Whatever Ty thought about what I’d just told him, he kept his face impassive. “What did the Délash do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It sniffed me. Sniffed the ring. And flew off in a huff.” Well, it seemed like a huff, anyway.
“Good.” You’d think I’d just told Ty I’d scared off a stray dog that was digging through our trash or some shit.
“Good? That’s all you have to say about it?”
Ty’s gaze slid momentarily to Asher. “Uh-huh.”
Jesus Christ. All of this secrecy was going to give me an ulcer.
“I think that’s my cue,” Ash said as he pushed himself up from the couch. He stretched his arms up high and let out a groan. Yawned. Checked his pockets as though he might have forgotten something. Stretched again. My lips twitched and I suppressed a smile as Ty’s expression hardened. “Okay, I’m out. I’ll be close though,” he said with a wink. “For a few more days at least.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” I said with smile as he brushed past Ty and slid open the gate for the elevator.
He waggled his brows at Tyler and grinned before sliding the gate shut and pushing the button for the ground floor. What a clown.
“You told Asher about the Délash?”
I didn’t appreciate the accusation in Tyler’s tone. “He was there when the damned thing swooped down on me,” I quipped. “You said it would leave me alone.”
Ty swore under his breath and raked a hand through his hair. “I’ll deal with it,” he said on a breath.
“How?” I was tired of beating around the bush with him. I wanted something concrete. Answers that would give me confidence, not fill me with more doubt.
“Don’t worry about it.”
The seal of my temper cracked. I shot up out of the chair and crossed the room to him. “Take it off of me.” I thrust my hand out and he stared at my thumb before bringing his eyes to my face. “Now.”
“No.”
I’d never seen such hard determination in Tyler’s usually soft hazel eyes. He had nothing on me when it came to stubbornness, though. “Do it,” I said again. “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything to do with it. Take if off of me or so help me I’ll cut my entire fucking arm off.”
He studied me for a quiet moment as though trying to determine if he should call my bluff or not. “You can’t,” he finally said.
“Why?” I kept my voice at a controlled burn when what I really wanted to do was shout. What in the hell was this thing that clung to me as though it was a part of my fucking bone structure?
“Because the ring won’t let you.”
“What is this thing Tyler?” My voice quavered with fear. “What in the hell did you give me?”
“I made you the keeper of the ring for a reason, Darian.”
Not the straight answer I was hoping for. “Oh yeah?” I couldn’t help the bitterness that infused my tone. “Why’s that?”
“Because from the moment I first laid eyes on you, I knew you—”
The world around me shattered. The force of the explosion knocked me off my feet. I flew backward and crashed into the opposite wall. The sound of the windows shattering nearly deafened me. I couldn’t hear past the ringing in my ears or see past the clouds of dust and smoke that choked the air from my lungs. Chaos. Fear. Worry. Disorientation. The destroyed interior of my apartment was like something out of an action movie and I stared, dumbstruck, at the gaping maw that had once been the south-facing wall of my building.
“Tyler!” It sounded as though I shouted through water. “Tyler!” I scrambled to my feet and doubled over as my broken leg gave out beneath me. The bone began to knit instantaneously but it still took me a couple of tries to stand. I choked on the dust that clogged my lungs and squinted through the dark smoke for any sign of him. “Oh my god, Ty!”
Part of the roof had collapsed when the wall gave way, leaving a pile of heavy beams and rubble where my living room met the kitchen. I rushed forward, my body screaming as it continued to heal. Bits of glass that had embedded in my skin pushed out and landed at my feet. The skin at my temple pulled and I reached up to swipe a trickle of blood from my eye.
Before I could dig through the rubble, the pile began to shift. The heavy beams were tossed away like toothpicks as Ty emerged from under the wood, brick, and glass. Debris scattered in his wake as he waded out of the remains of my destroyed apartment. Not even a scratch marred his perfect skin. Hell, barely a hair on his head was out of place.
