“Faeries can create illusions, can’t they, Mom?” he asked.
Sure enough, she confirmed it.
The volume of Cole’s voice dropped. “Neat little trick, Lily.”
Someone clapped, but my eyesight was too blurry to make out who was making fun of me.
“I’d say it was more than neat and little.”
I blinked at the voice I’d know anywhere.
Every single person whirled toward the front door of the building.
My brother winked at me just as the man who’d been holding Kiera jumped to his feet and lurched toward him.
He cracked his neck from side to side and then extended a hand. “Unless you want to blend into your filthy home, I’d stop trotting.”
The man skidded to a halt inches away from Ace’s raised palm. Ribbons of dust leaped off my brother’s palm.
“Release my sister before I get angrier than I already am,” Ace said, his voice sharper than all of Kajika’s arrows. “You really don’t want to see me angry.”
No one spoke. No one moved. Except for Kiera. She started coming to. When her eyes—that were hers again—landed on Ace, she balked, and then she stared around, her pale hair swishing from the momentum.
“Mom?” Cole asked.
Although all I could see of Charlotte was her back, from the ramrod straightness of her spine, I could tell she was on her guard. “Release the girl.”
Without meeting my eyes, Cole did as he was told, and the chain fell off my wrists.
He rose and stepped back, bearing the look of a wounded animal.
On feet that felt gummy, I stumbled toward Ace. Only after he’d looped an arm around me did I let myself sag.
“I’m going to kill Kajika,” he hissed into my ear.
I pressed away from him, shaking my head. I fisted my fingers and pumped them once against my chest. Mine. And then I flicked my little finger up and touched it to my forehead. Idea.
I needed to get to Kajika. I tried to break free from Ace, but he held onto me.
“You’re not going anywhere anymore. Not without a fucking army surrounding you.”
I sucked in a breath that whistled through the tiny gap in my front teeth.
“Mr. Wood?” Charlotte’s voice sliced through the tense atmosphere.
“What?” He shifted his incendiary gaze to her.
Unlike most people, she didn’t shrink back. “Never come back here.”
He smirked. “If it were up to me, after how you treated my sister, I’d do one of two things. I’d either leave and forget all about you people, or I would torch your compound and make your life a living hell. But I’m a married man now, so it’s no longer up to me. It’s up to my wife, and my wife isn’t going to want to leave the lot of you alone. Trust me, she’s stubborn as hell.”
Just as he said it, Cat shoved past him, giving him a playful smack on the arm before gathering me in her arms and hugging me to her so tight, she robbed me of breath.
“I’m not that stubborn,” she muttered into my hair.
I smiled.
It felt so incredibly good to smile.
When she released me, her gaze swept over my body, stilling on my charred but already healing wrists. “You look better than Kajika. Are you okay, though?”
I was about to nod when I caught sight of the hunter standing on the muddy clearing outside the crate-building. His torso was bare, streaked with blood, and two of his tattoos had vanished from underneath his skin. The Daneelies must’ve carved them out when they’d tortured him.
I pressed past Cat. Ace tried to snag my arm, but Cat chided him. On wobbly legs, I walked slowly toward Kajika, afraid that if I went any faster, he would run from me…the girl who’d caused him to bleed and scream.
He didn’t run.
He waited.
I felt my brother’s gaze burn a hole in my back.
As though I’d smacked into an invisible wall, I came to a stop a couple feet away from the hunter. The scent of rotten food had my stomach clenching. I looked down, wondering if I’d stepped in something.
I lifted my gaze back up and took a step forward. The stench worsened.
Kajika scanned me up and down…up and down.
I stopped again, inspected his neck. The leather cord holding his opal was gone. The smell was coming from him.
His already stiff posture hardened as he understood what held me back.
I parted my lips and concentrated on breathing in only through my mouth.
My eyes prickled from the scent, but also from my body’s physiological reaction to the hunter. We were made to repel each other. I didn’t want to be repelled by him. My stomach lurched into my throat. I halted again, breathing so hard through my mouth I was almost panting.
