His eyes widened in shock. “I will not restrain my king,” Raif hissed.
“Until he gets his head on straight, he’s no one’s king and you know it, Raif.”
“Did you kill her?”
I nodded.
“Good.”
Xander pushed himself up from the bed and swung his legs over the mattress. Dirty, naked, his hair disheveled and eyes wild, he looked more like a vagrant than the haughty monarch I knew him to be. He cradled his head in his hands and muttered under his breath. He started at the sound of a door closing somewhere on the ground floor as he looked wildly around him, arms raised defensively as though waiting for an attack.
Raif jerked his head toward the door and I followed him out. With a backward glance, my heart sank as Xander squeezed his eyes shut to block out his surroundings. He ran his fingers through his hair, gripping at the strands. Goddamn that sadistic bitch.
“He’s awake,” I said to Liam and Myles who’d positioned themselves outside of Xander’s door.
Liam inclined his head. “Got it.”
There was no need for further explanation. And Liam was smart to say as little about Xander’s condition as possible. We couldn’t risk anyone outside of our tight circle to know the details of Xander’s mental state. As far as I was concerned, the walls had ears and eyes. Anyone on the current staff could have been bought by Saben.
“How bad is it?” Raif pulled me into a guest room down the hallway. He kept his voice to barely a whisper. He let out a long sigh and raked his fingers through his hair. The tension he threw off buffeted my skin and caused me to shiver.
“Bad. Padma fucked with his mind, Raif. She—” I turned my back to him “—she used her illusions to make Xander think she was me. When I killed her, he thought I was her.”
Raif muttered a curse in a language I didn’t understand. “How bad are his physical injuries?”
“Strips of flesh cut from his body. Multiple cuts, bruises. From the looks of his fingers, some of them had been broken and had finally begun to heal.” I wouldn’t have been surprised if Padma had broken more than a bone or two. No worse than my own injuries at her hand. “He’ll heal,” I replied.
“And his mind?” Raif’s mouth turned down in a scowl.
“I’ll do what I can. The illusions aren’t easy to break free of. Without Tyler—” I took a cleansing breath to slow the sudden increase in my heart rate. “I might not have come back.”
“Damn that sadistic bitch to the hell that borne her,” Raif spat.
Amen to that. “It could be days, Raif. Weeks. I’ll see if Ty can do something.”
“He wouldn’t be in this position in the first place, if not for Tyler,” Raif ground out.
I cocked a brow and stared my friend down. “You’re going to have to let it go, Raif. What’s done is done. And you know as well as I do that Tyler didn’t twist anyone’s arm. This was all Xander’s doing.” I looked away. “I never would have let him trade himself for me if I’d known what they were up to.”
“I’m not happy with the outcome,” Raif admitted. “But I’m glad he got you out of there.”
“We have to ease him back into reality,” I said.
“How do you propose we do that?”
Filtering through the memories of my time in Padma’s dungeon wasn’t easy. Or pleasant. “In the back of my mind, I knew the difference between the illusions and reality. The lines get blurred, though.” I still couldn’t be sure if it was my ring that had allowed me those lucid moments or not. “I had him, Raif. For a split second. He knew I was real. But he slipped back into the illusions created in his mind just as quickly.”
“When he’s no longer being tortured, he’s sure to realize that he’s home and safe.”
“Not necessarily. Padma liked to kill her victims with kindness, too.”
“How do you mean?”
I refused to divulge what I’d interrupted when I walked into Xander’s cell. Good god, the way she’d used him… My own torture seemed tame in comparison. “My illusions weren’t always cruel. Sometimes, they were kind. Gentle. Meant to lull me into a sense of safety, I think. To draw my mind deeper into the illusion before she pulled out the rug from underneath me.”
Raif’s lips formed a hard line.
“Keep him under constant watch,” I said. “Restrain him if you have to. He’s already tried to kill me twice.”
