by Cate Corvin
“Honestly, Lu, can you stop trying to dig for answers for five minutes?”
“You’re the one who interrupted here. There’re miles of forest to run around in, but you just had to choose the twenty square feet I was using. Why can’t you go hang out on the other side of the grounds? Why do you have to be around me?” Injured or not, Roman had no reason to be here, unless he was trying to piss me off.
He shifted in place, his gaze running over me with an intensity that make my stomach swoop, and took a step forward.
Oh, no.
“You can’t be serious. You already had that chance and fucked it up hard. Do you remember last week, when you were being an absolute ass?”
Roman’s own fists clenched, relaxed, clenched again. His full, sensuous lips were turned down at the corners, exaggerating his tiredness. “I found Izzy.”
Confusion swirled in me. Izzy? Had he finally lost his mind? I had no idea who he was talking about. “Who?”
Every muscle in his body had gone tight as a wire as he struggled with himself.
“Isabelle Bitter.” The memory of the hands pushing through the walls flashed through my mind when I heard her name. “Her body was… on the waystone. Shane and I didn’t stop her from trying to escape. He’ll find out soon, but I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want him to blame himself.”
Miss Bitter had been swallowed whole by the Helping Hands my first morning in Cimmerian. She’d looked like a witch who’d been dragged through a war, and then she’d suffered an ignoble death. Hot acid churned in my stomach. “Roman, I-”
“I’m so tired of it.” He paced the clearing, dragging his hands through his short hair. “I’m so fucking tired of all the senseless death and never knowing who’s gonna be next. I’m tired of finding bodies and digging graves and waiting to die, or wondering if you-”
He abruptly fell silent, lowering his hands. I stared at his reddened, raw fingertips. He’d dug Isabelle Bitter’s grave for her.
A surge of emotion welled in me for him. He could be so caring when he wanted to show that face to the world. “Wondering what?” I asked softly.
“Forget I said that. It doesn’t fucking matter.”
He turned his back on me, shivering as long guard-hairs sprouted from his skin. Feeling like a stranger to myself, I stepped forward, touching his arm. “Roman, please. Don’t go. Just… just talk to me.”
I couldn’t explain why, but I hated the idea of him wandering back into the forest alone, bearing that burden on his shoulders.
Aradia knew he deserved no pity from me, but seeing the exhaustion in his limbs, carved in violet circles under his eyes, his hands brutalized from digging a grave for a girl I never knew, made me feel fiercely protective of him.
But he stopped shivering, turning slowly to face me. Being this close to him was intoxicating, despite the battle between hate and desire raging in my chest. He smelled like oakmoss and animalic musk, lavender and trees.
“About what, Lu? How I treated you like shit for no reason besides my own selfishness? I know I shouldn’t have done what I did, and I’m sorry. If I could go back, I wouldn’t have touched you at all.”
I realized I was still holding his arm, the muscle flexing under my palm. I lowered my hand swiftly, looking down and bracing myself.
Opening up to Roman was like exposing my heart to open air, and knowing he wished he’d never touched me hurt more than I wanted to admit. “Apology accepted. Just pretend it never happened.”
His hands were suddenly cupping my face, forcing me to look up at him. For once his twilight eyes weren’t cold or hard but desperate, searching mine for a hidden answer.
“But I don’t want to pretend it never happened. I want it to happen again, that’s the problem!” His thumbs grazed my cheeks, fingers sliding over my jawline. “I thought I could make this choice for myself, but how do I know it’s really me and not some pre-written destiny driving everything?”
My heart hammered behind my ribcage, so loud I feared he’d hear it. “You don’t. It’s still your choice, and you can always choose to walk away.”
Please don’t walk away.
“Shane’s visions have always ended in disaster.” Roman leaned closer, his ink-dark lashes like shadows over the blue of his eyes. “I thought if I put it off, I could stop that from happening, but… I don’t think I can hold it back anymore.”
I understood his fear, but I knew in my heart that I loved Shane, Dominic, and Locke. Fate or not, they were the ones I would always choose to fight for.
