by May Dawson
“I can do all basic magics and most second-level. I’m at half my usual power, at best.” He catalogs his weaknesses dispassionately.
“So in a fight…”
He shrugs. “I’m still a Marine.”
“You need to keep this to yourselves,” she says. “Does Tera know?”
“No,” I say. That was the one secret Mycroft agreed we should keep.
“Why not?” Radner’s tone is idly curious, but she’s never idly curious. She fidgets a pencil between her fingers, and the eraser taps out a staccato beat on her wooden desktop.
Must she ask?
“She might be reluctant to work on regaining her magic if she realizes it will come at a cost,” I say, “And we can’t afford for her to feel that way.”
“You would expect her to be eager to get her magic back. She won’t make it long past her first semester with dead magic.”
I don’t want to reveal Tera’s secrets, either, unless I have to, so I nod.
“Why is she reluctant at all?” Radner’s piercing eyes meet mine.
Goddamn it. I can’t lie to Radner.
Mycroft shifts impatiently, a transfer of his weight from one hip to the other. It would be a meaningless fidget in someone else. Mycroft feels trapped by this conversation and desperate to escape the room.
Well, me too.
“She’s afraid she might be like her father,” I admit.
“Of course she isn’t. Her father was powerful, at least.” Radner carries little rancor about the events of the Savage Night and the war that followed even though it had taken her leg. “How inconvenient.”
“Maybe you should stop treating the girl like a villain,” I suggest, “if you don’t want her to be afraid she will be one.”
Radner’s eyes widen, her lips pulling into a faint smile before the expression is gone, replaced by her usual grouchiness. “A smart-ass moment from you, Airren, really? These kids are rubbing off on you.”
“I was a smart-ass long before we met, Colonel,” I remind her. I keep it mostly on the inside these days. I’m loyal to the Crown, but I have my own thoughts.
“I thought you’d outgrown it long ago,” she said. “Along with love-struck foolishness. But you’re always surprising.”
Irritation prickles up my spine. “I do my best.”
“Make sure you cover Mycroft’s back on your mission,” she says. “I’m going to put out a call to our scientists. Mycroft, go to the lab for testing before you leave.”
He nods curtly, already heading for the door.
He’s out in the hall, and I’m close behind when Radner calls after me. “Airren.”
I turn, my hand on the knob. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I have faith in you to take care of them all,” she says, her voice soft. “Don’t disappoint me.”
“I never have before, ma’am.”
She meets my gaze, worry for Mycroft and Tera in her eyes despite her brisk demeanor, and nods.
Then as she begins to shuffle the papers on her desk, she adds, “Well, there was the incident in the Frizie Harbor—”
“I had no idea that was a brothel.”
She waves me out of her office impatiently, but her lips crack into a smile.
As I shut the door behind me, I wish that Cax and Mycroft—and Tera—could see the Radner I know, the one who’s tough and heroic and funny, and caring beneath the cold shell.
For some reason, I think of my own mother—who I hadn’t talked to in two years—with her perfectly styled hair and frozen smile. There was nothing beneath that cold, polished shell even though I’d tried to believe there was for years.
“Oh, thanks for that,” Croft says shortly.
The hardwood floors have just been polished to a high shine, and our boots squeak on the fresh wax.
I wriggle my fingers by my thigh, cloaking my words. There is no one else around, but it pays to be careful. “She has to know. She’s our CO.”
“It’s just always interesting to see where your loyalty lies, in the end.”
Damn. I would never expect Mycroft, who had been through Hell and back with me, to say something so cold.
I turn, my arms crossing, to meet his chilly gaze. “My loyalty is to our team and our mission, not to your privacy. Don’t confuse the two.”
“And if it’s a choice between the mission and the team? The mission and Tera?”
“I’m protecting her.” I answer the question he hasn’t asked. My voice comes out low, dangerously quiet.
He shakes his head.
I stare him down. “Just like you think you are, by keeping your current brokenness a secret.”
“Bullshit.”
Maybe I’m being unfair. I agreed that we couldn’t tell Tera about Mycroft’s magic. The last thing that girl needed was another dose of guilt. But we both keep secrets from her. Sometimes, protecting someone means lying to them.
Mycroft doesn’t have to make that hard call to shield Tera from the truth about how we came into her life. I already did. As his senior, I’m the one who shoulders the responsibility and guilt, and he and Cax get to be angry about it. Must be nice for them.
Just like Mycroft knew how to rile me, I knew how to rile him. “You’re so scared she’s going to hate you when she learns the truth, aren’t you? You can’t let your affection put her in danger.”
He turned to me, his eyes blazing. “I’m not afraid she’s going to hate me. I don’t care about that.”
“Sure.”
“What I care about is that she trusts us. She trusts someone for once. We told her to take a chance, and she did, but sooner or later, she’ll realize it was a mistake.”
“You’re making too much out of it.” Sure, Mycroft and Cax and I had befriended her on purpose. We’d revealed part of the truth—that we’d known she would be ostracized, and we wanted to protect her—but we hadn’t told her we were sent to befriend her by the Crown.
