unForgiven (The Birthright Series Book 2)

by Bridget E. Baker

  “Ten minutes after midnight,” Ambrosia says.

  “Any reason your neighbors might have company this late?”

  Billy glances out the window. “Those people have coveralls on with a patch for the local power company. It’s not a social call. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re pretending to work for the power company in order to search for someone.”

  I swear under my breath. Melina’s still looking, and I’m out of time. I need to get out of here, pronto. I slurp down the last of the smoothie. “I took note of your address outside. I’ll have some money sent to you as a thank you for the clothing and food, but right now, I’ve got to go.”

  Ambrosia glances at Billy. “What’s your plan here? Those people are going door-to-door, searching houses for you. But it’s not like they can check every crevice. Why don’t you hide?”

  I can’t exactly explain they would hear my heartbeat, no matter where I hid, or at least, that would take more time than I have. “Let’s just say my sister can track me.”

  Billy lifts his eyebrows. “Did you do something bad?”

  Too many to list. “Yes.”

  “Would you harm us?” Ambrosia asks.

  I wouldn’t unless I had no other choice. They are, after all, only humans. I figure that counts as a no. I shake my head.

  “We need to help her,” she whispers to Billy. “Get her out of here.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” he asks.

  “Your sister’s people have no idea how many people live here, let alone are currently at home,” Ambrosia says. “So she and I will pretend to be sleeping and you can tell them you’ve got two sisters.”

  They’ll hear my heartbeat and know it’s different.

  Unless I speed it up for a few moments to fool them. Could I do that? My eyes notice the pool of blood drying on the kitchen floor that trails through the house to the bathroom. Not to mention the handcuffs in the corner. If I’m going to take them up on their offer instead of trying to flee like a rabbit, we have work to do, quickly. Melina’s people are coming.

  I either trust these humans or flee and hope they can’t catch me in a place I don’t know and have no contacts. I may have surprised Melina’s people when I ran earlier, but they’re organized now, and surely prepared to take me out with tranqs. Or maybe something more lethal. The odds of success for this plan really come down to how well Billy can lie, and what Melina’s people will do if they realize he is.

  I shake my head. “I can’t risk it. They’ll press you for details, and if they realize you’re lying, they’ll take measures. Bad measures.”

  Billy scowls. “That decides it. You’re staying here. Go. I’ll clean this up.”

  I snatch the handcuffs and take them with me, Ambrosia only a step behind. Billy’s already scrubbing the floor with a towel.

  “This is my room.” She points. “And I’ve got bunk beds already so when my friends come over, they have somewhere to sleep.”

  I bob my head, allowing my heart to spike from the stress. It’s still half the speed of hers. Gah.

  “Does your dad have any weapons?” I ask quietly.

  Ambrosia gulps. “Uh, you mean like guns?”

  I shake my head. “Guns wouldn’t even slow them down.”

  She opens her mouth and then closes it.

  “Does he have a sword, maybe? Sometimes humans keep decorative ones, I’ve heard.”

  “Humans?” Her voice is high and wobbly.

  I frown. “I’ll explain later. I’m not an alien, okay. I’m just different.”

  “I figured that out when you healed up in three seconds after eating some eggs.”

  I bob my head. “Look, I could really use a sword, but if you don’t have one of those, even butcher knives are better than nothing.”

  I flinch when I hear a knock at the front door.

  “Oh, Dad went to Japan once. There’s some kind of samurai something hanging in his office over the door.”

  “Where’s the office?”

  “By his bedroom, right back there.” She points around the corner, and I race out.

  Billy’s answering the door fifty feet away.

  “Sorry to bother you this late,” the man at the door lies. “But there’s a dangerous fugitive on the loose in this area. We need to find her before she can kill again.”

  Who knows how Billy will react to that one. It’s not even, strictly speaking, a lie.

  I tear down the hall and into the master bedroom, then through it into a side room that’s stacked high with books. So many books. Are offices full of books or am I in the wrong place? I look up at the door—nothing. I almost groan in defeat, until I notice another door in the back that probably opens to a closet. Hanging above it is a Musashi Platinum Katana. I could do far worse. I snag it and sprint back to Ambrosia’s room. There’s a ladder up to the bed, but I hear footsteps in the hall.

