by Zoe Forward
She might belong to someone else. To Roman’s own brother, Shane. Had she been unfaithful to someone to whom she’d made promises? Self-loathing settled into a dull thudding inside her head. There couldn’t be a lycan who wasn’t Roman that she’d loved to the depths of her soul. She’d remember him.
She didn’t love Roman. This was lust.
Oh no, she might love him.
Impossible. She trusted him, yes. And, what happened in bed blew her mind.
This was about great sex, chemistry, and a modified version of Stockholm syndrome. Right?
She swallowed bile rising in her throat. There couldn’t be someone else she had a relationship with. That she would’ve told herself in a video. If she was going to erase her memories, she’d have been sure there was no one who would remember her that remained important in her life.
Then who filmed the video?
She panted through head pain and pushed to remember. Come on. Something had to flicker in there. Was there someone else? She massaged her temples as pain crackled through her skull. She shouldn’t be pushing, but she wanted to remember at least this. To know if she’d had someone.
Tightness compressed her chest. She replayed the male voice behind the camera in her head over and over. Nothing about the baritone triggered a memory or even a visceral reaction. Instead, all she thought of was last night with Roman, the two of them taking each other to highs until neither of them could move from being so blissed out. The way he kept looking at her as if he wished for so much more than he could give her was burned into her mind.
Nothing from the past came to her. And it never would.
Say it—that you’re never going to remember.
I can’t.
I’m too much of a coward to face a future without knowing what happened before.
In the video, she’d told herself not to try to remember. To be okay with not remembering. Wouldn’t that have been the moment to reveal she had someone or a family? But if she was trying to forget her past, someone who knew her intimately would be able to fill in the blanks and run the risk of pushing her to remember.
Meeting that someone who might’ve been special to her before she erased her mind terrified her, and not because she might remember him. Because she might like him more than Roman.
The world needs for you not to remember.
She wasn’t the kind of person to accept failure, even if there was little she could do to resurrect the memories that had been deleted.
“There might be a way out?” Flynn took a few shaky breaths. His words snapped her out of her identity crisis. He said, “I’d do anything to be free, Roman. Any. Fucking. Thing.” He glanced heavenward and then at Roman. “You said this was so much bigger than her. That she was important. I questioned you, but damn it, you’ve never been wrong. I’m a believer in your weird as shit, dead-on correct gut feelings.”
“What did she mean by gloves?” Roman’s eyes narrowed as they settled on her. “Care to clear that one up, Nova?”
Her stomach clenched. She balled her hands into fists and relaxed them. Gloves help. They might stop the death visions. The images were real. Kind of a freaky power to see some people’s death. The visions didn’t seem that useful.
She stared at her hands. Did all lycans have special abilities like this? Maybe it wouldn’t faze these two to know. They dealt with the occult every day.
“Nova!” Roman raised his voice. “Gloves?”
She swallowed, met his stare for an instant before looking away.
He caught her chin and forced eye contact. “What aren’t you telling me?”
They stared at each other in silence, measuring the depth of their connection and if that connection forced each of them not to lie to the other about basic truths.
“I, um…have an ability that didn’t get erased with my memories.” She cleared her throat and looked away.
“What kind of ability?” Roman asked.
“When I touch people, I see how they die.”
“What?” both Roman and Flynn said.
“It scared Dom, but I saw his death and that of every human I’ve touched. Oddly, it doesn’t happen with either of you or your mother. I think it might not work on lycans.”
“You haven’t seen my death?” Roman asked.
She shook her head. “Maybe it means you don’t die?”
“That’s optimistic, but unlikely. Everything dies. Except gods, although they might also have a defined lifespan. Who knows?”
“That’s a creepy skill,” Flynn muttered.
“No kidding,” she muttered back. “Not sure how useful it is, like I told myself in the video. Also not sure if what I see is set-in-stone truth or could be changed.”
Roman dropped his head, “We have to find Ky. He’s a part of all this, somehow.”
Flynn said, “I called Gerard from a payphone while you two were doing your thing. He seemed more concerned about us finding Nova and killing her than finding Ky. Legit, he’s worried about the King’s life. Can’t fault him for that. It’s his job.”
“That’s our current mission. Of course he’s going to be more focused on that.” Roman blew out an agitated breath. “What do we do to find Ky?”
“You didn’t let me finish.” Flynn snorted out an exasperated sigh. “Gerard gave me an address that Ky left in a message last night. It’s in Brussels. I already checked in all of our safe houses across Europe and Africa for Ky. He definitely wasn’t responding to the one in Brussels, nor did I get any trigger he’d entered the apartment we keep there. So, if he was in Brussels…if he really is there, then he wasn’t staying at the safe house.”
“If he called Gerard, why wouldn’t he have left a message for us yesterday when we were with Mom?”
“I don’t know. Gerard said he authenticated it.”
“Then we go to Brussels and find answers. But we be careful. Could be a trap.” Roman wiped his nose, coming away with blood. With a curse, he clapped his hand over his nose and shuffled to the hatch. By the time he pulled the rotatory door handle and activated the folding stairs, blood covered his hand and dribbled down his arm.
