Reckless Cruel Heirs

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “I watched you turn to ash and die.”

  The memory of when he’d perished in my arms still haunted me, so I understood how shell-shocked he must’ve felt. Combing the mud out of my hair, I kept walking toward him. “Who were you picturing when you tossed me off?”

  He shuddered as though reliving the moment. “Joshua Locklear.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it wasn’t me.”

  His jaw clenched.

  “So, how did you end up breaking out?”

  “The door clicked open when I got to the top.” He pointed to the bruise blackening the side of his neck. “I was in the middle of strangling myself.”

  “Eventful ride.” I smiled.

  “How can you be so . . . smiley? How can you even stomach to look at me right now? I killed you.”

  I tipped my head to the side. “Did you mean to kill me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then stow away your guilt and help me reach the portal.”

  His reddened gaze raked over me. Was he looking for forgiveness? I’d already given it to him. Didn’t he believe me?

  “I promise, Remo, I’m not mad at you. Cupolas were famous for scrambling—”

  He raised one hand to my cheek, grazing my mended skin. “You’re really real.”

  I let his fingers roam over my hair and collarbone before spiraling down my neck, hoping the feel of me would reassure him that he hadn’t murdered his princess. “I’m really real.” My voice took on a strange, coarsened quality, as though goose bumps had risen inside my throat. Was that possible?

  “I thought—” He swallowed and then he shuddered.

  I knew what he thought. Been there; thought that. Sensing the weight of his guilt, I said, “You can stop imagining all the ways my father and mother will torture you for killing off their only daughter. I’m alive and well. Very well. No more broken bones or shredded skin. You, on the other hand, don’t look too hot.”

  Shadows gathered over his blood-streaked face. “I watched you turn to smoke, Amara.”

  “And it didn’t rate among the best moments of your life?”

  “No!” His word was as violent as the look in his eyes, as brutal as the fingers gripping the back of my neck. “How can you even think that?” He shuddered, his lids falling over his eyes, his lashes shivering against his cheek. For a long moment, he stayed like that, with his eyes closed, his nostrils flaring, his jaw clenched.

  My lips settled into a grim line, and I pressed my palms against his chest, right over where his heart banged like a Gottwa war drum. “I had a front row seat to your disintegration, so trust me, I know how horrifying it is, but look at me. I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me.”

  His lids finally lifted. “I’ve never been more petrified in my entire life.”

  I shot him a sympathetic smile. “I can just imagine. I heard cupolas were quite the torture chamber.”

  His stare firmed and narrowed. “I wasn’t talking about the effect of the cage, Amara. I was talking about the effect of watching you die. About causing your death.”

  “You weren’t in your right mind.”

  His grip on my neck slackened and then his hand fell away from my body. “How can you be so forgiving with someone who’s spent their entire life making yours hell?”

  His admission stunned me into silence. Apparently, cupolas weren’t only useful at causing nightmares; they were also useful for soul-searching.

  Letting my hands slip off his torso, I sighed. “Don’t give yourself that much credit. You didn’t make my life easy, but you also didn’t make it hell. Your grandfather, on the other hand . . .” I gestured to the land around us.

  He craned his neck and glowered at the portal. “Let’s not talk about my grandfather right now.”

  I dropped the subject of Gregor. “So, what tool should I make? A rope?” I pulled my dust out of my hand, the golden filaments gleaming like stretched gum.

  “A spear gun.”

  “Wouldn’t an arrow damage the portal?”

  He returned his gaze to mine. “I planted a sword in one once. It suctioned the blade. Pulling it out was . . . challenging.”

  “Even for a big strong man like you?” I winked at him.

  My teasing released some of the tightness between his eyes. “Did you snort some mud, prinsisa? You sound a lot like your grandmother.”

  He didn’t have to clarify which one; only Addison existed in a constant mallow-haze.

  A smile cracked across my lips. “I think I might be high.” I shut my eyes and tipped my face to the white sky. “High on life.” When I opened my eyes and leveled them back on Remo, I found him watching me, brows hugging. “What?”

