I raced through the neon streets of Ancetol toward the tower like a man on borrowed time, fully prepared to die beside Reina, just as I’d promised. Or perhaps, for once in our lives, I could save her. My last hopes hung on the possibility that there was some force—some gift—greater than death, and that I possessed it.
41
Reina
DT leaned in, a wisp of his snowy hair brushing my cheek. “Speak,” he said, “and you will die right here.”
Truth. My stomach churned, my gift’s ability to detect truth a detriment to my deteriorating nerves.
He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out of the car. “Act normal,” he added.
He hooked his arm in mine, the coldness of his skin far more icy than the frigid air and just as unnerving. Despite his polished appearance, his presence was corpse-like, as if his gift had been draining his life bit by bit. We stepped into the light of the tower and his demeanor changed in an instant. The lobby was packed with families chatting and preparing to leave, as if we’d missed some kind of event. Everyone seemed happy and at ease. They didn’t look like plotters or assassins, or even remotely like an evil organization. So when they smiled and waved to DT as he passed like they were one big family, it made no sense. Kai had told me The Fallen were helping people, but it was surreal to see these families interact with DT without fear, as if the only hostage here was me. How could they not see his evil?
An elderly woman approached. “Oh, how lovely your friend is,” she beamed.
I smiled shyly, too terrified from DT’s warning to risk any pleasantries.
“She certainly is,” he replied with a smile.
She began to pull on her gloves, and just before she got them on, I saw the blisters between her thumb and finger that were always present on the ungifted who were laborers. My hands burned with sympathy pains from the brutal memories of the few shifts I’d worked last year to get by. I remember how, afterward, my hands had been bloody, but blisters like hers meant regular shifts over many years. Was everyone here ungifted? So The Fallen really did have only a few gifted people. And to think they had caused all this destruction.
“And how are you tonight, DT?” she asked.
“Excellent,” he said, his ease and charm appealing. Lie. It was my first real peek into his head, and it gave me an idea. I hoped, once we arrived at his destination, he’d allow me to speak long enough to find out more about this enigma of a man—perhaps something that I could use against him.
He led me to the elevators and I dragged my feet a little, hoping to remain a few moments longer among other people, where DT relied on a mask of kindness. I shuddered to think of what kind of man he’d be when we were truly alone for the first time, and the mask came off. He squeezed my arm in warning, reminding me I had no choice but to go with him into the elevator.
“Good,” he said as the doors closed. “Very good.”
I stared at my reflection in the elevator doors. Beneath my winter jacket was nothing but a silky tank top and matching pants that were my pajamas. Yemoja Roux had lent me the top, and it didn’t really fit, as she was much chestier than me, but at least I had my jacket to hide it. He was a murderer, I knew that for sure, but was he also a pervert?
He watched me carefully as the elevator rose. “You may speak now,” he said. “I’ve been watching your face, and I find I’m curious about what you’re thinking.”
“Do you have my friend Bri?”
“Who?”
“Briara Phillips, she was taken from GFA.”
He smiled. “No, the school has been off limits to me for some time.” He tilted his head in curiosity, then said, “How interesting.”
“What?” I asked, failing to keep emotions out of my voice as the elevator came to a stop. I needed to hold it together.
He gestured for me to move forward, and I was grateful that he didn’t touch me this time.
“Well, you’re in such a precarious situation, yet your first concern is for your friend.”
I followed the hallway to the door at the end. “A normal person would understand,” I mumbled.
“Hey, now, there’s no need to get nasty.” He opened the door.
My heart sank when I realized it was an apartment, my mind racing through worst-case scenarios. Being around him kept my nerves constantly on edge. “Actually, seeing that you kidnapped me, I think there is a need.” Fuck, what was I doing? Antagonizing him was a terrible idea.
He nodded and turned on the lights before taking a seat on his sleek couch. I stood frozen just beyond the threshold. The apartment was remarkably clean, to the point where it felt more like a hotel than someone’s home. It was simply but expensively furnished, and out of the floor to ceiling windows, far below, I could see Ancetol’s neon lights.
