1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Five

by Julie Kenner

  But there are creaks.

  I wince, wondering why I did not notice the sounds when ascending the other turret. Because you were not trying to sneak someplace you do not belong?

  A scowl replaces the wince. Cassian has not expressly “forbidden” me to come up here. And I am not “sneaking.” I am searching. There is a difference—

  Which thoroughly explains why I jump like a criminal as someone rushes up the stairway behind me. Why my blood turns to ice and my cheeks flame with accusation, as Prim’s infuriated form comes into view.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  CASSIAN

  “Mishella. What the hell were you doing?”

  I clench my jaw to stop the query from spilling into accusation. She’s already been subjected to that treatment; a minute into the phone call from Prim has betrayed that much already. While still on the line with her, I’d ordered Rob to cancel the rest of my day and used the Court Enterprises on-call car to get home, instead of waiting for Scott and the Jag.

  Wasn’t fast enough.

  Prim’s wrath has already taken its toll. I see it along the taut slashes of Ella’s shoulders, in every glimmering sapphire surface of the gaze she’ll no longer lift to mine. Instead, she stares across the study and out the window, perched on the edge of that damn chair—reminding me all too much of how stiff and scared she’d been back on Arcadia, that morning when I’d returned with the new contract.

  Only now, she’s afraid of me.

  My jaw clamps harder. I get down a hard inhalation, battling the bizarre twist in my gut: the beginning of a tornado so distinct, it startles me as much as it terrifies me. I’ve only endured the tornado twice before. Once for Damon, once for Lily. This—thing—with Mishella is nothing like either of those times.

  Is it?

  I drop my head. Pinch my nose so hard, vessels are likely broken. I can only hope. A bloodbath from my nose is a thousand times better than a hemorrhage from my soul—which this cannot be. Not after a goddamn week…

  You sure about that?

  Are you absolutely sure that seven days ago, you didn’t walk into that reception hall on Arcadia, behold this woman, and feel every tangle in your brain fall free? Every sprint of your spirit reach its finish line…every hunger of your heart find its fill?

  Hasn’t everything since then…just made sense?

  Except…that it doesn’t.

  “I—I just wanted to know more about you, Cassian.”

  And dammit, how it should.

  If she were with any other man, it would.

  “I know.” Both words are growled, drenched in my defeat. I hate this. Hate that the secrets I must keep have made her feel like the one on trial here. I hate that Prim has become so obsessed with keeping those secrets, she’s turned into the Temptation guard dog. I hate that she and Ella aren’t up on the terrace right now, drinking wine and giggling about—whatever the hell women giggle about. Probably their men. In that case, Prim’s giggles should be about Hodge, and Ella’s should be about—

  Not you, asshole.

  But the thought of any other man making her smile, much less giggle, turns my ire into barely contained rage—an anger I have no goddamn right to. She’s mine for only six months—and there’s no room in that timeline for dredging up ghosts. She’ll go back to Arcadia with memories of fire, passion, magic, and romance, not with the miserable stories of how fate, helped by two drug addicts I was stupid enough to love, has fucked my ability ever to trust words that mean even more than those. Words like commitment. And promises.

  And forever.

  Words she fully deserves in her life.

  Not the goddamn misery. Or worse, her pity.

  Sure as hell not with the story of how my wife threw herself out Turret Two’s window—and how I haven’t been able to leave her ghost behind for four damn years.

  She sneaks another furtive glance up at me. Squirms but sits straighter, like Lily herself is lurking nearby, and gleefully wiggling the phantom flagpole up Ella’s spine.

  “I…I am sorry, Cassian.”

  “It’s all right.”

  She stands in a rush. “No.”

  “Ella, really—it’s all right.”

  “I mean no, I am not sorry.”

  Her fists bunch, pulling at the hem of the sweater she must’ve changed into when returning from Kathryn’s—and visiting me. Best five minutes of my fucking day. Her lips twist but she firms them before jogging up her chin once more.

