Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor [64]
“Beauty,” Brimstone had scoffed once. “Humans are fools for it. As helpless as moths who hurl themselves at fire.”
Karou would not be a moth. For the moments that they circled each other, she reminded herself that though the seraph wouldn’t fight her now, he had spilled her blood before. He had left her scarred. Worse, he had burned the portals and left her alone.
She put on her anger like armor and attacked him again, surging at him in the air, and for a few minutes she was able to fool herself that she was a match for him, that she could… what? Kill him? She was barely even trying to use her knife. She didn’t want to kill him.
What did she want? What did he want?
And then he grabbed her hands and in one smooth movement disarmed her and disabused her of any notion she might have had that she was winning. He pressed her palms together so she couldn’t lash out with her hamsas again—up close she saw that his neck was welted white where she had touched him—and he was so strong, she couldn’t break free. His hands were warm and enclosed hers completely. Her magic was trapped in her palms, one tattoo hot against the other, and her knife had fallen to the street below. She was caught. She experienced a frantic moment, remembering the way he had stood over her in Morocco, the deadness of his expression. But it wasn’t dead now. Far from it.
He might have been someone else entirely, his look was so full of feeling. What feeling? Pain. He glistened with a fever sheen. His face bore the strain of endured agony, and his breathing was uneven. But that wasn’t all. He blazed with intensity, leaning toward Karou in the air, looking, looking, alive with a searing, wide-eyed searching.
His touch, his heat, his gaze washed over her and, in an instant, it was not butterflies she felt. That was small, the flutterings of a giddy girl.
This new thing that sprang up between them, it was… astral. It reshaped the air, and it was in her, too—a warming and softening, a pull—and for that moment, her hands in his, Karou felt as powerless as starlight tugged toward the sun in the huge, strange warp of space. She fought against it, trying to get away.
His voice low and hoarse, the angel said, “I’m not going to hurt you. What happened before, I’m sorry. Please believe me, Karou. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
She startled at the sound of her name and stopped struggling. How did he know her name? “Why did you come?”
On his face, a helpless look. He said again, “I don’t know,” and this time it didn’t strike her as funny. “Just… just to talk,” he said. “To try to understand this… this…” He fumbled for words and trailed away, at a loss, but Karou thought she knew what he meant, because she was trying to understand it, too.
“I can’t withstand more of your magic,” he said, and she was aware again of his strain. She had really hurt him. As she should, she told herself. He was her enemy. The heat in her hands told her that. Her scars told it, and her severed life. But her body wasn’t listening. It was focused on the contact of their skin, his hands on hers.
“But I won’t hold you,” he said. “If you want to hurt me, it’s no more than I deserve.”
He released her. His heat deserted her and the night rushed between them, colder than it had been before.
Clasping her hamsas in her fists, Karou backed away, barely aware that she was still floating.
Holy. What was that?
Remotely, she was conscious that she was flying in plain view of a gathered mass of people, and that more gawkers were coming in droves, as if the tourist route of Karlova had been diverted into this side channel. She sensed their pointing and amazement, saw the camera flashes, heard the shouts, but it was all muted muted muted, like it was playing on a screen, less real than the moment she was living.
She was on the cusp of something ineffable. When the seraph had held her hands, and when he had let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn’t realize it until