“Have a seat,” he said in a companionable tone, patting the couch beside him. “I only want to talk… and we could be here a while.”
Truth. The tension in my body relaxed. My situation wasn’t much improved, but at least he didn’t mean to kill me right away. I took a seat as far away as I could without falling off the couch, clutching my coat tightly.
“Take off your jacket and stay a while.”
“I’d… rather not.”
His eyes darkened, his jaw clenching with annoyance. Reluctantly, I peeled off my jacket, making sure to adjust my top to cover me. The fabric was too sheer for comfort, so I used my arms to block my chest, hoping he didn’t notice. From the way he spoke about Kai earlier, though, I wondered if he preferred men; but that thought went out the window when I lay my jacket between us. He took one look at me and his eyebrows shot up, his lips forming an O. There was a distinct red blush that hit the top of his cheekbones before promptly extinguishing. He turned his face away toward the window, his gaze locked on the glowing neon lights of the city below.
After a silent moment, he stood quickly and hurried out of the room, making me feel even more exposed. I could practically hear my nervous heartbeat. DT returned with an oversized T-shirt and tossed it to me, without so much as a glance in my direction.
I immediately slipped it on. “Thank you,” I whispered, totally embarrassed. “That was kind of you.” I’d hoped the second part would pull a reaction from him. I couldn’t seem to get a read.
He sighed as if trying to discharge a feeling that I couldn’t place based on his body language alone. He said, “Kai would kill me if he got here and you were dressed like that.”
I watched him carefully. “Is that why I’m here? You think Kai is coming for me? News flash, ace. Kai was taken into custody at the Agency tonight. He’s not coming back.”
“Interesting choice of words,” he said, tilting his head back. “‘Taken into custody.’ Not ‘arrested by the Agency.’”
I didn’t know where he was going with this, but I knew I needed to divulge less. However, maybe I could discover more.
He glared at me. “Why? Why would he turn himself in? What did you do to him?”
“Do to him? What are you talking about?” Ok, so he doesn’t know as much about Kai and me as he let on. That’s a good thing, at least.
“What are you not telling me? He’s obviously still loyal to The Fallen, so there must be a reason he’s doing this.”
“What makes you think he was ever loyal to The Fallen? He told me you were blackmailing him. Using the school as a hostage against his good behavior.”
He nodded casually, but there was a glimmer of knowledge in his eyes that gave him away. He was about to get cruel. “Let me ask you this, did he tell you where The Fallen’s base is? Did he tell the Agency?” He put his hand behind his ear as if trying to hear something, but all was still. With a twisted smirk on his face, he shook his head. “I don’t hear anything that sounds like an attack.”
My thoughts raced, buying into DT’s reasoning, and when familiar doubts about Kai snuck in, my reaction surprised me. I smiled, and the more I did, the more I saw the dark humor in it. DT’s face twitched, his expressio
n slipping from smug, to agitated, to angry. I tried to hold back, but a laugh tore through me, and DT bared his teeth. He didn’t like that at all.
I waved a hand to excuse myself. “I’m sorry. It’s just, here I thought you knew Kai so well.”
I saw a lump move in DT’s throat. Got him!
“If you’re hoping to know exactly where you stand, you chose the wrong guy.” I laughed into my hand, relishing the irony that the almighty Death Touch was suffering through Kai’s antics as much as I did.
“And you like not knowing?”
“I hate it.”
His shoulders relaxed a little, and he rubbed his hands together in thought. Several minutes passed in silence, but I could see the wheels turning.
“Is Zane okay?”
He nodded my question away, his mind somewhere else. I had him wondering now. Just when I thought I wouldn’t get a real answer he said, “I almost let him die when I saw an unreasonable amount of tears shed by my woman, but it’s so hard to find good help these days.”
I refrained from shuddering. Cold—this guy was an ice sculpture. “Let me go. Kai’s not coming.”
He leaned back. “He’ll come. No matter his circumstances, he’ll come if I have you.”
