The snow crunched and sparkled underfoot and for a few moments I forgot what a wreck my life had become. Everything seemed clean and fresh and I felt more alive than I had in weeks.
As we got closer to the line of trees, Luka slowed. “There’s just one thing to remember, we have animals in our woods. They never come this close to the castle but you never know.”
“What kind of animals?” I asked, eying the forest.
Luka turned around with a teasing smile on his lips and over his head jumped a matte shadow.
Before I could shout or turn to run, the shadow landed between us and leapt again before the disturbed snow could settle.
Rising up to my face was the ugliest creature I had ever seen. It was the size and shape of a panther but with all the detail and lines of a lizard. The black body seemed to suck light in and hid whether the animal was coated in fur or scales.
“Duck!” Luka shouted and my knees buckled at his command. But not fast enough. Something struck my face and landed back in the snow. Terrified, I bounded up again and watched in panicked awe as the animal continued to bound away and back into the dark forest.
“Holy crap,” I choked out. “What was that thing?”
Luka didn’t answer and I spun around in a panic. He stood perfectly still but his face was pale white. He swallowed hard once. “Bixby,” he finally said calm voice. “You’re going to be okay.”
I gave a shaky laugh at that. “I’m okay. You’re the one who looks like you’ve seen a ghost. Man, that thing scared the crap out of me!” I forced myself to joke.
Luka closed the space between us and cupped my shoulders with his hands. “Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?” I asked, beginning to panic. “I’m okay, it didn’t hurt me,” I insisted, shaking my head. But as my head swung back and forth something swung the opposite way against my neck. Instinctively I looked down.
Everything was red. My coat, my pants, all the snow in front of me. “What …”
Something brushed my neck again and I lifted my hand to it.
Luka tried to push it back down. “You’re going to be fine.”
When I lifted my hand again he winced but let me. With gently probing fingers I felt along my neck and found the flesh dangling from my jaw onto my neck. I snatched my hand back down but not before my delicious breakfast rose up past my stomach. Nausea overcame me and I clenched my eyes shut while Luka held me upright against his body.
Even behind my eyes everything was red.
“No, no, no,” he was begging and I could feel his body shaking. “Please no, she could be the one …” His panicked voice faded out like an old song and then I was left with just the red.
Until it turned black.
Chapter Fifteen
I was warm again. The smell of burning firewood tickled my nose and I rubbed my face on the rough fabric against it. Pain shot through my jaw and cheek and I cried out.
“Bixby?” Someone called my name in a voice edged with panic.
I wanted to call out that I was fine, that I was right there but the pain blinded me and the nausea kept my mouth clenched tight.
Strong hands grabbed my arms and drew me up.
“Bixby,” the voice said again, this time in a panicked whisper.
“Luka?” I groaned.
His hand came up to my face, gently pushing the flap.
“Don’t!” I shrieked, trying to jerk away as the tearing pain drove deeper into my face. He stopped and I buried the good side of my face into chest. “Luka, make it stop, please.” The pain throbbed behind my eye and I threw my arms around him. He gently folded me against his chest and despite my agony it was a comfort.
“Bixby,” he said in a shaking voice, “Lincoln isn’t here but don’t worry, I can fix it.”
The pain receded before my new confusion. I squinted my eyes open but was only rewarded with a colorful blur. “Did I tell you about my brother?” I pulled my head back but couldn’t focus.
Warm hands rose gently to sides of my neck. “Bixby, did you hit your head?”
I no longer had to worry about vomiting as it felt like the bottom had dropped out of my stomach.
“Jordan?” I asked, forcing my eyes to focus. His worried face revealed itself out of the blur.
“Don’t talk.” He gently laid me on a small couch and cupped my face in his hands again. Fear and sadness glazed his eyes over. “Just like last time, this is going to hurt a little.”
I nodded and took in a deep slow breath. My eyes drifted shut as I let it out and Jordan pushed the edges of my face back together. A scream hissed out between my clenched teeth as I felt his fingers dig under and between the edges of skin to move tissue back into place.
“Almost done, almost done,” he breathed in my face.
An eternity later he removed his hands and I could breathe again. Too soon he returned with a cold cloth and I feebly pushed him away. “Bixby, you have blood all over you, just let me help.”
I sighed and opened my eyes. It felt like I was never going to be able to get away from him.
Even in the dim light he was still beautiful. His dark hair curled down to his collar, framing his perfect face and gleaming eyes. His mouth turned up in playful smile as he took me in. “You scared me, just appearing with all that blood everywhere …” he trailed off as his eyes followed the path down the front of my jacket to my waist and wrists. “Bixby,” he breathed. “Why are you wearing those?”
I belatedly tried to pull my sleeves down but he grabbed my hand and pushed the fabric back, first on one wrist, then the other.
His face turned from perfectly angelic to terrifyingly angry. The gentle glow of his eyes lit with hate and his features hardened into granite. I tried to pull my wrists back, tried to think of a way to supplicate him but it was useless.
