Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  A plate of steaming food appeared in front of my nose, filled with crispy bacon and the fluffiest pancakes I’d ever seen.

  “I only eat cereal,” I mumbled, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the plate.

  Kason took up Nasty, shut it, and placed it on top of the microwave. “Not anymore.”

  I shot upright. “Hey! I’m working on saving your sweet ass.”

  “My sweet ass can wait.” He turned and gave me a brilliant grin, and I forgot how to inhale. His eyes danced when he smiled that big, and suddenly I wished I was a comedian so he would wear it constantly. His hair was still wet from his shower, the ends curling slightly over the collar of his white plaid flannel. “You, on the other hand, can’t wait. You’ve been on that thing constantly. Take a brain break with some brain food. And no more wine for breakfast either.” He snatched the bottle off the table and set it on Nasty.

  “Well, I guess we’ll never know how to get you out of this house.” I gave him a dark look that didn’t stick. Ever since I’d unloaded my deepest secrets on him, the air between us had become lighter. Happier, even, with more laughter than I’d heard from myself in a long time.

  Even so, I heaved a sigh at the plate in front of me. The salty and sweet smell wafting from it made my stomach growl. The bacon I could probably handle, but I couldn’t lizard-lick a whole pancake into my mouth.

  Kason studied me from his chair across the table, his fork balanced between his fingers. He’d set a knife and fork on either side of my plate as if I could pick them up and use them like a normal witch. Was this some kind of test to see if I’d break my own curse?

  He slid my knife across the table toward him, eyeing me warily, then picked up a nearby bottle of syrup. “Just in case since I can feel the defensiveness rolling off of you. No pressure here, Hadley. It’s just breakfast. I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t want to do. I’ll help you if you want.” He squeezed the syrup and drenched his pancakes with squiggly lines.

  I gazed at my plate longingly. How long had it been since I’d eaten pancakes? Three years, maybe, since that time Talamond, my middle brother, woke up early and nearly burned the house down because he wanted to surprise us.

  “Help me like with the straw contraption you built for my wine?” I asked.

  “For you, not your wine.” He half smiled and held the syrup over my plate. “May I?”

  I nodded. “This is why I eat cereal. It’s not complicated. It’s just cereal.”

  He drew thick lines across the stack of pancakes, and it dripped slowly down the golden stair steps and onto the plate in delicious-looking pools. “This doesn’t have to be complicated either.”

  I licked my lips at my plate, then glanced up to find him staring at me, the syrup bottle still in his hand. His gaze caught on my mouth, but he quickly looked away and cleared his throat. He dug in to his pancakes, expertly handling his knife and fork. When he passed his second bite of pancakes between his lips, his tongue darted out to catch a stray crumb.

  “You’re right.” I smiled as my pulse quickened. “It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

  “Nope.” He wiped his mouth slowly with a napkin, and I’d never seen anyone do that with so much raw sexuality. “It doesn’t.”

  I laughed nervously while my skin heated underneath his stare. What had just happened? “Fine. Will you please cut up my pancakes for me, oh great human who wields a knife and fork?”

  There was that grin again, just a flash, but enough to dawn a summer glow across the kitchen. My plate clanked loudly against his when he dragged it closer and butchered my pancakes, the utensils scraping against the porcelain hard enough to shiver my teeth. He shoved my plate back and furiously dug back into his.

  “I think you accidentally left a pancake alive.”

  “I’m hungry,” he said, his gaze fixed to mine. “Now eat your damn food, Hadley Hawthorn.”

  I shrugged and dove into my plate face-first. Syrup stuck to the tip of my nose and my chin, and my hair bathed in the pools when I leaned over, but I didn’t care. Kason didn’t seem to either. The pancakes melted in my mouth like sugar-whipped air, and the bacon danced salty-sweet over my tongue. All of it tasted like heaven on a plate.

  Kason finished long before I did, unusually quiet, and frowned into his coffee cup. “I have to tell you something, Hadley.”