Kajika’s lids lowered over his dark eyes.
I’m sorry, I told him through our bond. Sorry for what had happened and for what was happening.
He crossed his corded arms and stepped back. The air became slightly more tolerable. “I tried to get to you, but they drugged me.” His tone was clinical. “I could not get my limbs to move. I could not get my mind to clear.” His mouth pinched shut for a long moment.
I took a step toward him, trying my damndest not to let his smell hold me back, but my stomach contracted again and made me stumble. Kajika whizzed toward me and caught my arm before I could topple into the mud.
Thank you. My nostrils flared, and again a wave of sick swelled through me. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth.
His amber eyes filled with shadows. “You cannot stand the smell of me.”
Because they took away your opal.
He released my arm and backed away so fast, his figure blurred.
I’m just not used to your smell.
His jaw was so tight that if it were made of rubber it would snap. He backed away from me.
Don’t leave.
He shot me a long, pained look, so unlike any expression I’d ever seen on his face. Perhaps it was the absence of his eyebrows that made this expression so unfamiliar. Or maybe it was the desperation rising within me that colored my last image of him.
He turned and raced away, blending with the wind.
The sting of my iron shackles paled in comparison to the ache blooming in my chest at Kajika’s abandonment.
I didn’t cry, though.
I was all out of tears.
19
The Meal
I wanted to leave right away, but Cat made us stay a couple more hours. After talking extensively back in the crate-building, Charlotte, who’d been so adamant about never seeing us again, suggested dinner.
I thought it was a trap and signed it to Cat, who insisted it wasn’t. Ace voiced my concerns out loud, reminding everyone that he had lucionaga circling the vicinity and an unparalleled technique of saturating soft tissue with dust. That made more than a few squirm. Charlotte promised it wasn’t a trap.
She said it was an apology.
How she apologized to me.
I didn’t forgive her.
I would never forgive her.
I didn’t want to share a meal with the people who’d kidnapped and drugged and tortured us. From Quinn and Kiera’s glares, I believed the sentiment was shared.
And yet, we stayed for dinner.
Charlotte showed us to her converted RV, so I could “freshen up.” Ace had one of his lucionaga pick up some clothes from Cat’s house and bring them over to the compound. Although thankful for the change of clothes, I didn’t want to take a shower in Charlotte’s RV. I didn’t want to dry myself with her towels. I didn’t want to be in this place that reminded me of singed flesh and iron chains. What I wanted was to crawl into my bed and never get out of it.
“Which ones hurt you, Lily?” Ace asked me as soon as it was just us.
I signed, Quinn, the white-haired girl, Kiera, and the one who tried to attack you.
“What about the blond boy?” he asked.
Cole had followed orders, but
he’d done so with reticence. I showed the kid the mercy I wasn’t afforded. No.
“And their leader? Charlotte?” he murmured.
She gave the orders but she didn’t touch me.
“Cat, I know you think they’re family,” Ace said, his voice quiet as a stab, “but they’re uncivilized and contentious. Look at what they did to Lily. To Kajika. I don’t trust them.”
“You also don’t trust Gregor, and he’s your right-hand man.”
“That’s not the same. I know Gregor. I know his motivations and his desires. I don’t know what these”—he waved his hand in the air—“crazies want.”
She pecked his cheek. “That’s why we’re staying for dinner. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
He grunted something I didn’t hear. When he pulled Cat onto his lap, I went in search of the shower. It took me half a second to locate it, considering the size of Charlotte’s home.
I took the shower I didn’t want to take.
I used the towel I didn’t want to use.
I got dressed and finger-combed my hair to make myself presentable, like the good little princess I was.
When I got out of the closet-sized bathroom, Cat and Ace were no longer all over each other…they were arguing. It was a quiet fight, but it startled me nonetheless. I waited in the shadow of Charlotte’s room, studying the one-eye stuffed dolphin on the bed—probably her youngest son’s.
