My brow furrowed with confusion. “You are free, Kaine. You are beholden to none but yourself, and you have more power than virtually anyone else in existence.”
“Yes,” he said, stepping closer. Oz grabbed my arm and pushed me back. His body edged in front of mine to put himself between Kaine and me. The leader of the Dark Ones frowned but continued. “I am free. They, however, are not. They are bound to me, as Oz should be, which leads me to believe that you are the reason for this—that your bond is what allows it. I want that for all of us.”
Oz’s grip on my arm tightened. “Where’s the ultimatum, Kaine?”
“The ultimatum is that, if she is unwilling to free my Dark Ones, I will take something from her that she dearly loves.”
“If you hurt anything or anyone I care for, all that will do is secure your death and the deaths of those whose freedom you seek.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps you will be too broken with loss to challenge me.”
“Never,” I seethed, daring a glance at Oz.
“We shall see,” he said, voice unfaltering. His wings shot forth, the sharp obsidian feathers gleaming in the light of the sun. “Do you know what these can do, Khara? Why we are so feared in the Underworld? What they can do to the souls that reside there?” Something cold crawled up my spine slowly as realization settled in, and the all-knowing expression on his face told me he knew that I understood. “I wonder what would happen if we were to raid the Elysian Fields, which are filled with fallen PC warriors—what shredding their souls and wiping them from existence would do to you—”
“You will not get the chance,” I said, lifting my arms in anger. But my lightning was sluggish in my veins, fatigue from transporting Oz and myself to the Victorian still present.
“How do you know I have not already?” he countered. I lowered my hands and let him speak as I tried to calm myself—tried to preserve my power for the moment I would need it most. Worry and fear would not help my fallen brothers. Cunning, however, would. “Now tell me, Khara, do you want the chance to know your dead brothers, or do they mean nothing to you? Are you willing to be the cause of their eradication?” I did not bother to respond to such a clearly rhetorical question. He was very well aware that I did not want that fate. “I didn’t think so.”
“How do I do what you want?” I asked. Oz wheeled on me the second the words left my mouth.
“You can’t—”
“I cannot let him do what he threatens to, either,” I said, cutting him off. “They are my blood.”
“You don’t understand what this means.” He grabbed my arms. “If you free them, they will spread and pollute the world with their evil. They’ll be a plague on this Earth and destroy everything and everyone on it.”
“I will not let that happen.”
“You won’t be able to stop it!” he argued. “Dark Ones literally corrupt everything they touch. They will spread evil at a rate you can’t even fathom. There will be no stopping it. Not even you can—”
“I will try—”
“That’s not good enough,” he said, shaking me.
I looked at where his hands gripped my biceps, then back into his desperate brown stare.
“You have touched me. Am I now corrupted, too?”
His mouth pressed to a thin line. “This is hardly the time to try and unpack that, new girl.”
“Do you think I am bluffing?” Kaine asked as he took a step closer.
Oz held me tighter. “Your brothers would not want this.”
I knew he was right, but the truth in his words changed nothing.
“Perhaps you need to see just how serious I am,” Kaine said.
Before I could respond, an obsidian feather appeared only inches away, pointing directly at my heart. For a moment, I did not understand how that could be, given where I was standing, but then I looked at Oz, and the tip of a wing protruding from his chest, and realized what had just happened.
“I have been waiting a long time to do that,” Kaine said, ripping his wing from Oz. “I’ll be in the Underworld with your dead brothers awaiting your answer, Khara. You have forty-eight hours before they meet their final end.”
Oz fell to his knees as Kaine took to the air and flew toward the Underworld with frightening speed. I wanted to follow—to strike him from the sky—but the gurgling sound Oz made when he tried to speak held me back. Then he fell to the rooftop at my feet.
Though I could see him plainly, I could not process what was before me. Oz was lying on the roof, blood streaming from his chest where a shiny black feather stuck out—right where his heart should be. I dropped to his side, reaching for the weapon.
