I shook my head. “You’re going to kill someone. I don’t think I want you to have good luck.”

  He rolled his eyes, putting a hand over his heart. “That hurts. It’s dangerous work I do.”

  “They might have a family, people who love them.”

  “They most assuredly do.” He stood, buttoning his frock coat. “But that’s what wills and overpaid solicitors are for. Good night, Pretty Darling.”

  My mouth opened and closed in disbelief as he winked out of existence directly in front of me.

  “Stay safe,” I whispered, against my better judgement.

  I couldn’t condone what he did for a living, but neither could I wish harm on the man who’d just patiently shown me such a beautiful city. My shoulders drooped slightly at the realisation that I’d done the unthinkable and started to like the assassin.

  I spent the rest of the evening wandering around the apartment, looking for Enzo in every shadow of the place. I explored all the rooms with one notable exception. There was a single locked door in the hallway, and try as I might to open it, it wouldn’t budge. The mystery of what was behind it kept me occupied for a short while longer before I finally gave up waiting for my Gluttony mate and went to bed.

  It was still dark when I heard a loud crash in the room beyond my own, jolting me awake. I reached blindly for the lamp, blinking in the light as I slowly left my bed and headed to the door as quietly as I could. I pressed my ear against the solid wood, hearing only heavy breathing on the other side.

  “Enzo?” I whispered, turning the key in the lock.

  When I looked out into the treasure room, it was pitch black, the only noise coming from the collapsed figure sprawled over the armchair.

  “Enzo?” I approached the dark figure, lighting the fire with a tiny spark of pyrokinesis and illuminating him.

  “Not my best moment, Pretty Darling,” he groaned, rolling to face me. “Go back to bed. I’ll patch myself up.” His dark blue eyes were glazed with pain and his blonde hair was messy around his face.

  I covered my hand with my mouth as I saw the long gash across his abdomen, oozing blood.

  Damn, there was so much blood.

  “I can... Can I help? You need a healer or...” I trailed off as he snatched my hand and pulled me closer to him.

  “I don’t need a healer,” he insisted, stroking his hands over the skin of my palm. “I just need to focus past the pain of this damned paper cut to fix it.” He gasped as his fingers probed the wound gently. “Ah, fuck, that hurts.”

  “If I took the pain, could you fix it?” I asked, gently pushing his shirt up and almost gagging at the sight of the exposed bones of his ribs.

  His fingers traced over my skin lightly. “Yes,” he hissed, holding the wound closed with one hand.

  “I can’t give you very long,” I warned, reaching out like I had with Mrs Oxomoda.

  With Enzo, pulling the pain from him was easier, perhaps because I had the mating bond to guide me. But just like with Mrs Oxomoda all I could seem to do was drag it towards myself. I gasped as first numbness and then searing fire took over my body. I sank to my knees beside the chair, hand still grasping his. I ground my teeth together to try and suppress a whimper, but it did nothing, the noise tearing from my throat and forcing its way out of my mouth regardless.

  I held the pain from Enzo through it all, watching as his skin started knitting back together. The agony started to fade, but the effect was only noticeable after the first thirty seconds. Five minutes later it was nothing more than pins and needles and the feeling of a deep bruise.

  Enzo slid off the chair till he was sitting in front of me. With one motion he easily lifted me into his lap and turned my face to look at him. “Lilith, let go.”

  I blinked myopically at him. Everything about him was slightly blurry.

  “You’re using too much power. Let go.”

  I did as he asked, letting go of the last lingering twinges of pain and breathing for the first time in what seemed like hours. He stroked my hair gently, and we sat like that for a long time, both of us breathing as though we had just run a marathon.

  “You were right about Ethiopia,” he finally admitted, staring into the flames. “I finished my work and went to check on the temple. Aoife Saxon was there, along with several goons from the Syndicate... as you can see, they weren’t feeling particularly welcoming.”

  I bit my lip, wondering if he’d continue.

  “I destroyed the entire site,” he grumbled. “I’m not admitting to anything, you understand, but in case there was something that I missed, it's all dust now.”

  “Are they alive?”

  “The goons? No. Saxon must have made it out though because her corpse wasn’t there.” He gave a long, drawn out sigh. “It was all so very messy.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that news, but I shelved dealing with it for later. “You need a shower.” The cooling blood from his wound now covered both of us.

  “You need power.” He raised an eyebrow, daring me to say otherwise.

  “I can wait till we’re both blood free.” I wasn’t going to kiss him with the evidence of the horror we’d both experienced still covering us.

  “What else did the Strange God tell you?” Enzo lifted us both from the floor and started carrying me to the bathroom. He settled me on the counter and turned away to examine the disappearing scar in the mirror.

