What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(107)
Something had changed in our relationship in that moment, and Caelum damn well knew it.
“Is there something you want to talk about, my star?” Caelum asked, tilting his head to the side as he drew in a breath.
“Just nervous,” I lied, feeling the need to protect my thoughts from him. I couldn’t say what Caelum would do if he discovered I’d wondered about his intentions and his obsession with me, but whatever it was, I didn’t think it would be good, and the walls closed in around me some more.
“You could have stayed in the safety of the Resistance,” he remarked, tugging me around a corner as Melian and the others melted into one of the alleyways in the distance. “You’d be warm and comfortable there, waiting for me to wake you up with my cock.”
“Is that all you care about now? I am more than just something for you to fuck,” I said, my voice dropping low. I loved his innuendos and his desire for me, but in the moments when I had to wonder about the intensity of our relationship, the last thing I wanted was to feel as if I didn’t matter beyond the hole between my legs.
He stopped in the middle of the alleyway, looking down to glare at me in warning. “Trust me when I tell you that I know exactly what you’re worth, Little One. I know exactly how irreplaceable you are. That is why I would much rather see you waiting back in the tunnels, safe and sound where nothing can take you away from me,” he said, leaning forward to touch his lips to my forehead in a tender moment.
I tried to shrug off Melian’s concerns and the way they’d melded with mine, creating a symphony of worry inside of me that I couldn’t seem to shake. I sensed that I was dancing on the edge of something, missing what was right in front of my face.
“I don’t know what I’ve done to make you mistake me for a woman of leisure, Caelum, but I most certainly am not,” I said primly as my lips curved up, watching as his brow smoothed in the face of my sudden sass and the dissipation of the tension from a moment before.
“Not yet, anyway. I’d very much like to see you live a comfortable life one day,” he said, stepping up to the corner of an alley. He peeked around it, guiding me out onto the main street as we followed the shadows of Melian and her men in the distance. He walked at my back as I crossed the open space, hugging the shadows outside the circles of torchlight. I drew my dagger from its sheath and clutched it in my hand, taking comfort in the small blade that drew less attention than a sword would have.
Every set of eyes that fell on me from the windows of the homes lining the street felt like they would sound the alarm, like they would turn us in out of fear they might suffer the consequences of our freedom. We ducked into another narrow cross street, leaving me to breathe a sigh of relief at being less exposed.
“Are we going to talk about what you’re keeping from me?” Caelum whispered, his voice hushed as he walked at my back. I inhaled raggedly, the chilly air filling my lungs as I didn’t dare to look back at him.
“I’m not keeping anything from you,” I said, as I glanced toward a darkened corner of the alley and felt the sweet relief of nothing staring back at me.
We came to the mouth of the crossroad, Caelum pressing his spine into the wall at his back as he chanced a glance out into another main road. He raised two fingers, signaling me to hurry across the cobblestone roadway and into the alley on the opposite side. Once there, I waited, watching as Caelum ducked low and hurried to catch up behind me.
“If you aren’t keeping anything from me, then why do you sometimes act as if you’ve seen a ghost when you look at me, my star? Did I somehow become your enemy in the last two days?” he asked, walking at my side as we traveled down the darkened pathway between the main streets.
“Why would you be my enemy, Caelum? We’re on the same side.”
“Are we?” he asked, staring at me as I searched for any sign of Melian and the others. “The only side I’m on is the one that keeps you safe and mine. Beyond that, I couldn’t care less what happens to this world, no matter what you think that says about me.”
“You don’t care at all about saving the other Marked?” I asked, stopping in my tracks. I understood wanting me to stay safe, but to not care at all was brutal.
“I only care about you,” he reiterated. “I only came on this mission because I knew you would want me to. These people matter to you, so I’ll do my part. But I only do it out of loyalty to you, Little One. Not the Resistance.”
“They’re like us. How can you not want to help them?” I asked, forcing my feet to keep moving, because staying in one place would be too risky.
“Do you think us being like them would stop them from throwing us to the Mist Guard if it meant saving their own skins? Loyalty isn’t worth having if it doesn’t extend both ways,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me as if he could feel the way my thoughts had wandered since the cave beast. As if he could feel me pulling away from him, questioning him.
“Does that go for honesty as well?” I asked, swallowing past my nerves to act as he grabbed me by the front of the throat. He pressed me into the wall, letting the stone surface catch me.
I reached up, pressing the pointy end of my dagger to his throat as he grinned down at me. “That depends. There are some truths a person may not be ready to hear. Some omissions or lies are told for your protection. That goes for many things, my star,” he said, leaning into the sharp point until it broke the skin and a thin trail of blood dripped down his neck. “Like trust, but your tendency to put your knife to my throat would have me believe you do not trust me. Am I to understand I shouldn’t trust you in return?”