“If you don’t and this goes bad, he might end up dead. Are you sure that’s your answer?”
“You could tell me I’d end up dead right beside him and it would still be my answer. When I did it, I needed you two, plus a shitload of other Wyrd Blood, and the fairies kicking in. Do you really think I could slink off and undo it with the snap of my fingers?” He stopped moving around, a pile of laundry in his hands.
I could tell by the pain in his eyes that if he thought it were possible, no matter what he’d just said, he’d try in order to save his friend. It was what I’d feared, and Burn knew enough to fear what might be coming.
“If I were you, I’d go have a good time while you can,” he said with a smile. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some company coming.”
“You do?” I asked, trying to sound happy for him, but it was all bittersweet.
“Yes, I do. You know the teacher I might’ve been eyeing up?”
“Oh, I know the teacher.” I’d thought she wasn’t interested, but from the way he was hustling around cleaning, something must’ve changed.
“Yeah, well, it might be happening after all.”
“Good for you,” I said.
He opened up an already full trunk on the side of the room and began pressing his armful of clothes into it. “Great, now get out. I don’t want her to see you leaving and get the wrong idea in case she’s the only one who doesn’t know you and Ryker are doing it.”
He smiled as if he were funny.
“Go fuck yourself,” I said, but not unkindly.
“Not tonight,” he replied, laughing as I left.
* * *
Another night struggling for sleep, except this time I could nearly taste the Zs. It was right there, within reach, if I could only shut down my thoughts for a little bit. I tried to lie still, but my brain kept racing past at a hundred.
All I could think of were monsters and power merges, life and loss.
Dez…
Fuck. I flipped over onto my stomach. What if it had been Marra? I should’ve made her leave as soon as she turned on me. I should’ve told Ryker to get rid of her when he’d offered. No, I’d screwed up long before that. I shouldn’t have come back here. Then Knife and Dez wouldn’t have stayed. I’d been weak, and Dez had paid for it.
There were so many turns that could’ve been different and maybe she’d be alive. If I hadn’t merged with Ryker, I’d be dead, but Dez’s body might not be lying in the Grove of Souls in a spot that should’ve been mine. And now I was going to get another stone and lure the monster out? How many more people would die before the end?
My door opened. A few minutes later, a warm body covered mine. I didn’t panic. I would recognize Ryker’s scent, his feel, his energy anywhere. I didn’t need to see him to know him. Sometimes it felt as if I’d memorized everything about him.
He nipped at my neck and then my earlobe, his scruff rubbing against my skin. “Why weren’t you in my room waiting like I told you?”
Pull back. Tell him you’re tired. Do something before it’s too late.
I arched my ass into his groin. That was definitely the wrong “something.” His arm slipped between my body and the bed, and he cupped my breast, arching me into him further.
“You weren’t there.”
“You knew I was coming back. You should’ve waited.” He wrapped his arm around my hips, hoisting them upward while he kneaded and then pinched my hard nipple. “You’re going to have to pay for that.”
I swallowed hard.
You can still stop this. It’s going to end badly.
He yanked my nightshirt up to my waist, and I could feel his naked thighs as they parted mine. The head of his cock pressed against me, teasing, barely dipping in. I arched back, trying to press him further into me, but he held me back.
“Next time I tell you to wait in my bed, are you going to do as you’re told?”
There was no way I could stop this. I wanted him too much.
“Yes.” I would’ve agreed to anything right then, even handing over all my magic.
His cock dipped a little farther in before teasing my entrance again.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Promise.”
His cock rammed fully into me, filling me. I felt as if I were dissolving into him, fading from the pieces of myself and becoming whole with him. With each stroke and caress, we merged into something new, and it was terrifying. I clung to him as our bodies shifted together.
His lips knew every part of me, moving lower, only for him to fill me again with his tongue. I glided over him, our bodies slick with sweat, to take him in my mouth, wanting to know him as well. And then he was pulling me upward and filling me again, wrapping around me until we were both shaking with release, and I still wanted more. That was when I knew there would never be enough with this man. I’d want him ceaselessly until the day I died, and it didn’t matter if it was tomorrow or centuries from now. He was a drug to my soul.
He settled into my small bed, pulling me into the nook of his arm and shoulder. He dragged up the blanket around us both.
Any second, he’d get up. He’d go back to his nice, large bed.
The seconds kept adding up.
“You’re sleeping here?” I asked. It was a stupid question, because he was closing his eyes, his head on my pillow and his arm wrapped around my waist.
“It’s comfortable, and you’re warm.” He pulled me closer to him.
More comfortable? I never used the heater thing in the corner. My bed was narrow. I was forever out of water in the pitcher.
What was this? What were we doing? How long could this last before he grew bored of me?
I should tell him to leave, that I couldn’t sleep like this. I glanced up. His eyes were closed, his lips soft.
“What is it?” he asked, sensing my stare or the rigidness of my spine.
“Nothing.” I pressed my cheek back to his chest, breathing in the scent of him. He smelled different after we had sex, and I liked it. I needed to log it into my memory, file it away for when this was over.