  No time.

  I vault up and over the guard rail on the bed and slide under the covers with my new sword.

  Ambrosia swears softly below me. “That was awesome.”

  She’s impressed easily, but then she is human.

  The door cracks open. “See?” Billy says. “Just my sisters.”

  My heart is racing, possibly too fast. Human hearts slow down at rest, don’t they? I wish I knew exactly what it should sound like. Ambrosia isn’t helping me down below, her heart racing like she’s sprinting a race.

  “They aren’t asleep,” the man says.

  “Of course they are,” Billy says. “It’s past midnight.”

  “Their hearts are racing, their breathing elevated,” a woman’s voice says. A voice I’ve heard before.

  I close my eyes. It’s the lady I shot in the face. I suppress a groan.

  “We’re going to need to take a closer look at them,” she says. “Trust me when I tell you that you do not want to shelter the woman we’re pursuing. She killed a kid not much older than you last week. She’s not . . . normal.”

  Also true. Footsteps approach the bed and I tense to spring out.

  “Wait,” Billy says. “I’ve got 9-1-1 entered in my phone and I will call them, right now. I don’t trust you, and I don’t want you terrorizing my sister. I think I’d know if I was harboring a fugitive, and I’d hand her over. Please leave before you make things worse.”

  Melina’s people stop.

  “You said your sister.” The woman’s voice is practically gleeful. “As in one sister.”

  This time it’s me who swears under my breath.

  I throw the covers over the woman’s head and leap from the bed, unsheathing the sword. I drop the sheath and stand on the balls of my feet. “Get out Billy. Run, Ambrosia. Now.”

  “Oh, that’s touching,” the man says. “She’s pretending to care about the humans.”

  “Precious, actually,” the woman says, her gold eyes sparkling. I’m a little annoyed to discover her face looks fine. She healed that point blank shot quickly, which is why guns are so useless.

  I tilt my head back and forth, analyzing the scene in front of me. The woman’s unarmed as far as I can tell, and the guy has pulled two guns. Exploding rounds, I’m assuming. Fine. I can handle that, but not with Billy and Ambrosia here.

  “Get. Out.”

  Billy shakes his head. “We may be weak, but this isn’t right. Judica didn’t threaten us, or scare us, or try and kill us. You two seem to be the only ones doing that.”

  He drags the stupid bat out from behind the doorframe and bonks the guy on the head with it. I’m furious he isn’t listening, but for a human, Billy’s got an arm on him.

  The man drops both guns when he crumples to the floor. The woman is so surprised her mouth lolls open. I’m only a hair less shocked, but I’m not about to let them kill the kid over it.

  I spring forward and kick both guns toward the wall. Then with two smooth strokes I slice off both of the man’s hands. The blood spray disgusts even me, and I’m pretty inured to this type of thing.


  Of course, I know that removing his hands won’t kill him. Ambrosia and Billy don’t.

  Ambrosia vomits in the corner of her bed. Poor kid.

  Billy drops his bat and stares at me, aghast.

  “He’ll survive,” I say, “and his hands will regrow. Don’t worry about him too much—”

  A knife thwacks into my throat mid-word, air rasping out of the hole when I try to talk. Melina’s golden eyed friend is really pissing me off. She’s hiding behind the edge of Ambrosia’s desk now, like a coward.

  I yank the knife out and drop into a crouch, covering poor Ambrosia’s carpet with my blood. I cough, making things worse. But when the woman throws a second blade, I’m ready. I deflect it with the sword, and it lodges in the wall instead.

  Time to give her a little of her own back. I throw the wicked, serrated edge knife I pulled from my throat at the woman, expecting her to dodge and reclaim it, which she does. But she wasn’t expecting me to roll and come up with a sweep to her left thigh. My borrowed sword swings underneath the desk and bites into the meaty part of her leg. And yet, I’m greedy for more. My throat is nearly healed, but I don’t appreciate being taken by surprise.