“And she will too,” he promises me. “You’re the worst of all of us. Sleeping with her.”
His tone is heavy with disgust.
“She’s not just a mark.” The memory of her lithe body in my arms rises like a ghost. I’m lost when it comes to the way her heart hammers against mine when I wrap her in my arms, the scent of her perfume in that soft, shimmering golden-brown hair, and the quiet, enduring strength behind her bright eyes. “I like her.”
When I say I like her, I mean that I love her. But I don’t want to say those words, not in the middle of a fight with Mycroft on a drizzling, miserable night.
“Sure, you like her.” Mycroft pushes open the doors to campus and strides down the stairs ahead of me, but I still hear the cloaked words he throws back at me over his shoulder. “But if you cared about her as much as you should, you would keep your dick in your trousers.”
On the battlefield, my emotions are so locked-down that I barely register anger or fear. I’m focused on the mission. I guess I take that for granted.
Because I’m not on guard with the people I trust most.
His crude words strike deep. Sudden anxiety twists through my gut. Maybe I really have misjudged Tera. Maybe she really will hate us. Maybe that could even drive her to the side of the True, which would put her in terrible danger.
Maybe I should have protected her heart and kept her from falling for me, even as I fell for her.
But Mycroft’s just said all that to hurt me. He can’t be trusted right now.
Then rage washes those misgivings away.
As I run up behind him, Mycroft doesn’t hear me coming, or maybe he thinks I won’t do anything.
I slam into his waist, the motion carrying both of us into the grass at the edge of the stone trail. As he hits the ground hard beneath me, he’s already twisting to one side, trying to roll away.
He struggles to throw me. Then my elbow pins his throat, and he stills. Once I’ve got him down, I don’t know what to do next.
I’m not capable of punching my best friend in the
face.
He stares up at me, his eyes cold and flinty, not bothering to struggle.
“I care about her,” I tell him, my voice low and hard and certain.
“Maybe you do,” he admits. His eyes lock on mine. “Maybe you’re just stupid.”
It turns out, I can punch my best friend.
The two of us roll back and forth across the ground, trading punches when we can get one in, trying to pin each other. We’re evenly matched. Mycroft can’t use what little magic he has, and I don’t use mine either. All I really want is to bury my fist in his side and hear him grunt, so when I get the opening, I do.
It isn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be. I can hurt him, but what I want is to hear him say he was wrong. I want him to believe in our mission. In me. I’m the guy who has had his back since we were nothing but stupid kids, despite the officer’s bars pinned to our shoulders.
He rolls to his knees and gets a punch in across my jaw, and the world blurs red for a second. I strike out blindly and hit him back, hard enough to knock him onto his heels before he stumbles back onto his ass.
He sprawls, then sits up, pausing. Usually, he would’ve already been launching himself to his feet for another attack, the way we were trained.
Mycroft holds up his hands. “Truce.”
I glower at him, but he did let me get in the last punch, which isn’t in Mycroft’s nature. Despite all he’s said in the past ten minutes, he must want peace.
Two freshmen pass by. When they recognize us, their eyes widen. I stare them down until they hurry down the path although they lean in to whisper to each other.
I roll to my feet and offer him a hand up. “Truce.”
There’s a cut across his lip, and he touches it with his free hand, pulling his fingertips away coated with fresh blood. “Very mature of us.”
“Everyone has a moment every now and then, I guess.”
It’s the closest either of us will come to admitting fault. We’ve been friends for a long time. We don’t need to.
“Let me heal that.” I make an impatient come-here gesture.
He takes a step toward me and tilts his head back. I rest my fingertips on his lip, letting my magic flow into him, until the wound knits itself shut again.
He’s still looking skyward. “I have one more thing to say.”
I drop my fingers from his face. We’re intimately close, and I take two steps back, putting some distance between us, before I fold my arms over my chest.
“What’s that?” I ask guardedly.
“I hope you’re right,” he says. “I just feel it in my bones. Learning the truth is going to tear that girl apart. And when that happens, it’s going to tear us apart too. We’re all bound together now.”
His words make my own instincts prickle with a sense of dread for something coming down the road.
“I guess we’ll see.”
“I guess we will.”
Chapter 4
Tera
Cax is charming and chatty as we walk back through campus. Night has fallen, dragging a dark, heavy blanket across the sky. Not even the scent of wood smoke and the crunch of fall leaves underfoot and his cheerful, teasing talk can distract me. I keep thinking about Mycroft’s gaze on me as he closed the door between us. It’s anger that tightens my chest now, not nerves.
It’s hard for me to trust anyone.
How the hell do I trust them when they literally shut me out?
“…and that’s the true story of how I personally slayed six zombie knights,” Cax finishes.
I turn to him, my lips parting. He says, “Aha! I got you at the end there. But I’m pretty sure you missed some key zombie-slaying details in the middle.”
I crinkle my nose. “Sorry. I wasn’t listening.”
“It’s all right.” His fingers slip against mine, an accidental brushing of our knuckles as we walk too close together. Or maybe it’s on purpose. “It’s been a strange night, hm? Lots to think about.”