“No!” he ground out as blood sputtered from his mouth. With every droplet that fell, my heart sped up a tick.
“The wound cannot be fixed with the blade still in there.”
He looked at me with alarming seriousness. “It cannot be fixed at all.”
Icy dread ran through my veins at his words. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Kaine knew exactly what he was doing.”
Another cough.
Much more blood.
“Well, Kaine will be sorely disappointed when he learns he has failed,” I said as I pulled out my phone. “Trey, you must bring the Healer. It is Oz. Come quickly.”
Seconds later, Trey appeared with my twin in tow, no Healer to be found.
“She cannot help him,” Sean said as he approached, a hint of guilt in his tone.
I stood to face him. “Cannot or will not?”
“She works for the PC—serves the PC—”
“Then she will serve me by doing my bidding—”
“Khara—"
“No!” I shouted, cutting him off. “We have been here before, Brother—been on this precipice in the past. I told you then that, if you did not let me help him, my wrath would know no end. That has not changed.” I turned back to Trey. “Bring the Healer. Now.”
Trey disappeared, returning with a petite girl who barely looked old enough to be what they claimed she was—the Healer.
“Fix him,” I said, pointing to Oz. Her eyes drifted to Sean, awaiting his directive. He shook his head, and I felt as though flames would burst from my mouth at any moment.
“You are not to heal him,” Sean said. “He is not PC.”
“She has healed someone outside of the PC before,” Trey said, drawing my attention. My quiet, compliant brother had apparently decided to take a stand against his leader in his own way; or perhaps he just wanted to point out the lie in Sean’s words. Either way, I planned to use that lie in my favor.
“Heal him,” I said, grabbing the Healer’s arm to drag her over. Sean’s hand clamped down on mine to stop me.
“I love you, Khara, and I know you’re hurting right now, but I cannot allow this. She cannot save him…”
I wrenched my hand from his grip and turned back to Oz, who had gone deathly pale while I had fought with my twin. With a gentle touch, I brushed his damp hair from his forehead.
“You cannot leave just yet.”
“Not my choice…”
“Do I no longer entertain you?” I asked, voice soft and breaking.
“No,” he said with a laugh that pained him greatly. “You’re entertaining as fuck. But your brother is a dick, and he can’t seem to let go of the past, so it looks like you’re on your own now, new girl.”
I could see through his bravado to the pain hidden in the depths of his eyes.
“I am afraid I cannot allow that,” I said, pressing my forehead to his, “because you and I—we have an understanding, you see. You are the thorn in my side I cannot pull free, and I am the one who gives you purpose—reminds you of who you once were so you do not fall freely into the darkness. Splitting us apart is just not in the cards, as Kierson says…”
Oz grunted in pain as his hand drifted up to cup my cheek.
“My purpose has been fulfilled. Yours, however, has not.” His grip went weak a
gainst me, and it startled me into action. If Sean would not allow the Healer to help Oz, then I would force his hand.
I stood to face my brother, a plan brewing in my mind. “You will not help him because he is not PC?” I asked, my voice low and menacing and a weapon all its own. “Because you have disdain for who and what he is?” My wings stretched wide and I reached behind me to snatch an obsidian feather from the bottom edge. It sliced through my palm as I pulled it free, and I held it tight as it tore through tendon and bone. I wrapped my free hand around the one holding the blade to support it. “Then let us see how you handle this.”
Sean steadied himself for a strike I never intended to land. Instead, I turned that blade toward my gut and buried it so deep that my hands dipped inside my stomach, the soft, warm feeling strange against my skin. The cries of Sean, Trey, and the Healer echoed around us as I jerked the obsidian up through my abdomen until it met bone, slicing several ribs until it hit its intended destination.
My heart.