  His jaw flushed. “Nothing.”

  Instead of drawing out his discomfort, which was totally something Amara 1.0 would’ve done, I let him off the hook and concentrated on creating our ticket out of the Scourge. As I shaped my dust, I asked, “What’s the first thing you’re going to do once you get home?”

  He didn’t hesitate long. “Eat. And you?”

  “Hmm . . . I’m going to fly and float around Neverra for hours.” After I found Gregor and Joshua and made them both pay for what they’d done. Retaliation first, then indolence. “I really miss flying. Falling is much less fun.” My reminder sparked a grimace on Remo’s face. Before he started self-flagellating himself for sending me hurtling to the ground, I said, “You’re welcome to accompany me on my excursion.”

  He froze.

  His reaction made the spear gun feel as though it weighed a hundred pounds. We didn’t need to be the best of friends, but we also didn’t need to be sworn enemies.

  “We’ll be civil to each other once we’re home, right?” His enduring silence made my raised arm arc down, the gun bumping against my hip. “Are you worried befriending me will hurt your rep and make your mother disown you?”

  “Hurt my rep?” His tension finally eased, coiling off his face and shoulders as though he’d tossed aside some heavy boulder. “No, Amara. I’m neither worried about my reputation nor about my mother’s feelings. I’m just surprised you’d want to spend time with me after what I said earlier.”

  I frowned. “What you said?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, gaze on the mud staining his black boots. “That I’d force you to marry me.”

  Oh. That. “Look, I know you’re not interested in me or my crown. You were angry. We all say things we don’t mean when we’re angry.” I slid my bottom lip between my teeth a few times, then released it to ask, “Right? You didn’t actually mean it?”

  His Adam’s apple jostled as he raised his gaze back to mine. “I would never force your hand back into the Cauldron.”

  Was it a figment of my imagination or did he sound a little despondent? “No one’s getting locked out of Neverra, Remo.” I said this gently, assuming it was the source of his fretfulness. When the trench between his eyebrows deepened, I touched his bicep. “We’ll just stay engaged until one of us finds our ideal partner.” He flinched as though the idea sounded atrocious, which reminded me of his whole no-strings-attached lifestyle, so I amended, “Until I find someone to marry. I forgot marriage wasn’t an ambition of yours. We’ll just have to be extra discreet about dating other people.”

  The tendons in his arm roiled underneath my fingertips, taut as the mooring lines that bolted the Floating Garden to the Pink Sea.

  “Actually. That’s stupid. Unless we demand to end our engagement, the Cauldron can’t kick us out.” I slid my hand off his arm, eyebrows dipping in thought. “Right?”

  “If the person has fae blood, and the . . . dating takes place in Neverra, the Cauldron will sense it and punish you.”

  My heart, which had begun to scud faster, missed a beat. “How?”

  “I’m not entirely sure.”

  I sighed. “That sort of puts a dent in our matchmaking plans.”

  “Our matchmaking plans?”

  “You were going to introduce me to potential can
didates?”

  His eyes tapered, and his pupils became pin-sized.

  “You led me on,” I murmured, hurt blooming in my chest. “There are no potential candidates. You just said that to”—I raked my hair back, the mud already caking my hair into dreads—“to placate me.” I stared dejectedly at the spear gun.

  It wasn’t like I needed Remo to set me up. I could find someone on my own. For Skies’ sake, I could even use captis to catch a man’s eye. But finding someone wasn’t what troubled me . . . it was the implication of his lie. Fae men didn’t stay away because they feared my blood or were warned not to befriend me; they stayed away because they were simply not interested.

  Tears stung my throat; I swallowed them back. And then I raised the spear gun and shot. My arrow went wide. Remo didn’t comment on my awry aim, perhaps because he feared I might shoot him next, or perhaps he was attempting decency by not heaping criticism onto my squashed ego.

