And she knew who his target would be.
The vampire who had killed her.
“I don’t know why I said that.” That confession left her lips as a whisper, one that lacked strength, made her sound as if she was worn down and on the edge, couldn’t take anymore.
She put it down to fatigue. He wasn’t the only one who needed some sleep, but she wouldn’t find rest if she closed her eyes. She would only find an endless replay of her final moments, every death she had experienced all rolled together in a nightmare.
It had nothing to do with the urge that swept through her, a need she had only indulged once.
With Syn.
Syn knew all about her, every horrible detail of her past. Syn was the only one who could know.
So why did she want to confess everything to Hartt? Why was she standing on the precipice and willing to take the fall, filled with hope that he would catch her rather than betray her in some way?
“I wish I’d known what you were,” Hartt murmured, his voice scraping low, tone distant as he looked at her. His gaze took on a bleak edge, the same one it had had when she had looked into his eyes and begged him to run.
When she had been filled with a desperate need to protect him.
“I can’t tell anyone. Can you imagine what that’s like?” She went to place her feet on the edge of the mattress to hug her legs to her chest and then remembered she was bare beneath her tunic, so she settled for toying with the hem of it instead, her eyes downcast. “We’re hunted. Prized by blood mages. It’s the reason I’ve been killed so many times.”
“The mages killed you?” He leaned towards her, resting his elbows on his knees, a beautiful look of concern mixed with rage on his handsome face. That look was in his eyes again, the one that said he wanted to hunt and destroy whoever had hurt her.
A look that made her feel special.
She shook her head. “Mostly… my family killed me.”
His eyes widened and she held her hand up, silencing him before he could leap to a terrible conclusion.
“It’s tradition.” And something she had never told anyone about, not even Syn.
What was it about Hartt that made her want to confess all the sins of her past, made her want to confide in him and trust him, even when she felt sure he would only end up hurting her?
She blamed her rebirth again. It always left her weak and drained, lowered her resilience to the point where she found it hard to deny herself the things she wanted. Apparently, she wanted Hartt to know her.
She had also wanted him to kiss her.
Still wanted it.
She pulled at a thread and then stopped when he scowled at her hand, reminding her this wasn’t her tunic.
“My kind grow stronger with each death.” She averted her gaze, stared at the window and beyond it, not seeing the world out there as she thought about her past. “When I was young, my family killed me over and over to make me more powerful and ensure I lived up to their name.”
“That’s barbaric,” he spat.
She glanced at him, lost herself in his eyes instead as he glared at her, looking even more as if he wanted to hurt whoever had hurt her. No one had ever wanted to avenge her before. A girl could get used to it. She reminded herself it was dangerous to let him under her skin, to break the rules she had laid down for herself.
No matter how tempting it was.
“I wanted to be strong like my older brothers, but I… I hated it.” She looked down at her knees as that confession slipped from her lips, something she had never told anyone, not even her family. “I used to cry myself to sleep whenever I was sure my next death was coming. But my family were right. I did grow stronger with every rebirth, and it was worth it when I finally felt as if I was deserving of my place in our family.”
Even though all those deaths had left her with terrible nightmares, ones that still haunted her now.
“Are there many others like you?” He noticed it when she tensed and softened his tone. “I am not interested in finding them. I’m simply trying to understand more about your kind. You’re more myth than reality, something people speak of but no one has seen.”
“You’ve seen me.” She was deeply aware of that as he looked at her, as heat shimmered in his eyes and his gaze darted down to her tunic before meeting hers again.
He had seen more than the fact she was a phoenix shifter. He had seen all of her.
It would only be fair if he stripped and let her see all of him too.
She slapped that rogue thought out of her head. There would be no sexy stripping, no sleeping together, nothing of that kind. She focused back on what they had been talking about, and a light feeling ran through her, lifting some of the weight from her tired limbs.
It felt good to talk with him about this, to share things with someone and have them look at her as if she was incredible, not something to sell out or someone who was weak because of the things that had happened to her in her past.
They felt more like allies than enemies now.
She stared into eyes that held heat and a wicked promise, a need that ran in her veins too.
Lovers.
Too dangerous. She tried to banish that word, but it lingered as he gazed at her, as he leaned towards her again and closed the distance between them. She could reach out and touch his face at this distance, could feather her fingers along his jaw and tip his head up, and if she leaned forwards too, she could easily kiss him.
He lifted his hand but didn’t touch her face, ghosted his hand through the air as his gaze softened.
“Is what happened to you the reason you paint your eyes the way you do? I thought you wore it like a mask at first…”
She touched her cheek just below her left eye, swallowed and nodded. “After I escaped the mansion, I painted my face. I was trying to conceal my identity and I had seen other females who had used makeup in a similar fashion.”
She had thought it looked good, better than an actual mask because it looked less suspicious. A real mask would have drawn attention to her. Using makeup had just made her look like many other females in the free realm—out to make herself more beautiful and mysterious.
“After a while, it just became part of who I was.” She felt naked without her makeup now, strangely panicked as she thought about the fact she had no way of donning her mask.
Oddly, it wasn’t the thought of Hartt seeing her like this, without a trace of makeup, that disturbed her and set her on edge. It was the thought of everyone else seeing her like it. Hartt had a terrible way of making her feel too comfortable around him, as if she didn’t need any barriers between them and didn’t need to protect herself from him.
“Why is the mage after you?” His amethyst eyes searched hers. “What happened at that mansion?”
Mackenzie looked at the window again, fought the tide of memories as they surged forwards, as they swept her along and threatened to pull her under.
“We lived in a valley, a place that had been safe for centuries. Secret.” Her gaze slid back to meet his, a need to know she wasn’t alone flooding her and tugging at her, making her crave the connection she felt whenever she looked into his eyes. She felt strong as she gazed into them, able to face her past and the pain that awaited her there. “The mages came one night. They took out the guards before anyone knew what was happening and then they were in the house. There were so many of them. We managed to take out some of them, but they overpowered us, used spells to weaken us. Someone knocked me out and when I came around, I was in a cell.”