  “I—I am starting to…care about you, Cassian. Probably…more than I should.” She works a bare toe against the floor—making me long to reach up, strip the gray leggings from her, and screw the rest of her unsteady questions right out of her eyes. Yeah, right here. Yeah, right now.

  “I care about you too.” My hands drop into their own tight balls. My jaw tautens again. None of it goes undetected by her darting gaze. By now, she has to discern the bottom line. I’m dancing around the real subject as much as she is. “Yeah,” I finally add. “Probably more than I should.”

  Another damn placeholder. I’ve never just “cared” about this woman—unless the term encompasses a connection so strong, every circuit of my psyche has felt snapped into hers from the moment our eyes first met. Our mainframes completely synched—

  Without any backup drive in place.

  Fuck. So dangerous.

  “So why is it a crime to want to know you better?”

  “It isn’t.” When her brows jump, I emphasize, “It isn’t. Prim reacted the way she did out of—”

  “Love?”

  I square my shoulders. “Yes.” Pull in another breath. “Out of love. But not in the way you think.” Hell. Could I get any more cliché? The sad answer is yes, because now I have to attempt an explanation about the bond to Prim, without ripping back the scab over the wound named Lily. “You know the funny bit girls have, about friends being a rose garden?” When she gives a small nod, I finish, “Well, Prim and I aren’t a garden. We’re a briar patch. We both bleed a lot—”

  “But it would hurt worse to leave.”

  Is it a shock that she concludes the thought so perfectly? Rhetorical question. It’s also no news alert when my chest clenches from the aftermath: the look on her face depicting the briar thorns she’s clearly still picking free from her spirit.

  Dammit.

  I need to fix this.

  Disconnecting the mainframe isn’t an option.

  “Ella—”

  “Cassian.” She takes a measured step back. “I—I understand, all right?” Her gaze turns dark and watery. “You have had years with her. I have had barely a week. She was right in reminding me of my place.”

  “Your place?” I rush forward. She retreats again, nearly skittering now. Real smooth, idiot.

  “It is fine. Truly.”

  “No.” The boulder in my chest is now a quarry, piled with chunks of tension. “Ella…no. Your place here…” I barely hold back from even reaching for her. “You belong in every place.” I need you in all of them.

  “Except Turret Two.”

  I stab a hand through my hair. “It’s just not—safe—up there, okay?”

  Truest thing you’ve spoken all day, mother fucker. She knows it too. Knows it. I feel her perception on the air like a mist before rain. “So we are back to where we started.”

  She folds her arms. I spread mine out.

  “If you want to know things, I’m right here. Just ask me, favori.”

  Her dash of a hopeful glance injects something close to joy. Maybe this hurricane will be just a passing storm after all. With Hodge calming Prim with a run through the park and the door to Turret Two now soundly locked, the spark of trust in Ella’s eyes is my light in that storm. If all it takes now to get there is sharing my favorite color and some inane stories from my childhood, so be it.

  “All right.” Ella lifts her head and nods. Sets her gaze steadily to mine. Despite the bid for confidence, she nervously wets he
r lips. “After my exam, Kathryn and I talked for a little while.”

  I smile and mean it. “Good. I knew you’d like her.”

  “Well…”

  “Well…what?”

  “She told me some…things.”

  Continuing the smile isn’t an effort. Even if Kate spilled all her “things”—which I highly doubt, knowing Kate and her ethics—they wouldn’t be all the things. Nobody has all of it. Silo the explosives, and no one has the power to blow the world up.

  “Things like what?” It’s still conversational. Okay…this really isn’t that hard.

  “Like about how you two fought on your first date.”

  I even let a full chuckle fly. “You mean our only date?”

  “Because you were too serious.”

  “Fair statement.”

  “She says you still are.”

  “Which is why I’m the only one laughing about this?”

  “She also said intense.”

  I widen my stance enough for a comfortable heel rock. And a heated turn of my stare. “Intensity can be a good thing…in many situations.” Just like that, I fixate on her leggings again—but she doesn’t follow the gist. Her brows are knitted, her gaze still clouded.

