Chapter 204: Vanilla
"W-why?"
"There is... something on your neck. Just turn around." Cillian’s tone was so serious that it caught her off guard, as she had never seen this side of him until now.
Slowly, she turned to look at the surface of the door in front of her.
Just as she did, Cillian leaned down, parting his lips as he brought them dangerously close to her nape. His warm breath ghosted over her skin, sending an involuntary shiver through Jade as her grip around the door handle tightened.
Cillian’s eyes bled into a vivid crimson as dark purple wisps slipped past his lips and drifted towards the mark. The moment they touched it, the mark sizzled before burning away from her skin, making Jade feel a strange tingling sensation spread across the back of her neck.
Then it hit him.
Her sweet, vanilla-like scent.
It quietly wrapped around his senses, making something inside him pause. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he found himself wanting to lean in just a little closer... to breathe her in just once more.
Meanwhile, Jade felt as though she were moments away from combusting. Every nerve in her body had become painfully aware of how close he was.
Without daring to turn around, she asked in a small, flustered voice, "I-Is it off?"
Her voice snapped him back to reality.
Catching himself, he quickly leaned away from her, pinching the skin of her neck lightly as a distraction.
"Ow!" Jade turned sharply to face him, only to find that he had already taken a step back to maintain a respectable distance between them. "What was that for?"
She rubbed the back of her neck in irritation.
Cillian simply flashed a charming smile and held up his hand, revealing a tiny insect trapped between his fingers. "I wonder where you have been wandering to let this little guy build a home on you."
Jade’s green eyes narrowed, focusing on his raised hand.
The moment she realised what he was holding, her eyes widened to the size of saucers. It was a small, black bug, still very much alive and wiggling to escape the grip of Cillian’s thumb and forefinger.
She stumbled backwards with a sharp yelp until her back slammed against the door.
"What the fuck was that doing on my back?"
Jade despised insects, regardless of whether they were big or small. To think that one of them had been casually residing on her skin made her flesh crawl in disgust.
Cillian merely shrugged his shoulders before turning around and walking towards his desk.
He picked up a tissue, wiped the bug off his hand, and murmured, "That is for you to figure out. If anything, you should be thanking me for helping you. At the very least, your boyfriend will not run away thinking you neglect your basic hygiene to the point of letting bugs make themselves at home on you."
And just as expected, that was enough to set Jade off again.
"M-My hygiene?! How dare you say that? I bathe at least twice a day."
She was still trying to control the tremors running through her body from having Cillian so close, along with the lingering sensation of that bug still crawling all over her skin.
"Hm, thank you for sharing that interesting piece of knowledge. But it is not me you need to convince. It will be your boyfriend if he sees another one crawling up your skin."
Jade gritted her teeth in pure frustration. "You impossible man!"
Cillian turned around, leaning casually against the edge of his desk. "Yes, impossible is the right word. After all, a handsome face like this is truly impossible to come by." He flashed her a cocky grin before sending a playful wink her way.
Her face still flustered like a cooked lobster, could only release a defeated sigh. "Whatever. I do not have time for this. Enjoy your time obsessing over yourself, demon."
With that, she straightened her posture, muttered a sharp curse under her breath, and finally threw the door open to march out.
Cillian chuckled quietly, as though he could practically see smoke billowing out of her ears.
But the moment the door clicked shut behind her, the smile vanished from his face, and his eyes turned colder than anyone had ever seen them before.
.....
Meanwhile, somewhere fifty thousand feet above the ground, a luxury private jet carved its way through the clouds back toward Astoria.
The steady, low hum of the engines filled the cabin, but the atmosphere inside was nowhere near as warm and flirtatious as it had been when they first flew out to Aria.
Gavriel sat motionless in his seat, resting his chin against his knuckles. The stark sunlight seeping through the window caught the sharp angles of his face, yet his icy blue eyes never drifted from the woman sitting across from him.
Following the horrific incident with the creature and the terrifying moment her powers spiralled out of control, Aliana had vanished into herself. She had become unusually withdrawn, barely speaking a word to him.
For Gavriel, a man who had always inhabited a world of absolute quiet, this particular silence stretching between them was suffocating.
This was not their usual comfortable, wordless understanding. It felt far more like the deceptive, heavy stillness that warned of an approaching storm.
That assessment was accurate, because the storm raging inside Aliana had not quieted in the slightest.
Even now, he could see the rigid line of her shoulders and the sheer effort she was putting into suppressing her inner turmoil.
After his tense conversation with Evelyn and Ivan, Gavriel had tried to approach her when she finally woke up later that day.
But the moment he spoke, she had simply shut down, pulling her walls up high.
Her eyes looked more lost than he had ever seen them, and her beautiful features remained locked behind a blank mask that made him deeply uncomfortable.
He had never found himself in a position like this before.
Across his long existence, he had never been forced to navigate the fragile landscape of someone else’s emotional trauma, nor had he ever allowed another person’s feelings to mirror so intensely within his own chest.
Realising he was completely out of his depth, he did the only thing he could think of. He gave them both some space. Space to breathe, and space to think.
On top of that, two conversations that had occurred yesterday kept resurfacing in his mind.
The first had taken place with Evelyn and Ivan right after Gavriel walked out of the bedroom, when Aliana had cried herself to sleep.
While Gavriel had been looking after Aliana, Ivan and Evelyn had quietly taken their seats in the living room.
They waited patiently for him to emerge, not only because there were urgent matters to discuss. But also because Evelyn was deeply worried about Aliana.
She felt a heavy weight of responsibility after Aliana had lost control of her powers. Fearing that her own blunt, unminced words had triggered the collapse.
More than that, there was a matter of utmost importance that both Ivan and Evelyn had noticed during the chaos. It was a crucial detail they needed to share with Gavriel immediately, one that could hold the key to helping Aliana recover.