The air around us filled with electricity. I could almost feel it tickling against my skin as Atticus asked in a low deadly voice, "What do you mean?"

"She wanted to turn me," I murmured, each syllable was a nail in Olivia's coffin. I could almost see myself swinging the hammer with a gleeful grin on my face as the echoes bounced off my ears. Except, that image didn't come, because the blue fire in Atticus' eyes kept it at bay. I knew I should have wanted her to suffer, for what she did to Nightmare at the very least, but there was something about Atticus' expression that made the gleeful revenge halt in its tracks.

If Olivia saw the depth of his rage, sizzling under the surface, she didn't let on as she continued to poke and prod.

"Playing with mummy and daddy's memory was easy enough and turning her friends against her was child's play."

Her words washed over me. They couldn't hurt me now. Without what she'd done, there would be no Nightmare, with her weird little chirps and mad moments of tearing around the flat. No Callum, or Emma, or Kelly, and the endless hours of banter and laughter and comfortable silence. I wouldn't have the flat, or my freedom, instead I'd likely be trapped in the vapid world my parents had unwittingly built around me. One with a social hierarchy I never understood and conservative rules that dictated how I should feel, think, act. Now I had a life that I had built and the future ahead of me is mine entirely.

And more than all of that, without her, there would be no him: the man standing between us with power roiling around him. The person who had snuck through every defence and sparked something in me that had long since died. He had been a ray of sunshine at the dawn of an endless night, and it was unnerving to see Olivia's darkness taking hold of him.

Her eyes twinkled with delight as she watched Atticus come undone before her. "Setting the teacher on her..." she uttered with cool precision. "That was some of my best work yet."

Atticus' gaze snapped to mine, and I gaped as I saw the lightning racing in his irises, like cracks showing the pure energy beneath his surface. His expression, once open and warm, was now as cold and hard as ice.

"Is this true?" he asked in a voice that was as sharp as a blade and equally deadly.

A panic gripped my heart. It felt like I was losing him, like when she was done with him, that light I loved would be snuffed out.

"Atticus it's OK," I reasoned as I reached for his hand. The electricity around him snapped as my fingertips like a scared dog.

Olivia's maniacal grin continued to goad him, despite the way Aslo's grasp tightened around her throat.

"Let her go," Atticus hissed in a deadly whisper. Lightning jumped from his clenched fists into the ground beneath, slithering across the floor like snakes.

Aslo raised an eyebrow as he watched his friend unleashing lightning into the earth. Coming undone in front of him. Slowly, his grasp loosened on Olivia, and she slumped forward out of his hold.

As she straightened, Olivia sneered, "What's wrong Atticus, upset I played with your toy?"

"I will end you," he growled. His eyes almost glowed white while the air around us hummed and crackled.

Olivia's bitter laugh cut through the charge, "End me? We're eternal," she cackled. "What are you going to do? Burn my book? Are you really that much of a traitor to your own kind?"

"You're not my kind. Not anymore," Atticus snarled before they lunged for each other.

Aslo was at my side the instant they did, and even though he played with his lighter, in the same nonchalant way he always had, I could see the way his shoulders tightened and his feet planted, ready to step in when needed.

He spread an arm out across me as I took an instinctive step towards the chaos. Something called in me to make it stop. I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but something felt wrong. Maybe it was the way Olivia had goaded him, or the smile on her face, or the fact that I'd already fallen for her puppeteering. Whatever it was, it felt like we were all on a rollercoaster, careering towards a broken track.

I tried to follow the fight, but my eyes couldn't keep up with their speed. All I saw were freeze frames when one had the upper hand and the other struggled to even the playing field. Olivia managed to land a few brutal strikes, but within minutes it was clear that Atticus was too strong, too fast, too experienced. With a thundering heart I watched as Olivia's body was pushed and pulled, blood marring every strike while her screams of anguish and pain ripped through the hush.

I wanted to shout, to tell him to stop, to wait, and to think about what he was doing and why Olivia hadn't tried to run. But every time, the words got caught in my throat. What if I distracted him at the wrong moment? What if I cost him the upper hand and Olivia used it to her advantage?

All too suddenly, it ended with Olivia bloodied and beaten, her neck grasped tightly in Atticus' ruby red hand. The blood coating its surface glimmered in the dying light, like the precious gemstone it resembled. He lifted her until her feet danced in the air and her hands slipped against his, trying to pry him free.

A brutal snarl ripped through his clenched teeth as lightning ran along his arm and raced over Olivia's body. Her eyes flared open in pain, and from them electricity leapt free. He was filling her with it, flaying her alive from the inside out.

