Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  “Maybe we can figure out how to break that spell, too.”

  “It’s the poppies. They’re reinforcing your house’s spells since they’ve been enchanted and can’t be destroyed. They’re what makes you go all sleepy when you try to leave.”

  “The flowers? Shit.” He bit down on his teeth so hard that the muscles in his jaw twitched.

  I narrowed my eyes. There was something he wasn’t telling me. “You don’t want to leave here, do you?”

  “I can’t leave here. We had this conversation already, remember?”

  “I don’t remember the parts you’re still not telling me,” I snapped. “I can’t help you if—”

  “You’re not helping me,” he said, his voice so lethal and sharp that it cut deep. “I’m helping you, even though you’ve given me no reason to. You came here, trashed my house, brought dog fairies with you, who have a beef with you, not me. I shouldn’t be helping you.”

  “And yet…” I tipped my chin at his scrolling finger. “Why did you open the door for me last night, then?”

  “Because you snuck into my fucking dreams and made me.”

  “I didn’t make you do anything,” I hissed.

  “You were screaming for help inside my head.”

  “So what? It wouldn’t be the first time someone left me to die.”

  He snapped his gaze to mine, his eyes wide, but I looked toward the fire, suddenly shaking even though I’d been warm seconds before. Bile burned the back of my throat, and I forced a swallow. I hadn’t meant to let that slip. To ever let that memory rise to the surface and tip my tongue with the cold, sharp truth.

  “Jesus, Hadley,” he said, his voice softer.

  “Don’t,” I warned. “Don’t say anything until you find something or if Ty messages me.”

  I didn’t need his pity or those questioning eyes of his picking apart my layers until he found all my failures. Seeing those would likely bring out his judgment in high definition.

  Outside, a darker grey marbled the clouds while heavier snow threaded a thicker layer over what was already on the ground. I listened above the gently crackling flames and Kason’s constant scrolling for any sign of the Diamond Dogs, but it seemed that they were restoring their magic energy reserves for something bigger than shrinking a house, something that may end up lasting all night. So, this should be fun.

  I felt up to the task of taking them on, though. Making Kason do all the work while I rested had turned out to be the best idea I didn’t have. He got credit for that one. It turned out he was good for something other than ass dimples and arguing with me and making me feel things I didn’t want to feel.

  The screen’s glow brightened his whole face when he leaned in closer to it. “Found it.”

  “Already?” I scrambled across the bed. “Let me see.”

  He turned the screen toward me and clicked back and forth between the runes in the database and the picture of his tattoo. “See the curve on the bottom there with the pointed arrow hooked to the side? It matches. And this one, it looks like an upside down letter A, which matches the rune on my shoulder.”

  He was right. The runes he’d found were archaic, literally a giant question mark next to the year 1633 in the database, but the matching symbols curled a grin across my face.

  “We can translate it,” I said. “Every symbol has already been decoded. See?”

  His gaze caught on my mouth, his breaths sighing past my cheek. We sat so close our hips and arms touched, and a steady pulse fired at every point in between.

  “You translate,” he said, voice husky. “I’ll get something to write with.” His eyes hardened as he backed away toward the end of the bed, kneeling on the mattress, and opened the wardrobe.

  His shirt rode up when he leaned inside, revealing a sliver of pale flesh, and his cotton pants hugged his ass in a way that cranked my heartbeat. He had so many things working for him back there. The front of him, too, though I hadn’t explored that as thoroughly as I wanted to. The whole package hardly seemed fair.

  When he turned back around, I quickly faced Nasty like the innocent girl I had no interest in being.

  “Knot,” I said, breathless and wishing he wouldn’t affect me so much.

  He sat at the end of the bed, far away from me, and poised a pen over a bundle of paper. “As in not or…?”

  “As in the kind that’s tattooed on your back,” I muttered.

  He took a deep breath, his jaw tight. “You know there are two kinds of knots, witch. What else?”

  Sighing, I tried to tune him out and focus on the next rune. “Will. Come. Undone.” I waited until the pen’s scratching stopped, then continued. “Join. Flesh. Hold. As. One. The. Legacy.”

