Andreas let me hold onto him as long as I needed to convince myself that he was alive and well. I finally pulled away. “What happened?” I asked him once I had put a comfortable distance between us. I needed space to be able to think clearly.

He took in a deep breath and laid down on his back, exhaustion written all over him. “I was attacked because I was distracted.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Someone was about to sneak up on you? You of all people!” I said, uncomprehending.

Andreas chuckled and it was a sweet sound, not the usual harsh one he used. “I’m not untouchable, little witch. And things do preoccupy my mind, just as they do other people. I may be powerful, but that doesn’t make me as immune to ordinary human feelings as I act like I am.”

“So you do have a heart,” I commented dryly.

He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “It turns out I do. I thought I lost it a long time ago, but you are showing me that it’s still there, buried under all the shit I have built up over the years.”

“I’m showing you it’s still there?” I prompted. My eyes were fixed on him. He was gazing up at the ceiling, so he didn’t notice the way I looked at him. I was grateful for that. My realization about my feelings for him put me in a very difficult position. I needed to understand all of this. And more importantly, I needed to understand how Kalen fit into all of this.

“Yes.”

Sometimes it was really frustrating when he wouldn’t offer information willingly. “Are you going to make me ask you to explain everything?”

He smirked. “Perhaps.”

I curled my legs to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. “Fine, if you are just going to give one word answers, I’m not going to talk.”

He shut his eyes and it took a moment for him to open them again. When he did, he turned on his side so he could look at me. “I’m not very good with talking to people, especially not about myself. That is why the only people who know anything about me are the ones that were there when it happened.”

“But I wasn’t there. And you are going to have to tell me if you want me to know you.”

He groaned and rolled back onto his back. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Everything.” I gave him the same answer I had given Kalen not too long ago.

He abruptly turned to me again. “Really? You cannot be more specific?” he commented dryly, his eyes narrowed.

“I can’t, because I actually do want to know everything.”

“That is not how this conversation is going to work. You want to know something, ask a specific question and I will answer it. I do not offer information freely.” Again, I could see the striking differences between him and Kalen. Getting information out of Kalen was easy, all I had to do was say I needed it. With Andreas it was like pulling teeth from an unwilling patient. He only gave information if he absolutely had to and for that reason he was still a mystery to me.

“You almost died today and you still can’t let anyone in?” I asked, unable to hide my shock.

“I never let anyone in for a good reason: everyone I have ever gotten even remotely close to, that I have allowed myself to care about, got hurt. No exceptions.” His tone darkened, his expression far away.

“Fine, let’s start with that then. How do they get hurt?” I asked, finally feeling like this conversation was going to go somewhere.

“Start with something else.”

I threw my hands in exasperation. “You just said that if I ask, you will answer,” I reminded him, a slight edge to my tone.

“I know what I said. And I will answer that question. Just not right now. Start with something easier.”

“Define easier.”

It was his turn to look exasperated. “You don’t know how this works, do you? Normally when you want to get to know someone, the first questions you ask them is: what are your hobbies? Your favorite color? A favorite number perhaps? Maybe a physical activities you enjoy above the rest?” he rolled his eyes and went back to staring at the ceiling.

“So you want me to be superficial? If that’s the case, how come you have never asked me any of those questions?” Andreas grunted and sat up, turning his body to mine.

He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I never do any of this and you are making it really difficult for me. I am now reminded why I never do this. But, I’m trying because I need to grovel. So this is me groveling the way you expect me to.” His expression was not pleased. “I haven’t asked you any of those things, because I have already figured them out. Your hobbies are reading and cooking, two things you enjoy doing immensely. I always see you doing one or the other. You favorite color is sapphire, as you show a preference for the sapphire dresses in your closest. Your favorite number is two, because everything you do needs to have a pair, probably related to your knight fantasy as observed from your choice of novels. You are a romantic, something I’m terribly sorry to have ruined for you. And you don’t like physical activities as far as I can tell. And after a long, stressful day, you like soaking in hot bath. Did I miss anything?”

I gaped at him, unable to reply. Every single thing he had said about me was true. I had no idea he was that observant. My mind was reeling. Had he really been paying that close attention to me? Here I thought he wanted to ignore me, to avoid me, that I was nothing but a menace to him that he needed to get rid of a soon as he could. I didn’t know what to say. I was at a complete loss for words. I shook my head after a while, realizing I hadn’t given him a reply.