I stood. “You’re wrong. He’s in prison. He’s not coming.”
DT’s body twitched. “I sent him a little gift. He might already be on his way. I don’t know what he sees in you, since you so vastly underestimate him,” he said, his voice blade-sharp. “He’s coming. Tonight.”
I sat, dropping my face into my hands, and exhaled a chest full of annoyance. It was time for a different approach. I needed to know what he thought he knew.
“What makes you think I underestimate him? What makes you think I estimate him at all? You say he’s fully committed to The Fallen. What gave you the crazy idea that he’d come for me at all?”
“I’m not crazy,” he said defensively, turning back to the window. “You’re in love with him, obviously, which means he’s most likely in love with you. He’s going to come, and when he does, we’ll find out which side he’s really on.”
“Does he have to be on one or the other? Is there no scenario where you can see him as your friend and my boyfriend? Why do you insist he choose between us, if there even is an us in this?”
“I just want to know where I fucking stand!”
Truth. I felt that. My thoughts raced to the memory of Kai’s speech to me at the dance. That night he’d said, “I think I might be in love with you.” My heart stuttered, my eyes closing so I could view the memory more clearly. I knew I had been furious with him back then, almost hated him, but still, I wished I had said those words back to him. I was starting to think I’d never get the chance. A question arose that froze my body: did Kai know where he stood with me? It was possible he didn’t; I’d barely begun to understand how strong my feelings for him actually were. Things had been so turbulent that I never had time to truly consider my feelings. When did they begin to change? The shift between hate and love was but a whisper—a line in the sand that, with one gentle wave, was gone. Now the last thing I wanted was for him to risk his life by coming here. I needed to get out of this on my own, and then work on convincing the Agency of his innocence. If whatever DT sent him was enough to help him break out, my time was limited. I had to stop him from breaking out because he’d be on the run for the rest of his life. And I might never see him again.
My muddled feelings became crystal clear as I prepared my response to DT. Then I felt my gift splinter from the lie before I even said the words.
“He doesn’t love me. And I don’t love him.”
My heartbeat quickened, my gift writhing in a potent mix of pain and pleasure as I fought my gift to be dishonest while the truth settled in for the first time. I was in love with Kaito Nakamaru, and I needed to survive long enough to tell him.
“Just let me go—”
“You fucking liar!” he shouted, pulling his hair.
My heart stopped, my bones rattled with fear, and my spine straightened. I’d misjudged, badly. He looked frantic. For some reason, my declaration that there was no love between Kai and me threw him. If I wasn’t watching him unravel, I would have believed he saw through me, but he looked afraid as he chewed on his thumbnail. He needed to believe that Kai loved me so he could believe that Kai would come back. Was this his Achilles heel? Though I didn’t know how I’d use it to my advantage, I’d discovered a weakness, but it was too early to tell if unhinging him in the process helped or hurt.
“I’ve told you the truth. There’s no reason he’d come for me. If you’ve given Kai a way out of the Agency jail, and you’re so sure he’s loyal to you, what do you need me for?”
He gave me a sideways wink. “Insurance.” I felt my stomach turn over.
He sat and leaned back on the couch, the tension in his body relaxing. Shit! My response had the opposite effect. I was losing him. I needed to make DT believe me. I needed to sell the lie, goddamnit! Squeezing the owl pendant to suppress my nerves, I pushed one more time.
“I don’t love him,” I said. “Kai might use whatever you sent him to escape, but he’s not coming for me, and I highly doubt he’ll come back to you either. You wanted the truth? Well, take my word for it. The truth hurts.”
His eyes narrowed into blue lasers, scanning me for the truth. But the truth wasn’t his gift. It was mine. “Where did you get that necklace?” he asked.
Dammit, he noticed. I shrugged. “Found it. Owls are cool, right?”
He looked nervously toward the window and then turned back to me. He grew even more agitated, his chest heaving as his breaths grew more strained. Finally, he exploded from the couch. “Prove it.” He sneered. “Prove you don’t love him, right now, and I’ll let you go, and I won’t go after you. I’ll find another way to get him back here once he’s free.”