  “No, I think you started in the wrong place. It should be ‘Join flesh, hold as one. The legacy knot will come undone.’”

  Join flesh, hold as one. Oooooh. I turned toward Kason who gazed at me with wide eyes.

  “That means—”

  “We have to have sex,” I finished for him. “And then the Legacy knot will untie itself.”

  His shoulders hitched. A shiver chased across my back at the dark, dangerous blaze in his eyes. Sex with him… The idea alone throbbed need through my body so strong that my thighs clenched together. My lips parted as thoughts of his mouth, his tongue, his body pushed me into a fantasy I might not ever want to come back from.

  A chime from my laptop tore my gaze away from Kason. It was a message from Ty:

  Your dad.

  My dad. I swam back to reality to recall what I’d asked him. Who told you about Kason?

  My dad.

  But my dad was dead. Murdered within feet of me.

  6

  I rounded on Kason. “Did you know my dad? Meric Hawthorn?”

  “No. Why?” His dark eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  “He knew you. Or knew of you.”

  Did he? He’d never said anything about a human living in Faction 11. And of all the witches living in the outskirts of the city, why tell Ty? Dad had said maybe ten words to him total in the four years I’d known him. Back when leaving my house was an actual thing, we hung out at Ty’s on the other side of the outskirts, mostly because my younger siblings could be dicks sometimes. Dad knew Ty pretty much by name, but that was it.

  “Talk to me, Hadley. Why would I know your dad?” Kason asked.

  “I don’t know.” I shifted away from Nasty and stood, a nervous energy swimming in my gut. “Do me a favor and type a message to my dear friend Ty. Tell him to video me or I will castrate him. No joke.”

  “What’s your fascination with cutting things?”

  “Chop, chop, Kason. Then you can take your pants off.” My heartbeat thrashed in my ears so loud I could barely hear, but we needed to do this. The sex. I didn’t know if I could with my shit hands, but I would certainly give it a try. I needed more wine, but then he would taste it on my breath and he might not like that. He might not like anything about me. Judging from the way his eyebrows climbed steadily up his forehead as he gaped at me, he already didn’t like anything about me. The room spun, and not in a giddy I’m-about-to-have-sex way.

  A long moment passed as he stared. “I’m not having sex with you.”

  “What?” I asked with a tense chuckle. “Of course you are. You heard what the runes mean. We have to untie the knot on your tattoo so we know how you can end fae power over witches. The Diamond Dogs—”

  “I know.” His face went hard, unreadable. “But I can’t have sex with you.”

  I stepped closer to the bed between his spread knees, so close he had to look at me, had to feel my heated skin through both our clothes. His entire body tightened while I searched his eyes for a good enough explanation.

  “Touch me,” I whispered.

  “I can’t,” he growled.

  I lowered myself in front of him as if to beg. And I would if it meant I could have my revenge on the fae. Being within kissing distance of him pooled a delicious heat betwee
n my thighs at the hard lines and planes of his body. I inhaled his cedar and chocolate scent as I leaned in, and the cleft covered with scruff on his chin bristled against my lips. It tickled so I smiled into it, bringing my mouth level with his.

  Desire flamed bright in his eyes, and he tilted forward a fraction. “Hadley…”

  When he spoke, his bottom lip skimmed my top one, fanning the current between us into an all-out throb so powerful, it hung my breath in my throat. Slowly, hesitantly, I pressed a kiss to his mouth, then pulled back at the shock of the tingle playing over my lips. Everything about him was soft and hard, virtuous and sinful, and I wanted to take all of it in.

  The cords in his neck strained, and his hands balled into fists at his sides. It had been at least two years since he’d fucked anything, so I didn’t understand why he wasn’t launching himself at me. I was literally throwing myself at him. Unless he was a virgin. Or unless I wasn’t the first witch to come knocking. Maybe he had a revolving door of witch hookers, and the one who usually came at night had licked a frozen metal pole or something.

