Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) Read Online Free PDF

how much they love you…all of them…” Jonathan reached out and caught a tear, held it up, and as it fell, it brightened until it shone like a star. “I can’t give you the love you deserve now…but I can take you somewhere you might start to find it. So what do you want?”
    Down on his knees, shaking, arms wrapped around himself and fighting sobs, he whispered, “What do I want?” The question made no sense—what he wanted had never really mattered.
    “Do you want to go on living like this, whoring yourself out for a fix and being degraded by lesser men…and you know that’s what’s coming, you’ve done all of this before…or do you want to take a chance that maybe…just maybe…there’s something else out there worth living for?”
    He lifted his head. It felt like his heart had been reamed out with a wire brush, leaving a great cavernous space in his chest that echoed even as the ragged edges of flesh fell down like leaves from the tree of his ribcage. “I can’t let him in,” Deven whispered. “I can’t. It will kill me.”
    “I thought you wanted death.”
    He knelt in silence for a while longer before slowly straightening. He honestly couldn’t tell what would be worse, waking up in the middle of being fucked by strangers or waking up knowing he was surrounded by people who loved and treasured him—because if they could see the reality, if they could see what he truly was, he would lose that love as violently as he had lost Jonathan.
    “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jonathan said, moving closer.
    Now, they were within a couple of feet, and Deven found himself memorizing his Consort’s face, the way he stood—yes, just so, unless he was on duty he tried to pretend he was shorter than he was. The scent of him—books, leather, whiskey, cigars…the faint strains of Amy Winehouse…It was all so much a part of the section of Deven’s brain roped off and dedicated to Jonathan…how could he let anyone else have even an inch of that room?
    Jonathan saw the vision Deven had created and smiled. “That’s a very sweet way for you to hate me,” he said. He reached down and touched Deven’s face, and Dev had to drag up every ounce of strength not to try and crawl into his arms.
    He couldn’t look Jonathan in the eye right then, and fixed his gaze on the Consort’s hand…his wedding ring. The real one had been badly damaged, unfixable without melting it down. It was locked in a trunk in his room back at the Haven with the few other items that had been salvaged from their home. As with the ring, so with Deven.
    “I’m broken, Jonathan,” he whispered. “I’m broken. Just pieces held together with spite, torn off one by one by the wind. Nothing can fix me—not Elven magic, not you…I can’t help them. I’m not worth hanging on to.”
    “Like I said,” Jonathan replied, the harsh words tempered with an all too familiar tenderness, “You’re a fucking idiot.”
    Defeated, Deven bowed his head. “What do you want me to do?”
    “Straighten out your coat a bit. Try to look presentable.”
    “Why?” Dev asked, but he let Jonathan move him around like a doll until the Consort was satisfied. When Jonathan found the IV port, he stared at it for a moment in silence.
    “You had one of these when we met,” he said softly. “You were hiding it from David.”
    “What are you doing? No, don’t—”
    Jonathan took hold of the cannula and with one quick movement pulled it out of the vein, causing Deven to gasp at the sharp pain. Black-shadowed blood fell in rivulets over his fingers, into the pale ground that looked like either snow or dust; either way, the blood shone out like it was on fire. Jonathan dropped the needle on the ground as well.
    “I just want to go back to sleep,” Deven said, bending to try and grab the discarded needle, but before he could reach it, it vanished. Deven whimpered, desperate—he had to leave here, now, so he could get a new one put in, or he was going to