Raging Rival Hearts

by Olivia Wildenstein

  Kajika, who’d released my arm only after crossing the threshold, had gone to stand by the bar, one boot up against the wall and forearms firmly crossed in front of his pecs.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Ace spat out.

  My gaze snapped to his.

  “You probably weren’t thinking, were you? At least not about me or Cat or”—he threw his hands in the air—“about anyone but yourself!”

  My spine snapped straight, and then I chopped the air with my hands. You’re right, I wasn’t thinking about you or Cat, but I was thinking about Cruz.

  “You wouldn’t have run away if you’d been thinking about me, Lily,” Cruz said quietly.

  I blinked at him.

  “Lily, this was clear from the beginning…my mess. My fault. My clean-up. What’s going to happen if your fire is as low as Kajika tells me, is not up for debate.”

  I speared the hunter with a look so cutting anyone else would’ve averted his gaze. But not him. Of course, not him.

  I hate you, I whispered into his mind.

  He didn’t even flinch, but his gaze finally moved off me to settle on the flamboyant painting gracing the wall opposite him.

  “How low is it?” Cruz asked.

  I shrugged. I had no clue. It wasn’t as though there was a thermometer that could measure it.

  “You cannot fly at all?” he continued.

  I was desperate to lie, but I had a human lie detector in the room. Besides, considering how pallid and sallow my skin had become, it was obvious I was running on fumes.

  “How long?” My brother’s question was like a stray bullet, whizzing through the room, searching for its mark.

  Silas shifted on the beige leather armchair. “Impossible to say, but according to Gregor, once her hair falls out, we’ll have a couple hours.” As though talking about my hair reminded him of his own, he tightened the leather tie that bound his shoulder-length locks off his face. “All the bonds established between faeries vanish the second a faerie dies”—Silas eyed my brother—“so potentially we can wait until Lily loses her hair, but waiting comes with risks. If she loses her hair during the night and no one notices until the morning—”

  “Lily will be under twenty-four-hour watch from now on,” Ace said.

  I gasped.

  “Don’t even try to object, Lily. I’m your brother and your king.”

  I glowered. Way to lord over me, brother.

  “I’ll watch you during the day. Cat will be with you at night.”

  Cat didn’t nod. Obviously this had been discussed beforehand. She twined her fingers in her lap and shot me an apologetic look. She wasn’t the one who had anything to apologize for.

  My brother and Kajika on the other hand—

  “Kajika, you may go,” Ace said. “Thank you for…helping.”

  The hunter didn’t budge. “I did not do this for you, Ace.”

  The five lucionaga tensed. All looked at Ace, awaiting an order from him. My brother didn’t give any.

  “I will stay,” Kajika said.

  Without looking his way, I spat through our bond, I’d rather you leave.

  “I can hear her. If she is planning to escape, I will be able to tell you.”

  Silence swathed the room.

  I scowled, which made one of Cat’s eyebrows rise.

  I won’t run. I promise, I signed to my brother, hoping he could force the hunter to leave.

  Kajika grunted. “No one gives me orders, Lily.”

  Ace studied the hunter, then he studied me. My stupid scowl seemed to sway his verdict. “Fine. You can stay.”

  “Don’t you have a fight coming up, ventor?” one of the lucionaga said.

  “You are aware of my work schedule?”

  The lucionaga’s gold eyes flickered uncomfortably. “We keep track of every hunter’s schedule and whereabouts.”

  “And here I believed we were no longer considered the enemy.”

  The guard readjusted his posture.

  It was Silas who interjected, “What he means is that we keep track of all faeries when they are on Earth. Not just Unseelies.”

  “You did not keep track of Lily.” Kajika’s lips barely moved as he said this.

  Silas became a block of granite. Only his eyes moved…straight to my brother.

  I trapped the bodyguard. It’s none of their faults.

  “I thought you were no longer addressing me, Lily.”

  I balled my fingers into fists and squeezed hard, imagining they were clutching Kajika’s throat.