  Whatever the reason, he didn’t want me, and that idea cinched a heavy chain around my chest. But he’d been turned on enough to stroke himself earlier when he’d dropped his pants to reveal his tattoo. What changed? Would he rather jerk himself than ravage my very willing body? Other than his unsteady breaths pushing his chest into mine, he’d turned into a statue.

  Still, I wasn’t about to give up so easily. I leaned in again and flicked my tongue at the seam between his clenched lips, trying to coax my way through his icy wall. I didn’t know whose walls were thicker, his or mine.

  His hand flashed to the back of my head and fisted through my hair. His other hand swept around to my ass and pulled me flush between his thighs to his rigid length thrusting against his pants. Something flickered behind his eyes, possibly the rest of his control, because in the next instant, he crashed his lips into mine. The hand on my ass inched underneath the elastic waistband, his fingers slipping along my crack and lower until they plunged inside my wetness, right where I wanted him the most.

  I cried out into mouth, his rough kiss as unrelenting as his fingers. His other hand still threaded in my hair to tilt my head so his tongue could ride with mine. He pulled me up from my kneeling position so we both stood. My hips rolled against his, matching his driving fingers, while the rest of the world spun away. A searing need coiled low in my belly, and I moaned at the intensity his touch had sparked. Even though I didn’t know how I was going to do it gracefully, I worked my hands between our writhing hips to slide down his flannel pants.

  He jerked back and knocked my hands away. “I can’t.”

  Pain from his touch threw flashing lights across my vision. I doubled over, hugging my hands to my stomach.

  “Jesus, Hadley, I didn’t…” He heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” My voice wobbled as if balancing on a tightrope. I stumbled around to face the fire instead of him, my whole body a vessel of hot and cold. Of agony and humiliation. He didn’t want me. Could I blame him after that messy seduction?

  “We’ll find another way to see what my tattoo means.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and shrugged as if it didn’t matter one way or the other. But of course it did matter.

  Air hissed between his teeth as he turned toward the doorway. The bed creaked as he stiffly crawled over it, and with his fingers tightened into fists, he smashed his hand into the wardrobe. Wood snapped and a jagged hole appeared, but that didn’t seem to help him any because he marched out of the room.

  Tears tracked down my cheeks. I wanted to hurl myself at him and slam his head into the ice wall. Put a leprosy spell on his dick so it crumbled and fell off. Something to make him feel just as humiliated as I did.

  Was it me? If I had been a normal witch who could eat cereal with a spoon rather than channel my inner lizard, would he have denied me? All we had to do to untie the Legacy knot on his back was to have sex. It didn’t have to mean anything. One and done. Thanks for coming, now go away.

  Yet here I was, crying, which proved it did mean something. To me, at least. It was so much easier to pretend I had a black heart with thorns when I lived in a house that mirrored that image. While living in that house with memories that threatened to surface if the dark residual magic peeled away, I didn’t have a choice which color heart I had. Here, though, beauty existed in hand-carved sunshine, real poppies that gave the snowy world a hopeful pop of color, and a beautiful man who didn’t want me. Once I saw these things, been blinded by all that hope, I couldn’t unsee it no matter how much I wanted to.

  So, fuck it. Not me, but the proverbial it. I would find another way to untie the Legacy knot and see what Kason was capable of. All while fending off the Diamond Dogs and wringing Ty’s…

  Shit. I strode toward the bed and sat facing Nasty’s screen. The spikes raking across the nerves in my hands had dulled into blunted needles, so it took a while to type out a simple yet effective message to Ty.

  Video with me or murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder…

  Murder was easy to repeat since it was the first word on my autocorrect list. For a variety of reasons.

  Ty’s face flickered across the screen. He wore a ruffled, polka-dot scarf around his neck and a pink bow with Jolly Rogers all over it in his black hair. “Okay, okay, enough.” His eyes widened as he took in the tiny bedroom behind me complete with iced walls and roaring fire. “I take it either you found Kason or you broke into some poor schmuck’s house. Are the Diamond Dogs there with you?”

