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Sometimes the Devil is a gentleman.
Shakespeare, maybe — or was it Shelley? Alex can’t remember who Darlington cited as the author of the quote, only that it had struck her and stuck in her mind long after being spoken.
They spend the days after the multiple trips to hell holed up in Il Bastone, researching wards and spells, rituals and artifacts. And sleeping.
Dawes can’t stop cooking, Darlington can’t stop reading, and Alex can’t stop falling asleep in various places around the house, each one more inconvenient than the last.
Turner comes and goes, their eyes and ears to the outside world, and the one small mercy comes in the fact that Thanksgiving break rapidly approaches and soon the campus will empty and leave them, and their encroaching demons, in peace.
It’s safe here, in the house. The one safe place in all the world, or at least that’s what it feels like now. Alex sleeps in the Dante room, too unnerved to return to her dorm; Darlington sleeps in the Virgil room, equally opposed to the solemn desolation of Black Elm; and Dawes turns the office downstairs into a bedroom, complete with a blow-up air mattress from Target and a five dollar flashlight for a lamp.
Every day, Turner asks, “How are you?” And every day Alex answers, “The same.”
The truth is, she doesn’t know how she is. She doesn’t know how any of them are.
Dawes dives headfirst into research, disappearing in and out of the library at every hour of day and night, proposing new approaches to combat Hell’s new open door policy. It distracts her, and Alex knows better than anyone that a distraction is sorely needed. Darlington stays in his room most of the time, coming out only for meals, always looking a little too pale, a little too gaunt.
Alex can’t say any better for herself. She’s pretty sure she loses a year off her life every time she looks out the window of the sitting room to see an inky black figure standing across the street or a swooping shadow in the nighttime sky. For now, all they can do is keep throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks while trying not to draw the attention of every single society at Yale, though she doubts it won’t be long until they’re all dragged headfirst into Lethe’s massive fuck up.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Alex is sitting at the table in the kitchen trying not to drown in her coffee when Dawes appears and sets a heavy duffle bag down with an unceremonious thud. Alex starts a little, narrowing her eyes at Dawes just as Darlington shuffles into the kitchen to join them.
“Where are you going?” Alex asks, her gruff morning voice making the words sound more accusatory than she intends them to be.
“I’m going to my sister’s for Thanksgiving,” she says with an air of stubborn finality, as if she’s rehearsed this conversation in her head and is anticipating Alex’s objection.
Her anticipation is correct.
“What?” Alex blurts, her gaze flickering to Darlington. He leans silently in the doorway, arms folded over his chest. Help, please, her gaze begs him, but he’s looking at Dawes. “You can’t,” she says, not because it’s true, but because she simply hasn’t prepared herself for this next phase of life where one of them inevitably leaves. They’ve built their own little fortress here. Alex was just starting to get used to it.
“I can, actually,” Dawes says, but her words are softer now. She almost looks guilty. “It’ll only be for a few days. I’ve packed plenty of salt, written down multiple iterations of every protective symbol known to mankind, and I even let Darlington add me on Find my Friends.”
Alex’s brows raise; she looks at Darlington again and all he does is shrug his shoulders.
The traitor. He knew.
“I know it’s not safe,” Dawes says. Alex’s grip tightens on her coffee mug. “I know that. But I need to get out of here, or I’m going to go insane. We all are.” If Dawes thinks her words are going to convince Alex to get out of the house for a little bit, she should think again.
“I’ll check in every hour,” Dawes continues, moving into the kitchen now and pouring herself a travel mug of coffee. Alex glares at her back. “And I’ll be home on Friday. It’s just three days.” She finishes filling the mug, sighs, and turns. “Okay?” Her eyes are pleading. Finally Alex huffs and takes a sip of her coffee.
“Okay,” Alex says, and suddenly Dawes looks ten years younger as the tension slinks from her shoulders.
Before Alex really knows what’s happening, Dawes shoulders her duffel bag, squeezes Alex on the shoulder, and gives Darlington a one-armed hug. Then she’s gone. Alex waits until she hears the front door of Il Bastone close before she speaks.
“She told you she was going,” she says, and Darlington nods, stepping away from the wall to pour himself a cup of coffee. Black. Like my soul, he’d joked when Dawes had commented on the recent alteration in his coffee habits. No one laughed.
“Will she be okay?” Alex hates how her voice sounds smaller when she speaks those words. She hates, too, how uncertain Darlington’s usually-confident gaze is when he turns back to her.
“She’ll be fine,” he says quietly, taking a seat across from her at the table. He’s paler than he used to be. His cheekbones a little sharper. Skin under his eyes a little darker. She wonders if he’s only just now begun to allow himself to come to terms with…all of it.
“You’re not—” Alex starts, letting her insecurity get the best of her, but Darlington quickly shakes his head.
“I’m staying,” he says, pulling the morning newspaper that’s folded neatly on the end of the table toward him, and Alex lets out a silent breath through her lips. I have nowhere else to go, Alex can almost hear him think. Or maybe those are just her own thoughts, ones she won’t speak out loud.
It’s been like this between them for the past week or so — cordial, but distant. Bordering on cold. Alex doesn’t know when it shifted or why, but it’s a little unnerving to know it’s just the two of them in the house now, alone. No Dawes to shield them from each other, or themselves.
Not that she’s scared of him. It’s the opposite, in fact. She spends every day terrified that she’ll knock on his bedroom door and it’ll swing open to reveal an empty room, as if he’d never even been there. As if he’d never come back at all.
And what he feels about her…well, she has no idea. Too often she finds him watching her, a faraway look on his face, somehow distinctly different and more intense than the way he’d looked at her when he first met her, like she was a curious puzzle to decipher.
Now he looks at her like she’s a bomb about to go off, one he can’t decide if he wants to run toward or away from.
“Kinda fucked that we have to do Thanksgiving without Dawes’s cooking,” Alex says lamely, searching for something — anything — to say. Darlington raises his brows at her.
“You don’t strike me as the type to celebrate.”
“I don’t. I was just looking forward to the free food,” she says, managing a smirk that she hopes is easygoing. Good humored. One that doesn’t betray the tension in her muscles that feels like it’s been there for years.
“Right,” Darlington says, a small smile touching the corners of his mouth. A courtesy expression, if anything. She can tell he doesn’t feel it.