  I tugged on the wita rope to reel the projectile back, feeling an acute kinship to it as it dragged unceremoniously through the mud. Discreetly, I scrubbed my blurry eyes on my forearm before aiming at the portal.

  “Aaron.” Remo’s voice pierced the heavy silence.

  I side-eyed him, found his arms tied firmly in front of his chest. “What about Aaron?” I tried to remember what he looked like from the brief episode in the elevator, but I’d been so focused on Remo that I’d paid the other lucionaga little attention.

  “He’s one of the guys who’d like an introduction to the prinsisa.”

  That stoppered my gloominess, but only for a second. It was surely a lie meant to improve my aim.

  “Titus is another. Then there’s Zane and Reid. Neither can shut up about your eyes and mouth, and Brooks is obsessed with your triple aptitude. Would you like me to go on? The list is quite long.”

  I wiped my eyes again, hoping he’d think I was brushing away sweat and not tears. “You’re just saying that so I focus on the target instead of on my bruised ego.”

  “No. I’m saying that so you stop thinking I’m a liar.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “You must think me so pathetic.”

  A nerve jumped next to his eye. At least, he had the decency not to agree with me. As I raised the spear gun again, he said, “But I’m not setting you up with any of them.”

  That dragged my arm and mood right back down. “Why not?”

  The tinged skin at his temple fluttered fiercely. “Do you still hate my guts, Amara?”

  I cocked an eyebrow up. “What do my feelings for you have to do with dating your friends?”

  “Everything.” His arms fell from their knot, and he took a step forward. “So? Do you?”

  Realization dawned on me. If the tables were turned, I would also worry about setting my friends up with someone who disliked me, because that would put a serious strain on the friendship. “I don’t hate you, Remo, and I’m not saying that to have access to your fr—”

  His palms settled on either side of my face, which had my mouth and heart screeching to a stop. A look of such deep concentration marred his features that if he’d been any other man, I might’ve assumed he was contemplating kissing me, but he was Remo. Gregor’s heir was much more likely to snap my neck than to sully his mouth with mine.

  I watched him watch me, thinking it might be wise to step back. When had I ever been wise, though? “I know I’ll resuscitate if you kill me, but it’ll put a real damper on our tenuous friendship.”

  The furrows on his forehead smoothed, and his mouth twitched around a low, slow chuckle. “Killing you isn’t my intent, Trifecta.”

  “Then why are you holding my face so close, Farrow?”

  His hold softened. “Because I was thinking about kissing you.”

  My quiet heart streaked back into movement, blasting against my ribs.

  “But I was hesitating, because I wasn’t sure if you’d appreciate it.”

  I swallowed, but it did nothing to moisten my dry throat. “I’d prefer it to death.”

  His lips twitched again, and he was so close that the slight realignment disrupted the air thickening between us. “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  My mind frantically scrambled to make sense of what was happening. Did I want him to kiss me? Did I want to kiss him?

  His pupils shrank then bloomed. “Mind putting that spear gun away?”

  My heart ratcheted up some more, stealing all the blood from my brain, which was terribly impractical, since without blood, there could be no rationality, and this situation demanded a modicum of level-headedness.

  Expelling a tatty breath, I squeezed the handle of my portal-snaring tool to liquefy it. “How terrible a kisser are you?”

  “I’m not even going to try to guess why you’re asking that question . . .” I felt the curve of his smile against my lips even though our mouths weren’t touching.

  “You’re obviously worried I might use the gun to put an end to our kiss.”

  The corners of his lips tipped higher. “I was actually worried the kiss would render you so limp your grip would loosen and your very heavy and very pointy weapon would end up lodged in my foot.”

  “Ha.” I tried to roll my eyes, but the hefty mix of anticipation and adrenaline coursing through me prevented all tendons from shifting. “You should really learn to manage a girl’s expectations.”

