Pyromancist (Seven Forbidden Arts 1)

She couldn’t look at him. She waited for him to lift his hand, but he kept her in place.

“It was the dream,” he said, offering another olive branch.

She didn’t want to take it. She didn’t want to know. There was only one way this could end. She made to stand again.

“Cle, wait.” His hand tightened on her shoulder. “You asked if it was always the same.” He continued in a quiet tone. “The answer is yes. Night after night, I watch them being slaughtered, unable to do a goddamn thing.”

How could he stand it? She wasn’t excusing his behavior, but she couldn’t wish this upon anyone. “You can’t stay here, Joss.”

“There’s nowhere else to go.”

“You could go to your safe house.”

He laughed. It was an ugly sound. “You won’t even be safe at the safe house.”

The impact of his words hit her like a fist in the stomach. She wasn’t safe with his people. She wasn’t safe with him. She wasn’t safe here. There was nowhere she’d ever be safe again.

“Hey,” he said, trying to pull her close, but she pushed away.

He dropped his hand from her shoulder. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come back.”

Too late.

“You want to know the ugly truth?” he said. “You were wrong. It was my fault. All mine.”

“Joss, I don’t—”

“I can’t beat these ghosts.” He rubbed a palm over his chest. “They’re invincible.”

“Maybe they’re just undealt with.”

He turned his head to look at her. His gaze homed in on her like nothing else was real. Like that day in the woods, he saw her. He saw everything. She tried to shelter her feelings—the longing, the vulnerability, and the need. For an awful and wonderful moment, she was the girl Joss had noticed again. Her heart crumpled like a ball of paper. It wasn’t fair. He had no business prying into her soul. Not any longer.

His gaze slipped to her neck where a vein was throbbing, a telltale sign of fear and unrequited love. Stupid love. With his eyes locked on the pulse in her neck, he reached out a hand, but she leaned back before he could touch her.

“I left marks,” he said. “It’ll bruise.”

His marks went much deeper. He knew. He saw her. He knew.

“I’m a bad man, Cle.” He said it searching her eyes, looking for something. Acceptance? Absolution?

“I know,” she whispered. The dream tried to warn her, but she didn’t listen. Her bad boy had grown into a very bad man.

He smiled, then gave a small nod, accepting the judgment, which, for some reason, broke her heart. She was just like everyone else in town, always expecting the worst of him.

“He broke down my door first.” He stared at the door as if he could picture his father standing there.

“You don’t have to—”

“You wanted to know,” he said in a hard voice. When she flinched, he softened his tone. “You know how I used to be. You of all people.” He lifted a finger toward her cheek but then dropped it again. “You saw me, the real me.”

Her face heated in shame. If he noticed, he didn’t acknowledge it.

“The fact that I was an arrogant little fuck didn’t help. My mother wouldn’t tell anyone because of the shame. You know how the people here are. They’d rather pretend it didn’t happen.” He chuckled, the sound bitter. “When I’d try to stop him, he’d tie me up and whip me with his belt, breaking my skin with the buckle.”

She flinched at the picture he was painting, remembering his haunted eyes, his wildness, and the pain she recognized in his defiant smiles.

“I took the beating like he told me to,” his lip curled, “like a man, knowing the day would come that I’d be stronger.” He uttered a cold laugh. “That’s when I knew I’d be a killer one day, that I’d be capable of taking a person’s neck in my hands and squeezing until the bones crushed.” He glanced at her again. “Just like I had your neck in my fist tonight. I knew it the day Iwig laid his hands on you. If you hadn’t been standing there, I might’ve killed him.”

The confession crossed another line. Joss was making himself vulnerable. He was making this personal, impossible for her to hate him. “I don’t—” want to hear it, she was going to say, but he didn’t give her a chance.

“That night, the night it happened, I came home to find my father dragging my mother up the stairs by her hair. I wanted to kill him. I meant to when I grabbed him by the collar and threw him down the stairs.” His eyes were fixed on the wall, unfocused, somewhere in the past. “The bastard got up.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to do this.”

He carried on as if he hadn’t felt or heard her. “I hit him until he went down, and then I kicked him. Over and over. I would’ve killed him too. Wanted to so damn badly. Should’ve. It wasn’t my mother’s screams that stopped me. It was my brother. He was standing at the top of the stairs, watching.