Her book flickered into existence, battling with his power to try and stay hidden, to stay safe.

But it wasn't enough.

With a tortured scream Olivia passed out in his grasp and her book fell with a thud into his waiting hand. His eyes had turned back to blue, but I could still see the way his anger tensed every muscle. They danced and twitched as he discarded her body. It landed in a pile on the floor. His grim stare never left Olivia's book in his hand, as he motioned to Aslo and the lighter he was swivelling between his thumb and forefinger.

Aslo raised his eyebrow but tossed the silver lighter without a second thought. Even with my gaze enraptured by the man in front of me, I could still see the way Aslo's eyes glimmered beside me. It was like I could almost see the fire flashing inside them. Hungry to see anything, everything, burn.

Atticus lifted the lighter to Olivia's book. As if sensing how close her fate was to death, she roused and groaned.

Looking at her broken body, I couldn't fight the concern pulling at my nerves, making my heart flutter and my chest tighten. It didn't make sense. She could have run. She could have feigned regret. She could have shut her fucking mouth whenever she wanted. But she didn't. She pushed and prodded and spat acidic poison into fresh open wounds. Just as she'd led me along a twisted path until I had a knife buried in her gut, she'd led Atticus to this moment. All I could think was 'why?'

"Don't," I cried as Atticus' thumb reached for the ignition.

He paused, and for the first time in moments he looked at me with wide eyes, like he was only now registering the room around us, anything except Olivia and her demise in his grasp.

"She deserves it," he hissed, although I could hear the pain at the edge of his words. Even if he believed his own words, the reality of what he planned to do, to a person he'd called a friend, still cut deep. "Even if the Council come for me, it doesn't matter. She'll be gone. For good."

"And then what?" I countered as I took a step towards him.

Aslo must have caught my train of thought as he added "Anna has a point. If Olivia is right, and the Order are going to keep coming, it only helps them having you out of the way."

Atticus' eyes flickered as realisation set in, and he saw how Olivia had manoeuvred us into this checkmate. "Whether she burns or not. We can't avoid the Council's involvement."

"And any involvement will leave Anna exposed," Aslo added in a knowing tone. "I can hide her for a while, but not indefinitely, and I can't hold off the Order and the Council alone." How many times had they had this conversation, or at least a variation of it? And how many times had it come to the same conclusion I had?

From their argument earlier, I could only guess it had been many.

I hadn't wanted to think about it then, but Aslo had been right. "You have to make me forget, Atticus."

"No."

"It's the only way. The Council can't charge you with anything if I don't remember." If it would keep him safe and thwart Olivia's plans, then I would do anything. That thought alone was as terrifying as it was true.

"I can't," he said as he shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. The dark strands stood on end in the wake of his palm, as if the electricity inside of him had left some remnant in the air around us.

"It's OK Atticus."

"No." His eyes burned with his fervour, his desperation. "I won't take the past year away from you. I know I should, but I can't..." His beautiful face twisted into a mask of despair and pain. His lips flattening into a grim line and a crease formed between his dark , thick eyebrows. And his eyes... They caught mine and all thought was seared away.

"You deserve to know you're loved," he started in a broken voice. "Fuck, even before learning what she did to you, I wanted you to know that. And not just by me, but the other people in your life."

I watched wide eyed as he continued.

"For months, I watched you just exist, like you didn't deserve any of it, and as time went on, it broke my heart." He fisted his hand over his chest, over the heart we both knew would never beat, but was no less alive. "So, I don't care what happens to me, what the Council do to me, because I will do anything, endure anything, if it means that you remember that."

I reached for his hand and clasped mine around his, lowering the lighter towards the ground. I wanted to bathe in the feelings his words had evoked, to throw my arms around him and say 'fuck it' to every PDA rule I'd ever enforced. But Olivia's crumpled body on the floor and the electricity palpable in the air kept logic at the forefront of my mind.

"If you're taking forgetting off the table then I'm vetoing anything that sees you being carted off to the Council," I countered, reaching for the lighter and throwing it back to Aslo. "So, forget plan A and plan B and any other plan that ends in you walking to your death, erasing these past months, or leaving me to deal with that asshole." I tossed a look back at the modern Viking and earned playful pout. "Where does that leave us?"

"Up Shit Creek getting pegged by a paddle?" Aslo muttered, flicking the hinged lid on and off of his lighter with an audible metallic click.

Atticus smiled despite himself. "Very poetic, Aslo."

