Gold

by Talia Vance

  Water.

  I could feel water. I sent water at the flames in large waves. It was too little, too late. The fire simply danced away, evading my efforts to tame it.

  Blake appeared next to me in a flash of silver. He grabbed my hand and spun me toward him. “What did you do?”

  “It’s not me.” Panic laced my words, but I believed what I said. The fire wasn’t mine. I couldn’t control it.

  “Like hell,” Blake said. Silver sparks lit up his green eyes. I’d seen Blake in his demigod form before, his perfect body clad in a swath of plaid fabric and illuminated in silver light that seemed to come from within, but his face was harder than I’d ever seen it. There was nothing beautiful about the pure hatred in his expression. “I saw you with my sister.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could say anything, another flash of silver flared on my right.

  I needed to move.

  I ran past Blake just as Jonah appeared right where I had been standing, his jeweled knife drawn. There would be no pretense of peace now. Jonah or Rush or Levi or one of the other Sons would kill me.

  Blake ran after me, grabbing my elbow and pulling me up. “This way.” He turned the opposite direction from the people making their way toward the back gate, and guided me toward the burning house. “Can you clear a path through the flames?”

  I could if they were mine, but this fire was beyond me. “I can’t control it.”

  “We’ll have to take our chances.” Blake ran straight into the burning house.

  I followed without hesitation.

  The heat of the blaze was stronger inside. Flames devoured an exterior wall and a couch in the corner. The hallway filled with dark smoke. I pulled my cardigan over my head, covering my mouth and nose with it.

  Blake held tight to my wrist as he dragged me down the hallway, toward a large window that would take us out to the street. He stopped as a burst of flame came through the wall a few feet in front of us. Blake spun me around and pulled me back the way we came. We didn’t get far. Blue flames had already filled in behind us. We were surrounded by fire.

  I tried not to breathe, but my lungs fought me, the instinct stronger than my will. I sucked in smoke until I could do nothing but choke and cough into my sweater.

  Water.

  I had to focus. I closed my eyes and concentrated on water running through my veins, becoming one with it. The wall of water I conjured was the largest I’d ever made, and I sent it at the flames in front of us.

  It wasn’t enough. The flames directly in front of us sputtered and died, only to be replaced by another wave of fire that rolled in to take its place.

  I tried wind, whipping the air around us in an attempt to keep the fire and smoke at bay. It kept the fire from getting closer, but it also fed the flames, making them higher, stronger, hotter.

  Blake’s arms came around me as the heat and smoke became unbearable.

  “Go,” I rasped, pointing to the window. Blake had the power to disappear and reappear anywhere within his line of sight. He could transport himself to safety.

  He kissed me instead.

  I sputtered and choked against him, pushing at his chest. He needed to get out of here. A flash of silver lit behind my eyes, and then the air around us turned cold and damp. I opened my eyes to find us floating in gray mist. I shivered against the cold, and Blake’s arms held me tighter. He was still in his demigod form, but he was no longer lit up with starlight.

  I knew where we were, in the place that hovered between life and magic, where the Sons went when they disappeared before changing forms or transporting themselves. I had been to the spirit realm before. We’d come here together once, when we bonded.

  I inhaled the damp air in large gulps. Blake held me against him until I stopped coughing. I curled my arms around his neck, clinging to him. Afraid to let go.

  “How did we get here?”

  “I’ll bring us back to the front porch just outside the window,” Blake said into my neck, ignoring my question. “That’s the best I can do. You won’t have much time. They’ll be looking for you. Joe’s car is parked near the intersection about four houses down. Hide in the backseat until Joe can meet you.”

  I listened to his instructions, not missing the hardness in his tone. We barely got out of the fire alive, and we were nowhere near safe. He’d just kissed me, but when I looked into his eyes all I saw was anger.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  His hands tightened on my arms. “Don’t.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t lie to me now.” His laugh was harsh. “Or was it all a lie?”

  “What? Of course not. You can’t believe that.” I could see in his face that he did. He believed that I could burn down his house and attack his family. He believed that I could pretend to care about him as a way to get close to the Sons. “Your sister and I had a fight. The fire was there before I could stop it.”

  “She’s human.”

  “Your sister can be pretty annoying.” My attempt at a joke fell flat. Blake dropped his hands to his side. My arms still hung around his neck, but they felt awkward, heavy.

  I didn’t need Blake to tell me that my calling fire against a girl who was no threat was a bad, bad sign. However close I’d come to starting a fight with one of the Sons, I’d never lost it like that with a human before. I’d never lost control of my elements.

  But I had sent my fire into the pool. I didn’t attack the house.

  Blake stiffened beneath my arms, and I finally let my hands fall to my sides too. I didn’t need the bond to know that he didn’t trust me.

  “So you decided to burn down the whole damn place and everyone in it?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Brianna? Did you want to kill them all?”

  And there it was. Right out in the open. He didn’t even pretend to trust me.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I whispered, though part of me wondered. The truth was I didn’t know what happened.

  “You just did.”