“I suppose we’ll just have to survive off of boxed mac and cheese and Dawes’ leftover chili, which…honestly? Doesn’t sound that bad,” Alex continues, babbling for the sake of speaking, filling the silence with something other than her thoughts.
Darlington doesn’t acknowledge her this time. She wants to believe he’s just engrossed in the morning paper, but she knows it’s something else.
Alex stares. Looks back at her phone. Stares again. Darlington’s eyes feel darker when they meet hers once more.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says quietly, a sigh behind the words.
“Like what?” Alex asks, brows furrowing a little as if she doesn’t know exactly what he means.
“Like I’m…breakable,” he decides, words that make her consciously aware of the fact that her insides feel like glass just waiting to be shattered.
“I’m not,” she says immediately, before rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, hoping to break the mounting tension of this moment. “ You’re not.”
“No, I am,” he says. “That’s just the thing, Stern. We all are.” There’s something grim about the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I’m nothing special.”
She hates how it scares her. The idea that they’ve all just been living on borrowed time and that at any second, some force beyond their control will decide their time is up. Darlington certainly isn’t providing any comfort toward that thought.
Alex sets down her phone, finishes her coffee with a long sip, and thinks that somehow, these three days without Dawes are going to be the longest three days of her life.
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
Darlington feels like a zombie moving through the paces of his old life. A ghost, floating through walls and along familiar paths of travel, going through the motions but not really there. He’s worried, distantly, as they all are, about their little…Hell problem. But mostly, he’s increasingly conscious of the fact that he isn’t supposed to be here. That he’s an unwelcome guest on this earth and it must only be a matter of time before something somehow manages to drag him back down.
He sits cross-legged on the floor of the library, a variety of books and tomes spread out around him, pen between his teeth as he reads the same paragraph for the fifth time. Each time he writes something down and slips it into the Albemarle Book, the library shakes and sputters and produces far more books than he’s looking for, as if trying to shower him with gifts as a plea for him to stay.
It’s very flattering, but at the same time frustrating. There are far more books than he has time to peruse.
He’s so engrossed in trying to focus that he’s failing to focus at all — which is why he doesn’t notice that Alex has snuck up on him until she speaks right over his shoulder, making him jump.
“What’s the difference between an amulet and a talisman?” she asks, and Darlington sucks in a breath. She takes a step back and walks in front of him; he can hear the smile in her voice.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Figured your demon powers came with some kind of…heightened awareness.” She plops down across from him, crossing her legs in the same fashion and pulling a textbook toward her.
“I’m part demon. I’m not omnipotent,” Darlington tells her dryly as he removes the pen from his lips, though he can’t help but be charmed by her affability. Clearly she’s adjusted to Dawes’s absence since the morning. Still, he can’t help but feel that she’s watching him more closely than she ever has, looking for each and every shift in his demeanor.
He can’t blame her. He’d be scared of him, too.
He is scared of himself, if he’s being honest. But honest isn’t something he plans to be with her right now. Not to that level, anyway.
“An amulet protects the wearer from diseases, curses, and other evils a person may encounter,” he tells her, tapping a passage absentmindedly with the butt of the pen. “A talisman, on the other hand, brings the holder happiness, health, wealth, and success.”
“So, an amulet could theoretically…protect someone from demons,” Alex ventures, and Darlington nods, shrugging his shoulders a little.
“That was my thinking, yes. There are several famous amulets, but that’s just the problem — they’re few and far between, usually one of a kind.”
“Right,” she says, tilting her head. “Do we have any?”
“Mm,” Darlington hums, glancing toward the wall as if he can see straight through it to the exhibits at the Peabody Museum. “One. The original wedjat. The Eye of Horus. It was believed to deter demons and protect the wearer from harm.”
“But there’s only one of it,” Alex surmises, frowning a little. “And I’m guessing magic like that can’t be duplicated.”
“Not that we know of,” Darlington says, but he speaks the words slowly. She looks at him and the same thought seems to dawn on them at once.
“We thought it wasn’t possible to go to Hell and back, but here you are,” Alex says, and though she says it lightly, Darlington can’t help but stiffen a little at her words.
“Here we are,” he corrects her, attempting to banish all thoughts of hot, flickering flame and searing steel from his mind. Sometimes, he’s fine, and then sometimes…sometimes it comes back like a flood that threatens to drown him. It’s a flip of a coin as to whether or not he’ll be able to stay afloat.
She’s looking at him again — that wary, probing look from those dark eyes, the kind of look that makes him want to sink into the floor. He wants to return to the book in his lap, but he can’t manage it. He wants to stop her from where he knows she’s going, but he can’t quite seem to get in the way.
“You never talk about what it was like,” she says quietly, like she’s talking to a wounded animal; like he’ll shatter if she speaks the words too loud. Darlington shakes his head, closing the book with a firm thud.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Stern,” he says, and though the words are brusk, there’s a plea in them. Don’t ask me . Because he knows that if she really digs, he’ll have to answer her. Because he knows that now, there’s nothing he can truly keep from her, whether he wants to or not.
“With anyone?” she asks. “Or with me?” The question catches him off guard, but he recalls her look from that morning, that wounded, betrayed look when she’d learned that Dawes had told Darlington — not her — that she was leaving. And while he wanted to deny it…yes, he had spoken to Dawes about some of it. Bits and pieces. Fragments.
Because Dawes was easy. Dawes listened, and she didn’t push back. There weren't any questions in her eyes. And she might pity him, yes — but she didn’t know what it was like. To have her soul pulled apart, to feel the tears in her mind. He had a feeling Alex knew all too well it was like to not have full control of yourself, of who you were. Of what you did.
“Alex—” he starts, but she’s already made up her mind. Hurt flickers in those dark eyes of hers for only a second before she nods and stands abruptly.
“Turner’s stopping by for dinner before he goes to his mom’s,” she says, stopping just past him. If he wanted to, he could reach out and grab her ankle; if he wanted to, he could reach up for her hand, ask her to stay. “You’re welcome to join us.”
He wants her to stay. He also never wants to see her again.
Is it his demon and human parts disagreeing, or just the duality of man?
She leaves and it’s like she was never there, and Darlington feels small. Insignificant.
He doesn’t know where the shift happened. He doesn’t know when they stopped seeing each other as mentor and student, Virgil and Dante. But they’re distinctly not now. I will serve you ‘til the end of days, he’d said, and he meant it. But giving her everything means giving her him, and he’s not sure he’s ready to do that.
