~ Pandora ~
I’m never consuming alcohol again, Pandora grumbled as she began to stir, blinking at the bright light crashing through the window, each ray a knife in her skull. She winced at the pain, and as her mind cleared, the ache only intensified. Because what she faced was far worse than just a hangover.
It was Jax.
And his behavior.
Her father.
And his words.
The titans.
The oracle.
The prophecy.
The shadows.
Naya.
And, above all, it was those blue eyes shining with victory in what should have been his moment of defeat.
Choose me.
Choose me.
Choose me.
The clues had rattled around her brain all day until she couldn’t take it anymore, until her fake smile had become physically painful to produce and her only option left had been the mature thing—to drink herself silly so no one would see the information doing somersaults in the back of her mind.
Okay, so not mature exactly.
But it was all she could think of at the time, all she could do to make sure she would keep touching him and talking to him and looking at him with that look.
All she could do to make sure she still saw Jax.
And not Samael wearing his skin.
Because that’s what all the signs were indicating, right? As she replayed the past few days over and over in the back of her mind, all the odd behavior and the strangely possessive looks and the anger brimming where it hadn’t been before—that’s what it had to mean, right?
That he wasn’t dead.
He was here.
He was Jax.
But that would mean…
That would mean…
Would mean…
Too many things. So many things.
Things Pandora didn’t know how to face.
I have to know, she thought, resolute. Determined. I have to know for sure. I can’t run away from this. I can’t hide. If Sam is— If Jax is— If I… I have to know.
So as the day broke and the sun streamed into her room, Pandora did something she didn’t think she would ever do again.
She reached for the shadows.
She touched the darkness, and she wrapped it around her in the thinnest protective cocoon, vanishing from the world as an ebony veil slipped over her eyes. This place had once been home. Now she was too afraid to breathe, too afraid to move, lest she be swallowed by the void. But this was the only way to get her answer. Only one other person in the world could see through the shadows, and she had to know if he was sleeping calmly beside her on this bed, not dead, but very much alive.
Pandora rolled over.
She nudged Jax awake.
He protested softly, quiet grumbles that made his chest vibrate beneath her palm. But she shook him once more, gently prodding.
“Jax,” she cooed, trying to keep her voice full of love, hiding the fear and doubts and pain teeming beneath the surface.
He blinked once.
Eyelids opening for a brief second, closing once more and staying that way.
Not enough for her to read.
“Jax…”
He blinked again, twice more. The sleep began to retreat. His brows lifted. His mouth opened in a yawn. And then he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. Those seafoam eyes were clear and bright and certain.
“It’s not time to get out of bed yet,” he whispered with a grin, rolling onto his back and pulling her with him, so she landed splayed across his chest like a blanket.
Not once did his gaze leave her face.
Not for a second.
He saw her.
Not with a tracker sense.
Not as though he were sensing her soul and guessing where her eyes might be.
But as if he could see right into the shadows, as if he hardly noticed their presence, as if the darkness was a part of him.
He saw her.
And for the first time, Pandora saw him too.
Sam.
Panic seized her heart.
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
She dropped her forehead to his chest, letting her hair cascade around her cheeks, hiding her face as the truth washed over her, no longer able to be ignored. Jax leaned closer, burrowing his nose into her hair as he took a deep, satisfied breath.
But not Jax.
Sam.
Not Jax.
A shiver raced through her. He mistook it for one of pleasure, choosing to brush his fingers across the bare skin of her shoulder, eliciting another tremor.
Pandora tried to breathe.
Tried to still her racing heart.
Tried to control her crashing emotions.
Because if there was any hope of saving Jax, if he was even alive, she knew it would depend on ensuring that Sam had no idea she’d discovered the truth. None whatsoever. Being a vampire thief would be child’s play compared to the con she was about to pull off.
Good thing I’ve always thrived under pressure.
Pandora took a deep breath, blanking her features, bringing a smile to her lips and a twinkle to her eye as she lifted her head from his chest.
The sight of those seafoam eyes was a punch to the gut.
She didn’t flinch.
Instead, she lifted a suggestive brow and deepened her grin. To Sam, it was meant to look sultry. But in the back of her mind, all Pandora could think was, Game on.
