Shadows and Shade Box Set

by Amanda Cashure

  Right now would be a good time to get up and go somewhere else. To one of the other beds, or the couches, or the tiny chair in the corner.

  “Let’s play a game,” he says, his voice drawing me closer to him.

  I pull myself up further along the bed with every intention of sitting. He can lay down, that’s fine. But I’m going to sit… except I don’t sit. I settle next to him. Facing him. His blue eyes looking directly into my…

  “Just wondering, what color are my eyes?” I ask.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve never looked.”

  He squints at me for a moment.

  “You don’t have any.”

  “What?” My hands flying to my face and at exactly the same time the feeling of stupidity slams into me. “Of course, I’ve got eyes.”

  Chuckling, he pulls my hands down and rests them on the bed in front of my face, a bed that has little white horse hairs sticking out of a black rug. Pax’s bed.

  “Gray. You’ve got gray eyes, and you’re so funny when you’re drunk.”

  Am not. I want to argue with him, but instead I say, “What game?”

  “I ask you a question and you answer me truthfully. Then you ask me one and I answer truthfully.”

  I snort. “Sounds like a stupid game.”

  “You make it better, then.”

  “You want me to un-stupid your game?” He just keeps smiling at me, so I just keep talking. “Each question gets only a one word answer.”

  “How can you answer truthfully in one word?”

  “That’s another question,” I say.

  His cheeks dimple at the challenge.

  “Me first,” I jump in. “What really happened between you and Asanta?”

  Crap! Why did I ask that? Why do I even care?

  “EastCoyt.”

  “EastCoyt?”

  “Town.”

  “EastCoyt is a town, what, nearby?”

  He nods and I fist pump.

  “North.”

  “What? EastCoyt is a town in the north?”

  “Tavern,” he says.

  “So, you went to a town beginning with the word east but that is actually in the north to get drunk?” I ask, jealousy beginning to dig its claws into the insides of my stomach.

  “Loose.”

  “Huh?”

  “Screws.”

  “Yeah, she has a few of those,” I agree.

  He chuckles, pinching his lips to get some control before saying, “Cart.”

  “Oh, so the murderous bitch loosened someone’s cart wheels?”

  His eyes go wide. “Wow, Shade. You just said a real curse word.”

  “You broke the rules,” I say, playfully pushing his chest – which doesn’t move him at all. Damn rock. “And I swear all the time. My curse of choice is a reference to cows balls, that's got to be worse than referencing a female breeding dog.”

  “I can’t undo what Asanta feels, I can’t understand what she’s thinking. Roarke says she needs to grow over it, something about time or some crap. My turn. Why am I number Two?” he asks.

  “Line.”

  “Line what?”

  “In.”

  “In line for what?”

  “Dick.”

  “In line for dick? Now, I really like where this is going.”

  Wow, that sentence wasn’t my end goal. I can’t help myself. He’s so confused that a pout has formed on his lips and I split with laughter.

  “This game isn’t going to work unless you make sense,” he says.

  “You were all in a line and Lord Martin was the dick. Born a dick, I guess. Not the good kind. More the kind that gets cut off a young stallion.”

  He starts choking.

  I groan. My normal brain mouth connection was lacking a filter before the wine. Now I just can’t muster enough give-a-crap to even try to stop myself.

  He moves in closer, leans in, takes all my space, but doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t stop me from wriggling back a bit.

  “What is the good kind of dick?” he asks, and I start to move for an escape.

  “No, wait,” he says, stopping me. “This isn’t going to work. Let’s just answer like normal people talk. I know you’re not normal but we have to try.”

  “Sure, we’ll use full sentences, but it’s my turn. What’s Pax’s story?”

  “None.”

  “He doesn’t have one? And you can’t suddenly be playing the game now that it’s your turn.”

  “None of your business,” he elaborates.

  “Plenty of my business. You have to tell me or I don’t have to answer your next question.” That doesn’t seem to worry him enough so I add, “And I move way over to that chair over there.”

  “Pax was twenty when Mother and Father found him. That’s a lot of years for memories to burn into someone.”

  “How did they lose him?” I slur.

  “What? No, they adopted him. All of us. They didn’t lose him. My turn – who were you before becoming Lord Martin’s –,” he stops. I’m not sure if that was the end of his sentence or if he changed his mind. He swallows and adds, “A servant on the estate.”

  “Just another kid on the estate. Parents died, Cook took me home. That’s all.”

  “So there’s nothing special about you?” he asks.

  “There’s plenty special about me!”

  “Like what?”

  Like the fact that I can put up with you, even as you inch closer and I inch to the very edge of the bed. I can scrub pots like the best of them, and get comfortable enough to sleep anywhere. I could keep listing things, maybe, but my brain trails off as he leans in.

  He cups his hand on my cheek, warm and comforting and perfect. “Is this okay?”

  I nod, then shake my head, then lose all ability to think.

  “Any reason our mother would send us to find you?”

  I shake my head again. Mind gone.

  His lips brush against mine and my insides twist and pool like molten steel.

  “Are you sure?” he asks, demanding my gaze stays on his. “Concentrate. Anything?”