Roman himself had taught me that.
“Then stop being a coward,” I whispered, almost light-headed with how close he was. What were we doing? “You asked me yourself- could you stand to see the person you want every day, and know you never fought for them?”
He mouthed the word “no”, but I hardly noticed because he was kissing me, no pretense or anger between us, just a bone-deep, feverish hunger.
His lips were demanding, exactly as I remembered. My breath hitched on a sigh as his tongue slid over mine, fiery roses bursting behind my eyes as he bit my lower lip and growled.
I wanted to fall against him, into him, but the roses faded and the memory of the lips I was kissing now surfaced, Roman’s voice reminding me that he didn’t choose me.
I pulled away, bracing my hands on his bare, scratched chest. “I can’t do this yet.”
It was hard enough seeing him after he’d humiliated me once; it’d be no one’s fault but my own if I gave him the ammunition to fuck me over a second time.
He gripped my face in one large hand, the gentle force making my knees melt. “Stay. I’m done fighting fate, Lu. I can’t keep it up anymore.”
Roman might as well have splashed me with his glacial witchwater. The heat in my stomach became a cold, heavy cinder.
He wasn’t kissing me because he wanted me, but because he was resigned to his brother’s visions.
Being pushed away because he’d given a shit about his future had hurt less. I didn’t want to be his consolation prize. “So, you’re just going to give in and do what the Sight tells you?”
His dark brows furrowed. “That wasn’t what I meant-”
I pulled his hands off my face and stepped back. Outside the warmth of his arms, the dawn air felt cooler than ever.
“It is. You have to make the decision, not give in to something you think is inevitable. I don’t want to be a task you check off Shane’s list. That’s worse than you not wanting me at all, and I want to be wanted, Roman. We all deserve that from the ones who love us. If you don’t want it, then fight it. If you do… well, I don’t know yet. But you must make that choice and defend it, not settle for it.”
Roman stared at me, his jaw set.
“And I’m sorry about Izzy,” I added, my voice breaking. “I wish I could’ve helped you.”
I took a deep breath, clenched my trembling fingers, and turned on my heel. I didn’t look back.
***
The weekend spent in Dominic’s arms had gone a long way towards relaxing me out of my frenzied need to improve myself as fast as possible. I opened the Fundamentals of Conjure and Exorcism, but instead of taking notes at top-speed like an academic madman, I stopped to glance around.
Everything was back to normal. Daphne had trimmed up her hair at some point and was once again holding court at the front of the class, surrounded by Lissa, Petra, and Garth.
Holly was absent, and both Dominic and I looked up at Shane when he walked in alone.
For a moment, my heart dropped into my stomach, and I reprimanded myself. It was silly to expect Roman to come anywhere near me after I’d basically said I’d be willing to consider a relationship.
Maybe I was crazy.
“Have you seen Holly?” I whispered to Shane as he took a seat between me and Beckwith Tatter. He opened Fundamentals for Beck, but judging by the way our mostly-catatonic classmate was staring at the ceiling with cobwebs clinging to his hair, that wasn’t
really going to do him any good.
“Professor White pulled her from regular classes to help him with the new conservatory. She’s the only one he trusts with his new seedlings. You and Daphne are permanently banned, by the way.”
I frowned down at my paper. I was used to Holly disappearing on her own time, secretive and solitary by nature, but after last week’s foray into perfectionism and disappearing for a weekend, I felt like I hadn’t really seen her in days.
“At least that means I don’t have to dig for mandrake roots anymore,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, but truthfully, I’d miss the quiet concentration that Herbalism and Alchemy demanded.
Shane leaned back in his seat and draped his arm around me. I shivered when his fingers touched the back of my neck, tracing the spot he’d grazed with his teeth last night.
“When are you going to do it, Shane?” I whispered, my hand jerking and scrawling right through my otherwise-flawless notes. “You clearly want to.”