There was murder in my genie’s eyes when he crossed the space to where I stood. Still too shocked to reconcile what had just happened, all I could do was stare, jaw slack.
“Are you hurt?” Ty took my face in his hands. He examined my temple, the top of my head, my neck, shoulders, arms. “Darian?” He gave me a gentle shake and bent down to eye level. “Are you hurt? Say something.” Another shake. “Darian!”
“I-I’m okay.” Holy shit. My building…my studio was completely destroyed. The place I’d called home for decades—my fucking sanctuary—was now a pile of debris.
“We have to get out of here. Now.”
In the distance, the sound of sirens howled. The police, the fire department would be here soon. I couldn’t abandon the place. I had to explain what had happened. Shit, what in the hell had happened? This wasn’t a warning. One or both of us were on someone’s hit list and whoever had just pulled the trigger was tired of playing games. My money was on the Synod.
“I have to stay.” It still sounded like I was hearing myself from under water. “Do you want the police looking for us as well as the Synod?” I didn’t want to be accused of blowing up my own goddamned building, that was for sure.
A furrow cut into Ty’s brow. “I’ll stay. You need to get the hell out of here.”
Yeah, like that was safe. “No. No way. If the Synod did this—”
“Then you really need to get the hell out of here,” Ty interrupted. “Don’t argue with me on this, Darian.” His jaw flexed as though his next words had to be forced from his mouth. “Go to Xander’s. I don’t want you at my place and you’ll be safe there. I’ll come to get you after everything is settled here. Wish yourself there.”
“I’m staying.”
“I can send you there whether you wish for it or not,” he warned. “It’s up to you how much of my energy you want to expend to get it done.”
Dirty pool. He knew I’d never do anything to intentionally weaken him. “If you don’t show up in three hours, I’m coming back here.”
“Deal.”
“I wish I was at Xander’s house,” I said. “Right now.”
And just like that, Ty sent me away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
If I would have known that nearly blowing myself up would’ve gotten Xander off his duff, I would have done it a long damned time ago. He rushed into the formal living room—a room I didn’t think I’d ever been in in all of the time I’d known him—and jerked me up off of the couch so that he could inspect me from head to toe.
I wanted to remind everyone that I was in fact a supernatural creature who was pretty damned impervious to harm but it seemed like a waste of my breath at this point. Only Asher responded in the way I wanted to be treated: with a gentle smack to my shoulder and a comment that it was going to take a hell of a lot more than an explosion to get rid of me.
He was fucking right about that.
Xander’s concerned stare was starting to make me twitchy. “I told you he was dangerous.”
I wasn’t about to feed into Xander’s paranoia about Ty. “We don’t know the Synod is involved,” I said. “I think we can all agree that I’ve pissed enough people off to make a list of potential suspects a mile long. “It could be retribution for killing Mithras for all I know.”
I doubted you could off a god and not expect a little blow-back.
“She’s right.” At least I could count on Raif to be the voice of reason. “His acolytes were many. A fanatic with his eye on vengeanc
e is capable of anything.”
Damn. I actually wanted Mithras’s acolytes to be responsible. But the more I thought about it, the more I feared they weren’t. Tyler never would have sent me here if he hadn’t thought the Synod was behind the attack. His condo had top notch security and it practically sat at the top of the freaking world. I would have been safe there. Instead, he’d insisted I come here. He might have hated Xander, but he knew that he and Raif would protect me.
As Asher and Raif continued to discuss the many possibilities of who might’ve wanted to blow up my apartment, their voices faded to the back of my mind. The thought occurred that I was officially homeless. A quick redecorating wasn’t going to fix the damage. This wasn’t something I could put a Band-Aid on and call it good.
Where in the hell would I find another place like that? I loved Belltown but I wasn’t about to stuff myself into an apartment building and share my walls with other people. And likewise, I wasn’t going to move out of the city to some cute little house on the lake. When I found the son of a bitch responsible for blowing up my building, I was going to draw blood.