Chapter Twenty
Roman didn’t remember the trek to the hangar’s small restroom nor obtaining a wad of stiff brown paper towels to press to his nose.
Sitting on the cold concrete floor of a questionably clean, unheated restroom wasn’t how he wanted to meet his maker. So long as he remained still and kept his mind blank, the pain from the curse’s punishment faded. His strength waned as did his ability to focus on keeping his mind blank. Nova’s image popped into his head.
Shit.
The pain ramped back up. The world shifted and tilted around him, even though he was certain he hadn’t moved. He had to be bleeding out internally, weakening from blood loss. His inherent rapid healing ability couldn’t compete with hundreds of vessels exploding at once.
“Helluva time to take a nap,” Flynn announced from the doorway. He knelt near Roman’s feet, swallowed several times, and compressed his lips. “I’m going to have to take a look…to see how bad it is.”
The miniscule movement of his head in Flynn’s direction sent the whole world into a dizzying shift.
Flynn lifted Roman’s upper lip and then peeked under his T-shirt. “You’re bruising everywhere. It means this is going on inside, too. I know how to counteract a lot of magical insanity, but not this. I don’t know if the curse will actually kill us, but sure looks like it might if we disobey.”
Flynn dialed on a cell phone. Speaking into the phone but not moving away Roman heard him say, “It’s an emergency.” Pause. “Don’t give me attitude, not when you and my mother…yeah, that’s what I thought. It sure as shit gives me leverage. Want me to talk to her about it? You don’t want to be on her bad side.” Flynn darted a glance Roman’s way. “The problem is none of u
s has ever fought an order from the Crown for this long, especially not Roman. After three days, it’s making him bleed internally. The order? To kill Nova.” More pausing on Flynn’s part. “I know we can’t do it and that she’s part of something bigger, but we might have to.” Flynn’s breath caught. He cradled the phone between his ear and neck to use his hand to massage his opposite wrist over the blood curse mark. The curse was punishing him, too. “I’m calling you for options on what the hell do we do? Roman’s probably within a half hour of dying from internal bleeding. I might not be far behind him.” Silence for at least thirty seconds from Flynn’s end. He grunted once. “That’ll work? Okay, I get it. I know it’s a shot in the dark.” He hung up.
Roman slumped further down the wall, unable to sit upright.
“You hang on, Roman,” Flynn ordered before he walked out. What seemed a long while later, but was probably no more than a minute, he returned with Nova.
Flynn said, “You two should sit side by side and look at each other. Roman, you tell her you’re going to kill her. Nova, you tell him it’s okay.”
“It won’t work,” Nova said. “It’s not like you can lie to it, and it’ll believe him. Because if we both meant it, he’d already have done it. Is that what Dom suggested?”
“No, he suggested some crazy stuff about you doing what you know you have to do, whatever that means. You have to do it big, he said. I assume it means magic. Honestly, I’m not into it. Magic is too unpredictable. I figure if we can convince the curse that we’re all on the same page—”
“How long does he think that’ll buy us this time?” Nova interrupted. Her attitude was no-nonsense. Somehow, it eased Roman. Flynn might be tough. His brother excelled at fighting and technology. He could finish a job, but he wasn’t great at making life-or-death spontaneous decisions.
“A day. Maybe two. He didn’t know,” Flynn said. “In so many words, he said we’re fucked and will either have to die or do what we’ve been ordered. It’s how this curse works. We can’t simply decide to say no. We’re not in charge of our own choices.”
Nova put her hands on her hips. “I’m not bound by it. Curses are powerful, but the witch casting is limited in how wide a scope the curse can take on the victim, particularly if she didn’t get the victim to agree to the conditions.” Her breath caught as she realized what she’d just said. “I remembered something. Holy freaking shit. I remembered. That was amazing. How can I remember this random magic stuff but nothing about myself?”
Flynn asked, “Does that—”
She held up a hand to stop Flynn. “Let me try to remember more. It’s in my head somewhere, but I can’t get to it. Damn it.” She slammed her hand against the wall in frustration but yanked it back to massage one hand with the other. “Ouch. That hurt. Did you or any of your brothers agree to the curse? Did anyone utter a single word of consent?”
“No.” Flynn fiddled with the line of rings up the side of his left ear. “Can you do something soon? He looks worse than he did a few minutes ago.”
Nova grabbed more paper towels and wiped off Roman’s nose. Her warm fingers traced his face lightly.
They stared at each other for the longest time. Somehow, he understood her thoughts. Maybe it was the vulnerable look in her eyes. There was but one notable topic: One of them was going to have to die. Which one?
He wanted to touch her face. To reassure her he was okay with him dying so long as she got to live. But he was too weak to lift his hand.
“S’okay,” he managed to get out.
Her sad smile was so full of compassion. “It’s not okay. It’s truly not. You dying doesn’t resolve anything. Then it’ll be Flynn next, if he doesn’t try to kill me, and then your other brother will die.” She gripped his chin tight between her fingers and squeezed until it hurt. “I need you to be the stubborn, infuriating, sexy-as-fuck asshole I met in Berlin. Tell the curse it can’t have you. You belong to me.”
