by Zile Elliven
Aeyli? What did you do?
Smiling, she accessed Marshall’s eyes, wanting to see the results of their handiwork.
Marshall had slowed time back to a crawl, probably to give his friends time to escape, but Aeyli willed it to resume its usual steady march. They had all the resources they were going to get. Win or lose, it was time to see if it would be enough.
The purple barrier was flickering and had contracted down to a small circle. Aeyli’s and Marshall’s bodies were only inches away from the hordes assembled against them. She watched as their barrier brightened and hummed.
Demons were packed around them in a tight wall, but wherever there was a chink she could make out the colors of Jack’s and Adelle’s magic, as they desperately tried to carve their way into the crowd. She couldn’t see him, but she knew Fourteen was with them. She could feel his presence—a velvety wall of protection pressing against her mind. Warmth rippled through her stillness. He would never leave her behind.
Front and center was Sekt, his eyes glowing with the zeal of his assured victory. Together, she and Marshall flexed their will and sent out their shield as far as it would go.
Power ripped through the monsters like tissue paper in a tsunami. It happened so fast, it was over almost as soon as it had begun. What had been an army of horrors one minute was now a field of glittering smoke, mixed with snow.
She could see their friends across the field stumbling over themselves, still caught up in the momentum of the fight. Then, as a single unit, Jack, Adelle, and Fourteen began to run across the field toward them.
We should sort ourselves out now, or this could get confusing, Marshall said.
How do we do that? she said sleepily. She could still feel the power swirling out from her endlessly, but it seemed less a part of her now and more an entity of its own.
Just like before. You pull back as much as you can, and I’ll push you out the rest of the way.
Oh. Right. Her mind was so hazy now. All she wanted was sleep, but she figured she could do Marshall the decency of extricating herself from his soul before she dropped off.
That would be nice, yes. Marshall sounded amused.
She summoned just enough energy to pull her magic back from Marshall and was glad when he managed to send her back to her own body. Blinking up at him, she smiled drowsily.
Marshall returned her smile with an equally exhausted one, squeezed her tightly against his chest for a moment, and then sighed deeply into her hair.
“My gods, Marshall, what the hell happened?” Adelle demanded as she, Jack and Fourteen pounded to a stop a few feet away.
Fourteen took in Aeyli’s position in Marshall’s lap with narrowed eyes.
“Aeyli happened.” Marshall said, laughing shakily.
Dropping to his knees, Fourteen raked his eyes over Aeyli’s form looking for injuries. When that wasn’t enough, he grunted, “Let me have her,” and pulled Marshall’s arm away.
“Easy, soldier, easy. I’m not getting in your way. She just tired, that’s all.” Marshall relinquished his hold and passed her over to Fourteen.
“Aeyli did all of that?” Jack kneeled as well and touched Marshall’s hand.
“She could have done twice that much and been fine. And don’t worry,” he said as Adelle crouched to touch his other hand. “I’m not going to fade. Aeyli tapped into her Stillbringer power before I had a chance to do something stupid.”
“Stupid, huh? Sounds like you.” Jack punched Marshall’s arm none-too-gently then turned to Aeyli, who was still getting checked out by an anxious Fourteen. “Good for you, I had a feeling you were special.”
“I knew she was,” Even after being in the middle of a warzone, Adelle was the epitome of calm and far better groomed than she had any right to be. “Thank you for rescuing my brother from himself.”
Aeyli pressed her face against the now-familiar buzz of Fourteen’s jacket. “He wouldn’t have had to be here if it wasn’t for me.”
The stillness had receded from her entirely now. With its departure, all her old insecurities had returned. Part of her could remember now that they were only an illusion. It was something she was interested in exploring further later, but for right now, she had a hard-earned snuggle she’d been promising herself.
“This is our job, and from where I am sitting, you’re worth it.” Adelle said a little too forcefully. “Your family has a lot to answer for. Where is Elanor? Did she survive?”
Aeyli filled the guardians in on the real story of what her mother had become while they searched. They found her body a hundred yards away, cold and unmoving.
“She did it to herself,” Jack informed them before Aeyli had a chance to wonder if she had killed her own mother. “She probably did it as soon as Sekt was unmade. From what you’ve told us, I’d say she willed herself to die once her lover was gone.”
“Witches can do that?”
“Witches can do a lot of things. You’ll learn soon enough.”
Aeyli kept expecting to feel something, anything about her mother’s passing, but she couldn’t. Maybe later, once the rawness of the situation had faded, she would be able to mourn the woman who’d had her life torn away and perverted.
Slowly the five of them began to seek out the survivors—but found none. Adelle told them about a pocket of witches in the woods not far away and began to lead them there. According to her, Sterling was with them. Thank the gods.
Fourteen and Aeyli followed the guardians into the woods but allowed themselves to fall behind. The air was crisp —they must have been upwind of the fires—and the snow had finally stopped. The clouds had made way for the moon and stars, allowing their gentle light to reflect off the new-fallen snow and giving her just enough light to examine Fourteen’s tired face.