  His eyes flashed with amusement, and then with something else . . . something that made my pulse leap off the deep end. I darted my tongue out of my mouth and moistened my lips, my mind going blissfully blanker. His pupils danced, but no longer in amusement. Slowly, he tipped his head to the side and brushed his mouth over mine.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Tingles raced over my lips, radiated into my cheeks, before scurrying into my chin and down my neck.

  “What a tease you are,” I croaked.

  Confidence dripped over him like my magic glue back at the inn, seeping into all the little cracks of his ego, raising an insufferably sexy smile that sparked another tingle, this time low in my belly.

  The tips of his fingers edged into my hair, and he pressed me closer. “Good things come to those who wait, Trifecta.”

  “Trifecta . . . Any chance a kiss could earn me a better nickname?”

  A ruddy lock of hair fell into his eyes, obscuring their vividness. “It’s never been a disparagement.”

  “It always sounded like one.”

  He tipped my head up a little farther. “Trust me. It wasn’t.”

  Did I trust him?

  I thought about the wolves, the sling, our night spent in a dank basement with my head on his shoulder and his arm around my waist. Skies, not only was I beginning to trust him, but I was beginning to like him.

  “Amara?”

  How long had I just retreated inside my head? “I was just thinking about how far we’ve come, you and I. Mortal enemies to almost kissers.”

  His pupils throbbed with mock indignance. “Almost?”

  “Um. Yeah. Kissing usually involves a little more pressure and a lot more tongue.”

  “How about I rectify the almost-part?”

  My snark and voice left me. Poof. Gone like the fire in my veins. The only thing I managed was a thin swallow.

  This time, when his mouth touched mine, it wasn’t the gossamer brush of a butterfly wing. This time his lips molded against mine, opening me to him. In the haze of sensation, I managed a single coherent thought: I would totally have dropped my weapon on his foot.

  His tongue stroked the seam of my mouth, coaxing my lips farther apart before penetrating a little deeper. I’d never been kissed like that before, with such measured skill. It shouldn’t have surprised me considering Remo’s extensive experience. I batted that thought away, not wanting to dwell on the number of girls he’d trained on.

  When he pulled back, even though my eyes were lidded, I could taste his pleased smile.

  “How was that?” Th
e raspy quality of his voice made everything in me seesaw.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes and fixed them on his. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad?”

  Smiling, I raised my hands to his shoulders, finding purchase on the hard muscles, and initiated another kiss. Where his touch had been measured and firm, mine was chaotic. I liked slow and steady, but I also loved hard and wild. And, I soon learned, he did too. He devoured the press of my lips, the slide of my tongue. Our teeth scraped, and our fingers dented, filling the ridges of his body with the supple curves of mine.

  Our kiss was unbridled, delectable, and completely reckless, transmuting years of hatred into something else entirely. Something that would make Neverrians balk in surprise. After all, Remo and I were known for only two things: nasty barbs and nastier glares.

  As his greedy mouth feasted on my hushed moans, a series of unwelcomed thoughts scrolled through my weakened brain, reinvigorating the organ which had switched off when his palms had cradled my cheeks. Remo didn’t want any strings, and I wanted all the strings. His mother hated mine, and mine hated his. He was a Farrow, and I was a Wood. Even if our mouths were compatible, our lives and dreams weren’t.

  I ripped my mouth off his and bounced away, panting harder than when I’d run from the wolf pack in Frontier Land. “I can’t do this, Remo.”

  “I thought you were doing it quite well, actually.” His voice was hoarse and his breathing labored.

  “I meant this. Us. We don’t want the same things.” I pushed my hair behind my ears, the weight of the caked mud straining my neck, all but forcing my gaze up to the portal. “Well, besides getting out of here and wishing we’d known our grandmothers. We do have that much in common, but that’s all we have in common.”

  His eyes darkened beneath the thick shadow of his lashes.

  “Our attraction isn’t real. It’s just a consequence of there being no one else around.”

  “I disagree.”

  “You can’t disagree with a fact.”

  “What fact?”