  “Why does it matter?” I watched him switch on the shower and peel his blood-soaked shirt off. Underneath he was pure, leanly sculpted perfection and pale skin, marred only by rust coloured stains and one long, puckered scar that went from under his ribs to his shoulder. A tiny smattering of blonde hair led down from his navel to disappear under the dark fabric of his jeans and my eyes seemed magnetised to it. I just couldn’t look away.

  “Perhaps it doesn’t.” He shrugged, popping open the first button of his trousers. “But, if it doesn’t matter, what harm could come of telling me? And if it does matter, then you really ought to tell me anyway.”

  He popped open the second button and I dragged my eyes away. When I heard fabric hitting the floor, I shrugged my hair around my face to try and shore up my willpower.

  “He told me if I didn’t mate Bane then we would both die,” I admitted, my psychic hand reaching out along Bane’s mating bond as I spoke of him, only to be rebuked by that damned wall once again. “That’s why he, Blaze and Aeron tricked me into mating him yesterday.”

  “Sensible.”

  I forgot all about my prudishness and snapped my gaze to him in anger. “I didn’t want it!” I growled, but my mind blanked as I watched the water of the shower cascade over those shoulders and down to an ass that made my toes curl with desire.

  “They did it for your own good.” He glanced over his shoulder, eyes meeting mine and holding them. “You know that, and you also know that pretending otherwise is immature. What else?”

  I counted to ten for patience before I answered him. “Abrosiax and his family are tasked with breaking me and then disposing of me.” My hands twisted together as I recalled how they’d talked about me. “I won’t lie and say that it’s not scary how obsessed they are with vengeance against me...” My hand briefly touched against the bullet in my horn, almost subconsciously. “I also learned that they have agents infiltrating the Resistance.”

  “Abrosiax is a dead man.” He started to turn around and I ducked away with a force of will I didn’t know I possessed. “And the Resistance will take care of itself, especially since I assume you’ve warned them and they’re aware of the issue.”

  The light splashing sounds of water teased my imagination as I studiously kept my gaze fixed on the door, my eyelids heavy with sleep. When he reached past me with one muscled arm, snagging the black towel on the other side of me, I couldn’t help the dart of my eyes downwards.

  And I couldn’t help the appreciative sigh that left my lips either, or was it a yawn? I was tired and horny all at once and things weren’t really making much sense to me.

  “Your turn.” Enzo smirked, leaning against the door, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. “And while you’re in there, you might consider telling me why you touched that silver streak in your horn when you spoke of Abrosiax.”

  “Or I might not, and you might leave the room to give me some privacy.”

  “You’re low on power and swaying on the spot even though you’re sitting down.” His dry tone made me look up from where a droplet of water was trickling hypnotically along his bicep. “Not to mention you’re incredibly easily distracted at the moment, all of which could easily lead to your slipping and hurting yourself.”

  “And the solution to that is you seeing me naked.” I rolled my eyes, suppressing the sudden urge to yawn.

  “I knew you were a smart one.”

  I held back another yawn, hopping off the counter and heading straight for the warm spray of the shower. If I showered in my pjs, at least he wouldn’t see anything important, and I could probably wash the skin that was dirty around them.

  The familiar flash of pyrokinesis against my skin had me pausing with one hand on the glass of the shower screen. Enzo had destroyed the pjs, leaving my body completely exposed to him. I took one deep breath, feeling his eyes upon my skin, and decided to play it cool. After all, nudity wasn’t a big thing, right? There were whole beaches of naked people all over the world.

  The warm water hitting my skin was like heaven on earth, and I moaned slightly as it slowly sluiced the blood from my skin and returned the warmth to my limbs.

  “You were telling me about your horn,” he reminded me softly.

  I didn’t answer, scrubbing at my face under the water.

  “Don’t tempt me to come in there.” His voice had dropped several notes till the sound of it was a husky temptation to my ears.

  “It’s what remains of a bullet,” I mumbled. “During my practical exam I antagonised Circe Abrosiax, and she just happened to have a gun.” My hands fisted as my mind flashed back to the impact of the bullets against my shield. “I didn’t think she’d actually do it... I got her back with my gift, but my horns started to grow and the fragments that were left in there got stuck... There was so much blood.” I shuddered at the memory, scrubbing my skin that much harder.

  The silence from the other side of the room was deafening, but I did my best not to react as I finished my shower and grabbed for a towel. When I finally looked over at the door, Enzo was gone.

  “Enzo?” I called, wrapping the large towel around myself and stepping over the pile of bloody clothes on the floor.

  I peeked out into the treasure room, anxiety spiking at his sudden disappearance.

  “Enzo!” I yelled, hearing only my own voice echo back at me in response.

  I stumbled on thin air, the lack of power making me clumsy as I walked from room to room, looking for him. Eventually I ended up back in my bedroom, and I used the chance to grab some new pyjamas. Putting them on seemed to be too much for my wavering balance, and I toppled over onto the bed.