18
A swirling darkness overtook me and I fell to my knees, the vision of Oz’s hand reaching for me blurring, then fading. I could barely make out Sean’s silhouette through that darkness, hovering over me with someone small at his side. Then I felt a fire similar to the Dragon’s tear through me as tiny hands pressed against my belly and someone ripped the weapon from my heart.
The fire soon turned to soothing warmth, and the world grew brighter around me. Clearer. Within seconds, my wound stopped pouring blood, and the skin knit itself together again. The Healer sat back on her heels and stared at me as Sean loomed over her, scowling.
“How could you be so—”
“Reckless?” I asked, cutting him off. “I think you of all people should understand the answer to that question. It is the one emotion that trumps all.”
Without another word, I crawled to Oz’s side. His eyes had closed, and his breathing was weak and shallow. His hand was outstretched on the ground as if to reach for me—to stop me from doing what had already been done and undone.
“Hold on just a little longer,” I said, pressing my hands to his chest. “I learned a new trick just now—I think you might like to see it.” A strange magic unlike any I had ever possessed coursed through me, mixing with Oz’s own to create a wave of healing I could not fathom. I watched as his bleeding slowed, and with a sharp yank, I freed the obsidian from his chest. He shot up at the pain, eyes wide and angry. “If you plan to kill me, you should wait until I am finished,” I said, a wry smile tugging at my lips. Oz’s gaze fell to my bloody hands and the nearly-vanished wound on his chest. A smile of his own graced his face.
“Cutting it a little close there, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “I have a flair for the dramatic.”
His smile widened. “So it seems.”
“We should get you home,” I said as I helped him up.
“Khara—”
“No, Sean,” I snapped. “I do not want to hear it.”
“You fucked up,” Oz said, looking at my twin. “She doesn’t handle betrayal well—unless it’s me doing the betraying.”
I shot the healing Dark One a sharp glare and he laughed.
“You have to understand why I did it, Khara,” Sean argued, his bright green eyes darkening by the second. “There are rules.”
“And actions have consequences,” I replied. “You have to understand my reaction, especially given our recent conversation.” To that, he had no response. “Trey, would you please return us to the Dragon? I am not certain I have the strength for it at the moment.”
He walked over and placed his hands on Oz and me, and with no preamble, he whisked us away. We arrived in the center of the golden room to find my brothers there, each one drawing a weapon. Apparently, our entrance had startled them.
Trey quickly took his leave before the others could begin their interrogation.
“Jesus, Khara,” Kierson exhaled. “Where the fuck have you been?” With his final word, his eyes took in the tear in my black sweater and the crust of bloodstains. Then he turned to Oz, still pale and coated in blood, and his eyes went wide. “What happened?”
“Kaine happened,” Oz said, wincing as he walked over to the sofa.
“He stabbed him through the heart from behind like the coward he is.”
“Fucking pussy,” Casey growled. “When do we kill him?”
“We cannot,” I said.
The depths of his black eyes were bottomless. “Why the hell not?”
“It is complicated.”
“As it always is with you,” Pierson replied, no hint of mocking in his tone. “I assume Kaine wants something? Is using something to bargain with?”
“Does he have your mother?” Kierson asked, panic in his tone.
“No, he is using something else to leverage me. And he stabbed Oz in the heart to make sure I understood how serious he was about following through on his threat.”
“What does he want?” Drew asked softly as he came to my side.
“He wants her to free his Dark Ones—break the tie that binds them to his presence.” Every head in the room turned toward where Oz slumped on the couch, his eyes closed. “He thinks she’s the key to this because I’m not bound to him as the rest are.”
“Khara,” Pierson said calmly, “you cannot do it.”
“I can and I will, because if I do not, he will slay every one of our fallen brothers in the Underworld and wipe them from existence.” Pierson stilled at my words, as did the others. “So you see, Brother, this is not a choice. It is a necessary evil.”
“Evil is precisely what you’ll curse this world with if you do it,” Oz said, repeating his earlier words. “Your dead brothers would rather meet their final end than let that happen.”