Raif’s brows crept to his hairline. I pursed my lips and shrugged. “It is what it is. We just have to try to level him out as best we can. I’ll talk to Tyler tonight and see if I can wish some clarity back to Xander. In the meantime, lock this place down or you’ll have bigger problems than Xander’s sanity to deal with.”
Raif nodded slowly. He didn’t need to contemplate the possibilities. “Padma used the people I cared about against me. She got into my head and knew exactly what would screw the most with me. I don’t doubt she did the exact same thing to Xander.”
“Which makes it impossible for us to help him,” Raif remarked. “When he think us the enemy.”
“Pretty much.”
Another frustrated sigh pierced the silence. “I don’t even know how to begin to set him right.”
“Regardless, you don’t have to do it alone.”
“If Tyler can help my brother regain his mind,” Raif said, “all will be forgiven.”
It was presumptuous of him to speak for Xander, but by damn, I’d hold him to it. “We’d better go check on him. I wouldn’t advise leaving him alone for long periods of time.” Isolation would only further push him further toward madness.
You could have heard a damned pin drop in the thousands of square feet of Xander’s mansion. A somberness thickened the air and I had to hope that it would quickly pass. Saben needed to know that it was business as usual at Shaede headquarters. Anything less would incite a coup. We approached the door to Xander’s suite. “Anything?” I asked Myles.
He shook his head. You couldn’t ask for better sentinels than Myles and Liam. Deadly. Committed. Loyal. They didn’t utter a single fucking word. “Let me go in alone,” I told Raif.
He cocked a brow. “You said he’s already tried to kill you twice. Do you think that’s such a good idea?”
“I’ll call if I need you.”
I stepped past Liam and into Xander’s suite, closing the door behind me. The Shaede King paced the confines of his room as he muttered under his breath. Despite his battered state, his nakedness was no less disarming. The muscles that sculpted his body no less powerful. I averted my gaze and the memories the sight of him evoked. If I could at least get him dressed, I’d count it a win.
“All right you royal pain in my ass.” My snarky disrespect seemed to have more of a positive effect on him than gentle concern. “As much as I’m sure you enjoy parading your naked butt in front of me, it’s time to put some damned clothes on.”
His head jerked upright and Xander studied me with narrowed eyes. I got a brief glimpse of lucidity but ignored it as I went to his walk-in closet. I bypassed the expensive slacks and designer dress shirts and instead rifled through the drawers until I found a pair of boxer briefs, a soft black t-shirt, and a pair of loose-fitting workout pants and headed back into the bedroom. If I could get him clothed, we could tackle getting him cleaned up later.
Xander approached me with the slow, rolling gait of a predator. I kept him in the periphery of my vision, ready to defend myself against an attack if need be. My skin prickled with his nearness, a static charge that tingled over my skin. He leaned his head in and buried his nose in my hair before inhaling deeply. Behind me, he tensed.
I remember noticing Ty’s scent when he came to take me out of that dungeon and how my brain couldn’t quite reconcile the fact that none of Padma’s previous illusions of Tyler possessed his unique, homey smell. I stilled, feeling every bit his prey as I waited for Xander to make his next move.
His hand came slowly around my throat. My breath sped in my chest and my fucking heart beat so fast
I worried for a second that it might rip right through my chest. His fingers wound around my neck and he turned me, slowly, until I faced him fully. I couldn’t be the aggressor in this situation. It would only solidify in his mind that I was the enemy. Instead, I waited for him to act. He could be gentle or rough and I’d react in kind. Xander’s lip curled back in a cruel sneer before he slammed my back into the wall.
Son of a bitch, that hurt.
His fingers tightened to constrict my airway. Like an animal, he canted his head to one side as he studied me, wary and intense. His nostrils flared as he crowded me, the sheer size of him taking up all of the breathable air. I met him look for look, forced him to hold my gaze as I worked to draw a decent amount of air into my lungs. Xander bent his head and inhaled deeply before putting his mouth to mine.
