Bound by Forever (True Immortality 3)

Yet the thought of rejecting Niamh so brutally … well, he didn’t like the thought of doing that to her.

Kiyo didn’t understand his reaction.

He hadn’t experienced soft feelings toward anyone in a very long time.

Disturbed by his response, he lifted their clasped hands and placed them in her lap before easing out of her hold. “I’m not good at providing comfort,” he said as gently as he was able. “I’m not that guy.”

She stared at him, assessing, her eyes moving to his now-free hand, her brows puckering. Wondering at the confusion on her face, he followed her gaze to his hand and realized he was flexing it.

Because it still tingled, like she’d given him an electric shock.

He abruptly dropped his hand out of sight. “Go to sleep,” he commanded.

The goddamn woman needed to give him a break for just a while.

“It’s okay to need human contact, Kiyo,” she whispered. “A little comfort. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Patience thinning, he sneered at her. “Neither of us are human. And I wasn’t the one who needed to be comforted. If you need that, find someone who’s interested when we land in Tokyo.”

Hurt flickered across her stunning face before she could hide it.

Another sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time caused an ache to flare across his chest.

Guilt.

Goddamm it.

He’d never regretted taking on a job so much in his entire existence.

“What happened to make you so cold?” Niamh asked, but he could tell by the hard edge to her words that she wasn’t really asking him. She was merely observing facts.

Kiyo turned to look at her, and his agitation built tenfold. For someone as fast and powerful as she was, a woman who could break his neck without even touching him, she was irritatingly soft. She cared too damn much, and it would get her killed … or worse, put the entire world in jeopardy.

“You’re soft,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Her head whipped around toward him. “What?”

“You’re soft. You care about strangers and it makes you weak. That’s not to be admired, Niamh, when that weakness could cause a war. So stop being weak. You could learn a thing or two from me, and it might just keep us all safe.” The words were harsh, and he knew as soon as he said them that she didn’t deserve them. But she made him off-kilter and he didn’t like it.

That’s when she reminded him that he didn’t know her at all. A cool hardness crawled across her features, and she suddenly looked strange and ethereal and every inch the fae woman she was. Her words, however, were very human and very irate. “I have nothing to learn from you other than how to be a complete and total arsehole. Go to sleep, Kiyo. Give the world a rest from your delightful presence.”

The guilt he’d felt over his words was nudged to the side by amusement.

She had a fire in her. Spirit.

And he couldn’t help but admire it.

That was the problem. He couldn’t help but admire—

The hair on Kiyo’s neck rose, stalling his thoughts. He felt strangely disconcerted.

Something wasn’t right.

Growing still, tense, he tried to feel out his surroundings.

“Kiyo, what’s wro—”

He held up a hand to cut off Niamh.

And then it hit him.

Tapping the screen on the headrest in front of him, Kiyo searched for confirmation.

He brought up the map.

His muscles locked tight. Niamh leaned in to look at his screen and he heard her slight exhalation.

“We’re going the wrong way.”

He nodded, quickly tapping off the screen. “We’re not heading south. We’re heading west.” Kiyo studied her shocked expression. “You can’t sense anything?”

They both tried to look circumspectly around the plane. Something about what he saw wasn’t right.

“Kiyo …” Niamh’s voice was hushed with fear. “Everyone is … sleeping.”

Every single passenger had their eyes closed.

He turned to Niamh as she lifted a hand into the air and flexed her fingers. Her cheeks paled as her horrified gaze flew to his. “They’re dead.”

“Get up,” Kiyo bit out. “We need to get off this plane.”

They both unlatched their seat belts and Kiyo slid out first, holding a hand to help Niamh onto the aisle. He was still holding her when every hair on his body rose. A figure appeared out of a shimmer in the air at the head of the aisle; he walked toward them. Behind the man, the air shimmered again and someone else appeared.

“Cloaking spell,” Niamh said as the three warlocks and two witches lined up on the aisle ahead of them.

“How?” Kiyo growled. Niamh was supposed to be able to sense magic and supernaturals.

“They can cloak themselves, even from me.” Tears brightened her eyes. Eyes that were filled with rage as she stared down the coven members. “But at great sacrifice.”

Kiyo knew about magic. He knew that unlike Niamh who was made of energy, connected to it, and could use her powers with no need of an exchange, witches and warlocks couldn’t. To cast spells, to use magic of any kind, they required fuel for the energy. A tree in the woods in exchange for an offensive spell in battle. An animal in exchange for wounding an enemy.