He’s not sure she’s ready to see, to know — who he is, or what he’s become.
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
Dinner sucks.
Alex feels tired and moody, and Turner is in a state of anxious paranoia that has him looking over his shoulder every five seconds, and Darlington is…Darlington. Quiet, polite. Charming, but…guarded.
The walls are up. Walls that weren’t there before, walls that he must’ve only chosen to erect once he decided it wasn’t Alex he wanted seeing past them. She can’t help but think about that night in Black Elm, about him striding past her up the stairs, eating sugary cereal next to her in the kitchen. They hadn’t talked about it then, and she hadn’t wanted to. She’d thought, He’ll talk when he’s ready . But what if he’s never ready? What if that time never comes?
Everything Alex knows about Darlington is stolen. She stole it through the memories of an ornery old Gray, from exasperatedly scrawled diary pages — she’d pried and dug to know the parts of him he’d never willingly given her, the parts of him he’d never willingly shared. And now…well, she wanted him to share with her. To let her see the parts of him that the rest of the world didn’t get to.
You’re a hypocrite, Alex thinks to herself as she picks at her udon noodles and listens to Turner talk about a murder in Branford, Darlington nodding along politely and interjecting where appropriate. She’d never willingly shared anything with anyone — that’s sort of her whole thing. Everything Darlington knows about her he’d stolen, too — well, Lethe had stolen. He’d known about that night, about Hellie, about the Grays, long before she’d ever uttered a word about it to anyone.
But he’d let her take her time, with the rest of it. He’d been patient. So maybe she can be patient too.
Patience is not a gift Alex Stern possesses, as much as she wants to convince herself she does.
Turner leaves, Darlington ‘retires,’ and Alex contemplates drowning herself in her bathtub before she winds up in bed with a book titled Demonology for Dummies, just for kicks. She thinks about how much easier things were when Darlington was just a boy, and she was just a girl, and all they were doing was supervising some uppity rich kids as they played around with forces beyond their comprehension. Now she bears the title Wheelwalker and Darlington is the gentleman demon and somehow, friend doesn’t feel like an appropriate term for someone who owes you their soul.
She doesn’t know when she falls asleep. All she knows is that she wakes abruptly, in the dark, with the house shaking violently around her.
It feels like an earthquake. Alex can remember the last one she experienced that felt scary , instead of just a tiny, ten-second tremor that made her laugh. She’d been thirteen trailing her mom in the pasta aisle of Ralph’s, blue iPod in her hand as she scrolled through songs and kept her head down, trying to drown out the world and the Grays. In what felt like no longer than a second, her relationship with the world went from fuzzy and distant to painful, horrifying awareness as the shelves shook, the lights flickered and went out, and her mom grabbed her arm so hard to pull her down into a crouch that it left a bruise.
She remembers thinking that it had to be the end of the world, that this was the Rapture or the apocalypse or simply the time when it all just stopped.
And this feels a lot like that.
Blearily, she scrambles to her feet, stumbling but catching herself on the edge of the bed. Something shatters as it falls off a shelf; the house creaks and groans like a ship getting battered in a storm. Her first thought is light , but when the lamp beside her bed won’t turn on, her immediate second thought is Darlington.
Heart racing, Alex uses memory and feel alone to navigate the rocking, shifting house in nothing but an oversized t-shirt.
“Darlington?!” she calls over the cacophony of falling, breaking things, just hoping none of it is particularly rare or valuable, and by some sort of grace she manages to reach his bedroom door unscathed.
The door knob is scalding hot. Despite the heat on her hand that makes her jerk back, a cold chill races down her spine. She sucks in a breath, uses her t-shirt as a layer of protection, and manages to open the door without earning any burns (she hopes).
His room is shaking the worst of all, books flying off the shelves and onto the floor, chandelier rattling as it swings — and in the middle of it all, Darlington in demon form, fitfully asleep in the bed.
A nightmare.
Alex’s breath lodges in her throat, and for a moment she stands there in shock, unsure of what to do. His body glows with those strange marks; the dark horns curl back from his forehead. His dark hair sticks to a sweat-soaked brow, and the most unnerving part of it all are his eyes. They’re open, glowing a gleaming gold, staring into the nothingness of the ceiling. She just hopes they don’t see something she doesn’t yet see.
“Darlington!” she calls from her place by the door. He doesn’t respond. “Daniel!” It feels for a moment like they’re back at Black Elm, the shining gold circle between them, an invisible barrier between worlds.
But this time, there’s nothing stopping her from reaching out and touching him, nothing stopping her from calling him back.
Here goes nothing , Alex thinks before striding to the bed and reaching out a gentle hand.
“Darlington,” she says as she touches him softly, the bare skin of his shoulder slick with sweat. “Darlington, wake up.” His skin is hot to the touch, as if there’s a fire raging within him. He doesn’t respond; Alex feels another sharp bolt of fear strike through her before she sits down beside him and puts two hands on his shoulders.
“Darlington, please—” she starts, but she doesn’t get to finish. One moment, she’s leaning over him, but the next, she lands on her back with the wind knocked from her, his fingers wrapped around her wrists as he pins her to the bed. All of a sudden, he’s looming over her and larger than life, a growl rumbling from his chest, teeth bared in a snarl. Darlington presses her into the bed and all Alex can think is, fuck, this isn’t how I thought getting into his bed would go. It’s an easier thought to have than the alternative — that this is it. This is how she dies.
Seems a fitting end, all things considered.
The heat instantly causes her to break out in a sweat; his face is so close to hers that her instincts tell her she can potentially headbutt him and catch him by surprise. The bookcases continue to shake, the frames on the walls continue to rattle, and Darlington’s hot breath glances over her skin as another growl parts his lips. There’s something oddly beautiful about him even in the terror of the moment.
And then, just as abruptly as it started, it stops.
The room falls silent and Alex realizes she’s holding her breath. She stares wide-eyed as the horns recede, the markings dim, and finally, the molten gold in his eyes shifts to a dark chocolate brown. Confusion dawns in them, then recognition, then an overwhelming wave of guilt that Alex is all too familiar with.
“Alex?” Darlington manages in a broken whisper, and all Alex can do is nod breathlessly as she stares up into his ridiculously handsome, much-less-scary-now face. She watches a million questions flicker through his mind, and then as the horror of what must have happened dawns on him, he springs back from her like she burned him, scooting away from her on the bed, chest heaving as he fights to catch his breath and bearings.