The kiss was bruising. Punishing. Filled with a mixture of hate and wild desperation. His fingers dug in just below my jaw and he angled my head the way he wanted it as he deepened this kiss, slanting his mouth furiously over mine. His tongue thrust against the seam of my lips and when I didn’t open to him, he squeezed my jaw tighter. Panic swelled in my chest, constricted my blood vessels and knotted my stomach. Pinned between the wall and the immovable weight of his body, I couldn’t free my arm to push him away. So I did the next best thing and brought the heel of my boot down onto his bare foot. He let go of me with a low snarl. I followed up with a fist to his gut, though I went easy on him. I didn’t want to hurt Xander after all, just reconnect him with reality.
“Get dressed.” I dragged in a ragged and much needed breath before I tossed the pile of clothes at him and marched for the door. “I’ll be back later. This isn’t an illusion, Xander. Your kingdom needs you. Snap the fuck out of it.”
I left the room and slammed the door behind me. Asher stood at the top of the staircase on the second story landing. His eyes met mine, his expression grim.
“I’ll be back this evening,” I said through pants of breath to Raif. I didn’t stop walking. Couldn’t. I needed to get the fuck out of this house before I suffocated and fell over dead on the over-priced rugs. “Don’t let him out of that room.”
Asher followed me down the stairs. “You okay?”
“No.” Why sugarcoat it?
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.” Not really.
“Do you need me?”
I paused halfway down the staircase. I turned to face Asher and gave him a weak smile. “No. Stay here and keep an eye on him. I’ll be all right. I just need a time out. I’ll be back in a few hours. Hopefully with a solution.”
“I’m around.”
I couldn’t tell him how much that assurance meant to me. I simply nodded and headed down the stairs, racing for the front door as fast as I could without looking like a complete and utter coward.
A whole hell of a lot a help I was.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I told you,” I whispered in Amal’s ear as I let his lifeless body slump to the floor. “I won’t kill innocents.”
I used his shirt to clean the blood from my dagger. The arms trafficker might have been dead, but I still wasn’t taking his goddamned money. He’d almost tricked me into violating my number one rule and he’d paid the price for his deception. I shook out my duster to cool my flushed and heated skin. My temper still burned like an inferno and my hands shook as I sheathed the blade. Another job gone to shit. Really, what did I expect? It’s not like I was going to find an honorable criminal in the lot I chose to associate with. Maybe it was time to reconsider my questionable career choice. Though I doubted there were many job options out there for someone like me: a supernatural freak whose only skill set was how best to slit a throat. Isolation was the only way to keep my existence a secret. At least, that’s what Azriel had told me before he’d disappeared.
I wasn’t about to take any chances.
I headed for a little dive bar a few blocks from my new studio. It wasn’t much to look at, but with a name like The Pit, it’s not like they were doing any false advertising, either. I melted into shadow—I wasn’t interested in being seen—and made my way to the darkest corner of the bar. I found a tiny table tucked in a corner and out of view, and regained my corporeal form only when I knew no one cared enough about my adopted space to pay any attention.
This was my favorite perch to people watch from. It made me feel a little more normal to soak in the normalcy around me, even if it did qualify me as sort of a voyeur. It had been so long since I’d had a relationship of any kind, I forgot what it was like to have someone in my life that I could count on. Someone I could confide in. Hell, have a simple conversation with. Almost a century had passed and I still missed Azriel with a bone-deep ache that hollowed out my heart and left me cold and empty.
Death would have been a reprieve from the torture of eternal solitude.
“Someone wants to meet you.”
I turned my head slowly to face the kid staring down at me. I recognized him as the bartender. Leroy—or something like that. I leveled my gaze and cocked a curious brow. “Do I seem like I’m looking for a date tonight?”
He flashed me a wide, brilliant smile that more than likely incinerated panties on a daily basis. Charming. Easy-going. And unafraid.
Interesting.
“Nah. I wouldn’t call you particularly approachable.” He set a bright orange and ruby red drink down on the table. “Sex on the beach. On the house.”