He opened his eyes slightly. “You know, there’s this thing I’ve seen other people do called talking. We could try it.”
He rubbed down my spine, trying to coax the steel from it.
“Okay but not now. I’m too tired.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to enjoy the feel of him against me as long as it lasted.
His hand paused. “We’ve got some things that need discussing.”
“Another time,” I said.
He rubbed the length of me until his hand found a home on my hip.
Thirty-Three
Banging on my door startled me awake.
I was in the same position I’d fallen asleep, my cheek pressed to Ryker’s chest, our limbs intertwined.
“Let’s ignore it,” Ryker said, shifting closer.
The door banged again, and Sneak called out, “Ryker? I gotta talk to you.”
Ryker sighed loudly, and I knew he was going to get up. He climbed out from underneath me and then yanked on his pants.
“Hang on,” he called. He pulled the blanket a little higher up my body. “I’ll be right back.”
I rolled onto my back, realizing that anyone who didn’t know I was sleeping with Ryker would know now. He was standing outside my door, shirtless, at the crack of dawn. I wasn’t stupid enough to think it would deter any women from throwing themselves at him.
My system jolted as the sleep cleared. Why was Sneak here, anyway? I scrambled out of bed, throwing on clothing as my hands shook.
I swung open the door. Both their heads snapped to me as they stopped speaking. My stomach dropped.
Sneak’s eyes broke from me first as he said to Ryker, “I’ll go and…” He jerked his head in the opposite direction.
Ryker nodded. I stepped back, letting him in. He shut the door.
“Whatever proof he has better be beyond solid. Not that she
was spotted somewhere, near someone else, who might’ve had a shady look about them.”
He grabbed his shirt and threw it on, taking a painful minute of silence before he stopped moving. He turned to me, looking like he’d taken a punch to the gut. “Bugs, there was a partially eaten biscuit in Dez’s room the day she died. To be thorough, we brought it to the healer on a fluke. Turned out it was poisoned.”
I stepped back, letting his words sink in.
“We immediately questioned Sylvia. Turns out Marra has taken up baking recently, but only on select occasions. She was in one of her baking moods the morning Dez died.”
I circled the room, his words sinking in like fangs in my jugular. No. It didn’t fit.
I waved my hands, shaking my head, as a heady relief came. “You’re wrong. She got that biscuit from my place. I ate them too. It wasn’t poisoned.”
Ryker turned with me. “Bugs, the healer confirmed it.”
“Then the healer is wrong. I would’ve died too.”
He walked to my door and opened it. “Come on.”
“Where we going?”
He looked like he was carrying a two-ton weight on his shoulders as he stood by the door. “You need to see something.”
* * *
We walked until we came to a small building, set off by itself. It was where the healer stayed when she was here.
Ryker knocked on the door.
It didn’t matter what she showed me. Those biscuits weren’t poisoned. I’d eaten too many. I remembered the day clearly. I’d seen Marra at the food building right after I ate them.
I remembered seeing her. The way she stared at me…
I put a palm flat against the building, leaning.
Ryker glanced at me. The blood had drained from my face, and I must’ve looked like a ghost.
His lips had parted, as if he were going to ask something, when the door swung open.
“Been waiting for you,” the healer said, leaving the door open and walking back inside.
“Do you still have it?” Ryker asked as he followed her.
“Of course I do. I can follow instructions,” she replied.
Ryker stopped a few steps in and looked back at where I was still standing on the threshold. I let go of my grip on her building and forced myself to enter.
“You need to see this,” he said, as if he knew how hard this would be.
The wooden snake she used to heal was already out on the table, the creature all too familiar to me.
First, she picked up an apple and waved it in front of the snake. It immediately came to life and took a chunk out of it, then swallowed. The chunk expanded in its wooden throat before smoothing out again a few moments later.
“That’s how normal food looks,” she said.
The healer walked to the corner, grabbed a bag, and removed a small piece of a biscuit.
She held it in front of the wooden snake. It didn’t move.
“One more time if you want more apple,” she said.
The snake suddenly nipped off a tiny piece. Its mouth and head turned black before it regurgitated the biscuit onto the floor.
Its color quickly returned to normal and she held the apple back to its mouth, letting it gobble the rest of the thing down.
“That’s what poison looks like,” the healer said, stating the obvious.
I reached out to the wall, bending forward slightly. “How can it be? I ate the same thing and didn’t get sick.”
“If I had to guess? It could be the stone you’ve been carrying on you. It increased your warding ability so much that your body rejected the magic. Or maybe the merge helped block it. Aren’t you immune to poison?” the healer asked Ryker, all the while feeding the snake more apple.
“I am,” he said.
“Maybe she’s tapping into your specific abilities,” the healer said, shrugging.
“Thanks,” Ryker said.
I turned and walked away, pulling deep breaths as soon as I got outside. Ryker wrapped his arm around me, pulling me back against his chest.