  My muscles stiffened. A string of nonsensical theories dragged through my head that ranged from too much wine to… I needed more wine. This couldn’t be good.

  I blanked my face and tightened my stomach as if preparing for a sucker punch. “Tell me.”

  “I was going to tell you when you walked out of here and told me to go fuck myself.” He set his coffee cup down a little too hard. “Remember?”

  “Vaguely,” I said, my eyes narrowed.

  “That night you healed me. That night when the Diamond Dogs were here.”

  I wouldn’t soon forget. I’d thought I lost him when I only just found him. I nodded as I sat back and glanced longingly at my wine.

  “Well, I…I think you broke the curse.”

  “What curse?” I demanded.

  He rose to his feet while his fingers unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it next to his plate.

  If only his stripping half naked answered all my questions. I wet my lips, tasting remnants of wine, salt, and syrup, while I let my gaze travel down his chiseled pecs, the stack of bricks that carved his abs, to the trail of dark hair that disappeared down into his jeans.

  He stalked around the table, a smile twitching his mouth, his dark eyes flushing my skin long before his nearness did. He stopped beside my chair and turned, giving me an almost full view of his tattooed back.

  “See the scar?” He waved vaguely between his shoulder blades.

  “What scar?” I whispered against his perfect skin.

  Goosebumps pebbled across the black ink, and I smiled after them as they tracked down the peaks in his spine. With him this close and his skin bared, his cedar and chocolate smell raided my senses. I took my fill of it and more since it was less creepy if he couldn’t see me inhaling him like a drug.

  “It’s where the scar is. See it?”

  I peered closer, ignoring the irritation in his voice, more than happy to explore his body. Sure enough, a small faint scar marked the middle of his back, the stem of his tattoo, as if the Legacy knot had bloomed out of it.

  He turned around and stepped closer, his strong legs sliding between mine on the stool. I instinctively spread my knees wider as a rush of nerves ignited up my thighs and gathered at my center. Suddenly breathless, I gazed up at him and the half-inch glass vial he held between two fingers. A thick, black liquid slimed up the sides.

  “I found this vial in my bed the morning after you healed me,” he said. “That must have been some powerful healing spell you did because the relentless pain in my back was also gone.”

  He had been slightly less broody since then and not as stiff in his movements. I frowned at his six pack, recalling the moment when I’d found him lying in bed, unmoving, and the too-familiar panic that had spiked an alarm inside my head.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not dead.” He tucked his thumb under my sticky chin so I’d look at him. “Not cursed.”

  “What curse?” I demanded once again.

  He backed away, and something in his steady gaze cut deep, as if I might not like what I was about to hear.

  “What curse, Kason?” My voice snapped through the kitchen like a whip.

  “You’re not the first witch who thought I could end fae power.”

  “What?” I shook my head, my brain’s wires surging to understand. “What?”

  “One witch showed up at the first house but didn’t stay long. I think she was afraid of something. Soon after she left, I blacked out and woke up in a new house, maybe in Faction 11, maybe not. I also had a brand new tattoo I didn’t remember getting. Another witch came. Daphne. She knew about the Legacy kno
t tattoo and how to untie it.”

  Another woman. Another woman who’d wanted Kason.

  He gazed at me, an almost pained look in his eyes, as if waiting for me to click the pieces together.

  “But you didn’t have sex with her,” I whispered. Because if he had, none of us would be here. Still, the thought of another woman wanting to kiss him, touch him, formed a knot in my throat that was more complicated than his tattoo.

  “I don’t sleep with every woman who slithers through my door like a goddamned temptation and demands it. This isn’t a fucking brothel.” He forced a breath through thinned lips. “When I told her no, she didn’t take it so well. She cursed me. If I ever had sex with someone, she said, the curse would kill me and the person I had sex with.”

  Cursed for something he couldn’t control—for being human. Cursed for being tasked with ending fae power over witches when it wasn’t even his fight. Cursed to not have sex for a lifetime. That was fucked up.

  “So a year later when you showed up looking for the same thing…” he started.

