shaede assassin 05 - shadows at midnight

by amanda bonilla

  “He summoned me. I’m required to respond.”

  Summoned him how, I wondered. The message obviously hadn’t been hand delivered. Magic? Telepathy? I could speculate the possibilities for hours.

  “My problems are your problems.” It was a truth that had spanned the entirety of our relationship. “And that means your problems are mine. There’s no use trying to protect me by keeping things from me because you know as well as I do that I’ll butt my way in anyway.”

  “Not yet, Darian.” Tyler reached out and stroked the tips of his fingers over mine. His brow puckered as he brushed over my ring and a shock of cold raced up my arm. “Please. I need a little time. Can you trust me and know that I’m doing what’s best for both of us right now?”

  “We both know that secrets don’t work with us, Ty. We’ll self-destruct.”

  “I know. And that’s not what I want. Let me protect you. For a little while at least. Because it won’t be long before I might not be able to.”

  Ominous words. But I didn’t scare easily.

  “If we can’t tackle your problems yet, let’s start with mine. Xander—can you help him?”

  “Depends. Can I help him off a cliff?”

  Ty’s smirk wasn’t half as charming as he thought it was. “You’re not funny.”

  “I can’t help him,” Tyler said after a moment. “Believe me, Darian, if I thought it would get both him and Raif off my back, I’d return Xander’s clarity in an instant. But a fractured mind isn’t as easy to heal as you think.”

  I cocked a brow and fixed Ty with a stern gaze. “You fixed mine,” I replied. “It was almost immediate.”

  His eyes flitted to my ring and just as quickly refocused on my face. “Because of our bond.”

  Our bond, and the silver circling my thumb, no doubt. “There has to be something we can do to help him.” Ty’s brow arched. “Okay, there has to be something I can do to help him.”

  “You already did, Darian,” Ty replied. “You got him out of there.”

  It wasn’t enough. If Xander’s mind wouldn’t heal, the results could be disastrous not only for him. So much weighed on his ability to rule. An entire kingdom rested on his shoulders. And I wasn’t sure how long Raif would be able to bear the burden while his brother healed.

  “I can’t just sit around and do nothing, Ty.”

  He let out a slow breath. “Have you ever considered that maybe that’s exactly what you should do?”

  My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of the sockets. “What? How can you seriously suggest that?”

  “You’re so damned enmeshed with Xander, Raif, and the rest of them that you can’t see that it might be time to take a step back. From the moment Xander stepped foot in Seattle, shit has hit the fan. Your codependence isn’t doing you any favors.”

  “Codependence?” I knew that Ty would never be Xander’s—or Raif’s—number one fan, but his words stung.

  Ty raised his hands in surrender as my tone escalated. “Relax. Maybe codependence wasn’t the right choice of word. But even you have to admit that your life was pretty gods-damned uneventful before Xander forced himself into your life.”

  The only reason my life had been uneventful was because Ty had done his damnedest to perpetuate the myth that I was a lone supernatural creature in a sea full of the mundane. “Xander showing up here might have opened up a world I hadn’t known about, but even if he’d chosen not to come here, Azriel would have found me eventually and shit would be going down exactly the same.”

  “Maybe.” Ty averted his gaze. “Maybe not. I just don’t understand why you can’t let Raif handle this? The reason Xander thinks he has a claim on you is because you’re ever present in his life.”

  Ty and I weren’t exactly on steady ground. We’d reconciled but that didn’t mean our relationship was solid. We had our own issues to work through and it was obvious that my relationship with Xander was one of them. “First of all, no one has a claim on me.” I belonged to myself first and foremost. I made my own decisions. “Secondly, my wanting to help Xander has nothing to do with any feelings I might have for him. I love you. Period. I thought you knew that, Ty. I thought you understood that.”

  “I do know it.” His expression fell and he let out a long sigh. “But Xander doesn’t and that’s the problem.”