  “She says you are driven to be that way…by ghosts.”

  Fuck.

  The quarry stacks up again—in my gut. Outwardly, I cop a cool-ass Clint Eastwood, bravado bullets across my chest, teeth clenched on an invisible cigar. “Ghosts,” I finally repeat. “Was she specific? Gory ones with red eyes or cute cuddly Caspers?”

  Ella doesn’t flinch.

  I’m not sure whether to be encouraged or unnerved.

  Clint, don’t fail me now.

  She diverts her gaze from me. Dips a nod at the photo frame on the desk. “Is she one of them? The woman in the photo with you?”

  Her redirected sights give me a second to regroup my expression—and my thoughts. While there’s nothing to hide about the picture itself—it’s sitting in the open, after all—I predict the shot’s surface values will be just the start for my curious little Arcadian. Quickly, I start strategies for where she’ll take this.

  Because as far as I’ve let her in…

  she can’t be allowed to go all the way.

  “That’s…my mother.” I feel my lips kick up as I lift the frame. “Her name is Mallory.” I trace a finger around Mom’s face. “She lives in Connecticut now, in a little place I bought her, with a garden and room for her cats.”

  “But this was not taken in Connecticut.”

  Still not a damn thing wrong with the sorceress’s instinct. Right now, because things are still easy, I give her what she wants. “No. Not Connecticut. This was taken at the Jersey shore.”

  Suddenly, I’m there again. Maybe it’s the way Ella always smells a little like the sea or the memories-on-demand corner I’m in, but for one incredible moment, I’m just a kid again, on a grand adventure with my mom and big brother…

  “We were there on vacation,” I murmur. “Just something last-minute Mom threw together. She did shit like that all the time.” I laugh softly as the recollection takes deeper root. “We stayed in this…dump…Christ, the walls were so thin, we heard everything the couple next door was doing. Let’s just say I got a crash course in the birds, the bees, and the entire animal kingdom.”

  “Oh, my.”

  For a moment, I simply gaze at the new flags of color across Ella’s cheeks. She steals my fucking breath. “Oh, yeah. Probably the best two nights of my life up to that point.” When she smacks my shoulder, I laugh. “Hey, you wanted to know!”

  When her nose crinkles, my breath returns—in time to ignite my chest’s fucking fireworks show. “Indeed I did. But I believe the proper term here is…TMI?”

  “Too Much Information?” I slide a sly smirk. “Nah. Too much information is bragging that my arm-fart of the national anthem kicked ass all over Damon’s. Even Mom agr—”

  The abort button is five seconds too late. Ella’s curiosity is already in full bloom, though it’s still the open, did-I-miss-something kind, not the what-the-hell-are-you-hiding kind.

  “Damon?” Her innocence cinches the fresh twist in my gut. Dammit, was I really that careless? “Who is that?”

  For a second—maybe more than one—I weigh the merit of a simple lie. Simple? Really? How?

  Fine. Maybe half the truth. He went with us to Jersey a few times. I was close to him in childhood.

  Both statements are completely true. But neither is the full truth.

  “He was my brother.”

  And sometimes it’s just better to lie in the fucking bed one makes.

  She would’ve learned this part sooner or later. Something would’ve given her more than a passing clue, then she’d mention it to her ‘net-savvy little friend over in Arcadia, who’d hunt deeper than the basic wiki and biography websites from which Legal has managed to suppress the information so far. This way, I’m controlling the feed—and exactly how much of my soul is lobbed off in the doing. The wound will be repairable. A more invisible scar after she’s gone.

  “Your…brother.” Her murmur is dotted with bewilderment. “Oh. I—I did not know—”

  “Few do.” My stomach clenches by another notch. I cloak the discomfort in a haven cold but familiar: the corporate photo pose. Powerful lean against the desk. One hand braced against the top, knuckles down. It says impenetrability. It says back the hell down.

  But to someone like Mishella Santelle, it only says here’s your pause for more questions.

  “Well, does he live in Connecticut now too? Is he older or younger than you?”