  He can’t possibly be expecting an answer. I can’t even breathe.

  And he just keeps getting closer, until his lips are pressed to mine. Firm desire sparks between us. I lean back, but he moves with me.

  “Concentrate,” he says, like he isn’t right there ripping every little bit of my concentration apart.

  His hand leaves my cheek and reaches down to wrap around my waist and balance me on the edge of the bed. Not hold me. Not pin me.

  Just drive me crazy.

  I find my fingers threading through his hair, but I’m pretty sure that’s just in case I start to fall. If I’m going down, then he is too.

  “Chaos.” Killian’s voice fills the room.

  I squeak.

  Seth lets go of me and I crash off the edge of the bed, at the same time as I realize that Seth just set me up.

  Again.

  “What the hell?” I yell, gripping the side of the bed so I can sit up.

  I flip my hand through my hair, pushing it back off my face. Although at least with my hair covering my face none of them could see exactly how bright red I am.

  Seth’s standing on the other side of the bed. Killian just grunts, sitting on one of the lounges and starting to pull his boots off, but Pax is heading straight for me.

  “Should have left her with me,” Roarke says, following Pax.

  “I told you to find out what her role in this is, not make her fall in love with you,” Pax says, stopping at the end of the bed, arms crossed and eyes darting between Seth and me. “If I’d wanted to fight dirty, I would have sent Allure.”

  “I tried, she wasn’t making any sense. I had to get her to focus,” Seth says.

  Pretty much at the same time as I burst out with, “I’m not in love with him!”

  Seth gasps. “That hurts my feelings.”

  I haul myself to my feet, almost find my balanc
e, then fall back onto the ground.

  “Using alcohol is worse than using Allure,” Roarke says.

  “I kissed her, that’s all I did.”

  “He’s right, that’s all he did,” I say, pressing my lips together to suppress the feeling that his are still against mine.

  “Did it work?” Pax asks.

  Seth shakes his head and in a blink, Roarke’s standing in front of me.

  “My turn,” he says, and I freak out.

  “No turns!” I shout, scrambling backward and to my feet, and almost landing on my ass again, before managing to find solid ground.

  Pax grips Roarke’s shoulder, making his brother freeze before he can take another step.

  “No, no,” Seth yells, getting my attention before lowering his volume. “He means his turn to ask questions.”

  “What chuckin’ questions?!” I shout.

  Seth crosses the room, moving into the space between the others and me. When I don’t retreat, he wraps his arms around me. Slowly, softly.

  I melt against him, wanting everything else to just fade away. Because this is Seth, and Seth is perfect… and… I need to keep this in perspective. Seth is Saber asshole Two with ulterior motives.

  So, I knee him in the groin.

  Seth crumples to the ground.

  “Not your plaything,” I growl at him.

  Roarke holds his hands up in surrender. Killian bloody chuckles; I’m going to kick him in the balls one of these days, too. I walk straight past them all, aiming for the exit, and almost manage to make it there before staggering, tripping over my own feet, and falling on my face.

  Being clumsy is new to me. All of this is new to me, even the kicking guys in the balls part. That’s not something I would have done in my past life – and I’m going to blame Killian. Not sure why – it just seems appropriate.

  I launch myself back onto my feet like nothing even happened.

  “Toilet,” I declare.

  “Give us some clothes. She can have a shower too,” Pax says.

  When he steps up next to me, he’s holding one of my good-little-servant’s outfits. He runs his other hand over the wall and motions that I should go first. Maybe he’s coming because he thinks he’s above getting his balls kicked. He’s on my list – I know I have a good reason to kick him somewhere in our recent past.

  The stables are dark and quiet. Not like dead quiet, but the kind of quiet punctuated by the soft swish of a tail, or scrape of a hoof, and the steady rhythms of horses breathing.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask, using one of the stall railings to keep me from losing my balance – again.

  “Dinner,” Pax answers.

  He’s a little behind me. My stomach growls.

  “Food,” I mumble.

  “After your shower.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  He snorts, just a small sound that could almost have been a laugh if something didn’t occur to him just before the noise came out.

  “What?” I ask.

  “That isn’t who I am.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” I say, my fingers reaching the end of the railing.

  A narrow space before me cuts between the stalls and leads to the bathroom.

  He follows me and before I can open the door, he puts his hand in the way. It’s me, the wall behind me, him beside me and another wall behind him. I pause.

  “You don’t offend me,” he says softly, so softly that the syllables are almost lost in the short distance between his mouth and my ear. “Have a shower, clear your head, and we’ll explain what we can to you.”

  * * *

  What they can explain is very, very little.

  “Will you please let me question her?” Roarke asks, for the millionth time.

  “No,” Pax repeats.

  Outside the stables, I can hear Sabers training – which is apparently normal at all hours of the night in a place where the people rarely sleep.

  Roarke puts food and a mug of tea in my hands, then returns to looking at me like an owner who’s been told they can’t pat their beloved pet.

  Not a pet.

  “If she says she doesn’t remember anything, we’re just going to have to trust her.”