  I thrust at her solar plexus with my free left hand, knocking her backward, and then I spring on top of her, borrowing one of her own blades to press it to her throat.

  “You have one second to give me a reason not to end you. Permanently this time.”

  She grins. “I don’t have one. Your sister’s planning to kill you.”

  “You’re lucky I’m not like her, then.”

  I slit her throat and stand up. Mine is already healed, but I’m guessing it’ll take her much longer.

  Ambrosia is in shock, staring blankly at me, mouth open, face pale.

  Billy’s holding a towel against the guy’s stubs. I have no idea what color it was, but it’s soaked dark maroon with blood right now. I could walk out and they wouldn’t stop me, but I have no idea what Melina’s people will do to them. And if I’m being totally honest, I kind of like them. I don’t want them to die, not now, not after they’ve tried so hard to help me.

  “They’ll both survive.” I wipe my throat and chest off with the sheet on Ambrosia’s top bunk. This shirt can’t be saved. “But they’ll also alert Melina as soon as they can move and talk and dial, which means backup is coming. You two can stay here and wait for them, or you can leave with me.”

  “With you?” Billy asks, his eyes wide.

  I bob my head. “Melina will interrogate you at a baseline. I’m not sure quite what else she’ll do to you for harboring me.”

  Ambrosia tears her eyes away from my now-healed throat and says, “Cutting her like that.” She coughs. “That won’t kill her? She’s like you?”

  I shrug. “No one is quite like me, but she’ll recover, yes.”

  The woman at my feet has begun coughing, so I jab my sword into her leg, straight down through the bone.

  She cries out, blood bubbling through the hole in her throat.

  “I’m giving her things to heal so we have time to escape. Killing her would be cleaner, but. . .”

  “You’re not the monster they say you are,” Ambrosia says.

  I can’t meet her eye. “I did kill someone, and I’d do it again. I probably will kill again, and soon. I don’t like that fact, but I won’t go gently into the night.”

  Her eyes are sad. They remind me too much of Chancery’s. Kind, brave, generous.

  “I’m leaving,” I say. “Come or don’t.” I change my shirt and use the cleanest parts of the discarded one to dab at my new pants. Then I crouch down to grab the sword’s sheath and walk out the door, stepping over the man’s grotesquely unattached hands and tracking his blood down the hall.

  By the time I reach the back door, both of them have joined me. Billy even has a backpack slung over his shoulder. “We’re sticking with you. Maybe we can help out more.”

  Doubtful, but who knows? “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Maybe we head out the back door?” Billy says. “Less light that direction.”

  I nod. “Good idea.”

  “We could take my car,” Billy says.

  I shake my head. “There’s no chance that kind of noise wouldn’t be detected. Melina’s people would be on us immediately. No, we’ve got to put some space between us and her people before they heal enough to call her.”

  We duck out the back door and I set off at a jog, wincing at the noise Ambrosia and Billy make, even on pavement. Their footfalls are louder than the slaps of bare hands across rosy cheeks.

  Also, there’s no good way to carry my purloined sword. I guess you take a baldric for granted until you don’t have one. I end up tucking it through the neck of my shirt and a loop on my pants, which angles the whole thing sideways, stretching the collar on my borrowed t-shirt. The three of us, looking about as covert as a buffalo on the flat, open plains, blunder down the street.

  We miraculously reach the edge of the neighborhood before Ambrosia exclaims. “Oh no!”

  I spin around, looking for assailants, assessing risk. I see nothing but houses with dark windows and flowery landscaping. “What’s wrong?” How did a human notice something I missed?

  “I just realized, Dad is going to freak out.”

  I think about the blood and severed hands. Oh boy.

  10

  The Past

  I approach the staff quarters as quietly as possible. It’s early enough in the morning that the hall is empty. I tap on the door softly.

  I hear rustling inside, and I wonder how annoying it is not to have completely soundproofed walls. I didn’t realize the staff walls weren’t reinforced.