I leaned against him. “Now what?”
“If it were up to me? I’d kill her.”
A ragged breath shook my shoulders, and he rubbed my arm.
“But it isn’t. This is your call,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
“I’ve got to talk to Ruck. If she was behind the deaths, she nearly killed him as well.”
* * *
Ruck leaned sideways until his shoulder hit the side of the tower, as if he didn’t have the strength to stay on his feet by will alone. I knew the feeling.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
He shrugged as his eyes glazed over, shaking his head repeatedly. “If I didn’t know her the way I do, I’d kill her too.”
I looked out at the horizon. “But we do. No matter what she is now, she wasn’t always like this. I feel like we’re not only killing the person she is but the other Marra I loved.”
“I don’t know if I can do it. Even after what she did to me. Somewhere in that fucked-up, broken head of hers, there’s still the Marra we grew up with.” He lifted his shoulder. “Look, you want to make the call, go ahead. I won’t hold it against you.”
I sighed, the warring parts of me overflowing outward. “I don’t think I can either.”
“Then what? She can’t stay here. She’s too dangerous. What about banishment?” he asked.
“She’ll have to find a new crew if she hopes to survive. Can’t make it without someone watching your back.” I dragged my hand through my hair. “At least we wouldn’t have her death on our hands.”
“Letting her leave comes with risks. She might still cause problems. She knows a lot about this place, the people, the vulnerabilities.”
“Can you give the order to kill her?” I asked.
“When I think of Dez? I could kill her with my own hands. When I see her, it might be a different story. How do you think she got her hands on the queen’s poison?”
“That’s an easy one. The queen smuggled it in for her to kill me.”
“Another reason why letting her live isn’t safe,” Ruck added.
“Let’s talk to her. See what happens,” I said. I leaned over the tower, where Tommy was waiting to take Ruck’s shift, and waved him up.
There was a guard posted outside Marra’s place when we got there. He stepped aside to let us by. I knocked on Marra’s door to no answer. I would’ve knocked again, but Ruck pushed the door open.
Marra was sitting on her bed. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed, as if she were taking an afternoon break.
“Why? How could you?” Ruck asked, getting closer to her than I could stomach. I remained by the door, watching as she smiled. She was really gone. If we did kill her, it wouldn’t be Marra dying but some sick and twisted version of who she’d been.
“How could you do that? To Dez? To me?” Ruck asked.
My insides twisted as he begged her for answers.
She made a stabbing motion toward me before her eyes shifted in my direction. Pure venom shone in them.
“You sided with me against her,” I said.
Everyone had something that would undo them. Sinsy’s death had been Marra’s.
“What about the other deaths?”
She smiled and then used her hands as if she were building something invisible. It had been the signal she’d used back in the Ruins when she thought we needed to practice before a raid. She always wanted to do dry run after dry run. Always needed to be prepared.
I edged closer to the door, my need to get away from her warring with a desire to stay close to Ruck. His head dropped forward, his spine slumping with it.
I reached out and grabbed his arm, dragging him out of there. I kept pulling him until we were on the side of the building and she was out of view.
He slumped against the wall, banging his head back. “She’s gone. She’s really gone.”
I’d thought when I saw her, it
would be harder to make the call. It would still be hard to kill her, but I knew what had to be done.
Ruck tilted his head toward me. “Can you do it?”
“I can’t have someone else do it.” I pointed to his hip. “Give me your knife.”
He reached to the one he had hanging at his waist and handed it to me.
I wrapped my fingers around it and then turned back to Marra’s, before I lost my nerve. Ruck followed me.
The guard stepped out of the way, and I swung the door open. She was still on the bed, but there was a stillness to her now that hadn’t been there before.
I walked closer, and her eyes stared off to nowhere. Her chest didn’t move.
“She’s dead. She must’ve had some of the poison in here.”
The first thing that hit me was a sigh of relief. It wasn’t what I expected, but I wanted to slump into a chair and thank the gods of magic that she’d taken it out of my hands. I wouldn’t have to murder someone I’d once called sister. Those memories wouldn’t walk hand in hand with when she’d helped bandage up a cut on my arm or defended me when we lived in the Ruins and Willoby had called me a scrawny nobody.
Ruck’s head dropped, eyes on the ground. His chest expanded and then deflated in a whoosh, washing away the hard line of his shoulders as it did.
His eyes were as dry as mine when he finally looked up.
Neither of us would say it, but we were both thinking it. It had worked out for the best.
* * *
I swung my legs over the edge of the tower platform, thinking about Marra’s lifeless body. Ryker had come in and laid a hand on my shoulder, offering me his silent support. Switch had also shown up. In the end, Ruck and I had gone off alone, back here. No one but us would mourn her loss, and we needed to do it together.
Ruck didn’t speak for an hour. When he finally broke the silence, he said, “Today sucked. It really, really sucked.”
“Tell me something good. One really nice thing that warmed your heart. I need it,” I said.
Blood Binds: Wyrd Blood Book Three Page 20