  Of course, I don’t remember much from when I was five. Who does? I find myself sitting back on Pax’s bed, for some unknown reason, with my wet hair hanging in clumps about my face and Pax’s cloak wrapped around my shoulders because apparently these guys don’t need towels.

  I do. Wet chest and thin white cotton shirt don’t go well together.

  They’ve all crowded in around me, sitting on the backs of the nearest lounge, or the other beds, but they’re all also giving me some space, an odd balance between the two.

  “There are things I can pull from your mind that even you might not know are there,” Roarke says.

  “And there’s things you can put there too, right?”

  Seth and Killian nod. Roarke just continues to plead with me. Pax runs a hand down his face, before lifting his bottle and taking a really long sip.

  I don’t get to have any more wine. Apparently, that’s a new rule for the rest of my life; wine is off limits. I hope other drinks are still on their list, though.

  “Where did you get that stuff from, anyway?” I ask.

  Anything to shift the conversation from trying to pull long lost memories about why their mother left them the task of finding me, not that they’re even willing to give me that detail. They just don’t know how much eavesdropping I’ve done. Not that they even know for sure whether it was me, or some statue, that they were supposed to be finding.

  “The bottler,” Seth says.

  “The what?”

  “The bottler, right from his private cellar.”

  “I’m confused. Why do you sound so proud about that?”

  “He broke in,” Pax says.

  “Of course he did. And what about when the bottler discovers his wine’s missing?” Roarke asks.

  “He won’t know it was me.” Seth turns sharply to Killian and adds, “I found out why I’m number two.”

  Killian grunts.

  “Her system’s completely based on the most power to the least power,” Seth says.

  Which makes Killian growl.

  “No, it’s not,” I say, before Seth gets his head ripped off. He could at least have waited for his brother to move away from his sharp-pointy toys first. “It’s just the order you walk in.”

  “We don’t walk in order,” Killian says.

  “Yes, you do.”

  They look from one to the other, some more of their private eye-conversation going on.

  “If she thinks we walk in order,” Seth says, with a shrug. “Then we probably do. I’m stuck behind Pax, that’s basically an order.”

  “You only like that now because you want to keep Two,” Roarke says.

  Killian throws a knife, and the thing embeds clean into the middle of the hay bale right beside Seth’s shoulder.

  “All right, all right. I’ll walk at the back of the line from now on.”

  “No,” Pax grumbles.

  My eyes begin to droop, my whole head begins to droop, and my body is becoming heavy with a numb-tingling sensation. Most likely exhaustion.

  “The mortal needs sleep again,” Seth says, not even moving – perhaps just in case his brother decides to throw another knife.

  Pax grips the top of the cup in my hand, which I only notice when I let go of the cup and jolt awake thinking I’d just spilt the thing everywhere. I didn’t spill it, and Pax passes it back to Roarke, who puts it in the mounting box of supplies by the door.

  “You can sleep,” Pax says.

  My gaze darts around the room, looking for a suitable option that isn’t me inviting myself into someone else’s bed.

  “She slept on my bed last night,” Seth announces.

  “She’s fine where she is,” Killian counters.

  But it’s Pax who meets my eyes and actually acknowled
ges my dilemma. “We won’t be sleeping tonight, remember? None of us need these beds like you do.”

  “If you’re not sleeping, then neither am I,” I drawl.

  Which must be a terribly funny thing to say, because they all laugh.

  “Two minutes,” Killian says.

  Seth and Roarke watch me intently, and I look to Pax for help. I have to admit I’m not a hundred percent on what’s going on right now.

  “I’m going to sit here,” Pax says, with the slightest pause before he sits next to me.

  “What are they on about?” I whisper-ask him.

  “They’ve taken bets on how long before you pass out,” Pax says.

  He draws his knees up, sitting cross-legged, with a smirk on his face.

  “Thirty seconds,” he says.

  “I don’t…”

  The numbness takes over, and it’s bliss, like falling from one cloud into another. Nothing but soft. I barely register Pax cradling me, stopping me from thumping into the bed, and then settling the cloak over me.

  Soft.

  The next thing I do register is Roarke’s voice, and something to do with his cloak looking better on me, and Pax already got to give me a shirt, so someone else should get to go next.

  “We’re not sharing her,” Pax says.

  “You can’t split me up – you have to share me,” I drawl.

  And I don’t even care, too sleepy to care.

  “Is she still awake?” Roarke asks.

  My heavy, drunken breathing relaxes my throat again and without the sleep part, I start to snore.

  “Asleep?” Killian says it like it’s a question.

  “I don’t know how mortal sleep works,” Seth says.

  Followed by a long pause where I may or may not have actually fallen asleep again.

  “What are we going to do when we get rid of this bubble?” Roarke asks. “We still can’t let her leave our side, but we have to keep her out of all sight, too.”

  “Yes,” I say suddenly, my hand shooting into the air. “I’ll be blind, but that’s okay.”

  Seth laughs.

  “What in the aeons is she talking about?” Roarke asks.

  “No sight,” I say, my eyes still closed, sleep still nipping at the edges of my mind.

  “Did she just agree to let us remove her eyes? I like her,” Killian grunt-laughs.