  “I wasn’t looking for the same thing,” I said. “Revenge against the fae was all I ever wanted.” Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, and suddenly Kason stood too close. I tried to shove him away with my forearms, but he grabbed my shoulders to root me in place.

  “I know that now. But even when I didn’t, I couldn’t put you at risk when you could die too. Hell, she said I couldn’t even tell anyone about it, not that there was an influx of people running through my door after that.” He ducked low so I would look at him, searching for an answer I didn’t yet know. “But when you came, I could see that you were different. Not like Daphne at all. You have a big heart, guarded by razor blades but still there. The first time you stormed into this house…”

  “The first time what?” I gritted my teeth, wishing I didn’t care.

  “Well,” he said with a sigh. “You cried when you saw the poppies.”

  Because they’d been the first natural splash of color I’d seen in a long time. Brighter than any fire, they’d started the slow burn that had melted the black magic right off my raw heart. And Kason had fueled it with his kindness.

  I shook my head at my lap. “You didn’t even like me.”

  He leaned in close and planted a kiss on top of my head. “I don’t like any witches. But I can’t get this one right here out of my head.”

  “But…” He was spinning me around in circles, and while my heart seemed to like what he was saying, my mind didn’t. “Why would a witch put a curse on you? If she knew what the Legacy knot did, what you could do to end fae power, why would any witch stand in the way of that? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “She didn’t exactly give me the chance to ask her.”

  I blinked up at him, trying to understand. All spells, including curses, could be broken. Somehow. I’d never performed a sex curse before—my stunning personality did just fine doing that for me—but if I had to guess, she was hiding something, and not just Kason. Why else would someone go to a human’s house he couldn’t escape and throw a sex curse on him when he had to have sex?

  “Are you sure this Daphne chick was a witch and not a fae?” I asked.

  “She didn’t smell like a dead fish if that’s what you mean. No wings, either. Just a silver atern, black hair…hazel eyes.”

  I sharpened my gaze into twin daggers. “She sounds repulsive.”

  He laughed and rounded the table for his shirt. “She wasn’t at all, but she wasn’t my type. She was too cold, calculating. No sense of humor, just…boring.” His white flannel soon covered his stacks of muscle, driving a sliver of disappointment through my gut. “I can honestly say no second with you has been dull.” He gave me a look that shivered delightful tingles between my legs.

  My face heated, and I leaned my forearms on either side of my plate of unfinished pancakes, briefly considering taking another dive at them so he wouldn’t see my blush. “How did you know this Daphne chick cursed you? I mean specifically.”

  “Well, it was pretty clear when she said it to my face, but…” He nodded, his gaze vacant as if recalling the moment, then homed in on my hands. “There was a pain in my back. Always.”

  “Yeah. Curses have that effect sometimes.” I stared at the vial on the table inches from my fingertips. The black sludge indicated dark magic as if it, too, had been cursed. So what was it?

  I hopped down from my stool and strode toward Nasty on top of the microwave. Somehow, Daphne’s name and Kason’s description sounded vaguely familiar. I didn’t think I’d ever met a Daphne, yet a sense of déjà vu emanated from a place I couldn’t name.

  “Daphne,” I muttered and walked Nasty and the magic vial into the living room. “Are you a bad witch or not a witch at all?”

  “I’ll just clean up, then,” Kason called after me. “Thank you, Kason, for the wonderful breakfast. Oh, you’re welcome, Your Highness. I live to serve.”

  “Thanks, sweet cheeks,” I hollered from the couch.

  A howl of laughter bubbled up from the kitchen and lifted my mouth into a semi-permanent grin. So, I’d cured the cursed vial right out of him. Did that mean I’d broken the sex curse too? Because that would be a real shame. My grin widened.

  But I might’ve just cured him of the vial, not the curse. Though I did cure him of the pain associated with his curse, but that was just a symptom, not the curse itself. He was able to tell me about the curse, but I wasn’t sure if Daphne’s threat to not tell anyone had been a part of the curse or just that—a threat. There were too many unknowns. No way would I jump his bones if there was even a small chance it would kill him. And me, though I cared more about him.