Alex doesn’t know why she feels the need to do it, but she grabs one of his spare pillows, pulling it to her chest and giving it a little squeeze. She needs the grounding just as much as he does.
“You had a nightmare,” she tells him quietly, watching as he looses a breath from his lips and runs a hand through his hair. It’s shaking. “It, um — sorta caused the whole house to freak out?” she volunteers, because while she realizes it may not be the best choice to tell him immediately, she’s aware that she’d want to know in reversed roles. “Sort of like an earthquake, or—” She realizes he’s watching her with a wary, shaken look, and promptly cuts to the chase. “I was trying to wake you.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, his gaze traveling over her before landing on her wrists. There are bruise-like lines where his fingers sunk in. Alex immediately ducks them under the covers, but Darlington is there in an instant, close once again, fishing her wrist out and holding it up to examine it.
“It’s okay,” she says quickly, eyes skittering over his face, that haunted look in his eyes. When she pulls her hand away, she tries to be gentle about it. “You didn’t mean to.”
“I was—”
“Yeah.”
He runs his hand through his hair again. It’s gotten so long and he still hasn’t cut it. Alex has the fleeting thought that she wants to run her fingers through it, but she clamps down on that in an instant.
They study each other in the dark. Alex resists the urge to ask him about it, and she’s certainly not the type to offer him comfort. That’s Dawes’ role. She can’t help thinking that Dawes would be so much better at this, at figuring out what to do or say, how to make him feel okay. Human again.
It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
“I can go,” she says. Darlington looks at her as if he wants to stop her, but the words don’t form on his lips. He nods.
Slowly, Alex stands up off the bed, careful to avoid fallen books in the process. It hurts — the wall between them, and the magnetic pull telling her to reach out instead of pulling back. She misses when it was easy between them, simple. Now it’s anything but.
Of course, she can’t think of an instance when waking Darlington up in the middle of the night would be simple…but the whole demon situation definitely complicates things.
She can practically feel his eyes burning holes in her as she makes her way to the door. She’s hesitant to touch the handle, but luckily her fingers don’t explode into flames this time. “Drink some water,” she says lamely, because it feels like something Dawes would say, and then she promptly leaves and shuts the door behind her.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs as she walks down the hall, fingers lingering against the wood paneling of the wall. She tells herself she’s reassuring Il Bastone, but deep down, she knows there’s someone else the words are meant for.
She’d intended to go back to her room, but she soon finds that her footsteps carry her down to the first floor and toward the shadowed secrets of the library.
Alex isn’t going back to sleep tonight. Might as well make something of it.
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
She falls asleep in the library and wakes to the gentle shaking of the shelves — no doubt Il Bastone’s way of letting her know that she should probably be awake at this point in the day.
She’d been researching protective amulets and duplication spells, but nothing was hitting the mark. Although, it’s obvious Dawes took a few books with her, and Alex hopes she’ll find some kind of breakthrough if no one else does.
Stumbling blearily out of the library as the grandfather clock chimes noon, Alex becomes all too aware of the fact that she’s still wearing only an oversized t-shirt when she bumps into Darlington in the hall. They take each other in for a moment; Darlington himself is wearing pajama pants and a Lethe sweatshirt, perhaps the most casual she’s ever seen him save for those moments after he returned from Hell. His hair is still messy. She still wants to run her fingers through it.
“Hi,” he says tiredly, continuing to sweep up shattered glass from the floor into a dustpan. Somehow it’s only now that Alex realizes just how thin he looks, not just in his face, but everywhere. He can’t have been eating enough. “You should be careful walking around barefoot. There’s glass.”
“Can I help you?” she blurts, knowing this is a big house, knowing every brush of the broom has to be laced with some sort of guilt or woundedness. It’s written all over his pale face. Alex is done playing aloof — she’s done pretending she’s okay when he pushes her away. Done pretending he doesn’t need help, the same way she’d always pretended she didn’t.
She’d hated that when they first started working together — the fact that she knew nothing and he knew everything, that she had to rely on him for information, for support. Now, after going to Hell and back twice with Dawes, Turner, and Darlington (even Tripp to an extent), it has never been clearer to Alex that she needs these people, and that they might even need her too.
What a disgustingly sappy sentiment. It almost makes her smile.
Darlington considers her question. The muscle in his jaw jumps. Finally, he holds out the broom to her and she takes it, her fingers brushing his.
Warm. Soft. Not at all laced with fiery heat like they were the night before.
“I think the house is scared of me. Or angry with me, maybe,” Darlington murmurs. Alex sweeps more glass into the dustpan and watches him as he picks up a fallen canvas and slowly begins to set it back on its hook on the wall.
“Probably doesn’t love a demon being inside it,” Alex agrees, not harshly, simply truthfully. Darlington’s smile in return is wry and empty, but at least she manages to earn some kind of reaction from him.
“Probably not,” he sighs in agreement, and they fall silent, cleaning and re-hanging until the wall looks (mostly) back to normal. A few frames are missing glass, but she supposes that’s something Dawes will be more than happy to handle upon her return.
“Have you eaten?” Alex asks. She feels like a mom. Most of the time, she’d be the one skipping meals and isolating at all hours of the day, but if Darlington isn’t going to be the perfectly put together one and Dawes isn’t here, someone has to step up to the plate.
“No,” Darlington admits, that faraway look still in his eyes. The difference between the glowering demon who had pinned her to the bed last night and the pallid boy standing in front of her are like night and day.
“Let’s go get something to eat,” she decides, setting the broom against the wall. “Pizza maybe? Or…I don’t know, something healthier?”
“I thought we weren’t going outside,” Darlington says with a quirked brow, and Alex shrugs, finding the truth that neither of them would fully admit before now.
“I think we could both use an hour outside. And if the demons want to come after us, well…that’ll just make things more fun.” Okay, so it doesn’t sound fun at all, but she’s trying to convince him. Clearly, it’s suspicious, because Darlington doesn’t even try to hide the skepticism from his face.
“Who are you and what have you done with Alex Stern?” he asks, and Alex shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I’m trying something new,” she decides, having just made up the answer on the spot. She turns before he can protest and walks down the hall to head to her bedroom and change. “Meet me in the foyer in fifteen!” she calls, and though she can no longer see him, she swears she feels a smile spread over his face.