“How do I know nothing about you?” I asked after the silence started to bug me.

He smiled. “I didn’t want you to. I purposely hid all my actions so you wouldn’t notice.”

I bit my bottom lip, ashamed that I knew so little about him and he knew so much about me. Even though he said he made sure I couldn’t notice his actions, I still felt like I should’ve been more perceptive.

Andreas sighed. “My intention with that little exercise was not to make you feel bad. And if it will make you feel better, my hobbies also include reading, but I prefer research, or nonfiction to fiction and I like to draw. I absolutely hate cooking, which is why I’m glad I can do magic. My favorite color is black, but I’m sure you might have noticed that already. I do not have a favorite or lucky number and I don’t do physical activities, apart from the ones you’ve already caught me engaged in, although I am used to doing manual labor.”

I smiled. “Can we move on to deeper topics now then?” I asked. I needed to know what drove him, not what he liked. Something happened to make him this dark and I burned to know what it was.

He took in a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “Very well. But that first question you asked still has to wait. I’m not ready to answer it.”

“Fine, start by telling me who attacked you.”

“That’s easy, a Follower of Light.”

“Wait, what? A Follower of Light? Aren’t they supposed to be ‘good’?”

“They are, which is why he targeted me. I’m still considered evil, Lana. You may forget that fact for god-knows-what reason, but no one else does. Raphael, the Follower of Light, and I have had encounters in the past. You could say he doesn’t really like me all that much and decided to take destiny into his own hands. He was very lucky tonight because I wasn’t focused the way I normally am.”

“Why weren’t you focused?”

His eyes narrowed and he looked away from me. “When I say this I do not intend to make you feel guilty, as what happened is not your fault at all,” he cautioned. He immediately had me on edge. “Our conversation was what was on my mind. Or rather, your parting-words. I was replaying them in my head, wondering how I could have been such a fool. I didn’t consider Raphael a threat, since under normal circumstances, he is no match for me.”

My words had almost cost him his life. While he said he didn’t want to blame me, it was my fault. I reminded myself I never would have had to say anything to him had he not acted so horribly to me before, thus not making it my fault, but I couldn’t help but feel guilty. Seeing him bleeding out on the floor weakened my resolve to keep him at arm’s length. The thought of losing him was unbearable.

“I can’t think of another question. The only thing I really want to know is why you felt like you needed to push me away,” I said after another moment’s pause.

Andreas got to his feet and started pacing the room. “Is there nothing else we can talk about first? Aren’t you curious about my relationship with Kalen? Or…” he seemed to ravage his mind for something else he thought I could be curious about, “or about how I first discovered my powers? Or even when my eyes first turned—“ he cut himself off. “Never mind, forget the last one.”

He really seemed to want to avoid that topic for now, so I let him. I wasn’t going to forget to go back to it, but I let him have some peace of mind first. “Fine, I will ask something else first. How many girls did you sleep with before me? And how many of them meant anything to you as opposed to the ones that meant nothing?”

Pain flashed across his handsome face, knotting my insides. While I was glad he hadn’t thrown up his defense, it was almost too much to see him so hurt, as if my question was the knife that had stabbed him. He bit the inside of his cheek. “You really like bring up the topics I really want to avoid around you, don’t you? You don’t really want to know the answer to that question. Just as you don’t want to know how many people I have killed or the methods I have used to kill them. Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers too. I have done a lot of really bad things in my life, none you have to hear about.”

I saw my chance. “Fine. You choose then. Either answer this question, or tell me why you wanted to push me away.”

He became frustrated, stomping a lot more than before. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and continued the motion, pulling his fingers through his hair, keeping his disheveled hair tangled with them as he slightly pulled the ends. “I’ve slept with eight-nine women, all who thought I had feelings for them, and all of whom I used purely for sex. I lost count of how many people I have killed after I crossed the thousand mark. And if you want to know how I killed them, think of some of the most gruesome ways to kill someone, and multiply that by five and you might have an idea how I killed some of my victims. And if you were wondering why I killed them, well some deserved to die, while others were just in my way or in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I had heard many of this before from other people, but hearing him say it made it real, not just some story people were spreading around. “Why did you tell me this instead of why you pushed me away?” I asked, curious that he would find this an easier topic.