Upon noticing her regard, he winced. “So you and Marshall defeated the bad guy, huh? I’m going to go ahead and guess it was mostly you, since all I know about him is that he can’t dodge a bullet to save his life.” Disdain dripped from his voice.
In a fake whisper, Aeyli heard Jack say, “Should we tell them we can hear them?”
Marshall grabbed one of Jack’s arms, Adelle grabbed the other, and they forced marched him until they were out of earshot.
Laughter overcame her, deep, rolling belly laughs that were so contagious Fourteen joined her. It was cathartic, and they hung onto each other as it rolled through them, dispelling the tension of the evening’s events.
Wiping tears from her eyes, Aeyli said, “He’s actually not so bad. We would all be dead without him.” Then the implications of Fourteen’s words caught up to her. “Wait, are you saying you shot him?” She turned wide eyes to look up at him.
“He caught me at a bad time.” Fourteen shrugged dismissively.
“Boy, did we ever.” Jack’s voice came faintly from ahead. Marshall and Adelle resumed their hold on him and forced him even further ahead.
Fourteen caught her hand and pulled Aeyli to a stop. “You can’t order me away like that again. I can’t keep us safe if I don’t trust you. What if I hadn’t been able to shake off your command? You’d be dead now!” His fingers dug painfully into her upper arms, and he shook her slightly to emphasize his point.
The snow had muffled the noises of the forest, and Aeyli could no longer hear their companions ahead. It was so quiet she could hear her heart pounding as it reacted to Fourteen’s anger. “I couldn’t let my family take you,” she whispered.
“But I was supposed to let them take you? Aeyli, I would rather die than let something happen to you.” His hands gentled but stayed locked around her arms like he was afraid she would vanish if he let go.
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t stop thinking that this wasn’t your fight. And how you shouldn’t have to put up with all of this just because of me.”
“It became my fight when I met you.” His fingers tightened around newly formed bruises before he visibly forced himself to relax.
Aeyli didn’t protest. The pain
reminded her he was alive. If anything, she wanted more contact, not less.
Fourteen closed his eyes, and slowly, painstakingly, he pulled his hands away from her. When he opened them again, his mood had changed like a switch had been flipped. Now there was an impish gleam in his eye. “It will be a moot point soon enough. When I ran into a member of the Company earlier, I shook his command off even faster than I did yours. Once I get this garbage out of my head, you won’t be able to get rid of me.”
Fear gripped her. “They found you? What happened? What did they do?” She couldn’t stop herself from running her hands over him to make sure he was okay, even though, logically, she knew his presence meant he had gotten away.
Fourteen took being manhandled well, allowing her to raise his arms and poke at his ribs. “An agent by the name of Harper tried to take me in with a command, but I shook it off and managed to trap him long enough to make a deal. I traded him my spare set of armor for a distraction once I got inside.”
“But they know where you are now? We need to get out of here!” Aeyli quit poking him and began pulling instead. It was like trying to move a glacier.
“Calm down, we’ve got time. Part of the deal was a head start after the fireworks were over.”
“Do you think you can trust him?”
“I trust Harper to find it unsporting to go back on a deal. He won’t be looking for us until tomorrow. We could be anywhere by then.” He took her hand in his, and the warmth of it made her realize how cold she had gotten. She shivered as her magic lazily spilled into his bare skin. She really shouldn’t be touching him, but she couldn’t make herself let go.
“You want me to go with you?” Hope reared its ugly head. Even after everything they had gone through, most of her expected Fourteen to take off as soon as he felt she was safe.
“You think I’m going to trust these guardians to keep you safe? Aeyli, you were locked up and isolated for ten years. They might be good at guarding some things—but not you.” Fourteen began walking again but kept her hand tucked inside his. “Will you come with me? I promise you’ll be safe with me.”
He was tall enough that she couldn’t make out his expression while walking beside him. She wanted to see his face so she could guess what he was thinking.
“I want to come with you, but I’m afraid.”
She felt his hand loosen from hers. “Oh, I see.”
“Not of you,” she said quickly, gripping him tight. She had to get this right. There was no time for being squeamish about sharing her feelings. Aeyli was certain, unless she told Fourteen what she feared, he would assume it was him, and he would disappear from her life. “I’m afraid I am bad for you.”
He chuckled softly. “Did you hit your head during the fight? Because it sounds like you might have a concussion.”
“Well, yes,” She admitted and rubbed at the spot with a grimace. “But that’s not the point. Just hear me out, okay? This is hard enough without you making fun of me.”
“Fine.” He conceded, sounding petulant and completely unlike the cold, distant man she had first met.
“I can’t control my magic, you know that. And at first I thought you were immune to me, but soon we learned that you really, really aren’t. Whatever the Company did to you combined weirdly with my magic, and it looked like I was helping you. Then I sucked you into that nookie-dream, and you had to make out with me whether you wanted to or not. Now I have no idea if you can even give consent to the things I think about, like, all the time.” Aeyli’s face burned with humiliation. Maybe she hadn’t needed to share everything. Now would probably be the right time to crawl off into the darkness and find a hole to hide in.
“All the time?” Fourteen’s voice was husky.