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
Darlington knows what she’s doing. He’s not sure it will work, but he sure as hell can’t blame her for trying. Of all the people to give him a pep talk, he hadn’t expected it would be Alex, but he supposes she is and always has been full of surprises.
Of course, he can’t say he’s excited to walk out the door and find out what new horror Hell has to offer in the waking world.
He dresses in a dark sweater and jeans, feeling like a creature masquerading as a human, playing at being alive. Looking in the mirror, though he sees no horns on his head, it’s like he can feel the weight of them pressing down on his skull, like if he reaches a hand up he’ll be able to run his fingers over the ridges and lines.
Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. Nietzsche’s quote has never felt more applicable, and Darlington has never felt as if he’s gazing into an abyss more than he does right now as he takes in his hollow eyes, dark and unreadable, even to himself.
And his nightmares…
Darlington stops himself from going down that path and makes his way downstairs until he finds Alex in the foyer. She’s dressed in all black as usual, a tote bag over her shoulder, no doubt holding a variety of anti-demon weapons of varying ability.
“Do I want to know what you have in there?” he asks, and all Alex does is shake her head, a small smirk curving up the corner of her mouth. Darlington nods once, takes a steadying breath, and without any further preamble, leads the way out of Il Bastone into the bleak wintry afternoon.
It’s quiet. Darlington frowns as he surveys the landscape, looking for anything…out of the ordinary. Alex does the same, tense beside him, both of them holding their breath. But nothing immediately jumps out at them — no demons or vampires or creatures of the dark.
“Where are we going?” he asks, setting off at a walk as he shoves his hands in his pockets. Alex falls into step beside him.
“Somewhere quiet,” Alex murmurs, those haunted eyes of hers darting the periphery as if something might jump out at them at any moment. Something very well may. “Your pick.”
“I know a place,” he says and leaves it at that, steering them toward the outskirts of campus and down the quiet streets of New Haven. It’s not a far walk, but every step of it is laced with paranoia, and neither of them speak. Easier that way to hear, to be on guard. Not that a restaurant is any safer, but…it certainly feels that way.
Darlington takes Alex to Trinity Bar. It’s an old money establishment, usually filled with older men and jazz music, the booths maroon and the wood of the counters and tables cherry red. It’s…cozy, and quiet, and it makes Darlington feel safe. Like even though so much has happened in the last year, at least this place hasn’t changed.
They slide into a booth across from each other and Alex immediately picks up a menu; Darlington stares out the window as the first drizzle of rain starts outside.
“What are you getting?” Alex asks, and a small smile turns up the corner of Darlington’s mouth.
“Reuben sandwich. Side salad. Glass of Macallan.” The same thing he’s ordered here for four years now, minus the whiskey when he was underage.
“Sounds very—” Alex starts. Darlington raises his eyebrows. “...you.” Yes, he supposes it does. It brings a touch of amusement to his eyes. “I’m getting steak,” Alex continues, setting the menu down and crossing her arms, “since Lethe is paying.”
Darlington has the gut instinct to chide her on using Lethe’s money for superfluous things, but then he remembers that she went to Hell and back twice for him and promptly shuts up. They place their orders, receive their drinks (Alex opts for hot chocolate), and suddenly they’re left staring across the table at one another searching for something to say.
He doesn’t want to talk about Hell. He doesn’t want to talk about the task at hand. He wants to talk about, well… anything else.
“You never told me everything,” he says, and Alex frowns, tilting her head. “Everything that happened when I was gone.” Alex’s eyes widen the tiniest bit before she shakes her head a little, a mask closing in on her features.
“What do you want to know? That it sucked? That I was totally lost without you?” she asks, the slightest edge of bitterness to her voice. Darlington takes a sip of his whiskey.
“Totally lost without me? That’s not what Dawes said,” Darlington says gently, and a sigh leaves her lips.
“I was, though. Everyone thought I was a joke. Dawes. Turner. Sandow , especially—”
“Sandow was a murderer and a fraud. I hardly believe you care what he thought,” Darlington says, and Alex glances toward the window.
“Point being, it was a struggle. And I think I did it all wrong. And I didn’t really, like, plan anything brilliant. I think I just got lucky.”
“I think you know what I’m going to say,” Darlington says, because she’ll glare at him if he disagrees with her again.
“I think the worst part is that I let them convince me that I couldn’t save you. I spent the whole summer believing it was true because it was easier than the reality of it all,” she says quietly, and he realizes that guilt is where all of this is coming from. Something angry flashes on his face, enough so that she reacts by withdrawing, just a little bit.
“You are the only person that could’ve saved me,” he says slowly, lowly, “and you did.” That’s all that matters to him. And it’s all that should matter to her.
“I guess it was pretty badass,” Alex admits casually, and Darlington smiles a touch, glad to see her coming back to herself. “Dying and going to the Borderlands was kinda cool.” Darlington nearly chokes on his drink.
“What?” he asks, not having received that tidbit in the snippets he’d learned over the past weeks, and Alex grins.
“Yeah, I sorta threatened Salome with physical violence to let us use Wolf’s Head and Dawes drowned me so that I could die and go to the Borderlands and talk to North. That’s how I talked him into helping me figure out Tara’s death.”
“And how you solved centuries-old unsolved murders,” Darlington concludes, more than a little awed by her incredibly dangerous antics. “And the more recent ones—”
“That was all you,” Alex tells him quickly. “And the clues you gave us.” Clues he hardly even remembers giving, or maybe doesn’t want to remember.
“And the vampire…” Alex blanches.
“Shhhh,” she scolds, her eyes darting around, mostly for dramatic effect but he knows there’s a tinge of truth in it. “I…got into some trouble. With someone back home.” Now Darlington feels a flare of protective anger, the kind he’d felt that night in the kitchen of Il Bastone when they’d smashed all the glassware. Alex had hoped to leave her life behind when she came here, but he knows it’s never that easy.
“I owed him a debt to keep my mom safe. But as you know now, he’s dead, so…that’s solved.” Alex shrugs, taking a sip from her hot chocolate. The whipped cream leaves a white mustache on her upper lip that makes Darlington smile. He’s reminded of how young she is — how unprepared, and yet. Well. She’s his savior. And Lethe’s. And will probably end up saving the whole world, one way or another.