Letting DT finalize breaking Kai out was tempting, but even after the chairman so callously dismissed me before, I still believed in the basics of the system I was fighting to maintain. Otherwise I’d have to admit The Fallen had won, that Ancetol’s downtrodden citizens had been swayed by this madman to believe the Fae were evil. DT had practically defeated us all single-handedly. I had no choice but to escape and put an end to this. But proving that I didn’t love Kai was a test I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pass. If I had any positive karma built up, I needed to cash it in fast. “How can I prove it?”
I pleaded with my gift to allow me one last lie.
But DT’s next words stole the breath from my lungs, and all hope from my heart.
“Kiss me,” he said.
My time had run out. Death had called my bluff, and a pair of hearts was all I had left to play.
42
Kaito
I stood outside the door to DT’s apartment. My pulse thumped in my ears like the deafening base of a concert speaker. The thought of Carter, as he turned to dust, weighed down my legs. The memory of Quan being impaled numbed my limbs. But Yemoja Roux had believed in me, more than my parents ever had. She trusted me to get Reina out of there alive. I had to end this now, no matter the cost. I’d considered trying to use my gift to sneak through a window, but the closer I got to the tower, the more certain I was that I should play this casually. If I charged in with emotions running high, DT might overreact. I needed everyone to stay calm. Then I heard DT’s voice behind the door and I knew calm would not be an option.
“Kiss me,” he said. I leaned into the door, waiting for Reina’s angry reply, but I was met with only silence. Shaking, I reached for the door handle, my teeth gritted to brace myself for what I was about to see. DT moaned, and I heard the shuffle of movement. My heart stopped. I quietly opened the door so as not to startle DT and was paralyzed by the sight. On the far side of the room, Reina’s hand was cocked back, her purple glow filed into a shiny blade aimed at DT. He clutched the side of his face with two hands, mewling in pain.
“I am in love with Kai,” she s
aid, “so I don’t need to prove anything to you. And you should know I will take your life before I let you hurt him again.”
Her words jolted my heart back to life. She loved me. Despite everything. “I knew it,” I said, stepping into the familiar apartment. Her gaze moved to me and softened. My legs felt weak, and I was surprised by the burning sensation that flared behind my eyes.
“You came,” she breathed. “He was right.”
I turned my attention to DT. He slowly moved his hands away from his face, revealing a deep cut. His arms visibly shook as he stared at the blood on his fingertips. He looked like he was in shock.
His eyes widened, and an expression I’d never seen on his face completely overtook it. Reina must’ve caught him off guard, and from the crazed way he gaped at the red substance, it had been a very long time since he’d seen his own blood, if ever. In fact, it was starting to look like DT may have never been injured at all. This crumbled my plan of a casual approach. He was a time bomb, and I needed to get Reina out before detonation.
I sprinted across the room to put my body between him and Reina. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind me. A rush of emotion shot through me as her hand closed around my wrist. I had her now. I would keep her safe.
DT looked up at me. “Blood,” he murmured.
I leaned forward slightly, unwilling to move much closer. “It doesn’t look too bad. You’ll live,” I said, trying to calm him.
He nodded and stood, still looking shaky. “I knew you’d come.”
My gaze was drawn to the couch where he’d just been sitting. Right where he’d last touched it, the white leather surface had turned dark gray. As I watched, the darkness crept across the fabric. I finally realized what was happening. I watched in awe as it slowly disintegrated into gray flakes. My stomach lurched, and my heart seemed to clench at the memory of Carter. I stepped back cautiously, easing Reina back as I moved. DT walked toward us, each step deteriorating the floor into floating gray pieces that spread, filling the air with dust. I nervously lifted us slightly off the floor, just in case. Reina squeezed my wrist like she was trying to tell me something, something she didn’t want DT to hear, but since she was behind me I didn’t have enough of a read on her to know what it was.
The Brave & The Broken: Gifted Fae Academy - Year Two Page 15