  And fuck it, all my heart wants to do is answer—as my soul screams from the incision.

  “Older,” I finally grit. “By two years.” My fist grinds so hard against the desk, I expect cracks to fissure the glass plane. “At least…he was.”

  Her breath clutches—the sound I’ve been dreading. And now hate.

  “W-was?”

  I twist my lips. Focus my stare out the window, onto something as innocuous as possible. A crow sits atop a chimney half a block away, a black sentinel against the late afternoon sky. Why is that bird so still? And aren’t crows supposed to be magical symbols of something?

  “Cassian?”

  I swivel toward her. It’s torture but I’m unable to fight it. Magic. It’s not in the crow; it’s right here in her searching gaze, her quiet concern, her soft sorrow…

  No. Not sorrow.

  Pity.

  Fuck.

  I am the subject of nobody’s pity.

  “This isn’t something I want to talk about anymore, Mishella.”

  Her throat vibrates on a heavy swallow. Still, her chin jolts up before she replies, “Is that why the only sound louder than your fist against that desk is the grind of your teeth? Why you look as if you yearn to collapse where you stand, but run as fast as you can at the same time?”

  I jerk upright. Shove to my full stance. Pivot away. “This conversation isn’t going to happen. Period.”

  I had to go and nickname her after the princess who walked home from the ball carrying a pumpkin and a bunch of mice. Her hand, persistent and elegant, wraps around my forearm from behind. “I think this conversation is long overdue.”

  “Then you think really wrong.”

  “I do not want to hurt you.”

  A laugh twists out of my constricting throat. “Christ, Mishella.” All too fast, the laugh becomes a moan. “Don’t you see?” I focus outside again—seeking the crow. Needing it to get out in a snarl, “You. Will. Incinerate. Me.”

  Pumpkin. Mice. This damn, tenacious woman flattens herself against my back, her cheek like a flare to my whole spine…my whole being. “Maybe it is simply time to live in the light again.”

  Her arms circle my waist. She feels so fucking good…

  I clutch her wrists. Bring her in closer. “But you like the dark better.”

  “Maybe the world needs both.”
>
  The husk in her voice follows the fiery path she has already ignited…up my spine then back down. Spreading lower. Lower…

  I shudder. She presses tighter.

  “Cassian, please. I just want to help.”

  Her presence penetrates deeper. Makes me consider, if only for a moment…

  What would it be like…to surrender? To really talk about it all? To let someone into the darkness again?

  Like you let Lily in?

  My breath rushes out, full of relief, as the thought slams in. It’s the steel door I need. The clarity I crave. The passage back to the space I can best keep Ella too. Indeed, like a beacon, it guides my hands atop both of hers. Shoves them down until she’s cupping me. The inferno of my thoughts turns into the perfect fire between my thighs.

  “Then help me,” I grate…pushing harder into her grip. Filling her fingers, which now follow my lead. She grips and sprawls and stretches, taking in the width of my bulge…

  Her breath quickens against my back. “Oh. By the powers. Oh.”

  “Yes. Fuck, yes…”

  “No!”

  It’s just a gasp but breaks us apart like a scream. I wheel around but already know I shouldn’t be—that my glare, spawned by disgust for myself, is going to look more like impatient fury. Like the expression of a man who expects to get his forty million dollars’ worth out of the woman in front of him. The woman at whose feet he should be falling instead.

  The woman who stumbles away, lips trembling, eyes entirely too bright.

  “Well.” Her chin jerks high again—while her hands wrestle in front of her stomach. “I suppose apologies are in order. I am…sorry, Cassian. Truly.”

  My throat squeezes. “What the hell? You’re sorry?”

  “You were right. This conversation really is not happening.” Her eyes drop like a subject being judged by her king. “And now that I am enlightened about everything, it will not again. I give you my promise about that.”

  A strange weight slams my chest. “Promise?” I repeat. “Enlightened? I don’t…understand.”

  “It is all right. I do.” And why the hell is she smiling now—with such open serenity? “What you really wish for in all this is a bedmate.”