“You shouldn’t have told him you’d slice him up into tiny pieces and feed him to the fish,” she whispered to him.
“Were you expecting me to congratulate him on helping my sister get imprisoned by Daneelies? He was supposed to protect her. That’s the only reason I agreed to let them spend time together unchaperoned.”
“Ace—”
“She’s my baby sister, Cat. I’m supposed to protect her—” My brother’s voice broke. It never broke. It deepened or lightened depending on his mood. Melancholic breaks weren’t part of my brother’s repertoire.
Cat snaked an arm around his shoulder and pulled him to her. She spoke softly against his temple. “I know, but she’s also a big girl, Ace. She’s lived half-a-century more than me, and yet you still treat her like she’s barely a teenager.”
My brother’s shoulders shook. Was he crying? That dragged me out of my hiding place. I reopened the bathroom door and re-shoved it shut to alert them. And then I walked through the narrow corridor that led to the sitting area made of two rust-colored vinyl chairs and the beer-bottle green couch on which sat my brother.
Cat vaulted off Ace’s lap. “How are you feeling?”
I watched my brother, who still had his back to me. I gave Cat a tight-lipped look that I hope conveyed my unhappiness.
“Can you tell me how you found them?” she asked.
I sighed. I pointed to her and then pressed my palms together and opened them like the word the gesture stood for.
“My book? You mean, The Wytchen Tree? You read it? The location of this encampment was inside?”
I shook my head and grabbed the block of lined paper and pen on the kitchenette counter. I wrote out how the idea came to me when we were waiting for Remo to be born. Cat read my account over my shoulder. When I was done, she gaped at me.
I snuck a peek at my brother, who was spinning one of his sapphire cufflinks. I wasn’t sure where he’d come from, but obviously the search-and-rescue had interrupted some fancy affair. Cat, though, wasn’t in any fancy dress. She wore her favorite leather leggings and a simple black sweater that matched her eyes, her hair, and my mood.
“Why didn’t you tell us? Or Cruz? He told me you were on a road trip…”
I wrote, I was afraid to get your hopes up for nothing.
“Oh, Lily,” she croaked, picking up one of my hands and squeezing it tight. Her gaze fell to our hands.
I knew what she was thinking. I heard it in her swift inhale.
My skin was cold. Colder than hers. Almost as cold as the air in the trailer, in spite of the electric radiator pumping heat.
Her mouth pressed into a thin line that matched my brother’s grim expression.
I removed my fingers from hers just as a knock resounded on the door. While Cat went to open it, I turned to my brother. Our gazes held for a long, long moment. So much traveled between us. So many unspoken words. I hadn’t had a loving father, and my mother was too ditzy to care much for me, but my brother…he’d made up for all the lost affection.
Cat cleared her throat. Ace looked away first. He sighed and walked toward his wife. I trailed them out. It wasn’t Charlotte who’d come to fetch us, but Cole. He’d showered, changed, and slicked his hair back. Perhaps because I’d never stood beside him, I hadn’t realized how tall he was. As we walked toward another part of the compound I hadn’t seen yet, I had to crane my neck to look at him.
He wasn’t as tall as Kajika though…
The hunter’s absence was a punch to the heart.
Cole blushed, probably embarrassed about having partaken in the torture of a person who hadn’t meant them harm. “I’m sorry, Lily. I hate myself so much for what we—what I did.”
I nodded. I bet he was. I also bet he was one of the only ones who regretted hurting me.
After a long moment, I touched his arm to show him I accepted his apology. His entire face colored then.
“You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” he blurted right before we caught up with Charlotte, Cat, and Ace.
The latter turned to glare at Cole.
Cole paled, and then he concentrated on kicking a little stone the rest of the way.
Cole had the potential to be a good man. For now, he was sweet in the way a puppy was sweet. He had yet to grow into a man. Not that it would make me like him more.