  My anger drove me forward, pushing him hard in the chest. “You spent the last three months letting me be ridiculed and ostracized by your so-called friends, while you deliberately kept me at a distance.” It’s not until I said the words that I realized how true they were. I was willing to risk bonding again. Blake wasn’t. “And I’m the one that can’t be trusted?”

  Blake lifted his broadsword between us, the cold steel pressed against the skin covering my heart. “Looks that way.” He didn’t make a cut. He didn’t need to. The distrust in Blake’s eyes did the cutting for him. He leaned closer, glaring at me. “Assuming you can make it to Joe’s car, he’ll get you out. Then you better hope that you never see my face again. You might’ve fooled me once, but I know exactly what kind of monster you are. If anyone back there is dead, I’ll find you, and you’ll wish like hell that I let you burn in that fire.”

  I was already burning. Each word choked the air from my lungs and seared my heart, branding it with a black mark that would leave a permanent scar. “I love you.”

  I thought that loving him was enough. That we would find a way to be together. But I had been so, so wrong. Blake didn’t even want to try anymore. If he ever did.

  “Don’t.” His voice is soft, but his eyes are hard.

  “You felt it.” We shared each other’s emotions when our souls were bonded. There’d been a moment, before I killed him and broke the bond, when we had both felt love. I didn’t imagine it.

  “I felt a lot of things. That doesn’t make them real.” He stepped closer, wrapping his arms around me. There was no tenderness in the way he held me. His arms tightened.

  “How did you get me out of the fire?” I asked again.

  “Like this.” He lowered his head to mine and kissed me. Hard.

  We weren’t bonded anymore, but I could feel his anger just the same. It was there in the way his lips crushed mine with a force that rocked me backwards. When my mouth opened aga
inst the assault, his tongue thrust inside and I swore I felt his anger mix with sharp desire, the one constant that he couldn’t deny.

  It wasn’t enough, but I reached for it anyway, kissing him back with the same ferocity, until the only fire I felt was the one that burned for Blake. My hands were in his hair, pulling him closer. He groaned into my mouth. I closed my eyes against the bright silver light that grew around us.

  The kiss ended as suddenly as it began, leaving my mouth cold and bruised. Before I could adjust my eyes against the light, there was another blinding flash. I could feel the emptiness where Blake had stood. He was gone.

  Black smoke billowed out of the broken window, creating a screen that kept me hidden. It burned my nostrils and throat. I clamped my sweater over my mouth.

  I turned toward the street and ran.

  EIGHT

  The sun breaks through the clouds, sending rays of sunlight through the cracks in the blinds of the pub’s main dining hall. The light casts the morning in a golden glow that’s much too bright for my dark mood. A half cup of milk does nothing to temper the too-strong coffee, but I sip it anyway. I’m beginning to understand this country’s fascination with tea. At least the coffee’s better than the runny eggs and the chunk of igneous rock they try to pass off as a biscuit.

  I slept little, spending half the night trying to work out how Austin could be back and what it might mean, and the other half planning my escape to nowhere in particular. All that matters is that I won’t be anywhere near here when Blake arrives.

  A shadow falls across my coffee. Austin stands over me, looking far better than when I left him on the beach, his hair combed into some semblance of style despite the unruly strands that fall into his eyes. He wears a pair of dark jeans and a form fitting cream sweater that appears calculated to show off the perfect proportions of lean muscle along his chest and shoulders. He grabs a chair from an adjacent table and pulls it to my table, straddling it backwards and placing his elbows on the back rest.

  He glances at the suitcase on the floor beside me. “You don’t have to leave on my account.” His accent is softer than I remember, still more English than Irish.

  “I’m pretty sure I do.” His brown eyes meet mine, specks of gold reflecting the morning sunlight. “Why did you come here? To my home?”

  I stare down at my coffee. I don’t owe Austin an explanation.

  “So that’s it then. You’re not going to talk to me?” Austin leans forward and lowers his voice. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.”

  The bandia in me is there in an instant, all fire and vengeance. “I’ll find a way to hurt you.” I want to do more than hurt him. I want to destroy him. It’s a fight to keep the fire from leaping to the surface and flambéing my breakfast.

  He sighs. “You think you haven’t?”

  “Not nearly enough or you would still be locked in up in the underworld where you belong.”

  He doesn’t respond except to gesture at the mess on my plate. “You going to eat that?”

  “I’ve lost my appetite.” I push the plate toward him.

  He pulls a fork from the setting next to me and digs in, shoveling the slop of eggs into his mouth in a way that is anything but godly.

  “That’s attractive.”

  “Is it?” He winks at me but doesn’t lift his head from the plate. He doesn’t try to talk to me again until he’s cleaned the last bit of egg with a large hunk of biscuit. “You can’t get a breakfast like that in the underworld. No chickens.”

  Curiosity gets the best of me. “What do you eat?”

  His lip quirks. “Forbidden fruit.”

  I don’t know why I bother. I reach for my suitcase. “It’s been fun, but I have a train to catch.” A life to live that doesn’t include a war between the gods and the Sons of Killian. And certainly doesn’t include the god who forced me to kill Blake.

  He stops me with his gaze, his brown eyes nearly black as they bore into mine. “Your destiny is here.”