“What we should really be talking about is how Dawes stepped up to the plate,” Alex says. “I mean, huge fucking mistake to keep her on the sidelines this whole time.” Alex’s dark eyes light up and Darlington feels some kind of weight lift from his shoulders. Their food arrives and Alex keeps talking, gesturing with her fork, looking more alive than he’s ever seen her.
“I mean, killing Blake, yeah, badass, but also she just…knows everything. And fought so hard to protect you. And get you back.” Darlington feels a stab in his chest, remembering when he’d first seen her, the way she’d nearly squeezed the life out of him with her hug. His family had never truly loved him, no, but…this one did. The thought makes his throat feel tight.
Alex continues on, her face lighting up, her demeanor generally happier than she’s seemed in weeks. Her beauty has always seemed dangerous, sharp, but for once he’s seeing a softness in her that only comes from some sort of lifted weight, some sort of hope that it won’t all be bad anymore, at least not all the time.
All he wants in the world is to help her keep believing in that truth. It makes his heart hurt with the thought.
They wind up back at Il Bastone, Darlington a little lightheaded from the whiskey, their clothes soaked from rain they were ill-prepared to walk through. Evening finds them seated on the sofa in the sitting room with a fire going in the fireplace, Alex’s hair damp from a shower, Darlington cross-legged with a book in his hands.
The proximity between them is nearly stifling, and Darlington doesn’t know when it turned this way. The dim, warm lighting of the room casts her in a glow reminiscent of the blue flames that had swathed her before, dancing in the darkness of her eyes. Darlington had spent a year in Hell, yes, but Alex has lived it in so many ways her whole life, and still manages to be…this. Quiet and closed, yes, but brilliant and funny and…
Fuck. He needs to lay off the whiskey.
“What?” Alex asks without looking up at her phone, and Darlington makes the stupid mistake of acting confused, eyes widening in her direction. “I can practically hear you thinking,” she tells him, and he huffs a laugh.
“Nothing,” he murmurs. “I think it’s time for bed.”
“It’s 7:30, you grandpa,” she chides him, but there’s a dance of amusement in her eyes, one he wants to write permanently into his memories with a sharpie.
“I didn’t sleep for a year,” he returns, rising to his feet and stretching. “At some point, I have to catch up.”
Alex lets him go, but he can feel her watching him the whole time, and he finds he wants her to. He isn’t sure if that’s a good thought or a bad one, but if anything, he won’t be thinking it while he sleeps, and that’s a relief.
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
Alex wakes to the house shaking for the second night in a row.
At least this time, she knows what’s happening, where to go, and exactly how to handle it.
Well. She sort of knows how to handle it, but there’s trepidation in her step at the idea of coming face to face with demon Darlington again in a not-so-nice state. She smartly slips her feet into house slippers and hurries down the hall, feeling her way with a hand, trying not to step on glass and forcing herself to breathe through it.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs to the house, “it’s just Darlington.” But just Darlington isn’t a phrase she has much trust in, particularly not if this is going to become a nightly ritual.
Using the sleeve of her sweatshirt pulled over her hand, she turns the knob to his room and enters to a similar sight she’d seen last night — Darlington, in demon form, tossing and turning in his bed, glowing gold eyes open but unseeing.
“Fuck,” she whispers, steeling herself before making her way over to the bed, deciding to keep her feet on the ground this time as she stands beside it. “Darlington,” she says, but of course he doesn’t answer. Of course it’s not enough.
“Darlington, please,” she murmurs, briefly wondering if it would make more sense just to slap him and get it over with instead of trying the gentle approach. Again, she settles for shaking his shoulder, and again the demon wakes, rage-filled and hungry. This time, he grabs her wrist, claws sinking into the skin of her forearm. He pulls her toward him, and she doesn’t really think, just reacts — she cries out and slashes out with her hand, her fingers scrape clean, bloody lines down his cheek, and that seems to break the spell.
Darlington comes to, chest heaving, hand releasing her arm and flying up to his face. Wide eyes stare at her; his mouth parts in a wordless question, confusion and anguish written all over his features.
“Shit,” Alex bites out, scanning the room for something, anything to stop the blood welling on his beautiful pale cheek. Awareness dawns in his expression, and he shakes his head, jaw setting firmly as he points his free hand toward the door.
“Go, Alex. Leave,” he says, angry, hard. Alex feels her anger rear up to meet his, and she shakes her head, stomping toward the bathroom.
“Like hell I’m leaving,” she growls, searching for a towel in the dark. “You’re hurt, and these fucking nightmares are eating you alive.” She pulls the hand towel from the towel rack and turns back, nearly bumping straight into Darlington, who somehow wound up directly behind her soundlessly and quickly.
Alex takes a step back. There’s nothing kind in his face. “I don’t care what happens with my nightmares, it’s not your job to deal with them,” he grounds out, dark eyes flashing with a hint of gold as if the demon is trying to claw its way back to the surface. Alex has never seen him look like this. She’s never seen him so angry with her.
And angry with her for what? Trying to help?
“You have to let me—” she starts, raising the towel toward his face, but Darlington catches her wrist, his eyes not leaving hers.
“Thank you,” he says coldly, taking the towel from her. They stare at each other for a beat. “You can go now.”
Alex looks at this boy that she loves and feels her heart hardening in her chest like a statue turned to stone. She wants so desperately to help him — to bring him back from whatever hell he’s facing, now in his dreams instead of below the earth. But if he won’t let her, then. Well.
She’s done.
“Fine,” she says flatly, tugging her wrist out of his grip. She shoulders her way past him, bumping his with her own for good measure, and tries not to think about his eyes on her back as she leaves and slams the door behind her.
She stands in the hallway for a minute. Long enough to hear the lock to his bedroom door click.
Then, infuriatingly, tears bloom at the corners of her eyes, and she rubs her wrist under her eye. As she walks down the hall, a flicker in the mirror catches her eye, and she turns to see that she’s smeared blood on her face, her wrist still wet from his claws.
Fuck you, Darlington, she thinks, but she doesn’t mean it. All she wishes is that Dawes was here to bandage her wrist up so she doesn’t have to do it herself.
As she passes by the sitting room, she thinks she spots a black shadow beyond the windows, but once she turns her gaze there, nothing appears.
Pity. Maybe fighting a demon with her bare hands right now — other than the one upstairs — is just what she needs.