“It is their duty, even in death,” Pierson agreed.
“Khara,” Casey said with a softness I did not recognize, “this is crazy, even by your standards.”
“Perhaps, but that changes nothing.”
Muses entered the Dragon’s lair just as our brothers simultaneously broke into a barrage of arguments against my plan. As I stood silent, he looked to me, a million questions dancing behind his dark stare. I merely shrugged; I had no interest in discussing the matter further. They might have been steeped in duty to the PC, but I had not, and that upbringing had altered my allegiance. At present, it was to my family and nothing more. Everything else was a consequence I could deal with after the fact.
Because even I could not bring my dead brothers back if the Dark Ones slayed them.
“I have heard enough!” I shouted over the din. “The matter is closed, and that is final.”
“And here I am, late to the party as always,” Muses said, feigning a pout.
Oz shot him a wary glance, then turned those brown eyes to me. “I think you’re a bit grumpy after expending all that energy, new girl. Maybe a nap is in order.”
“I am not a child—”
“Be that as it may…bedroom. Now,” he said as he pushed himself off the couch with great effort and walked over.
“Wait,” Kierson called out. “If Kaine stabbed you in the heart, how are you even here, Oz?”
The Dark One looked over his shoulder at my brother and scowled. “Sean wouldn’t allow the Healer to help me, so your sister got a harebrained idea—as she always does—and executed it like a complete psycho.”
“What did you do, Khara?” Drew asked. The sadness in his eyes gave me pause—made me realize how they would mourn my death if and when it came to pass.
“I made it so the Healer would have to save me, thus giving me her ability. Once I procured it, I used it on Oz, and just in the nick of time.”
“She skewered herself with an obsidian feather right in front of Sean,” Oz clarified on my behalf. The anger in his tone was palpable, and it spread to my brothers like wildfire.
“Khara—”
“I am fine, Kierson—”
“Fuck fine! You could have d
ied!”
“And so could Oz. If you are angry, then you should take it up with Sean. His unwillingness to aid Oz drove me to such lengths.”
“To be clear, before you all start in on me, I told her to drop it,” Oz said. “But it seems this one has a mind all her own. Now, about that nap…”
He swayed on his feet, and I put my arm around his waist to steady him as we headed for our bedroom. Though I had healed Oz, it seemed that my ability was not nearly as finely tuned as the young Healer’s; he collapsed onto the bed in our room the moment we entered. It was the second time I had seen him rendered vulnerable by Kaine and the others, and I felt sparks forming in my fingers the longer I let my thoughts linger. Instead, I squeezed them into fists to choke off the lightning and sat on the edge of the bed to face the door—to stand guard. Though I doubted an attack would occur, I was unwilling to assume so. Not until Oz was at my side to tell me I was being foolish.
I could almost hear his arrogant tone in the silence as he lay behind me.
Rustling of the sheets drew my attention, and I dared a glance over my shoulder. Oz sat in the middle of the bed, his hooded eyes focused on me—on my wings.
“Keeping watch, new girl?”
“I feel it is a good idea. With so many enemies circling, one cannot be too careful.”
I turned my focus back to the door as the bed creaked behind me.
“You blame yourself for what happened.”
“My complacency where Kaine is concerned got you impaled by an obsidian blade.”
The bed went silent. “And then you buried one in yourself.”
“It was the only way—”
“The only way to what?”
I looked back at him, his body just behind mine, and tried to ignore the look of anger creasing his brow.
“To save you, you fool.”
His brown eyes narrowed as he leaned closer. I felt my heart speed up with his approach. His fingers trailed up my back, tickling the sensitive skin between my wings, and I stifled a shiver.
“Do me a favor next time,” he whispered in my ear, his breath warm and heady. “Don’t.” I moved to turn around, but his hand clamped down on the back of my neck, holding me still. “Because I don’t ever want to see what I saw again, understand?”
Unmade (Unborn Book 4) Page 12