He took the bait, bringing his own lopsided and lazy smile to his lips. “Oh, is that why you woke me up, love?”
Love? she silently sneered. Love? Really? How was I so freaking blind?
“No,” she murmured playfully and swallowed the bile rolling up her throat as she inched up his chest, holding his gaze the entire time, not allowing him to look away.
How had she missed that dark sparkle in his eyes?
How had she missed that domineering gleam?
That wicked edge?
Pandora hated herself. She hated him. And she used that anger and that fury as she placed her lips against his, funneling all that passion into her touch, allowing him to read it as love. After all, to Sam, the two had always been so easy to confuse. But Jax, if he was in there somewhere, would hopefully understand the difference, would see through the harsh, rough motions, and know it was loathing—not lust—that drove her.
When Sam was deep in her kiss, completely wrapped up in it, she released her hold over the shadows. The black veil dropped away while he was too distracted to notice—at least, she hoped. And when she couldn’t take the taste of him any longer, so sweet like Jax yet somehow rotten, Pandora broke away.
“I have to pee,” she said, as she rolled to the other side of his chest and flitted off the bed before dancing out of reach.
“And you woke me up for that because…”
“Because I could,” she answered lightly, sashaying toward the bathroom.
Sam’s eyes sizzled as they watched her, too dark to be Jax’s, too salacious.
Pandora closed the door softly, and only then, behind the safety of opaque wood, did she allow herself to collapse. She gripped the edges of the pedestal sink as her knees gave out and her body drooped, legs no longer working, back caving in, shoulders hunching.
Sam is Jax.
Sam is Jax.
Oh my god. What do I do?
How do I fix this?
Is he alive? Is he there?
Is he gone?
Did I kill him?
Her breath started to come in short spurts as the questions pounded, one after the other, again and again, each one worse than the next. How had this happened? How had Sam survived? How was he Jax?
The titans had been right about her the entire time.
Her father had been right.
She was a fool.
A fool.
And Jax had paid the price for trusting her.
Pandora looked up, looked into the mirror. Her face was hollow. Her cheeks were paler than they’d been when she was a vampire. Her skin was pallid, turning green. And her eyes, her eyes, she couldn’t even look into them. Couldn’t face herself.
Couldn’t face what she’d done.
No.
No, I don’t believe it.
In one violent move, she ripped away from the sink and stumbled to the side. Her butt crash-landed into the toilet as her hands came up to catch her face. She stayed there for a few minutes, trying to breathe, trying to force the air in and out of her lungs, staving off a full-blown panic attack that Sam would surely hear.
He’s alive.
He has to be.
Choose me—that was Jax.
That was a message from Jax.
Because he’s alive. And he’s fighting to come back to me.
Choose me.
Those two words were her lifeline, and she held on to them like an anchor in the storm, like a tether—
The tether!
Pandora jolted, head popping up as the realization ran through her. The tether. The one that had always stretched between her and Jax. The one that allowed him to sense her in the shadows. The one that she’d used as a guide back to the world after she’d killed Samael.
It wasn’t her magic. Or Jax’s.
It was something stronger.
Something beyond understanding.
A bond between their souls.
Pandora reached for it, searching with her senses as the fire in her chest flared. She blinked. And there it was. A faint blue line that stretched from her heart, through the door, and out toward Jax. She touched it with her magic, felt the bond burn, and took her first deep breath in five minutes.
He was alive.
Jax was alive.
But then she noticed something else. Something that had never been there before.
A shadow tether.
Twisting around the one she shared with Jax.
Pure black.
Suffocating.
Sam.
“Are you okay?” a deep voice called through the door.
“Fine!” Pandora shouted back, a little too fast. Reaching behind, she flushed the toilet, then stood. “Just washing my face.” She turned the faucet on and splashed water over her skin as a memory came to the forefront of her thoughts, her last memory as an angel.
Pandora and Sam stood, surrounded by an inferno of immortal fire as she wove the flames into a prison to keep him contained. And he let her. But right before she closed the door, he brought his shadows around them both, turning them into the sun at the core of an otherwise empty universe.
Samael? she’d asked, confused to see his power surge.