  The hunter smirked. He freaking smirked! Instead of acting like a grown-up, I marched out of the living room and into my bedroom, flinging the door shut behind me so hard the hinges shook, and then I dove onto my bed and buried my face in my pillow. I wanted to scream and to hit someone. Preferably Kajika.

  A soft knock sounded on my door. “Lily, it’s me,” Cat said. “I’m coming in, okay?”

  When the door snicked open, I flipped onto my back to make sure it was only her. I had no desire to see a single other person. Not even Cruz. Not yet anyway.

  After closing the door, she came to sit beside me on the bed and captured one of my fists between her hands. She wrenched my fingers open, then slid hers through mine. She wasn’t Seelie, yet her skin was as warm as the heated travertine floor in the ensuite bathroom.

  “Don’t be upset. We’re all just trying to protect you.”

  I shook my head. I never asked for protection, I signed.

  “That’s not how family works. You never ask for protection. You just naturally receive it. It’s part of the package.”

  Cruz is family too.

  She must’ve bit the inside of her cheek, because it dimpled. “Cruz…” She paused. “It’s not the same.”

  He can’t die.

  “And you can?”

  I nodded.

  Her black eyes turned as forbidding as two pieces of polished obsidian. “Don’t you dare even think this.”

  Did any of them even care what I wanted?

  “Besides, no one’s…dying. We’re not out of strategies.”

  I challenged her to tell me one solid idea.

  She raked her fingers through her long black hair. The diamonds on her crown ring glittered fiercely, reflecting the sunlight pouring through the wall of glass doors. I felt the inclination to pull the drapes shut when I caught sight of a guard positioned against the terrace railing. He was looking out over the city, but clearly he was there to keep me from escaping.

  When she didn’t utter a single new strategy, I snatched my hand out of hers and curled onto my side. Exactly what I thought…they were all out of ideas.

  “Lily—”

  I eyed the fluffy white carpet that extended from one wall to the other. It was so freaking white. I looked for stains, because nothing was spotless.

  For a long moment, she didn’t talk. But then, even though she wasn’t a person who needed to fill silences, she told me about Pete, about how angry he was to have been turned into a hunter, until Menawa showed him how to use his nascent powers.

  Was that even a good idea? The man was unhinged…

  “I think it’ll work out. Everything ends up working out, doesn’t it?”

  No it doesn’t, I wanted to tell her, but I kept my hands tucked underneath the pillow, kept my gaze fixed on the too-pristine carpet.

  “Lily, please don’t be mad at Ace or at Kajika for putting you under house arrest. They’re both blinded by how much they care for you.”

  Whatever. It didn’t change the fact they were taking the decision out of my hands, which wasn’t fair or right.

  “Is there a way to communicate with the Cauldron?”

  I finally detached my gaze from the rug to frown at her.

  “I know it’s not a person, but it’s magical, right? Is there no spell that can be cast to rid it of bonds?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. A tiny white scar extended from the hole to her lobe. I didn’t remember ever see
ing it. “Like a Cauldron for Dummies?”

  Cauldron for Dummies. Seriously…

  “Don’t make fun of me, but there must be a spell manual somewhere, right? How did your people learn to use it in the first place?”

  I finally heaved my hands out from underneath the pillow.

  They just learned. The same way humans learned to walk or build fire.

  Cat pursed her lips. “One of the history teachers Gregor saddled me with said faeries taught humans all about fire.”

  I sat up then signed, Give me your phone.

  She took it out of her wine-colored leather jacket and handed it to me.

  I entered her password and typed, The faeries who would’ve taught the first human about fire have been dead for a long time, so who knows? As for the Cauldron, all we know about it comes to us from the elders, and what they know came to them from their ancestors. Perhaps, once upon a time, there was a book of spells, but if it existed, it’s been lost.

  “Maybe an elder remembers something?”

  Didn’t they already interrogate all the elders?