He locked gazes with me again. “It is easier to admit I’m a monster, little witch, than to explain why I’m afraid of letting people get close to me.”

I got up from the bed and walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. He stiffened. “I’m not going anywhere, if that’s what you are worried about.”

He sank to the floor and I went down with him. His mask was off and he watched me with a completely unguarded expression. “You already know the story of how my brother died. That was the catalyst to my transformation into this,” he said gesturing to himself, his voice had taken on an eerie quality. “I used to be a much happier boy. I grew up in a happy home, with parents who cared about me, so I had no reason to be hateful or depressed. I had no reason to be dark.” For some reason I didn’t believe that. His words carried a heavier tone to them, almost like he was saying them because he was expected to. They were like barriers, shielding yet another secret behind them, but I chose not to dwell on it. I had been so used to him not being forth-coming that perhaps I was seeing something where there was nothing. “When my brother was killed I became angry at the world. He was the sweetest child you would have ever met. He was everything that was pure about this world. He wouldn’t even hurt a fly. For someone to have killed him… that person had to be truly heartless. I started spiraling out of control, doing things I wouldn’t normally have done.

“I blamed Kalen for what happened for a very long time. My mother, she had a soft spot for him. She basically adopted him when he had nowhere else to go and considered him her son as well.” I noticed his use of past tense when referring to his mother that same way Kalen had spoken about her, careful not to use present tense verbs. “She cornered me several times, telling me to be nicer to Kalen because he had had a hard life, and blah blah. I refused to listen. My father always agree with her no matter what, but I didn’t want to hear anything either of them had to say.

“I started practicing dark magic and my powers became stronger. It wasn’t long before I started learning how to do things that even my parents didn’t have the knowledge of yet. They noticed me getting darker little by little every day and they were worried.”

He stopped talking and looked at me, cupping my cheeks into both his hands. His eyes were cloudy, whatever happened next left a deep-rooted sorrow within him. He dropped his hands and stared anywhere but at my face before he started talking again. “My parents decided to confront me and tell me to get back on the right path again. They sat me down and calmly talked to me. But I was too far gone. The grief had eaten away at me and I was not longer the son they knew. They started yelling the more stubborn I became. And I… lost my cool. It was the product of months and months of not crying or screaming or doing anything about my brother’s loss. I was acting out without dealing with my grief. Anger, rage, sorrow, everything… all my emotions were jumbled up inside of me and I exploded, taking it all out on my parents who were only trying to help me.”

Tears were dripping down his cheeks and I reached out to wipe them away, but he caught my hand, suddenly locking our gazes again. “That was the first time my eyes turned gold. And I will never forget it, because it was also the day I killed my parents.”

I couldn’t have heard him right. His eyes were a liquid blue now, swimming in emotions I had never seen from him before. He killed his parents in a moment of lost control. I stared at him. I didn’t know what to do or say.

“One moment I was in control of myself, the next it all vanished. One moment they were talking to me, trying to urge me back onto the correct path, the next they were lying lifeless on the ground in front of me. I immediately realized what I had done. That was the final straw that put me over the edge. Losing my parents would’ve been one thing. Being the cause of their demise is an entirely different feeling. One I can never escape.”

He looked broken. All the usual calmness, all the usual confidence, all of it shattered. He was just a man laying himself bare in that moment. He wasn’t the all-powerful dark sorcerer Andreas Scott Grigoli, he was just Andreas, the man who needed someone to comfort him. It all made so much sense now. Why he pushed everyone away, why he was so afraid of letting himself care about anybody. Everyone he has loved had died in some way. He killed his own parents. How terrible it must feel to think that anytime you allow yourself to love someone you might end up killing them in a fit of rage, too?

He was still holding my hand, keeping it from wiping his tears away. I used my other hand to soften his grip and he let go. I moved closer to him and buried my head in his chest. My actions surprised him. He must have thought I would run the other way if I learned what he had done to his parents. “You aren’t going to hurt me,” I whispered. And for the first time, I actually believed it. The emotional pain he had put me through was nothing compared to what he must have experienced. I now understood why he kept warning me from the beginning that he couldn’t promise not to hurt me. It was because he didn’t know if he would. My heart melted.

“You don’t know that.”

I grabbed his face and pulled it down to mine. And instead of using words, I let my actions do the talking. I brought my lips to his.