Without responding, he’d pressed his palm to her chest and pushed out with his darkness, forceful enough that she’d felt something pinch her skin and puncture her heart.
Just a little piece of me, he’d whispered then, letting his shadows drop away so they were once more surrounded by blazing blue heat. So I’ll always be able to find you. So you’ll meet me in your dreams.
Then he let her close the prison.
Let her lock him up.
Let her seal their fate.
And when she’d woken up in her next life, with access to his shadows, power she’d never had before, she’d believed him at his word. She’d trusted his intentions. Had faith that he’d given her a bit of his power so he could indeed visit her through the darkness, slipping into her dreams and sometimes her waking hours, allowing their love to live on.
But what if it had been something else?
One last trick?
One final manipulation?
Pandora turned the water off and reached for the towel behind her. She patted her face dry as her thoughts began to whirl, as they flashed back to that look of triumph in his eyes in the moment before her power consumed him, the moment before he disappeared, immortal body finally burned away to ash in her cerulean fire.
That flash of victory had never sat right with her.
And now she knew why.
He wasn’t exulted to be dying.
He was exulted to finally have the chance to live.
Because he’d known. Even thousands of years ago, he’d known there was a chance she would find the courage to kill him. And he’d covered his bases. He’d sent the darkness into her heart. He’d given her the shadow kiss now printed out of sight at the crown of her head, marking her for all eternity. He’d used his power to tie them together so that when she did exactly what he knew she would, destroyed his immortal body, his soul would have a way to live on.
Her father’s words came back to haunt her.
His body. You watched his body explode, Malcolm Scott had said, voice cold and commanding as he calmly sipped his whiskey. What in the world made you think his body was the only thing that needed to be destroyed?
But she hadn’t listened.
Had never even considered.
She’d stood in front of him defiant and totally confident in her victory. And looking back, she wasn’t sure what pained her more—that her father had been right all along, or that now, in this rare moment where their goals might have aligned, he was gone and he wouldn’t be there to help her.
Because it was so obvious.
Painfully obvious.
After Sam’s body had exploded and her power had been sucked away in the vortex, she hadn’t immediately returned to the world. No. Instead, she’d found herself floating in an onyx sea, lost in the void of Sam’s power, adrift in it. And she didn’t pause, didn’t question. She didn’t stop to wonder what it might mean. She’d thought of Jax, thought of home, and used their tether to guide her through the darkness—used their tether to lead Sam straight to him. A weight had tugged on her heart, but she’d thought it fatigue. And he’d called her Pandora when he’d first woken up—Pandora!
What did I do, Jax?
What did I do?
She would fix it.
She would find a way to fix it.
But she couldn’t do it alone.
Pandora emerged from the bathroom determined. She looped her arm around Jax’s waist, leaning her head against his shoulder as she claimed starvation and forced him to follow her to the kitchen. Kira and Luke were already eating. Naya was outside with her brother. Pandora darted her gaze around the room, searching for some way to silently get the message across, cursing herself for never finding the time to get a replacement cell phone after escaping the titan jail.
And then she noticed Kira’s computer.
“Working on your blog?” she asked conversationally, taking the seat next to her friend as Jax peeled off to pour them each a cup of coffee. Kira nodded. “Mind if I look?”
“Go ahead.” The conduit shrugged and pushed the laptop in her direction.
Pandora spared a second to take one quick glance at Jax, still preoccupied with the bagels on the counter, before opening a new Word document on Kira’s computer.
SOS, she typed, taking furtive glances around the room as her fingers flew over the keyboard. Keep your face blank. Do not have a visible reaction as you read this. I need to talk to you and Naya and Pavia alone. This is an emergency. Get the boys to distract Jax. They cannot leave him alone. Not for a second! If he gets away, have Luke alert us immediately. Don’t speak about any of this out loud, not even to your fiancé. You don’t know who might be listening.
Pandora paused as Jax sat and set a steaming mug on the placemat in front of her.
Sam is alive, she typed. Sam is alive, and we need to figure out how to kill him.
And then she looked up from the screen and met those seafoam eyes that were watching her from across the table. With a grateful smile, she lifted the mug to her lips and held his gaze over the rim. She took a long sip before sliding the laptop back in front of Kira.