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
Darlington takes the longest shower of his life.
The cuts on his cheek sting but he lets them, closing his eyes as he leans a shoulder against the cool tile on the wall.
He doesn’t know why the nightmares have been so much worse, or what caused them — but he does know they’re the nearly the worst thing he’s ever experienced, aside from actually being trapped in Hell.
In his dreams, he fights and slashes his way through monsters of every shape and size, trying to fight his way to her. To Alex. She stands on a field of stars, trapped beyond his reach, bathed in blue fire and white light.
He kills what feels like thousands of creatures to reach her, blue-black blood spattering his hands and arms, piercing shrieks ringing in his ears, but he never gets any closer.
He wakes to her wrist in his claws.
This time, he’d drawn blood. He can still see the stricken look on her face, the pity and fear in her eyes. Who knows what he’ll do next, given the chance?
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
Alex finds herself in the library once more — a common locale for her these days. She furiously grabs the book that Darlington was looking at on amulets and talismans, as well as a book on “constitution spells” and another on general demonology, because to defeat your enemy you must know your enemy…or something.
She drags the heavy tomes to her room because she’s not about to have Darlington snooping on her, and then she gets to work, notebook open beside her and pen in her hand. She reads about the Eye of Horus, shut up in the Peabody Museum a few streets over; she reads about ancient spells of protection and warding, and even symbols of attraction for demons, things that draw them and push them away.
When it comes down to it, they don’t strike her as that different from Grays…just a little more chaotic and a little more evil, but overall they serve the same purpose in her mind.
She scans page after page until the birds chirp outside, the sun peeking through the gaps in her curtains…and just when she’s planning on giving up, she spies something that gives her hope. A small smile spreads across her face and before she can think of how early it is on Thanksgiving Day, she’s already dialing Dawes’ number on her phone, a plan forming in her mind.
If Darlington is going to continue to push her away, she’s going to find a place to put that anger. A way to make it useful.
After all, that’s what Alex Stern does best.
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
Darlington doesn’t see Alex for the entirety of the next day. Ironic, because it’s Thanksgiving, but he supposes it really is just another day. He goes to the library and she isn’t there; he eats a solitary lunch in the kitchen and stares at a book he’s not actually reading in the sitting room. He considers calling his distant cousin, Marie, who he hasn’t spoken to since he started his senior year at Yale, but he pulls up her number twice, fails to dial it twice, and finally gives up.
It’s only now that it’s truly set in for him — he’s not sure he has a home anymore.
For the longest time it was Black Elm, with its endearing drafts and creaks, a shadowed haven on the edge of an old road, but now… Black Elm was nearly as much his prison as Hell was. And of course there’s Il Bastone, but as soon as he graduates, he’s done with Lethe and its mysteries and adventures. He’ll no longer belong in the halls of this house.
The role of Virgil will be Alex’s soon, and then she truly won’t need him at all. None of them will.
His mind is heading into a dangerous spiral. Abruptly he stands, walking away from the sofa, his eyes drawn to the setting sun out the window.
…And Alex is standing on the lawn, a book in her hands, with two demons walking toward her through the dying rays of the evening sun. Though they look like normal humans, Darlington can sense them, as if evil is a thing that can be seen and heard.
It’s like a switch flips in his mind.
One second, he’s standing there, and the next, he’s outside, heat surging within him, the weight of horns on his head. A snarl rips from his throat as he lands beside Alex, only one thought in his mind — protect .
He’s vaguely aware that Alex had been chanting and has now stopped, but it’s at the back of his mind.
“Darlington—” she starts, but he can’t focus on her. One of the demons bares its fangs and launches itself at him, and he rakes his claws over its chest, leaping after it. He sees red, feeling more demon than man, unable to think of anything but killing this creature to protect Alex, to keep her safe.
It might be seconds or hours — all he knows is that eventually, the demon retreats and takes off, and he whirls back toward Alex to find an incomprehensible sight.
She’s standing with the book in one hand, and in the other, she’s holding out a purple amulet that shines with a silvery light. The demon that had been trying to attack her is frozen, confusion and horror dawning on its face, almost like it’s stuck. Darlington can’t quite make sense of what he’s seeing, but then it gets even stranger.
Alex drops the book, reels back, and punches the demon square in the face.
It screams and retreats, racing off in the direction the other one had left in. When Alex looks over at him, she’s grinning, a wild sort of glee on her features the likes of which he’s never seen.
He strides toward her and then stops, not sure exactly what he’s expecting. To touch her to make sure she’s okay? To hug her? Something more? He doesn’t realize that his blood is still coursing with the full might of a demon until she’s there in front of him, her hand on his cheek, perhaps the gentlest touch he’s ever received.
He blinks. The haze clears. Her hand drops to her side, like it was never there.
“What was that?” Darlington asks blankly, his gaze flicking between her and the amulet in her hand.
“I wanted to punch a demon in the face,” Alex explains simply, as if that’s not a big thing, and adds, “One that wasn’t you.”
“You what?” he asks, blinking as if doing so will clear his head. “Are you crazy?”
“Probably, yeah,” she says with a shrug, picking the book up off the ground. “You mentioned the Eye of Horus, and I remembered that Dawes had mentioned this spell to imbue the powers of objects onto other objects, so I—”
“...So you stole the Eye of Horus from the Peabody Museum, performed a spell to duplicate its properties onto another amulet, and then summoned two demons so that you could test it out and ideally punch one of them, if it worked,” Darlington concludes, and Alex nods as she follows along.
“Yeah.”
“What if it hadn’t worked?” he asks lowly, and Alex shrugs.
“It did.”
“You’re unbelievable,” he sighs, and she nods.
“I get that a lot with varying levels of enthusiasm.” She pauses. Something sobers on her face. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s fine,” Darlington says, but he feels sluggish, lost. He feels caught up in her again, like she’s some sort of storm, violent and raging but with the promise of calm inside if he can just reach it.
He loves her. He loves her and he keeps pushing her away.
Why won’t he let her in? And what’s the worst that could happen?
A lot of things are the worst that could happen, and none of them good, a voice inside him says, but for the first time, he decides he won’t listen to it.
Alex turns to head inside, but Darlington reaches out a hand, gently grabbing her wrist. There’s a shoddy ace bandage wrapped around gauze on her wrist from the night before; he smooths his thumb over it briefly. This girl he’s so worried about hurting isn’t very easily hurt. The antics she just pulled make that more than clear, so what the hell is he so hung up on?