“The problem is the parts that aren’t strange. Like Airren and Mycroft keeping secrets from me.” Heat prickles across my cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I know I kept a secret from you and made everything…”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean to make things harder on you, Tera. We’re here for you. Even if we are idiots from time-to-time.”
“I wouldn’t call you an idiot.” The genuine regret written across his handsome features makes me feel sorry for him. I feel sorry enough to tuck my hand inside his arm, drawing him close to me as we walk. “I’ve called you lots of other things, after the Raila situation, but that’s in the past now.”
He must be thinking of the present idiots, because he says, “Radner won’t talk openly in front of you.”
“I know.” But I still can’t help feeling like they should be fighting for me in every way; it’s not enough for them to try to protect me. Airren’s teased about making me into a secret agent like they are. I grin like it’s a joke, every time. But I would really like to be their partner.
I’d really like to have a purpose, to help put Avalon right again after my father almost tilted this world off its axis.
When he stops abruptly, I turn toward him. His face is almost lost in the dim light of the evening, but his voice is soft and warm. “Maybe they’ll tell you everything that was said. Maybe just…tuck the mad away into your pocket and see if you need it.”
“How would I know?” I ask. “That they told me everything?”
He groans. “Oh, Tera…”
“I’m not trying to be difficult. I want to trust you. I want to trust all of you. But that means…”
“I know.” He draws my hands up, against his chest; his heart pounds against my knuckles. “Don’t give up on us.”
There’s something haunted in his voice. I cock my head to one side, not sure if I really heard that or not. The darkness, the lack of visual cues, has made my other senses sharper.
“Cax,” I whisper, determined to discover whatever secret he’s keeping. It might just be that he still feels guilty about Raila. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about his feelings. Mycroft’s strange mood earlier rises in my memory. I never want to talk about my feelings, either—a lump rises to my throat when I try to put them into words—but they owe me honesty now.
“Tera,” he murmurs. He presses his lips to mine, misunderstanding the way I’ve said his name. Or perhaps he’s just distracting me.
His lips are soft and warm. They certainly are a sweet distraction.
I kiss him back, letting the argument fall away for now. His hands release mine, and I sway against his chest, running my palms over his wool vest and the crisp lines of his button-down shirt. As our kisses deepen, I breathe in the scent of starch and of his clean, fresh cologne.
His hands span my hips and tug my body against his. The cold had begun to sink through my sweater, but now heat washes through my body, warming me again.
I break away first, catching a breath of that cold, snappy air, because kissing him is making me dizzy.
“Maybe no one on the outside would believe it,” he says, nuzzling my ear, “but we don’t deserve you.”
The reminder that, to the outside world, I seem like a villain in the making, chills my lust. I pat his shoulder as I lean away, putting space between us. “Stelly would agree that you don’t deserve me.”
“That is true,” he admits.
There’s something regretful in his green eyes that makes me take his jaw in my hands. Softly, I say, “But I hope she’s wrong. I hope you do. And I’m not always so sure about myself, either. I hope you and I deserve each other.”
His forehead wrinkles, his blond brows drawing together, and his lips part.
“There you guys are!” Airren’s low, warm voice calls out behind us. “I’m sorry about that, Tera. I know you must have questions.”
Airren slides his arm around
my waist, drawing me into his side. For a second, I stumble internally. Cax was about to tell me something. As much as I love Airren’s touch, I wish he hadn’t just interrupted. The dynamic between the three of us is different than when it’s just Cax and me; whatever Cax almost confessed is lost now.
I catch Cax’s arm, tucking my arm through his so we can walk together. Interlinked, the three of us meander slowly back toward Rawl House.
“Where’s Mycroft?” I ask, even though that’s certainly not my only question.
“He went to meet with Cutter. They’re working together to figure out our next step to find Moirus Neal, after we’ve humored the prince.”
“And what was it that you couldn’t say in front of me?” I ask tartly.
“Oh, Tera.” He squeezes my waist. “I’m worried by the prospect of bringing you along to face Moirus. I’d rather you were kept safe, in the castle, with Mycroft to guard you after the prince’s ball. That was what I wanted to discuss with Radner.”
“No, no, I want to go with you. Moirus is my battle.” Not to mention, I’m pretty sure Airren would snap his neck as soon as look at him. “And why did you need to…”
“In front of you, she’d go into full witch mode, just to be stubborn, and I’d never get what I want.” His lips nuzzle my ear. “Which is to keep you safe.”
“I don’t want to be kept safe,” I say. “I want to be your partner.”
“Is it really such an awful thing to have someone want to protect you?” Airren asks.
I shake my head, unable to give voice to the rise of emotion in my chest, which is a mix of dread and confusion and warmth.
“We try to protect Cax too,” Airren teases, his eyes flickering up to his friend on my other side. “He’s still a civilian.”
Cax harrumphs.
The mood lightens as the three of us climb the stone steps to Rawl House. I’m sure that my joy at being back here will fade in time as it becomes commonplace, but still, something lifts inside my soul every time I approach this house. Its windows like bright eyes seem to peer out into the night, welcoming us all home. Every day I cross the polished wooden floors feels like a gift.