“Of course I want to, Bambi,” he growled, leaning in close to my ear. His breath tickled the fine hairs on the back of my neck, and I knew without looking that his fangs would be fully shifted. His speech thickened when they slid out. “And you’re not making it much easier on me.”
It was impossible to focus on the dry words of Fundamentals with Shane tickling my neck. “Maybe if you didn’t keep teasing me with the prospect, I wouldn’t be trying so hard. I love you, Shane. Is it really that surprising that I’d want you to bite me?”
“No.” His lips pressed to my ear and his tongue flicked my earlobe. Another shiver ran down my spine. “But if you’d just be patient, I’m not the only one who’d like to leave a permanent mark.”
He pressed his thumb to the spot where Dominic’s teeth had sunk into my flesh. Having that spot touched was like a livewire crackling through my body. My skin prickled and tightened, and Shane’s smile became predatory when I shifted in my seat.
Shane, Dominic, and Locke would all be more than happy to mark me… my heart sank when I thought of my vampire, wandering alone out there in the woods, and the spot on my thigh where he’d bitten me in my dream seemed to throb.
I needed to tell them about the third, the bloodthirsty predator among us. Shane wasn’t the only one struggling.
“I can wait.” I gripped Shane’s hand and laced my fingers through his. “Sorry I’m making this harder on you.”
He squeezed my hand and leaned back in his seat, not bothering to open his own book. I managed to refocus most of my concentration of Chapter 12 of Fundamentals, making neat bullet-pointed notations about binding spirits, and almost fumbled my pen in shock.
Few covens possess the genetic predisposition towards magic-binding, an inherent ability to siphon or obfuscate the magical discharge of elementalism. Lockheart, founded in 1432 by Godefryd Locke, was perhaps the greatest of their number, but the coven has since dissolved and their covenstead passed into the care of Giltglass, under Lord Albrecht Gilt. No genetic potential for magic-binding came of this union.
I stared at the paragraph, then flipped through my notebook until I found the notes I had scrawled after Gilt stole The Rites of the Cage from me.
The word I’d pulled from the heart of the book was Lockheart. I’d emphatically underlined it twice.
I glanced at Shane, but his brow was furrowed and his eyes stormy as he contemplated other things.
I ripped the page from Fundamentals and carefully tucked it into my notebook.
Chapter 11
Roman
The vampire was holding her. I wanted to rip his throat out.
His head tilted towards her, amber eyes half-lidded, but Lu’s arms were around his neck and her eyes were closed as she rose on her tiptoes; she didn’t see the gleam of sharp fangs, the taut face of a hunter going for the kill.
Shane snarled, whipping towards the pair as Locke’s features tightened. He looked down at Lu with a burning intensity before he deliberately pushed her back and stepped in front of her, between us and our mate.
My mate? What the fuck? No. Shane’s mate.
I’d already screwed up my chances, too worried about the future to care about the present.
My muscles screamed with exertion as I caught up to my twin, nails ripping the grass and dirt underfoot. The darkness of the wolf in me threatened to take over, to become a red glaze that would slip over my mind and rule my instincts until I woke from a blood-drenched haze.
I skidded to a halt next to Shane, panting as I fought the creature that was part and parcel of myself.
Shane was already becoming a man again, snarling words from a half-formed mouth. He’d been growling incomprehensibly since he caught Lu’s scent on the other side of the wall, mixed with that of the vampire, and went tearing up a bridge of fallen trees to escape the grounds.
Lu held Locke’s arm, and the vampire didn’t look fazed in the slightest. He eyed Shane up and down with a wary respect.
I huffed and began the shift. The last thing I wanted right now was to snap and destroy the tiny bit of progress I’d made with Blondie that morning.
It’d already sucked enough spending all day kicking myself for not thinking about my words before they fell out of my mouth.
“How did you get outside the wall?” Lu asked, still trying to inch in front of the vampire.
To his credit, Locke held her back, his measuring gaze still fixed on my brother. Shane snarled, a sound so much like the wolf, it was a little disconcerting to hear it coming from a man.