  I’d made it clear to Xander more than once there would never be anything between us. True, he was stubborn but what did that matter? I didn’t want him the way he wanted me, that’s all there was to it. But his feelings for me shouldn’t justify turning my back on him.

  “Tyler—”

  “You forget that Xander and I spent some quality time together recently,” Tyler interrupted. “And believe me, Darian, he didn’t pull any punches. He let me know exactly how he felt about you. He’s not above manipulating you to keep you close. You have this…weakness when it comes to him. To Raif and Asher, too. They’ll continue to use you because they all know that you’ll come running if they so much as let out a whimper.”

  His anger mounted with his words but I refused to lose my cool. A fight wasn’t going to do either of us any good. “I owe him, Tyler. He gave himself to her to buy my freedom.”

  “You wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place if it hadn’t been for his multiple fuckups!” Tyler shouted. “He owed you. Not the other way around. He’s put you in harm’s way time and again and rather than hate him for it, you keep running back there, more than ready to stretch your neck out on the chopping block once again.”

  Xander’s infatuation might have been a little misguided but he cared about me. I’d seen proof of it in Padma’s dungeon. And Raif’s loyalty to me couldn’t ever be questioned. Or Asher’s. Neither one of them would ever willingly put me in the path of danger.

  “So you think I’m stupid, is that it? That I would blindly let them use me and run back for more abuse?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid, Darian,” Tyler said quietly. “Sometimes I think you’re too damned smart for your own good. It’s not your head that’s the problem. It’s your heart. It’s too damned big.”

  “Wow. Somehow, I didn’t think that would be a quality you’d find unsavory in me, Tyler.”

  “It’s the thing I love most about you,” he responded. “But it’s also the reason why you can’t cut ties with Xander when you know it’s what’s best for both of you.”

  Maybe Ty was right. Dysfunctional as it might have been, my connection to Raif and Xander and even Ash was more than just a simple friendship. They were my family. I’d existed most of my life feeling adrift and unconnected to another soul. They’d become my lifeline. Did that mean that I enabled Xander’s behavior? Encouraged him to press his case with me over and again because I was simply too weak to let him go?

  “Are you trying to tell me that we can’t have a relationship unless I walk away from them, Ty?”

  He pursed his lips and gave me a stern look. “I’d never tell you what to do, Darian. I think we both know you do what you want anyway.”

  Low freaking blow. Henry had isolated me through abuse and belittlement. He’d intimidated me to the point that I made very few friendships outside of the façade he wanted people to see. Azriel had separated me from my humanity and closed me off from the world under the guise of caution until I cleaved to him and him alone. No matter the havoc it had wreaked in my life, Xander’s appearance had connected me to the supernatural world as well as other creatures like me. Well, sort of like me… Didn’t Tyler realize how much that meant to me?

  I stared at him, unable to speak through the hurt that sliced through my chest. Tyler let out another gust of breath and raked his hands through the tangles of his hair. A crease cut into his brow as his gaze drank me in.

  “I’m an asshole. A jealous, selfish asshole, and I’m sorry.”

  Ty was a lot of things, but selfish wasn’t one of them. “I’m not in love with Xander,” I replied softly. “When you and I were apart…”
Just the memory of that time caused a lump to rise in my throat. “…I’d never felt so empty and alone. So lost. I wanted to curl up and die. Xander forced me to get my ass out of bed and get my shit together. He helped to get me through something that I know I couldn’t have survived on my own. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. I love him, Ty, just like I love Raif and Asher.” And maybe even Anya in some weird, twisted way. “But Xander isn’t the one I can’t live without. He’s not the one who makes me feel whole. Tyler, I’ll never love anyone more than I love you. My wanting to help Xander has nothing to do with what happened between us. He’s my friend and I care about him. And if it’s in my power to help him now, I have to at least try.”

  Tyler grabbed my hand and pulled me close. He cupped my face and locked his gaze with mine. I lost myself completely to the hazel depths. Ty could get to me with a look. Command my attention until everything else in the world melted away. God, I loved him so much there weren’t even words that could describe this all-consuming emotion. I couldn’t even adequately convey it to him. How could something so powerful be described with simple words?