Another wide smile. I didn’t think he was coming on to me, but damn, given the proper motivation I could definitely take a model like him for a spin. Too bad I’d sworn off personal interactions. I lifted the glass and gave him a silent salute. A little sweeter than what I usually drank, but it had a nice fruity tang. And I supposed a sugar rush couldn’t hurt.
“Thanks for the drink. Still doesn’t mean I’m interested.”
He crossed his arms in front of his wide chest. “How do you know? And for the record, this isn’t about a date.”
I had to give it to him, the boy was persistent. And now, my curiosity was piqued. “Okay, fine.” I pushed out the chair across from me with my foot. The bartender flashed me another confident grin. “Talk to me.”
#
“Talk to me.”
I stirred from sleep to find Tyler hovering over me. He braced one arm beside me and leaned down, so close that the corner of his mouth brushed mine.
“What?” My voice was thick with sleep and it took a minute for me to remember exactly where I was. I’d meant to take a short nap, but had fallen into a deep, dream-filled sleep. A wormhole of my past that was still fresh in my mind.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Ty murmured with amusement.
“Trying to flush out my secrets, huh?” I stretched my stiff muscles. Tyler made no move to put any distance between us. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have any. Not anymore.”
He put his mouth to mine. A gentle quest of a kiss, feather-light. My arms went around his neck and I threaded my fingers through his hair as his lips moved over mine. There was nothing harsh or demanding about it. Nothing greedy or punishing. Not an ounce of selfishness. I loved him for his tenderness. He always seemed to know when I needed it most.
“Wait.” I pulled away. I did in fact have a secret. Well, not so much a secret as something that I wanted to tell him before it became a secret. “Xander kissed me today.”
Ty let out a long suffering sigh. He kept his lips against mine and said, “You sure know how to kill a mood.”
“Sorry.” He sat upright and I pushed myself up on the pillows. I hadn’t reciprocated the kiss, but keeping it from Ty would make it seem as though I felt guilty for what had happened and that’s how secrets were born. “I just wanted you to know. He was obviously out of his mind at the time. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“You sure about that?”
Ty’s sour tone prickled the hairs at the back of my neck. “Yes. And you know it, too. I talked to Raif today. He sai
d that if you can help Xander like you helped me, you’ll be pardoned.”
He answered with a derisive snort. “As if I need their pardon.”
I pursed my lips. “You have enough problems; wouldn’t you like to have one less thing on your plate?”
“What other problems do you think I have?”
I might have vowed not to keep secrets, but Ty was still having a hard time with that particular promise. “The Synod, for starters.” I held up my left hand and shoved my ring toward his face. “This. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the letter you gave me when Adare arrested you, Tyler. We have a lot to talk about.”
He brushed a palm over his head. “We do.”
“There was a man. At The Pit. I saw him the night Lorik took me. I saw him again two nights ago. Sort of had an English professor look. Tall, well put together in a three-piece suit. His eyes were like yours, hazel but more green than gold.”
“Merrick,” Ty said.
“Merrick,” I deadpanned. “As in, He’s my friend, Darian, but he’s loyal to the Synod and I don’t know if I can trust him.” I repeated the words Ty had written to me in his letter as though his memory needed jogged about who exactly he was talking about.
“Yes.”
Those single-word answers weren’t doing anything for my temper. “Who is he, Tyler?”
“Levi’s adoptive father,” Ty responded. “And the Ordar of the Synod.”
“Ordar?” I repeated.
“It means he’s the chairman of the Synod, more or less,” Ty responded wryly. “The Jinn in charge.”
Knock me over with a fucking feather. Levi. That little shit. I knew that his connection to the supernatural world was big, but never in a million years would I have thought that his own dad—adopted or not—was the Jinn in charge of the mother-fucking Synod. Jesus.
“He’s the one who told you we couldn’t have any sort of relationship aside from protector and charge?”
“Yes.”
If he didn’t start answering in full sentences, I was going to go ballistic. “Was he the reason you ran off this afternoon when we got back to Xander’s house?”
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