I looked up to find Xander quietly studying me. The intensity of his stare put me on edge and I averted my gaze. I had a feeling he was waiting for the perfect time to tell me a bunch of shit I didn’t want to hear. “Shouldn’t you be in your room, brooding?”
It was totally bitchy, but I had to say something to erase the concern from his regal face. I was too damned angry to shoulder his pity. Raif looked at me like he was about to jump right out of his skin. And Asher rolled his eyes, his own expression just short of a slap to his forehead. My near-death had coaxed Xander from his hole and apparently everyone was afraid that at the slightest twitch he’d see his shadow and burrow back down. I shot them both an angry glare. So glad that my personal tragedy could help everyone out.
“I should go.” I’d told Ty I’d wait a few hours before hunting him down but I was antsy as hell and not doing anyone—including myself—a damned bit of good here. Honestly, if the Synod wanted me dead, I suspected that not even Raif and Xander could protect me from their wrath. Besides, I wasn’t interested in bringing my shit to their door yet again. This issue with the Jinn involved Tyler, and me. Period. From the corner of my eye, I caught Xander as he gave his brother a look. Raif jerked his chin at Asher and the two of them left the room as though someone had lit their pants on fire. So much for renouncing his crown. Xander could claim he didn’t want to rule, but it was in his blood to boss people around. He could no less rule than the moon couldn’t rise.
“If you stay with him, you’ll die Darian. Or worse.”
Looked like Xander was going to cut right through the bullshit. What in the hell could be worse than death? Oh yeah, I’d just lived through torture that had been almost as bad as dying. I guess the possibilities were endless.
“We’re bound, Xander.” My reasoning might have seemed thin to him but to me, it was everything. “I don’t expect you to understand what that means.”
“He’s broken their rules,” Xander said gravely. “Neither of us can understand what that means.”
“What do you know?” I was tired of chasing my tail and hitting wall after wall. “Either tell me or shut the hell up about it.”
Xander’s lucid gaze grew wild and I sensed that I’d lost him to memories that he would never entirely forget. “You were mine once.”
His words were as wistful as the illusions that had created them. “That wasn’t me and you know it wasn’t.”
“What did she show you?” He faced me and his eyes cleared for the barest moment.
“She used my fears against me. My insecurities and doubts.” Talking about it caused a lump to rise in my throat. I didn’t want to revisit any of it, but pretending none of it ever happened probably wasn’t healthy either. “Used the people I loved to torture me. Made me face my guilt. She lured me down the rabbit hole until I believed everything I saw. Everything I felt. And then, she pulled the rug out from under me.”
Xander looked away. “She did the same to me. Padma…” He swallowed, cleared his throat. “Used my desires against me. She lured me into submission. Gave me everything I’d ever wanted before she revealed herself to me and promised that I’d live the rest of my life as her whore.” His jaw squared and the air thickened with tension. “She collared me. Paraded me in front of her subjects. Bled me. She cut away my flesh and made me watch as she feasted upon it.” Tears welled in his eyes and my heart clenched. “She beat me, starved me, made me revisit all of the many mistakes of my life. But none of the torture or the humiliation could even hold a candle to pain I felt when I realized that I’d never truly had you. It cut me to my soul.”
I reached out and took his hand. I’d never wanted to hurt him. “If I could take it all back, I would.”
“Everything you thought you knew about Tyler is a lie,” Xander said gravely. The deep timbre of his voice, as smooth as velvet, wrapped me in a warm embrace. “He’s deceived you, Darian.”
“And you know the truth, huh?” My anger mounted. I pulled my hand from his and shot up out of my chair. Agitated, I paced the confines of Xander’s living room in an effort to calm the fuck down. Tyler had been the one constant in my life. He’d never once let me down. With a couple of words, Xander threatened to collapse my entire world.
“I know enough,” Xander replied.
“What was your bargain with Tyler?” Knowing Xander, he’d tried to tip the scales in his favor when he and Ty negotiated the labyrinth to get to me.