I liked one man.
One I wasn’t supposed to like according to my brother and to Mother Nature. But brothers and Mother Natures didn’t get to decide who my heart beat for. Only I got to choose that. And I’d chosen.
And for a moment, Kajika had chosen me back.
After today, though, he would never choose me again.
“Can you forget I said that?” Cole asked finally, brow scrunching.
I started to move my hands around but remembered he didn’t understand sign language. I thought about my little trick with the dust earlier. I made two letters materialize from my upturned palms: OK.
He blinked at my dust, then after a stretch of silence, he asked, “Where did your boyfriend go?”
I closed my fingers and made a new word reappear. Home.
“Why did he leave without you?”
I didn’t want to answer this because I was ashamed. Finally, I settled on I hurt him.
“Are you using your dust to speak?” Ace asked, falling into step with us.
I nodded.
“Clever.”
I beamed at my brother’s compliment. He draped an arm around my shoulder.
“That trick you pulled earlier, the switch with my sister, well now that we’re…not enemies”—Cole spoke this like a question—“it was really neat.”
And yet he’d caught me, so it wasn’t as well thought out as I’d planned. I made four more words. Does Kiera hate me?
He raked his hair back and wrinkled his nose. “Yeah. She sort of does.”
“As long as she doesn’t try anything—” Ace started, but Cole interrupted him.
“She won’t.”
“Uh-huh.” My brother didn’t seem convinced.
“So…what…is your boyfriend?”
“A pain in my ass,” Ace muttered. “And he’s not her boyfriend. Right, Lil’?”
I stared at the rock Cole was still kicking. I felt the kicks inside my chest.
“Is he?” Ace asked again.
I shook my head abruptly.
After a moment, Ace answered Cole. “Kajika’s a hunter. An Unseelie with a body. You know what an Unseelie is?”
“The spectral faeries?”
“Bingo. G
lad to see you were taught something besides growing illegal substances.”
Cole drew back. “We sell drugs to survive. Just like our ancestors did. We’re not hicks, Mr. Wood.”
“Not a fan of mister. You can just call me king or sire or the Neverrian term for sire, massin.”
Cole jerked his head back. “I’m not your subject.”
“Technically, you are. But if you don’t like any of those, then at least call me Ace. Or the brother. But say it with gusto. The brother.” Ace spoke the term as though he were some Russian kingpin, letting the rs roll off his tongue.
In spite of my sour mood, I smiled, which made Cole relax. He also smiled, but swiftly wiped it away, because we’d arrived in front of a white tent that looked like something a circus would’ve left behind. Next to the entrance stood Quinn, and next to him Kiera. On his other side stood the man who’d been streaked in blood, the one with the crimson patch on his cheek. The gauze had been removed, but it bore what looked like teeth marks. Had he been bitten?
Oh, skies, had Kajika bitten him?
I knew the answer was yes. I was almost certain this man had been the one to torture him. He’d been covered in so much blood earlier. I hated him instantly and regretted Kajika had sunk his teeth into his cheek instead of into his jugular.
Everyone had changed into, most probably, their fanciest attire. What they hadn’t changed was their bitter mood. Kiera, Quinn, and the bitten man were the worst. They scowled as we walked past them.
I must’ve stiffened because Ace said in Faeli, “I’ll turn them to ash if they so much as breathe your way.”
I reached for my brother’s hand that rested on my shoulder and clasped it.
Inside the tent, a long communal table had been set up with benches and heaps of food. Strings of twinkling lights had been wrapped around the metal structure. Platters full of food had been laid out.
“They better not have poisoned the food with iron,” Ace muttered, again in Faeli.
Charlotte turned her pale eyes on Ace and replied in perfect Faeli, “We wouldn’t do such a thing.”
Stunned by her command of our language, Ace stopped in his tracks, and his arm fell away from my shoulders. “You understand Faeli?”
“Yes.”
Raging Rival Hearts Page 12