  He put his lips to mine and in our kiss I felt every ounce of his love for me. We didn’t need words. We never had.

  “You’re not without power, Darian,” Tyler said against my mouth. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to help him.”

  A ripple of cold burst from my ring. “Thank you,” I whispered back.

  “For what?”

  I raked my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “For everything.”

  The silver of my ring brushed the back of Ty’s neck and he shivered. His love for me was absolute. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. And there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him, including keeping any and all of his secrets.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I headed to Xander’s the next morning with a plan set firmly in my mind. Ty hadn’t offered outright to help Xander regain his sanity but he’d given me a tool—and the words to use it. It probably wasn’t a good idea to go around muttering Jinn incantations that I had no idea what they meant. For all I knew, I was opening a portal into a parallel dimension or some shit. Then again, I’d never been one to consider the consequences of my actions before I acted. Xander needed my help. And I was going to do whatever it took to help him.

  “How is he?”

  “Ordering anyone who’ll listen to go fetch you,” Asher said instead of giving me a straight answer. “Since last night. He hasn’t slept.”

  “Demanding with a one track mind. Definitely a good sign.”

  Ash shrugged. “Raif doesn’t seem to think so. They’ve kept the king sequestered. He’s had moments of lucidity but they’re not as frequent as Raif would like. Seconds in comparison to the hours he’s spent disoriented and rambling. The entire house has been cleared of any non-essential personnel and no one but me, Anya, Myles, Liam, and Raif are allowed past the first story.”

  Raif was definitely playing it close to the hip. Not a bad idea. “I talked to Tyler last night. He said there was nothing he could do to outright mend Xander’s mind, but I think he’s given me a way to do it without directly using his magic.”

  Ash’s eyes lit with curiosity. “Wanna fill me in?”

  “Nope.”

  He didn’t do anything to hide his disappointment and pouted like a like a kid who’d found his Happy Meal without a toy. “You’re no fun, you know that?”

  “I do and I’m totally okay with it.”

  “Sadistic,” Ash said with a sad shake of his head. “Well, inadvertently or not, if whatever you manage to do helps Xander, Ty will definitely be off the hook for any affronts to the crown.”

  I snorted. “Perceived affronts.”

  As we started up the stairs the sound of angry shouts drifted down from Xander’s suite of rooms. The door opened wide and his voice boomed before the door slammed closed again, muffling the sound. Anya came waddling down the stairs in a gentle stir of flowing fabric. Her eyes lit on me and her full lips thinned with annoyance. “Good, you’re here,” she said as though she really wished I was buried deep in a hole somewhere. “He continues to believe that we’re all illusions sent to trick him into believing that you’re actually alive. Maybe if he sees you with his own eyes, his mind will clear and he’ll move on to obsessions that are worthy of his attention.” Without missing a beat, she passed me on the staircase and continued her descent.

  “So, yeah. That about covers it,” Asher said with a laugh. “The last thing he remembers is Padma killing you. Or…you killing Padma who looked like you.”

  “Got it.” Reconciling with reality wasn’t easy after a major mind fuck. I owed it to Xander to do whatever I could to help get him back to one hundred percent. But I couldn’t let myself get sucked back into this world. His world. Like Ty pointed out to me last night, I’d become too enmeshed with Xander and I had to be careful not to get sucked back into a destructive pattern that would only confuse us both. I’d told him I was moving on and I meant it.

  As we reached the second floor landing, Raif exited the suite to more of the same angry shouts. He paused outside the door and cradled his forehead in his palm, massaging his temple with the pads of his thumb and fingers. He let out an exhausted sigh before bringing his gaze up to meet mine. “Good. You’re here.”

  “Uh-huh.” Looked like Raif and Anya shared a mutual frustration. Aside from the power in my ring and the magic words that seemed to awaken it, I wasn’t exactly sure how much help I’d be in leveling him out. If our history was any indication, my presence here would make matters worse before it made them any better.

