Daughter of Smoke and Bone

“Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?

This time, it was Akiva who jerked his hand away. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

He reached for her face, and Karou covered his hand with hers, pressing it to her cheek.

He said, “I want you to know…” He swallowed. “I need you to know that I was drawn to you—to you, Karou—before the wishbone. Before I knew, and I think… I think I would always find you, no matter how you were hidden.” He was focused on her with extraordinary intensity. “Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world. No matter what happens—” His voice cracked, and he took a breath. “I need you to remember that I love you.”

Love. Karou felt bathed in light. The cherished word leapt to her own lips to answer him, but he beseeched her, “Tell me you’ll remember. Promise me.”

Here was a promise she could make, and did. Akiva fell silent, and Karou, sitting forward, breathless, thought that that was all—that he would just say something like that and then not kiss her. Which was absurd, and she would have protested had it come to that, but it did not.

One of his hands was already at her cheek; he lifted the other. He cradled her face in his hands, and then it was as smooth as inevitability: a gliding together. His mouth brushed hers. A dip, a touch like a whisper—a gentle, gentle grazing of Akiva’s full lower lip across both of Karou’s in an upward lilt, and then there was space between them again, so small a space, their faces so close. They breathed each other’s breath as the pull gathered between and around and in them, astral, and then the space was gone again, and all there was was the kiss.

Sweet and warm and trembling.

Soft and hard and deepening.

Mint on Karou’s breath, salt on Akiva’s skin.

His hands in her hair, plunged to the wrists like it was water; her palms at his chest, the wishbone forgotten in the discovery of his heartbeat.

You tell me that battling with monsters has made me a monster? Doing business with devils, what has that made you?”