“That’s what you latched on to?”
“Only because I think about those things all the time, too.”
“You do?”
“I’d have to be dead not to around you.”
This time she pulled him to a stop. “But how do I know it’s really you thinking these things? What if you only feel this way because I do?”
“Aeyli, admittedly my mind has been put through a blender, but I know how it feels to be controlled. Everything that is me is forced away until the only thing inside my head is another person’s wishes. It’s a cold, empty feeling. The way I feel about you is crazy and confused. It’s feels like there is a brass band inside my head with confetti flying and people dancing. And as embarrassing as it is to admit it, that’s all me. Every part of me is shouting to be with you, to protect you, to . . . love you. I can’t stop it. I don’t want to stop it. Trust me when I say the way I feel is not being forced on me.”
With every fiber of her being, she wanted to believe him. What he was saying sounded so perfect it couldn’t possibly be true, could it? Could this beautiful, irresistible man be meant for her?
If only there was some way she could be certain.
A soothing pulse from her hand brought her attention to the magic flowing from her to Fourteen. Why had he taken off his glove in the first place? Did he want to be under her control? Her magic pulsed again like it was trying to get her attention. Then something occurred to her. She closed her eyes and followed the pink of her magic as it sang through her hand, straight into Fourteen. She needed to see if it was corrupting him like it had Marshall.
She followed her magic into the velvety warm blackness that was Fourteen’s soul. The beauty of it was breathtaking. It was untarnished and pure—nothing like what she would have found if he had been the assassin he believed himself to be when they first met.
She combed it over and over again for any sign of being tainted with pink, but instead she discovered her magic only cradled it, without mingling with it. They were completely separate.
She was about to leave when she noticed the music.
It was so hauntingly familiar she had to find the source. She searched through the sweeping tendrils of Fourteen’s soul, hoping to find where the music was coming from, not even sure what she was looking for. When she reached a place where her magic came in contact with Fourteen’s soul, she paused. The music was louder here.
Aeyli dove deeper, drawn in by the poignant beauty. The music was coming from both of them. Where the essence of their souls connected, they resonated together to make the most intoxicating sound she’d ever heard. Opening her eyes, she looked at Fourteen’s shadowed face. “I’m really not controlling you, am I?”
“I promise you, you aren’t. And I should know.”
Placing her hands on his chest, she boosted herself up on her toes and tilted her head up. Before she could complete the motion, Fourteen’s mouth had already found hers and was giving her a preview of all the things he had been thinking about.
Fire raced though her body, consuming everything in its path with white-hot flames. Reason flew out the window, and her hands fought to get inside Fourteen’s jacket. She needed to feel as much of his body as she could get to, and the leather was in her way.
Her feet left the ground as Fourteen lifted her up. Then her legs were around his waist and her back was against a tree as Fourteen kissed and nipped his way down her neck. His hot length pressed against her, and she resented the distance their clothes put between them.
“Aeyli? Jack told me you guys were over here.” Sterling’s voice was a bucket of ice water to her senses, and she froze, mortified she was about to be caught trying to mount Fourteen like an animal in the forest.
Fourteen buried his face in her hair and whispered in a gravelly tone, thick with thwarted desire, “You’re not going to let me kill him for this, are you?”
Shakily, she laughed. “Not this time, but the next time, you won’t have to. I’ll do it myself.”
Fourteen stepped back and allowed her to drop back to her feet. She began to shiver at the loss of his body heat, and he pulled her under his arm to keep her warm. She smiled and kissed him—quickly so she wouldn’t get caught up in him again. She failed.
; Several minutes passed before she said, “We’re over here, Ster.” She was proud of how steady her voice was.
When he found her, Sterling grabbed her hand and pulled her away from Fourteen, who growled softly in response.
Sterling stuck out his tongue and turned his back to Fourteen, maneuvering himself between the two thwarted lovers. “There are more guardians here now, and they’re setting up a camp, of sorts.”
Aeyli smiled ruefully and allowed herself to be towed toward a spot of light in the distance. “It figures help would arrive after all the heavy lifting is done.”
Aeyli wasn’t sure how she felt about the Guard, especially now that Fourteen had pointed out to her they had missed the complete internal destruction of one of their most prominent families. Marshall’s team was okay, though. Without them, everyone she loved would be dead now.
When they reached a spell-lit clearing in the trees, dozens of faces turned to her, some she vaguely recognized, most were strangers. Clapping began, followed by raucous cheering.
Unsure, Aeyli shrank back into Sterling. “What is going on?”
He held an arm out wide, motioning to the remnants of their family. “They are cheering for you, Aeyli. The new matriarch of the Blaikes, who upheld the family’s honor by rooting out the darkness.”
Sterling began to giggle, and Aeyli hastily skipped three steps to the side to give him room. He might not be raging out of control, but it was still possible she could be driving him insane.
“I can’t be the matriarch. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know anyone here!” Her skin felt hot and prickly at the idea of being in charge.
“You know us.” Marshall stepped forward. “We’ll help you figure things out.”
“We owe you that much at the very least,” Adelle’s smile was brighter than the spell lights overhead.