  “Yeah, we’re about to sing campfire songs and tell scary stories about your scarf,” I said. “You need to tell me about my dad.”

  He let out a long sigh and looked at something beyond his computer screen. “I got a letter about a week ago.”

  “A letter from who?”

  “Your dad, Hadley,” he said softly.

  I shook my head. Blood. So much blood. Pointed shoes with gold metal plating the toe. A dying gasp. A choking sound gurgled at the back of my throat at the memory. Spiked daggers tapped the bones of my hands like a ticking time bomb. I blinked against the glow of the screen, the fire to my left suddenly too warm, and acid burned up past my heart.

  “Someone must have mailed it for him,” Ty blurted, his face lost in a blur. “I don’t know who, though, but the letter said that if I was reading it…” Long pause while he bowed his head. “That he was already dead. And for you to find Kason, that he was the key to ending fae power.”

  “What else?” I whispered.

  “He said there was a tattoo shop, old Dimic’s around where Hell Here is, remember?”

  I nodded. Dimic’s Everlasting Ink. Had that been where Kason got his tattoo and then blacked out when he heard a child’s laughter? He’d said that had been one of his only memories when he hadn’t been trapped inside one of the three houses.

  “When I got there to check it out, it was boarded up,” Ty said. “No sign of Dimic.”

  “My dad didn’t say anything more about it?”

  “No.” Ty’s forehead bunched up while he sawed his teeth across his lower lip. “Only that I should burn the letter after I read it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was from him originally?”

  “I got the letter a week ago, Hadley. From your dad. I didn’t want to give you hope that he’s alive if…” He looked at me imploringly. “He’s not.”

  “He isn’t alive,” I snapped.

  “Okay. You’ve never actually talked about what happened, so… All I know is that these last two years, we’ve only emailed since you wouldn’t open your door to me. I was just trying to protect you, is all. You’re my best friend. You know that, right?”

  “Of course.” I glanced over my shoulder at the crack in the ice over the window, at the gray sky deepening into nightfall. “Listen, find out everything you can about something called the Legacy knot, especially how to untie it,
understand?” I started to close Nasty with my elbow, then stopped. “Stay close, Ty.”

  “Wait. Promise me you’re okay.”

  “Yeah. Promise.” I shut the screen then pushed to my feet.

  No sounds came from downstairs as I passed the brand new fist-sized hole in the wardrobe. If I couldn’t make Kason have sex with me, then maybe I’d have better luck stomping on his happy memories with one boot, make him remember something useful, and rearrange the events tonight inside his head so that he was the one who felt a weird mix of shame and guilt instead of me. Or maybe I would just drink his entire wine cellar and call it good.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I found him loading a shotgun, its barrel pointed at me.

  I stopped and lifted an eyebrow. Or maybe I would just feed him to the Diamond Dogs.

  He quickly aimed the gun toward the floor, averting my gaze. “We have company.”

  The whole house shuddered as if in agreement.

  “Figured as much. I’ll go tell them there’s nothing to see here.” I swept past him to the front door, my chin lifted as if nothing had happened between us. Because nothing did happen between us.

  Outside, wind kicked the snow up from the ground and swirled it in mini-tornadoes around three fae-shaped figures standing in the street. Maybe since they weren’t in dog form, I could somehow convince them I was harmless without them trying to maim me and using up all my magic. I would probably have better luck snuggling up to Kason again, but I would give it the old Hawthorn try. Sighing, I strode toward the frozen closet and aimed my arms at both the front and closet doors.

  “Desolati,” I commanded. My atern ticked down two. Forty clicks left.

  The ice melted from the walls and doors in the hallway, but the knob on the closet was built for working thumbs and fingers, and oh-my-fucking-god, why wouldn’t it open? Frustration burned bright and hot, and I crashed my molars together to keep from screaming.

  Kason leaned in, his nearness sinking a dead weight into my gut, and opened the door.

  I cut him open with my glare and doused his insides with lemon juice. “That is why I don’t use closets.”