“When I asked Adare to release him from PNT custody, it was with the full knowledge that I would be trading my life for yours. I accepted that. You killed Azriel at my behest. You got involved with the Cambion at my behest. I brought Padma’s wrath down on you. I was prepared to lay down my life for yours.” I met Xander’s gaze and found not an ounce of guile. “Because I love you.”
“Xander, you know I love you, too. But I’ve already told you: I’m not in love with you any more than you’re in love with me.” We’d been over it again and again. And though I knew there was a measure of affection between us—how could there not be?—he wasn’t in love with me. “What was your bargain with Ty? I think I deserve to know.”
“Promise to stay here with me and consider it done.”
Coming here had been a monumental mistake. “You can take your slick deals and shove them right up your high and mighty ass.”
“He’s stolen something from them, Darian.” Xander said with a resigned sigh. “And they won’t stop until they get it back.”
I twisted the ring on my thumb. I refused to believe that Tyler would ever give me something that would put me in danger. He was my protector for shit’s sake. “Bullshit. He’s on the Synod’s radar because of our relationship. They told him we couldn’t be together.”
“At least he’s been honest with you about one thing,” Xander said ruefully. “Answer me this, Darian: Would Tyler sacrifice himself for you? Would he die so you could live?”
“Stop deflecting. What deal did you make with Tyler? Tell me Xander, or we’re through. I mean it.”
“Could you so easily walk away?” he asked, low.
I was through playing games. “Try me.”
Xander rose from his seat and crossed the room toward me. The soft luminescence of his golden eyes drew my attention and it called to mind our very first meeting. He’d held a certain sway over me even then. We shared a connection through Azriel. Maybe that was all we’d ever shared.
“I knew that when you realized what I’d done that you’d insist on going back for me. You’re insufferably honorable, Darian. So much like Raif,” he mused. “Tyler knew it, too. Your loyalty to those you care about is perhaps your most admirable quality.”
The warmth of his endearment melted a little of my anger. So often, people only saw the superficial me. The cold, emotionless loner who didn’t have the time for entanglements or attachments. Beneath that hard exterior, I wanted to
feel loved, to have friendships, to belong. I only pretended as though I didn’t care. Xander reached out and smoothed the pad of his thumb over my cheek.
“Noble, beautiful, Darian. Fierce protector. Bringer of vengeance. Cold, cruel, and yet, so passionate. I told your Jinn that if you managed to free me from Padma, that I would leave you and never come back.”
My heart, that had softened with Xander’s words, plunged to the bottom of my gut with his admission. “So, what? In a last ditch effort to save your skin, you implied to Ty that if he helped me extract you, you’d sever ties with me?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to slap the forlorn look right off his face. That he’d tell me in one breath that he would sacrifice for me what no one else would and then admit that he’d known all along I’d save his ass, cut through me so deeply that I swore my heart bled in my chest. It shouldn’t have hurt me so badly. Who was I to condemn him for wanting to live? It was just…we all could have died down there. Me, Ty, Asher, and the others. We’d risked our lives to save Xander, to get him back home. My own guilt for the sacrifice he’d made ate away at me. And he’d thanked his loyal subjects for their efforts by renouncing his throne. He’d thanked Tyler by breaking faith with him. He’d let me carry the burden of guilt all this time when he’d hedged his bets from the beginning.
I couldn’t even find the words to convey how I felt about what he’d done.
I jerked away from his touch. “I’m leaving.”
“Rather than face your difficulties, you always choose to walk away.”
I stepped up until I was nose-to-nose with him. My breath heaved in my chest and anger scorched a path up my throat. “Asher is leaving in three days to go kill Saben for you. Raif has driven himself into the ground to hold onto your crown for you. I asked Tyler to grant my wish—the one thing I am loathe to do—in order to clear your mind of Padma’s illusions and even though he couldn’t circumvent the rules—even though he has zero regard for you—he gave me the means to do it. How much more will you require of the people whose loyalties you’ve won while you sit back and do nothing for yourself?”
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