Page 72 of Empire of Dark
Until it didn’t.
“Too typical of my kind?” His fingers moved up my back and dug deep into my hair, curling along my scalp.
I nudged my head into his touch like a greedy cat as I found his eyes. “I think I’ve finally accepted the fact that you’re not exactly your kind, so I’ve realized I can’t take anything of you at face value.”
He smiled, an exhale with a soft chuckle coming out of his mouth. “Since you asked so sweetly.”
I rolled my eyes.
“This one”—his forefinger traced the top curve of the skull until it met the tip of my finger—“I got when I was young, but old enough that I had my adult body—I didn’t want any of the artwork to stretch in weird ways.”
“How young?”
“About a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Wait, how old are you?”
“A hundred and seventy something, give or take. I think past the one hundred mark, one stops counting.”
I smirked.
“What’s so funny?”
“I thought I was older than you.”
“Why? How old are you?”
I chuckled, riding my bare leg up along his thighs. “One hundred and thirty-eight and I thought I was older because I always imagined I was the wiser one.”
He scoffed. “Too bad I have thirty-some years of extra wisdom stuffed into my head.”
“But then there’s the theory that we age backward—after a hundred years or so, our kinds get so set in our ways that welose whatever wisdom we managed to gain.” I grinned as my fingertip tapped the end of his nose. “Which would put you firmly on the losing end of the wisdom stick.”
He nipped my finger with a wicked gleam in his eye, making sure to bite hard enough to sting until I pulled it free. “Whatever you need to tell yourself at night.”
I shifted, sitting up and straddling him, my fingers splaying wide on his chest as I looked down at him. “So the skull—tell me of all the wisdom it entails.”
“I got it to remind me that in the end, that is all we are—malefic, human, panthenite.” He glanced down at his chest. “We’re skull and bones, we all rot the same, we all end up in the same place.”
“We just take longer to get there.”
He nodded.
“And the eyes inside?”
“You can see those? I thought they had long ago faded.”
I shook my head. “They’re there, staring at me all the time.”
He grinned. “I had them put in, because there’s always a soul behind the skull, even in death, lest I forget that fact.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Souls that will always haunt?”
His eyes flickered wider for a second and then he nodded, his irises darkening.
Was it even possible that he was haunted by the past the same as I? “Why do you need to be reminded?”
His head rolled to the side, his look going to the window across the room. “It keeps me from falling into the group think that is shared by the rest of my kind. The thought process that is drilled into our heads from the moment we can walk. That we’re better. We deserve more. Everything is ours by right of nature.”