  The door opens a crack, and Nihils’ eyes widen with alarm.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Uh, Your Highness. Can I help you? Is there a problem?”

  “May I come in? I’d like to talk to you.” And poke a knife into your eye until you scream.

  “Oh.” He glances up and down the hall as if looking for my guards, who were quite hard to ditch, or anyone who might save him. “Uh, sure.” He opens the door a few inches.

  I shove it open further and press myself through. He’s standing in his room in basketball shorts and nothing else, but I couldn’t care less what his chest looks like. I’ve got bigger problems than insufficiently defined pectoral muscles, even on an evian who should be working harder. I mean, geez, a hundred sit-ups and push-ups a day and he’d be ripped.

  His eyes dart from the door I slam shut behind me to the sword strapped to my back. Good. He’s appropriately nervous.

  “I have a few questions,” I say.

  “Because I traded shifts.”

  He may be lazy, but at least he isn’t painfully stupid. “Yes.”

  “I wondered when someone would notice.”

  I cross my arms. “I noticed.”

  “I didn’t hurt your mother, I swear to you I didn’t.” His heart rate remains steady, his smell is neutral, and no perspiration has spiked since he answered the door. That actually magnifies my existing suspicion. Why isn’t my presence and interrogation more terrifying? He’s acting like I’ll find his secret candy stash, not as though I’ve discovered he positioned himself to poison his Empress.

  “For your sake, I certainly hope that’s true.” The more time I spend here, the more convinced I become that he can’t be the mastermind behind my mother’s death. If he was involved, it was as an intermediary, a delivery boy, and nothing more. Which means, if my suspicions pan out, I should be pumping him for information on his boss.

  “I have a reason for changing those shifts,” he says. “A reason that has nothing to do with your mother.”

  This better be good. I stare at him and tap my foot.

  He swallows. “It was because of a girl.”

  “I’m going to need more than that,” I say.

  “If you check the chart, you’ll see that I had kitchen duty on all of those days. I’d h
ave come in contact with your mother anyway by delivering her tray. But I didn’t want to see Cina, and if I’d kept kitchen duty, I would have.”

  “Why exactly didn’t you want to see her?” I raise one eyebrow. I know Cina. She’s feisty and outspoken and I like her, and like most evians, she’s attractive.

  “We made out, and it was hot.” He looks at the ground. “But then she wanted more than I did, and it was easier not to bump into her.”

  She’d have known he switched, and hopefully gotten the message. Good grief. Someone who takes the coward’s route to avoid seeing a girl is no one she’d want anyway. “You’re an idiot.”

  He tosses his hands up in the air. “I won’t argue with that, but it worked.”

  So he’s not nefarious, just rude, cowardly, lazy, and imbecilic. Fabulous. Of course I’ll need to check out his story, but it looks like this may be a dead end. Before I wanted to cut him, and now I’d like to punch him out of frustration. Because now I’m back to the starting line. Empty handed again.

  I spin on my heel and head for the door. “Enjoy your morning.”

  “I’ll try,” he says.

  Roman’s waiting in the hallway outside, glowering terribly. “You can’t dismiss your guards, Your Majesty.”

  I huff. “I can do whatever I want to do.”

  He grabs my upper arm. “Don’t be stupid. Not now.” He lowers his voice. “Please.”

  “Worried about your job?”

  His heart accelerates, but he drops my arm and steps back. “Yes. My job disappears if you die, and we have a killer at large right now. And worse than that, you’re searching for him or her. Alone.”

  “I can protect myself, you know. Calm down.”

  “There’s a reason people use the phrase, ‘watch your back.’ It’s because even perfect princesses can’t watch their own back. That’s my job. And if you don’t let me do it, I get crabby.”

  I want to huff or dismiss his complaint, but I can’t. Because he’s right. Running off alone to chase a killer is just as dangerous as trusting the wrong person to guard me. Mother taught me better than this. I need to separate myself from emotional baggage and trauma and start being smart about all of this, which means doing the things I was taught to do, and not taking reckless, unnecessary risks. I could have at least asked Balthasar or Roman to come along.