“Jordan, don’t freak out—”
“Who did this to you?” he roared. Scared, I tried harder to free myself but he barely noticed. His chest heaved with angry huffs of breath and I froze, not even sure he still knew that I was there. If the fire in his eyes burned as bright as they seemed, the bracelets would have melted off.
“It’s the curse,” I finally said.
“Luka did this to you?” His instant recognition was unsettling. How much did he know? Jordan was still seething, still waiting for an answer. I managed to shrug. “Yes but it’s not his fault, I don’t think he had a choice.”
“We always have a choice,” Jordan said in a voice as cold as the air outside. “And he chose wrong. Wake up, Bixby; I’m coming to get you.”
A chill traveled down my spine. “I don’t think—”
He leaned down, putting his face an inch from mine. “You belong to me and no one else. I’ll play your human games to win you over but this isn’t a game. Now wake up.” He released my wrists only to pull me up into his arms.
With his face so close I could see something besides anger lit his eyes—fear.
“Jordan,” I breathed, suddenly more scared than I had been the whole time.
“It will be okay,” he whispered back, his sweet breath moving over my cheeks. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Before I could pull back he brushed his lips against mine, softly at first then more fiercely, crushing my body to his. Warmth filled me, then shame. I shouldn’t want this.
He pulled his face away only to move his mouth to my ear. “Wake up.”
“Wake up,” another voice urged me.
I was still on a soft couch with a warm body leaning over me. “This is confusing,” I groaned.
Luka put a cool hand against my cheek. “How are you feeling, does it still hurt?”
I gently shook my head, testing for pain. “No, it’s okay, Jordan fixed it.”
He
smirked. “No, I fixed it while you were out. And you’re lucky because—”
“It hurts, I know.” I tried to sit up and Luka leaned back a little.
“I think you should probably rest,” he said hesitantly.
“You’re probably right but I have a teensy little problem.”
A boom cracked through the air and I jumped. Another came and I jumped up from the couch.
“Wait,” Luka called but I ignored him. I had to get to Jordan before Jordan got to him. I ran down the halls, following the thundering booms to their source, chasing down hallways and stairs before finally sliding to a stop in the main front foyer. Luka slid past me having me having been on my heels the whole time.
The door was cracking under the weight of the fist banging into it and Luka was just going to answer it like it was the milkman on the other side. I opened my mouth to warn him but the door flew open at his touch and Jordan stepped through. Why I had ever thought Luka was larger than him I didn’t know. They faced each other beneath the doorway, two beautiful, dangerous creatures. One blond and golden, one dark and marble.
My breath was trapped in my chest as I waited for what would happen next. Finally Jordan spoke. “What did you do, Luka?” he asked, his voice barely controlled.
Luka cocked his and held his hands out, questioning. “The same thing I’ve had to do since my uncle died. Is there a problem?”
“There is,” Jordan said sharply, coming to my side. “You can’t have this one.”
Luka looked from Jordan to me and back again. Slowly his blank mask came up again. I closed my eyes against the new pain and guilt settling into my chest. It went great with all the old pain and guilt. I opened my teary eyes, trying to silently beg Luka to let me explain later but he just folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes in anger. “I don’t want any of them. Do you know her?”
“I do. She belongs to me.”
“Uh,” I piped up, “I don’t belong to anyone.”
They both silenced me with an evil glare. “She belongs to the curse now. You know how this works. There are rules in place about jinn and Gatekeepers. This is one of the reasons why.”
“She shouldn’t have been chosen,” Jordan thundered. “She has red hair! The curse always takes blondes, Miriam was blonde.”
Luka shrugged, totally unconcerned with his cousin’s anger. “She volunteered.”
Jordan turned his glare back to me. “You really did that, Bixby? Why, why would you do that?”
I squared my shoulders. “That girl was going to take Martha and I couldn’t let that happen. She was terrified. At least I know what’s going on.”
Jordan closed his eyes and gave a pained sigh. “Clearly you don’t.”
My hand moved to his arm, a part of me wanting to calm and comfort him. “What’s the big deal, Jordan? If I can’t fix the curse then it will just spit me out when it realizes I’m not the right girl and get another one.”
“Is that what you think?” Jordan asked, still not opening his eyes. “You’ll be trapped here for a few weeks or months and then just go home when it’s over?”
“Ye-es,” I said, suddenly unsure of myself.
He opened his eyes and the pain and fear in them cooled the blood in my veins. “Why didn’t you tell her, Luka? Afraid she’ll quit looking at you like you’re a man and not a monster?”
“Jordan, shut up!” I snarled.
He turned toward me slowly as if it hurt to move. “You don’t get to home, that’s not how it works. When you don’t break the curse and your time here is done, you disappear.”
I looked to Luka but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He’d gone back to indifferent and it hurt. So I turned to Jordan and asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean the girl that came to get you in the middle of the night will come for you again and lead you out into the woods never to be seen again.”