Lu’s eyes widened at the sound, looking at my brother like she’d never really seen him before.
It was about damn time she got to see what a therianthrope was really like. At least if Shane snapped, all his rage would be focused on Locke.
“How did you get outside the wall? Who is he?” Shane paced, but there was no way for him to snatch Blondie away without pissing off Locke.
“His name is Locke,” I interjected. My nails dug into my palms and I took a deep breath. The vampire hadn’t bitten her. I wasn’t even sure that’s what he had been planning.
I had no grounds to go after him. Yet.
Not that I wanted to. It was only thanks to him that Izzy was buried under a proper cairn now, instead of rotting in a shallow grave.
The look Shane gave me sent a prickle down my spine, like he was looking at a stranger instead of his own twin. “You know him?” His voice was still guttural, on the verge of shifting back into a beast’s vocal cords.
“He’s the one who found Izzy. He’s alright, Shane.” Lu’s gray eyes flicked to me, an indecipherable expression in them. I hoped championing her vamp boyfriend- no matter how fucking much it irritated me that she was perfectly fine with falling into his arms, even though he could kill her in three seconds flat- might earn me a few points in her regard.
My twin paced the forest, his head swiveling right back to stare at Locke and Lu.
“He’s still a danger.” His fangs had descended entirely, filling his mouth with sharp teeth. If he’d still been in wolf form, every hair on his body would’ve been standing on end. “And you’re outside the wall, Lu. When were you going to tell me you could go outside? Did you remove the periapt?”
She was scowling now. “No, it’s still in my arm. I was going to tell you as soon as I was sure that Locke’s fine with other people.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, swallowing hard as saliva filled my mouth. My own fangs wanted to slide forward, driven by the sight of Lu in another man’s arms.
“He’s a vampire, Lu. He’s not capable of being fine around other people!” Every muscle in Shane’s body was tight with strain.
“Oh, is that why he’s battened onto my neck like an overgrown leech right now?” she coolly countered. “Wait- he’s not. Because he’s sane and he’s under control, Shane. Even-” She paused for a split-second before saying my name, like speaking it aloud hurt her, and that drove a splinter of ice through my heart- “Even Roman likes him.”
That might’ve been pushing it a little.
But I had some serious shit to make up for, and if pretending I liked the vamp made Blondie warmer towards me, I’d ride off into the sunset to grab a Type O Bloody Mary with him.
“Shane.” My brother stopped pacing, but his eyes were still dark. “If he wanted to kill her, she’d have been a goner long before we got here. Give him a chance.” I wasn’t completely convinced of that myself; hadn’t his fangs been just a touch too close to her throat?
I caught Locke’s amber eyes across the clearing. He looked back at me with the same steadfast sanity I’d seen in him the first night we met.
Shane’s lips drew back over his fangs and Lu sighed. She released Locke’s arm and patted his bicep before taking my brother’s face in her hands.
Locke and I were both immediately rigid, ready to snatch her back from him if he showed the slightest sign of aggression towards her.
I never would’ve believed I’d be ready to take down my own twin over a girl I’d known for a month.
But, fortunately for all of us, Shane took a deep breath and slid his hands over her waist. “I love you, Lu,” he whispered, and she leaned her forehead against his.
“I love you, Shane. You have to trust me on this.”
If the shard of ice in my heart had hurt before, now it felt like a fucking glacier had taken up residence somewhere in my guts, freezing my heart and lungs.
“The night-creature will not be able to hold himself back much longer.”
I swallowed back an enraged snarl. Locke was no longer across the clearing but standing right next to me. I hadn’t heard him move at all.
My inner wolf didn’t like surprises.
“What do you mean?” I asked, but I already knew what he meant. Shane spent his alternating three nights in Cimmerian in Blondie’s bed, and he loved her, the girl from his visions that he’d risked everything to wait for.
It would’ve been surprising if he wasn’t going mad with the need to place the mating bite on her. Not for the first time, I kicked myself for running away when I could’ve doubled down and made her mine, too.