  “It’s not.” The hint of gold in Austin’s eyes glows with an otherworldly light. The cloudiness in my head is the first sign that he’s trying to get inside my head. I close my eyes and turn my back on him. “Stay the hell out of my head.”

  “I’m not your enemy, Brianna.”

  “Sorry, but it’s not your call. I’ll pick my own sides, thanks.”

  He reaches for my wrist as I step away. “Don’t go.”

  I jerk my arm from his grasp and spin to face him. A crease forms between his eyebrows, breaking up the sculpted lines of his face. The tiny flaw is magnified on him. He looks almost broken.

  I want to hurt him. I want him dead. I should not want to reach out and touch that little imperfection, to smooth it away. I grab my roller bag and walk out of the dingy pub before I do something stupid.

  Cath is about as far from a thriving metropolis as you can get, so it’s not like there are little yellow cabs cruising up and down the street searching for wayward bandia in need of a lift. A sign across the street proclaims “taxi,” in big black letters, and I dutifully stand by it, staring at my watch. Austin walks out of the pub a few minutes later. He stays on his side of the street, but I feel his eyes on me.

  I turn to face the other direction.

  After ten minutes, there’s still no sign of anything resembling a taxi. The only traffic consist a tiny beige car, only slightly bigger than the Barbie Jeep I had when I was five. I glance at the clock on my phone and then back across the street.

  Austin waves from across the street. “Do you need a lift?” He walks toward me even though I’m shaking my head. “I could drop you at the station.”

  “I don’t accept rides from strangers.”

  “Then you’re in luck. I’m hardly a stranger.”

  “Just strange. And evil. I’ll pass.”

  “You think I’m evil?”

  I meet his gaze, raising my eyebrows. After everything he’s done, what am I supposed to think?

  He opens his mouth and closes it again, before it falls open on its own. “For God’s sake, Brianna, I’m a lot of things, but I’m not evil.”

  “Tell it to someone who is too blinded by your inhuman good looks to recognize the snake who thinks it’s okay to kill to get what he wants.”

  “To protect what I care about.”

  All Austin cares about is his stupid war. “Murder by any other name … ”

  He places his hand on the “taxi” sign and moves closer to me, invading my personal space. “Are you so different? If I recall correctly, you were perfectly willing to try to kill me to save your bloody boyfriend.”

  “That was different.”

  “Was it?”

  His words sting. Austin would’ve killed Blake if I hadn’t lobbed a fire ball at him. Then Austin disappeared at the last second and I ended up killing Blake instead of saving him. I would’ve killed to save Blake, something Austin had counted on, and used against me. But Blake is alive now. I saved him. I cross my arms in front of me. “I brought him back.”

  “What are you talking about?” Austin’s eyes narrow. The crease is back, deeper and angrier than before.

  “Blake. I brought him back. With the reversal spell you used to save my horse.”

  Austin’s hand curls into a tight fist before he catches himself and straightens his fingers. He looks past me, out at the harbor beyond the buildings dotting the street. “Then you’ve no choice but to run.”

  Since when does Austin not want me to fight the Sons? It’s the only thing he’s ever wanted from me.

  “What happened to stay and face my destiny?”

  “It’s too late. You’ve already let them win.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe the Sons should win? That the earth is better off without a bunch of gods turning humanity into indentured servants?”

  Austin flashes me a rueful smile. “Actually, it has.”

  Not the reaction I expect. At all.

  A small silver hat
chback pulls up. Austin leans into the window and makes sure the driver knows the way to the train station in Tralee, as I pull my bag into the seat beside me and shut the door.

  Austin nods at me through the window. “Get as far from here as you can. No matter what you feel, just keep going. The pull to come back will get weaker over time. In a few weeks, you shouldn’t feel it at all.”

  “I’m not coming back.” Lord knows I need to get away from here. Away from Austin. Away from Blake. Away from all of this.

  “The best laid plans of mice and men.” He chews on his lower lip in a way that makes him look almost human. Then he smiles and the effect is ruined. “I could go with you.”

  Gods.

  “How do I put this in terms you can understand? Wait. Got it. No.”

  His smile fades by a fraction. “Worth a shot. Do you know how to reach Mickel?”

  I hold up the phone. “Covered.”

  He lifts his chin and backs away from the car. As he walks back across the street, his shoulders slump forward.

  Once the taxi is a good mile out of Cath, I lean my head against the window and let my cheek settle against the cool glass. Everything about Austin is wrong. It’s not like him to let me go so easily. One minute he’s telling me I have to stay and the next he’s giving the driver directions to the train station. I should be glad, but all I can do is wonder what he thinks he knows that I don’t. And since when does Austin slump? I push the thought away. None of it matters. What matters is that I’m getting far, far away.

  I get a whole twenty miles out of town before I’m hit with the first pang of longing to go back.

  NINE

  I do my best to ignore the driving beat of my heart, an insistent pounding that gets stronger with every mile that stretches between me and Cath. I won’t stay in Ireland and wait for the Sons to come find me. I definitely won’t sit around and wait for Blake. Whatever magic brought us together, it wasn’t love. Love means giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Blake doesn’t trust me. He never did.