As I watched the wood blacken and crumble and collapse, my lungs constricted, refused to take in sufficient air. How swiftly, how suddenly everything had gone wrong. Where did it even begin? Not with Meredith and me, I told myself, but months earlier—with Caesar? Macbeth? It was impossible to identify Point Zero. I squirmed, unable to dismiss the idea that some huge invisible weight was crushing down on me like a boulder. (It was that ponderous crouching demon Guilt. At the time I didn’t know him, but in the months to come he would climb onto my chest every night and sit snarling there, an ugly Fuselian nightmare.) The fire burned down to embers and its light slowly left the room, leaking out through the cracks. Lacking oxygen, light-headed, I tilted back toward unconsciousness, and it was more like suffocating than falling asleep.
Seems that Bran runs way deeper than I thought, but as he hangs on to me as if I'm his only anchor, I know that I'll never let him go.
Not even if I burn with him.
For him.
In him.
I'd willingly catch fire if he so much as asked me to.
"So," she said cautiously, "is all this your way of telling me you're the villain?"
His chuckle was dark. "I'm definitely not the hero."
"I already knew that," Tella said. "It's my story, so clearly I'm the hero."
His mouth tipped up at both corners, and his eyes sparked, growing as hot as the finger now reaching out trace her jaw. "If you're the hero, what does that make me?"
His finger dipped to her collarbone.
Heat spread across her chest.
"I'm still trying to figure that out."
"Would you like my help?" Dante dropped his hand to her hips.
Tella's breath hitched. "No. I don't want your help.... I want you."
Dante's gaze caught on fire and he took her mouth with his.