  Cruz and Ace were thorough. I doubted they’d left one stone, or in this case, one elder unturned.

  In my opinion, you’d be better off questioning diles.

  She turned her entire body toward me, knocking her bent knee against mine. “We can communicate with them?”

  I rolled my eyes. Sarcasm, Cat. Sarcasm.

  She tsked. “We can communicate with lupa, so it wasn’t such a stretch to assume we could communicate with other species…”

  She said something else, but her voice faded as a thought overtook my entire brain as swiftly as the lake had overtaken the fishing boat.

  As if she’d heard the mechanisms grinding inside my skull, she asked, “What?”

  I clutched her phone long seconds before I could get my fingers to move and transcribe this…this potentially game-changing brainwave. Dile poison can stop faerie hearts for a few minutes if used in the right quantity. Too much would stop a heart forever, but I didn’t write that, because that wasn’t my solution. What if—

  I was about to write more when Cat tore the phone from my fingers and sprang to her feet, dashing out of my bedroom. I didn’t follow her out, still processing this very real solution.

  A long moment later, a soft knock sounded at my door. I looked over to find Cruz standing on the threshold. “Can I come in, Lily?”

  I nodded, then scooted back until my back was flush with the headboard’s cream leather Chesterfield padding and gathered my legs against me, locking my arms around them.

  He sat on the mattress. “I’ll try it, but if it doesn’t work, Lily—”

  I shook my head to prevent him from saying more.

  He shot me such a sad smile that it compressed my heart. “I don’t know if you are aware of this, but Catori still owes me a favor, and I was going to claim some of her blood. The advantages of dile poison had slipped my mind. We have such an immortality complex, us fae.” His sad smile turned crooked, as though he believed that what he was saying was funny.

  There was no humor in talking about dying.

  “It’s actually one of the better deaths because it stops your heart instantly instead of charring your insides like wita. Then again, I wouldn’t have asked to be gassed. I would’ve gone the way Borgo did. Suicide by hunter blood.”

  I was torn between slapping him and sobbing uncontrollably. How could he sit there and discuss the best way of erasing himself from the universe? I scowled, and his lips finally settled back into a grim line.

  He placed one of his hands on my knees. “I’m not afraid, Lily. I just want you to know that. I’ve had a good life. I’ve done what I wanted to do. Of course, not all I wanted to do. I would’ve loved to have children.”

  A lump as hard and sharp as a shard of glass stoppered my throat.

  “With you. I would’ve loved to have children with you,” he whispered.

  That cracked the dam I’d tried to build in my chest.

  “You know what my only regret will be? That I took you for granted. I was so sure you’d be by my side forever. I was so certain I would have time to show you how much you meant to me.” His fingers seized my cold hands. “I love you, Lily Wood.”

  Tears cascaded down my cheeks.

  “I have always loved you. In a hundred different ways. I loved you as a friend. As a sister. And then, when the Cauldron separated us…when it was too late…I realized that I loved you so much more than that. I’m sorry I’m only telling you this now.” His thumb stroked my knuckles. “It’s not really fair of me to spring this on you now, is it?” His voice had become so hushed that I barely heard it over my sobbing. “Oh, Lily…” He kept stroking the top of my hand. “Please don’t cry. Please…”

  I’d waited decades for him to say all these things to me. My chest clenched so tightly it cheated me of breath. I curled over my knees and let my hair fall around my face. Without letting go of the hand still trapped in his, Cruz moved up on the bed and smoothed one of his palms down my curved spine, up and down, up and down. Veroli used to do that when I came home from school in tears because someone had been mean to me. She’d rub my back until I calmed down. Sometimes I even fell asleep that way. Instead of being soothing, Cruz’s touch increased the tremors racking my body. At some point, he stopped and the mattress shifted and a new set of arms came around me, thin but hard, with skin that smelled like lavender.

  Cat forced me to lie down, then curled around me and held me until I stopped shaking, until I stopped crying. She hummed a soft melody that sounded like a lullaby. Had her mother sung it to her when she was a child? Or was it Derek who’d sing her to sleep?

