Danial could pull someone back from the brink of death. And you and I give life to people who have already spent theirs. That’s worth our weight in gold, at least.” His wolfish grin surfaces. “And it’s easier to come by than I used to think. Some girl who came to us this morning was willing to pay her entire fortune. We turned her down, but there’ll be others.”

“What was her name?” I demand, aware of my voice rising. Meredy Crowther was looking for a necromancer. And she didn’t seem to hear my warning about not going into the Deadlands with or without me.

“She didn’t tell us, but that’s not unusual.” Jax shrugs. “I was about to take her money, but when Simeon pointed out that the giant Shade was still loose in the Deadlands and she could get killed, I . . .” He grimaces. It must cost him something to admit what he’s about to say. “I couldn’t go through with it. There’s been too much death lately.”

I have a sudden urge to kiss away Jax’s pain. But I won’t. I’ve done enough damage there already, and besides, I doubt even the best kiss will help ease the sting of Evander’s absence for Jax any more than it would for me.

“From the look of things, though, she’s not one to give up easily,” Jax mutters.

My heart skips a beat. The girl he mentioned could be anyone, but I need to be sure she’s not Meredy. “What do you mean, from the look of things? Jax, what did this girl look like?”

“It was the same girl who was searching for you at the party—I saw her again when I was trying to find you at the healing house. She was farther down the hill, coming up from the Ashes. She had dark red hair and a scar—”

“Across her cheek . . .”

Jax nods and frowns, looking puzzled by my reaction. My skin prickles with alarm for cool, calm, distant Meredy. “Yeah,” he says. “And there were a couple of men with her, and an older woman, following her to the cemetery near the healers’ place.”