  Raif gave Asher a stern look and he gave a shallow nod of his head. “Catch ya later,” he said before heading back down the stairs. It always filled me with a sense of awe that Raif could bend others to his will with nothing more than a withering stare. Where Xander was a regal king, I had no doubt that Raif would have made a ruthless one.

  “What happened in that dungeon?” Raif hissed close to my ear. “And don’t tell me it’s none of my business because I’m holding onto his kingdom by the barest of threads. He seems lucid now, Darian, but I have no idea how long that will last. He believes that you were with him every minute of his time there.”

  I opened my mouth to tell Raif that it truly was none of his business, but he gave me that same stern look and I shut my mouth. “Padma,” I said through clenched teeth, “tortured Xander while making him believe that she was me. I don’t know everything that passed between them, but from my own experience with her, I can only assume that she used him, humiliated him, tortured him, and then made him beg for more.”

  Raif’s sapphire blue gaze narrowed into dangerous slits. He jerked his head toward the closed door. “You’d better get in there. Aside from seeing you with his own eyes, not much else will placate him.”

  I took a steadying breath. Myles and Liam stood sentinel, like they had the day before. We exchanged a glance as I walked through the door. Here goes… With any luck, he wouldn’t try to kiss me or choke me to death.

  “I told you not to show your face to me again until you found her!”

  Xander stood with his back to me. Dressed in the black tee and workout pants I’d chosen out of his closet yesterday, he stared through the window at the grounds below. He braced an arm on the molding that framed the panes of glass, his shoulders slumped. His question baffled me. Was he so disoriented that he thought I was still missing?

  “Xander. I’m here.”

  His body tensed. Silence stretched between us and he didn’t move for several beats. His broad back expanded with his breath and he turned slowly to face me. “Are you real?”

  My heart broke for him. I knew the confusion he felt, the doubt. That he’d endured his torture to secure my freedom tore at me even more. “As real as you are.”

  He gave me a wan smile. “Then we are nothing more than shadows of ourselves.”

  There was a harsh truth to his words that caus
ed my stomach to clench. “When you’re forced into the dark, you’ll do anything to get out. We both went willingly and we both paid the price, didn’t we?” That darkness had followed us from the moment we’d set out to kill Azriel. That act cast the darkest of shadows on our souls.

  “We are shadows at midnight.” Xander’s eyes glazed over and he lost focus for a moment. He gripped his forehead in his palm and gave a violent shake of his head. I noted the barest tremor of his fingers and a quaver in the release of his breath. He turned away, almost violently, and faced the window once again. “I’m finding that I can’t reconcile the promises I made with my own memories.”

  He didn’t make an ounce of sense. I walked slowly toward him and he tensed as though afraid. God. What had Padma done to him as she’d worn my face? If I had to guess, she’d beaten and abused him. Cut and bled him. Feasted on his flesh as though it were a delicacy and when he was too broken to meet her gaze, she’d used his feelings for me to seduce him and use his body. I could only imagine the damage it had done to his psyche. Had she used similar tactics on me, I would have broken long before Tyler brought me home.

  I reached out and Xander flinched. A lump formed in my throat and I cleared it away as I laid my left palm to his cheek. His eyes drifted shut and I murmured, “Sia’i, rolqir al Nys’Asdar.”A cold chill snaked from my thumb, twined around my fingers and settled in my palm. Xander shivered violently from the contact and his breath fogged the air between us. When he pulled away, his lids opened to reveal his beautiful molten caramel eyes. He looked at me with more clarity than he had since we’d found him and I let out a slow breath of relief. “You shouldn’t have come for me, Xander.” I was grateful for what he’d done to save me, but the price he’d paid for my freedom filled me a wracking guilt that churned in my gut like acid.

  His chest rose and fell with a shuddering breath. “How could I not?” he asked, low.

  I didn’t know what else to say. What to do. Thanks to the magic of Nys’Asdar, Xander was clearly more lucid than he’d been. Thank god.