I gasped. “Emma? No, she wouldn’t do that to me, to anyone.”
Jordan shook his head. “It’s not really Emma doing it, it’s the curse. Emma didn’t escape with Miriam and in his anger our uncle tied her into the curse. He made her be the one to fetch the girls and then take them away. He did it to punish Miriam.”
Tears pricked my eyes. “Poor Emma,” I murmured.
“Poor Emma?” Jordan echoed. “You need to be worried about you. Luka, you have to let her go. I demand it.”
Anger sharpened Luka’s icy features. “Don’t you think if I knew how to let them go, how to remove this evil burden of stealing girls from my soul, I would have by now? There’s nothing I can do. She belongs to the curse.”
Everything finally crashed down on me. I wasn’t going to be able to break the curse if a jinn couldn’t. And I wasn’t going to go home; I wasn’t ever going to find my brother. My grandma would be stuck in a nursing home forever and no one would ever know what had happened to me.
“Wait,” I asked, my voice breaking on a sob. “What happens to me, when I’m not the right girl? I can’t just disappear. So will Emma—will she kill me? Is that what happened to all the other girls? I mean, they can’t just disappear.”
Luka shrugged uncomfortably. “We don’t know.”
I nodded numbly, tears streaming down my cheeks and making little dark splashes on my ruined coat. I stumbled over the stairs, suddenly needing somewhere to sit. Jordan scooped me up into his arms and held me gently against his chest. “Don’t be scared,” he whispered into my hair. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Luka said sharply before turning on his heel and leaving the room.
Chapter Sixteen
Jordan and I sat on the stairs, him silent and me crying. When the tears finally dried I pushed him away and sat up on my own. He let me but kept my hand trapped in his.
“I have to figure something out,” I finally said. “I’m not staying here just to … disappear in a few weeks. I can’t let that happen, not to me, not to Grandma and not to Linc.”
“We will figure something out,” he promised again.
I waited for him to say more but he stayed quiet and I realized he was just as clueless as I was on how to solve the curse.
“What about your uncle? Maybe he can help,” I asked.
Jordan looked at me curiously from the corner of his eye. “My uncle? You hate my uncle.”
“No, I don’t,” I protested.
He turned to face me, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Yes. You do. You said you did.”
I shrugged uneasily. “Well, I don’t feel that way anymore. And he’s a lot older than you and that guy that started this whole mess was his brother, so maybe he could help.”
Anger flashed in Jordan’s eyes. “So my uncle is allowed to help but I am not?”
I stood up from the stairs, brushing off my skirts. “Yep.”
He stood up as well and it took every ounce of will power not to step back from him. “And why is that?”
“Um, let’s see. He hasn’t technically lied to me and the help he gives is actually somewhat helpful and not just to get me out of a mess he created in the first place.”
Jordan opened his mouth in anger then slowly shut it. My eyes widened in surprise when he finally bowed his head with a little sigh.
“You’re right,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “I haven’t been fair or kind in how I have treated you. You have no reason to trust me. But please believe I never meant to hurt you and I won’t hurt you—or allow you to be hurt—now. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. And if you … trust my uncle’s opinion more than mine, then I will gladly ask him for it.”
I stared at the top of his head, his dark curls gleaming and spilling forward and hiding his face. Even his shoulders were bowed down and I hesitantl
y reached out to touch his arm. “I would appreciate it.”
He nodded once but didn’t pick his head up. I waited for any other response but didn’t expect the one I got. “What did my uncle help you with?” he asked.
I crossed my arms over my chest, wondering if I should actually answer. “He took me to see my grandma.”
Jordan’s head snapped up at that. “I could have taken you,” he said, his voice almost accusatory. “I can help, you can trust me.”
I shook my head sadly. “No, I can’t.” I wanted to, I needed someone I could trust but Jordan had already proved he wasn’t the one.
Something like anger then determination flooded his face, smoothing his features into cold marble. “You will trust me. You will love me. I will win you back.”
His green eyes were burning into mine and I couldn’t look away. But being gorgeous and determined wasn’t going to win me over. If he didn’t know that, he didn’t know me at all.
“Ask your uncle what we can do,” I said, and fled up the stairs.
“Wait,” he called in a weak voice. “What about Luka?”
I tripped and banged my shin into one of the stairs. My dry tongue flicked around in my even drier mouth while I tried to think of an acceptable response. Finally I settled on, “What about him?”
The air behind me stirred before Jordan placed his hand on my shoulder and turned me around. “I saw how you were looking at him.”
“I was looking at him like maybe he could help me out of this mess.”
Jordan turned his sad face towards mine. “No, you were looking at him like he was important to you.”
His bald jealousy was ugly but not totally misplaced. Once again relying on my anger, I snapped, “The only thing important to me is getting out of here and helping Linc and my grandma. Don’t you know me at all? Didn’t all your years of spying give you a clue as to what motivates me?”
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