  The melody twirled around me, filling the gargantuan chasm of Cruz’s declaration. My gummy lids closed, and then I felt myself slip into the darkest of sleeps.

  32

  Last Dance

  I woke up to a black sky and muted lights. Cat was no longer holding me, but she must’ve been close by, because her voice drifted toward me. I tried to get up, but the mattress dragged me down. I stayed pinned to my bed for a long time, just listening to the drone of her voice and to my brother’s answering one.

  I turned to my side and saw them through the slash window. They sat on two chairs set around a small granite table. My brother had a tumbler full of what I assumed was whiskey in front of him. Cat was drinking water, unless it was vodka, but I doubted it. She wasn’t a heavy drinker. I searched the terrace for the others and caught a shadowy movement by the railing—a lucionaga. The sentry stood very still and very straight, golden eyes ceaselessly roving around the terrace as though on the lookout for a threat.

  Were there threats? In the last few weeks, I’d been so focused on the drama of my own life that I’d forgotten my brother and Cat bore a title that came with danger. Sure, my brother was ten times the man my father was, but no one is universally loved.

  Loved…

  That made me think of Cruz. Which in turn made my stomach shrink and sink. Hadn’t I grieved enough for one day? I sighed, then finally rolled up to sitting. The movement caught Cat’s eye. She was already out of her chair and pushing the window further open to step inside my bedroom.

  “Hey.”

  I swallowed. My throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper.

  My brother turned his head to look at me, but he stayed sitting, one leg crossed over the other, index finger going round and round the rim of his glass. He was worried. I wasn’t sure if it was about me or Cruz or the dile venom or something else entirely.

  A piece of sky moved, and then a man landed in a crouch. Silas pushed himself up and advanced toward Ace. The pool lights flickered over his face, revealing tiny lines of tension. He stooped to speak to Ace.

  Cat and I both watched them even though we couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  I touched Cat’s shoulder, then signed, You think they captured the dile?

  She let out a long, whistling breath. �
��I hope so. But who knows? There’s always something happening in Neverra. On Earth too. The world never stops spinning.”

  For some people, it did.

  “I was thinking…because whatever happens, it’s not happening tonight—”

  How do you know that?

  “Ace said it takes a while to harvest poison from a dile.”

  True. I remembered my fauna teacher telling us that, although diles could eject poison as fast as a faerie could whip out dust, if the creature sensed danger, they hid their poison somewhere inside their bodies, and the only way to get to it was to pierce every inch of its scaly skin. If you killed it, the poison broke down instantly and became unharvestable.

  Cat traced the whorls of ink on her forearm. A filament of confined dust tacked onto her fingertips and rose. She tore her hand away and it snapped off, just like Blake’s spirit had torn away from his body to enter Kajika’s last winter.

  Kajika… Where was he?

  What did I care where he was?

  I didn’t care.

  Not in the least.

  I jerked as a loud noise sounded in the foyer. A door slammed, heels clicked, high-pitched voices bellowed out hellos. Cat shot me a sheepish look.

  “So I did something…or rather I got coerced into doing something…Cassidy can be really convincing…” The fact that she wasn’t finishing a single sentence had me on edge.

  What did you do?

  “Um. Well.” She raked her hair off her glowing cheeks. “Well, I had Cass on the phone earlier and, well, she wanted to organize my bachelorette…apparently she told you—” Cat gave me a pointed look, as though whatever she’d done was in part my fault. “Anyway, I thought that we could all use a night of fun, and well”—how many wells could one person place in a sentence?—“I sent them the jet.”

  Them?

  “Cass and Faith.”

  They’re here? I signed just as the door flew open.

  “Hey, bitches!” Faith squealed.

  That answered my question. Not only were they here, but they were wearing slinky dresses, sky-high stilettos, and accessories that didn’t include a baby.

  Where’s Remo?