  “I hope he didn’t do anything rash,” I whispered at Onyx and Ivory who were asleep on the pillow beside mine, oblivious to everything going on. I couldn’t fight the next yawn and it dragged me straight into the land of dreams.

  Chapter 15

  When I woke up the next morning, I was in my own bed in the tower and someone was banging on my door loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Lilith Carazor, open this door.” I recognised Blaze’s voice, but he sounded angry and distant.

  I stumbled my way to the door, ready to give him a piece of my mind for tricking me into mating Bane, but the second I opened the portal three security officers burst into my room and started sweeping the place. They were armed, I realised with shock as Onyx and Ivory started swarming me like angry bees, ready to defend me from the intruders.

  “What’s going on?” I yawned again as I met Blaze’s burning green eyes. Why was I so damned tired?

  “Where were you last night between the hours of three and five?” he demanded.

  Where had I been? Confusion took me as I tried to think back but couldn’t past the tired fog clouding my mind. “Asleep?” I answered, not sure that it was the right answer.

  “Can anyone confirm that?” he demanded.

  Could anyone what? I floundered. “No?”

  “Nothing here, Sir.” One of the officers reported.

  “Scans show no weapons or blood residue in the bathroom,” another one announced.

  “Blood, what? What’s going on?” I asked, trying to sharpen my mind as I swayed slightly on my feet. “Sorry... I’m just a bit low on power.”

  “Officer Inferna!” Maddox’s voice boomed up the stairwell. “You cannot just search student rooms without proof.”

  “I have my orders,” Blaze retorted as Maddox leapt up the stairs. “The Headmistress believes there is sufficient motive for a search of Carazor’s room.”

  “Motive for what?” I asked, catching the doorway to support myself.

  “Lilith, a student has been murdered,” Maddox informed me delicately. “Circe Abrosiax was found shot dead in her room last night.”

  No amount of gripping the door frame was enough to hold me up as reality crashed through the sleepy fog of my mind. I had been at Enzo’s in the shower, he’d asked me about my horn and I had stupidly told the psychotic assassin the truth. “What?” I repeated. “How could...?” How could he just go and kill her like that?

  “Your rivalry was well known; hence, Professor Saxon has decided it would be prudent to have your room searched and yourself brought in for an interview,” Blaze informed me, his voice a cold counterpoint to the angry fire in his eyes.

  “But, I didn’t...” Enzo had.

  Blaze’s radio squawked, and a tinny voice echoed through it.

  “Commander, do you copy?”

  My mate stepped back. “Ten-four, ten-twelve,” he responded quietly, and I struggled to make sense of the code speak.

  “Roger that. We have further intel that several other Abrosiax family members have been killed in the past six hours. It appears to be a professional hit arranged and paid for by a rival family, definitely not something a student could have arranged.” The radio squeaked slightly. “Over ten confirmed deaths so far, Commander. The Abrosiax family’s security is demanding all of the details of our investigation whilst they scramble to try and protect what’s left of them.”

  “Copy that. Move out!” Blaze yelled, and the three officers marched out of my room and down the stairs.

  Ten confirmed deaths... Enzo was wiping out the entire family one by one... “Oh god...” I felt dizzy and lightheaded all at once.

  “Sorry to frighten you, Miss Carazor,” Blaze muttered as he left to follow his men, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t even look at Maddox who followed after them, closing my door softly as they all left.

  Because I’d just reached up to touch my horn on instinct, and when I drew my hand away, there was a small plaster there, a crudely drawn black heart decorating the centre.

  “Enzo stop this,” I whispered into the empty room.

  I tugged at our mating bond inside my chest, willing him to stop and come back to me. But all I could feel down the thread that bound us was a cold, clinical rage that scared me more than Bane’s stubborn, heartless wall could.

  Despite my fear I persevered, trying to put all my anguish and horror down the bond, hoping that it would draw him back, so I could make him stop.

  But I was so powerless, and so weak that I couldn’t do much.

  “Lilith?” My door, previously shut, creeped open.

  I didn’t want to answer, but I knew I should.

  “Can I come in?”

  Jin’s head peeked around the edge of the door and caught sight of me sitting on the floor at once.

  “Oh, Pet.” He lifted me into his arms and carried me over to the bed. “You’re so low on power that you’re swaying sitting down.”

  “He’s killing them all.” I looked into his brown eyes. “Jin, I told Enzo about my vision of Abrosiax and what his daughter did with the gun and now he’s slaughtering them.”

  Jin shook his head. “Let me give you a top up so you can think clearly.”

  He slowly, sweetly, pressed his lips to mine, and I sighed. Even as stressed as I was, Jin’s lips felt like home. His tongue enticed mine, always tempting and seducing instead of just taking. I loved that about Jin’s kisses.