  The sound of running water came from the kitchen. Instead of researching who this Daphne might be, I found myself staring at the maze-like straw he’d built for me lying on the coffee table. After knowing him for just a few days, if we had sex, it would mean something. At least for me. It didn’t mean I wanted to pop out a bunch of little Kasons and Hadleys with him, but it would mean something. Something…nice. Something happy. But it definitely wouldn’t be worth it if it killed him.

  The rest of the day, with one or eight breaks for wine, and a long, hot bath to clean breakfast residue off me, I spent laid out on the couch researching Daphne, sex curses, and why someone would stick a vial inside Kason’s back. As the last of the meager daylight faded to night between the cracks in the curtains, I had some of my answers. Maybe.

  I’d taken the vial apart to take a whiff, and by I, I meant Kason who sat next to me reading a book, and it had smelled like rotten poke root inside. Mom used to grow some, and another reason she planted her garden in her bedroom was because some of her herbs, including poke root, were toxic if ingested, and she didn’t want Jake and Talamond to get into them.

  Poke root was used to find lost objects, like a tracking agent. But why would Kason need to be tracked if he wasn’t able to leave his own house? Whoever moved him from house to house should know where they were moving him, so why track him?

  So really, I hadn’t found much, but somehow it was enough to make my head spin and my hands ache.

  Kason nudged my outstretched leg with his knee. “Did you know that fae have a thing about counting?”

  I rubbed my temples with my wrists as I glanced up from Nasty’s screen. “Good for them.”

  “They feel compelled to count things like grains of sand and salt.” He pointed at his massive, open book titled The Isa Fae Regime: A Brief History. “They’ll stop whatever they’re doing just to count because it’s an obsessive compulsion.”

  “Okay.” I sighed. “The beach is covered in snow, so I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

  “I’m saying we could use that somehow if the Diamond Dogs show up again.” He snapped the book shut, his eyebrows lifted. “Information is power.”

  I tipped my mouth in a half grin. “Have you always been an info junkie?”

  He nodded toward the packed books
helf on the far wall. “How do you think I learned woodworking? And cooking? And home-escape techniques?”

  I snorted a laugh, shaking my head. “Someone needs to rewrite that book just for you.”

  “What about you?” he asked, placing the book on the coffee table. “Have you always been an info junkie?”

  “Yeah, my dad…” The storm of memories I associated with him quaked loose, but I focused on Kason to help ride me through it, hopefully with minimal tears. “He used to ask me things just to see if I knew them, and if I didn’t—the very rare occasion I didn’t—we learned about it together. He always said he wanted me to dream beyond the snow, and I guess part of that is always asking questions.”

  He smiled and it sparkled warmth in his eyes. “Tell me something about you.”

  “I just did.”

  “Something you haven’t told me yet.”

  Yeesh, what hadn’t I told him? I’d shared more personal shit with him in the past few days than I had in the four years I’d known Ty.

  Kason rubbed a hand over my socked foot resting next to his thigh, a simple touch, but one that erupted all kinds of sensations all the way up my leg. “Come on, I know there’s more to Hadley Hawthorn that I don’t know.”

  “Uh…” I gazed at his hand resting on my foot, how his long fingers absently stroked my toes, each caress stirring my blood hotter. “You tell me something while I think.”

  “Two things because I’m not stingy.” He gave me a pointed, amused look and sat back into the couch cushions. “Number one, I grew up in a forested area of Faction 11, near Egilsstadir, and I always remember hardly ever being home, which is kind of ironic since now I’m always home. I helped my dad clear the snow from the forest trails between school and our house, caught snakes and frogs, did normal stuff. One day, I came back home to find a bear inside my house facing off with my older sister. My dad was out in the forest. My mom was in the barn out back and didn’t hear the commotion. I was sixteen, maybe seventeen at the time, and I did not like my sister. But in that moment, everything changed. I knew that I would do whatever I had to do to protect her and that I would never leave her side again after that.”