Twilight is falling. The sun has just set, and the world is cast in hues of purple and blue, like the color of the amulet in her hand, like the color of the flames that burn around her heart. Il Bastone stands like a silent guardian behind them, the promise of safety and shelter within.
But home isn’t Black Elm. And it’s not Il Bastone, either.
Before he can really think about what he’s doing, Darlington lifts her wrist to his lips, gently pressing a kiss against it, his eyes not once leaving hers. He swears he feels her breath hitch in her throat, pupils blown wide in the dark of her eyes.
“You saved me, Alex Stern,” he says quietly, deadly serious, valiantly loyal. “As long as you’re willing to continue saving me, I think we’ll be okay.” Keep dragging me back from the edge and I’ll do the same for you, he swears in his mind, right before she fists her fingers in the front of his sweater and drags him into a kiss.
It’s his turn to gasp, a quick stutter of breath before he sighs against her lips and lets the tension fall away from every muscle and limb. It’s like muscle memory, the act of wrapping an arm around her waist, of pulling her into his orbit. The way her fingers slide up into his hair make a chill race up his spine, and though he feels a little clumsy and out of practice, he wouldn’t know it from the way her tongue snakes between his lips, sweet and soft.
She tastes like every stupid, intangible thing a book has ever described someone tasting like — like starlight and flame, like cedar and steel. He could get drunk off of it if he bottled it. He decides here and now that he’s game to try.
His fingers skim the edge of the Lethe sweatshirt she’s wearing, begging for a chance to get inside, and she pulls back just enough to lean their foreheads together, their breath mingling in the encroaching cold.
“Not very gentlemanly of you,” she scolds, but she nearly laughs in an attempt to get the words out, knowing just how truly silly they sound. “Though I suppose gentleman and demon are sort of an oxymoron, anyway.”
“I’m sure you can figure out something else to call me,” he manages, staring into her eyes, trying to drown in them.
“Alright, darling,” she murmurs, “I’ll give it a try.”
𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙
They find themselves in the Virgil bedroom and Alex’s first move is to sprawl out on the bed and complain about how much comfier it is than the one in the Dante room. That feels like the right move.
“This isn’t fair,” Alex mumbles face-down on top of the comforter, and Darlington laughs, a warm, rich sound that sends butterflies dancing in her stomach. He sits on the edge of the bed, almost like he doesn’t want to interrupt her or get in her space — like he’s never done this before.
She knows he has. But she has the same feeling she thinks he does, which is that this is different. That he’s different.
Alex flips over onto her side facing him. She reaches a hand out to take his and gives a little tug, inviting him closer. A sigh leaves his lips and he moves, his eyes watching her like he’s trying to swallow her, like he’s trying to memorize every detail of her image in this very moment. It makes her self-conscious, but she shoves that down and away. She’s allowed to feel beautiful. Particularly here. Particularly now.
He curls up facing her, their noses brushing, breath mingling. His hair shines in the warm glow from the lamps beside the bed and Alex can’t help but smile. She feels like an idiot. Like a little kid on her birthday, happy and fulfilled and carefree.
Darlington kisses her, slow and soft, exploratory. She parts her lips for him as his hand comes to rest against her cheek, her fingers twining in his sweater again to draw him closer. When he tilts his head to press kisses against her jaw and down her neck, she sighs, smiling again, unable to stop herself. Her fingers thread up through his hair and he nuzzles his nose against her neck, a breathy laugh tickling her skin.
“What?” she asks, even though she’s smiling too, even though she’s on the verge of laughter.
“I just don’t think this is how a Virgil is supposed to behave with his Dante,” Darlington murmurs, clearly unable to help himself, and Alex shoves him back, rolling her eyes. He laughs, pulling her close again, and tucks a hair behind her ear. He’s looking at her again in that strange sort of way that makes her insides squirm.
“I get it now,” she murmurs, and he tilts his head, curious. “You said I was looking at you like you were breakable.” She takes a breath. “It’s the same look you’re giving me now.” The smile falls from his lips and he looks away, jaw tensing. Alex studies his face and drinks it in — his beautiful sharp brow, his pink lips. His somehow perfectly manicured eyebrows, even though she knows he’s never done a thing to them in his life (and certainly not in the last year).
“Can you blame me?” he returns, taking one of her hands in his and kissing the back of it, watching her from under frustratingly long eyelashes. Alex opens her mouth to say something along the lines of yes, actually , but somehow she manages to bite her tongue.
“In my nightmares,” he continues, his eyes never leaving hers, “I’m trying to get to you.” Alex can suddenly hear her heartbeat in her ears, can feel it pounding through her chest. “You’re standing on a field of stars, and there are countless creatures between us. Wolves. Vampires. Demons. Bats.” He pauses. “Demon bats.” Against her better judgment, Alex laughs softly, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
“I fight through hundreds of them, but I never get any closer to you,” he says, deathly serious, and Alex feels a lump forming in her throat. “That’s how it felt, being on the other side, knowing you were here. Knowing I couldn’t reach you. But I should’ve known that it’s not me who fights through the monsters. It’s you.”
Alex can’t describe the feelings she feels bubbling inside her chest. Feelings she’d fought her whole life never to feel, if only for the sake of never having to hurt when they disappear. But this boy…this stupidly brilliant, unfairly handsome, dangerously strong boy is making her feel every single thing she’s swore she would never feel. It nearly brings tears to her eyes.
“I’m right here,” she murmurs, leaning her forehead against his and closing her eyes. “And you swore to serve me forever, didn’t you?” she asks, pulling away to look at him. He narrows his eyes, but nods, a smirk twitching up at the corner of his mouth.
“Something like that,” he murmurs, and she feels a dark thrill rush through her.
“Good. Then neither of us are going anywhere.” She says it cheekily, but the levity of the moment is washed away as he tugs her into another kiss, the grip on her waist firmer now, the insistence in his lips rough.
Mine, she thinks, and promises herself that no one will ever take him from her again. If they want him, they can come get him. But they’ll have to go through her first.
When Darlington jolts awake that night from a nightmare with Il Bastone quaking around him, it’s Alex who holds his hand and sends him to sleep. And when Alex wakes in the morning to sunlight streaming through the curtains, it’s Darlington who kisses her into being, swearing himself to her with every breath.