He belonged to her? She thought him sexy? Damn if everything inside didn’t fill with warmth. He may be misinterpreting this floaty, tingly sensation when it was actually him on the path to death. So be it.
She rose.
No, don’t leave. I don’t want to die alone.
She scanned the Spartan room, muttering, “So little to work with.”
After saturating a wad of paper towels with water, she straddled his legs to sit on his lap. As she squeezed out droplets of water onto his face, she intoned, “Troubles be gone. Washed away. Leave Roman free of punishment for several days.”
She repeated it four times. With each iteration, she splashed more droplets of water on him. Upon completion of the fourth recitation, she used the wet paper to clean his face.
He still felt weak, but he tensed to move in order to see if he was better. She put a restraining hand on his chest. “We’re not done.”
She lifted his wrist and wiped the blood-soaked, wet paper towels around the curse tattoo. “You’ve sent Roman strife and caused him years of pain. I reflect it back on you to feel every moment of its stain.”
Wind whipped through the room, around them, and tunneled outside.
A wicked smile lit her face. “Take that, bitch.”
Eyes wide, in a hushed tone Flynn asked, “What did you do?”
She collapsed with her back against the cold wall beside him.“I put a stay on his punishment for now to buy us a bit more time. It won’t be much. Hopefully, it’ll be long enough to get to the bottom of this and maybe find your brother.”
“No, I mean the last bit you did with the wind.” Flynn looked around as if expected another mysterious wind gust but remained in place.
“I punished the stupid witch who cast this to begin with.” She met Flynn’s double eyebrow raise. “What? I never said I was a nice magical person. If someone messes with the people I care about, I’ll mess right back.” She gasped and grabbed her left forearm. She rolled up her sleeve and a triangular raised tattoo now marked it. The sigil of powerful magic.
As if exhausted she lolled her head back to support it against the wall with eyes shut.
“You revenge casting must be why the Council forbids lycans from practicing hard-core magic. Guaranteed, if I had the kind of power you do, there’s a 100 percent chance I’d abuse it.” Flynn’s mouth split into a small smile, but then he sobered. “How are you, Roman?”
She caressed Roman’s cheek, leaned in, and kissed him gently on the lips. “You’re welcome. I hope your regenerative ability kicks in soon so you can fly us out of here.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Nova tugged her car seat belt into a more comfortable position over her shoulder as Roman drove through the flurrying snow to the east side of Brussels. No stars in the darkening sky at dusk, which came early in December here.
He said, “You should’ve stayed at the plane, Nova.”
Maybe she should’ve. Vertigo hit her at random since she her big spell cast. When standing, the ground constantly shifted as if on a stopping elevator car. Sitting was good. But she refused to miss this. “We’re not going to argue about it again. I want to see if anything here triggers a memory. Also, I make good backup. You’re weak and Flynn…well, he’s Flynn.” She watched Roman’s reaction out of the corner of her eye. His rugged face remained stoic, his gaze concentrated, and his body on full alert.
“I’m right here,” Flynn said from the back seat. “I am his back up. You here means we have to look after you.”
She rotated to give him a squinty glare.
Flynn threw up his hands. “All right. You can probably handle yourself.”
They’d flown into a private airstrip miles outside of Belgium. The flight had been quiet despite Nova’s desire to quiz Roman on his status every few minutes. She hadn’t asked. Because he was alive and no longer leaked blood from his nose. Upon landing, Flynn announced there were no rental cars possible. T
hen he disappeared for a half hour and returned with this sedan that smelled of cigarettes and cinnamon air freshener. No one asked questions, but they’d driven with the windows cracked for miles. Until her nose and toes turned into Popsicles. She hadn’t complained but did roll up her window. The car still reeked of stale smoke.
Flynn said, “Brussels is an interesting city.” Was he trying to lighten the mood? “Did you know many famous comics were drawn by artists who’re from here, like Smurfs?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Roman said. “Smurfs? Not exactly a page turner.”
“They made just as much as the Watchmen stuff you read.”
“That’s bullcrap.”
“The Smurf movie alone grossed…537 million dollars.” Flynn clicked through a few screens on his laptop while Roman drove. “Watchmen only made 185 on its movie.”
“You’re going to side with blue elf-like creatures that live in a village with one girl over history-altering superheroes?” Roman elicited a quick, disgusted snort. “Why don’t you do something useful like look up architectural plans for this address we’re about to visit?”
“Already did that. Come on, give me a little credit. The place is a shoe factory renovated into an office building. Based on the website, there are at least fifteen companies with offices there. Looks good on paper. But I watched midday surveillance camera footage, and there’s not enough movement into or out of the building for it to be a real place with that many businesses.”
“It’s a front.” Roman sucked air through his teeth.
“Left at this light, and it’s on the right.” Flynn leaned between the seats as if desperate for a first look. “God, I hope Ky is here. I don’t understand why he’d be out in the middle of nowhere in an abandoned building.”
Roman parked outside the brick building. “Before we go inside…” He removed a pistol from the inside pocket of his heavy coat and handed it to her. Next, he gave her a burner phone. “We have no idea what we’ll find in there.”