His eyes flicked back to mine as I traced his strong jaw and cupped his face. His stubble scratched against my palm while his inherent heat soaked down through my skin. "We can work this out," I implored as I tried not to think about the delectable scent of him. "What would you do if I wanted you to stay?"

My eyes caught his and for the first time since I'd seen him, I saw something soft and warm in their depths. "If I told you that these past months have been really fucking shitty because, as much as I tried, I couldn't go back to how I was. I couldn't flip that switch like I had five years ago, and all I felt was this fucking void." A shaky breath skittered across my lips as I dropped my hands and fiddled with my fingernails. "If I told you that now you're here, I don't want to lose you again."

The words were as a weak as a whisper, a perfect juxtaposition to the power they held. I hadn't meant to say them, not now, in a derelict building, especially not in front of Aslo, with R's dead body and an unconscious Watcher as my witnesses. But they were true. I knew that down in my marrow, in every cell, every atom.

A smile crept onto Atticus' face, tweaking the corners of his tempting lips and lighting the brilliant blue in his eyes.

For fear of turning into a puddle of mush at his size twelve feet, I cleared my throat and glanced down at the scuffed leather of my boots before daring to look back up. "So you either find some way to stay or we face the Council together. Dealers choice," I finished with the dregs of whatever authoritative tone I had left.

I reached for the hand holding Olivia's book and slowly lowered it, clasping his hand in mine. The heat of his skin radiated out, warming my bones. It reminded me what it had felt like to have his touch on my skin, that day before it all fell apart.

Somehow the air changed, and the atmosphere filled with a tension as thick and sweet as cooling fudge.

I could feel his heat radiating into the small space between us, and his breath rattling from his lungs, despite not needing the air. If I tilted my head, just an infinitesimal movement, I knew I could feel his lips on mine.

My tongue danced behind my teeth in anticipation. Eager to rediscover what his lower lip tasted like.

I dragged in a ragged breath. Had too much happened between us to take this leap? Was there too much baggage weighing us down?

I felt him shift. Slowly, deliberately, his fingers brushed against my own.

With a touch, so light it felt like no more than a breeze, I felt his fingers skate across my skin. Like living flame, the warmth of his touch rekindled the fire in my veins.

My heart pounded as his hand crept from my waist to inch across the sensitive skin on my neck. Deftly he turned my face towards his.

My breathing quickened. I let my eyes flutter closed.

In a moment that lasted forever, I felt his lips brush against mine. They were soft and unsure at first. Nothing like our first kiss, but somehow it was so much more than that had been. It was honest and pure. My skin tingled at the contact as my heart thundered in my chest.

"Anna," he murmured. It was a question and a plea. We'd been here before, but back then I couldn't give him what he deserved. I couldn't let myself open myself up, because I didn't want to be vulnerable. Now... now I knew I didn't need to be vulnerable to let him in. It wasn't a weakness to want him and letting him in didn't mean I had to give anything up.

I answered him the only way I knew how.

I drew in a shaky breath and felt myself moving forward... no, falling forward, or maybe just falling. Letting go and just falling towards Atticus, for him, into him. For the idea that I could be happy if I just let myself. I couldn't register the difference anymore. All I knew was that the space between us was shortening and my heart was flying, and it all collided into something when I brushed my lips lightly against his own in a kiss that almost didn't feel real. It was so soft yet electrifying.

I could feel how his body tensed, the tremor in his hand, still holding Olivia's book, as his body, primed for violence, shivered under his restraint.

I craved more so I pressed my lips to his; delivering myself a dose of that special something I had always been yearning for but could never allow myself to find.

So many thoughts rushed through my head at that point. He tasted like sweet peppermint, but there was also something else. Something that made my stomach tighten into a hard knot and forced me to fight against a sudden urge to wrap myself around him. It was pure intoxication and it hit me like a shot of absinthe. It rolled through my body, smouldering like hot coals and melting my resolve like a flame to a candle.

"Excusing the profanity and demanding tone, that was almost romantic," Aslo drawled from the sidelines as Atticus pulled back. His chest heaved as his gaze locked on my lower lip before dragging with slow delicious purpose to my own.

Electricity tingled against my lips, a spark zapping lightly at the sensitive skin sending a shiver down my spine and a gasp from my lips. My eyes flew to his, the darkness sparking with veins of electricity.

"Shut the fuck up, Aslo," Atticus muttered with a wicked grin, before he threw Olivia's book to ground and pulled my lips to his, his hands twining into my hair.