He fought to process the problem logically, to not simply react. “Which part is unclear? Explain the mechanics to me.”
“If a councilor is injured, the adnexus pulls from the other four to help repair the damage done. It doesn’t leave a corresponding mark on the others—if someone stabbed DuPont, the other four wouldn’t gain matching knife wounds—but it does draw from their energy to repair it.
“It isn’t an exact correspondence, either. The adnexus amplifies what is given to it.”
Random tried to accept what she told him without interrupting her, but it defied reason. “There is no Aspect use that can do what you’re describing.”
“No, there is no legal Aspect use that can do it.” Her gaze flicked briefly to blood-filled sugar bowl.
“Blood magic,” he spat. “You’re telling me the Council, the head of our society, the foundation that made our laws, is built on breaking the first law they ever enacted?”
“What better way to maintain power than by making sure no one else is allowed access to the same Aspect that ensured the Council’s supremacy in the first place?”
It wasn’t as if Random had previously held some rosy image of the Council’s beneficence that was now being shattered—he’d never been that naive—but he’d more or less thought that any less-than-savory actions by one of those members would be just that: an action by one member.
An individual might gain a prominent position and decide they liked the influence they wielded, might decide that that influence gave them a license to do what they wanted. That individual could then be tried in a court of law and removed.
But this—this wasn’t power turning a single person’s head, wasn’t a corruption that could be excised from the whole. This was a failing at the heart of Aspect Society, a breach of trust and integrity so profound that to fix it would necessitate the removal of the whole in its entirety.
He would deal with that revelation later. After he’d ensured that the woman he loved wasn’t going to die.
“Continue,” he said, with a great deal more calm than he felt.
She frowned at him. “What’s going through your head?”
“Things. Explain the rest of it.”
“There isn’t much else. If one councilor is sustaining damage, the adnexus won’t draw from the others enough to kill them for the sake of the one. There is a threshold for how much can be taken, so it is possible to kill a single councilor.”
“If there is a threshold, where is the danger?”
“Because the adnexus might not pull from me past a certain point, but Elijah can. And I don’t have any doubt that if it’s him or me, he’s going to choose himself.”
“You’re telling me he could kill you at any moment?”
“If he was sadistic enough to stab himself in the heart and transfer the death to me? Sure.”
Random opened his mouth, shut it. He hadn’t felt this helpless since his mother had died. At least then he’d been a kid, too young to really understand what was happening, and his Aspect hadn’t manifested yet. They were good excuses for his failure to prevent what had happened, even if he couldn’t make himself fully believe them.
But he wasn’t a kid anymore, and his Aspect was more or less his to command. He fully understood what was happening. He wanted to walk to Valkyrie, to take her in his arms and prove to himself that she was here, and alive, and well. He wanted to bury himself in her body and give in to the illusion that simply loving her could solve this problem.
It wouldn’t. All it would do was distract them both when they needed to focus.
His brain scrambled to come up with a solution. “You said Siren could destroy the adnexus. She knows about this? That it’s you bound to it?”
Valkyrie nodded. “She discovered it when she had her little showdown with the Council. What she saw wasn’t the adnexus itself, but the connection it draws between all of the councilors. She couldn’t figure out how to disperse it then, but she thinks if she has the adnexus itself, the physical anchor for it, that she might be able to destroy it without killing any of us.”
“So that’s why you already had Kara’s and Theo’s blood?”
“Yeah.”
“Kyrie...” He trailed off, not sure how to say what he wanted to, and certain this wasn’t the right time. But there never seemed to be a right time with her. “Kyrie, I think we should talk. About us.”
Valkyrie couldn’t breathe. It was like she’d been hammered in the chest with a Battle-Aspect-strengthened punch and had no chance to shield against the impact.
She didn’t know much about relationships. She knew she and Random weren’t really in one. But she also knew it was not a good thing when the man she was fucking said they should “talk.”
She breathed in short, shallow sips, willing the tightness in her chest to ease. It didn’t.
“Kyrie?” Random sounded concerned. Of course he did. He was a good man. He didn’t like to hurt people.
He loved her. She knew that. She also knew love didn’t fix everything. Her life wasn’t a book, or a movie, or a love song. Real love was complicated, and messy, and sometimes people decided it wasn’t worth it.
Who wouldn’t run away from her after learning everything he’d just learned?
“It’s fine.” Getting the two words out let her breath come a little easier. “You don’t need to explain. I understand.”
He swore. “I’m not pulling the plug on us, Kyrie.”
“I may be inexperienced, but I’m not an idiot. I know what we should talk means. And I get it. This isn’t what you signed up for.” Loving her despite her many flaws was one thing. Loving her after finding out she was a magical experiment with her life tied to a blood magic spell was...something else.
“I signed up for you, love.” He came to her, reached for her, but she held up a staying hand.
“Please don’t.” He shouldn’t touch her now, if he never meant to do it again. Some part of her wished he would anyway, but Random wasn’t the kind of man to disrespect the boundaries a person set.
“Kyrie, love.” His voice was pleading, now. “Wherever you went in your head just now, don’t go there. I don’t want you to leave. I want you here. But things can’t keep going on the way they have been. I need more from you.”
More. He didn’t need more, he needed different. Someone who wasn’t her. Someone normal. “I can’t be what you need me to be.”
He was silent for a moment before he said, voice dangerously soft, “And what is it you think I need?”
“A normal woman. A nice woman. Someone who fits here.” She waved a hand indicating the house, the kitchen. “I’m never going to be domestic.”
“When have I ever asked you to be? When have I ever said, ‘Kyrie, you’d be perfect if only you’d put on a dress and some pearls and bake a fucking casserole’? I don’t want any of that shit, I want you.
“And as for you fitting here, you are the only woman who ever will. I built this house for you. Why do you think I have a bloody stable? Why do you think the gym is perfect for you? I even picked the goddess-damned color scheme with you in mind.”
The revelation was so obvious it should have slapped her in the face long before now. Random, who’d always been more disposed toward the city than the country, had bought property out here. She’d known the build was new, she just hadn’t put together that it had been his new build.
No wonder he’d been so smug when she liked the gym. No wonder her horses liked the damn barn so much. No wonder she’d felt like she was home the morning she’d woken up in his bed and felt soothed by the “goddess-damned color scheme.”
“You built this for me?”
“Yes.” His voice was hoarse.
“When?”
“I had the plans drawn up the day after.” He didn’t specify which day after. He didn’t have to. There was really only one, for them.
“What would you do if I didn’t want it?”
Pain flashed across his fac
e, as if he thought her asking the question guaranteed that she didn’t want any part of what he’d built. But he answered her. “Sell it. I’d never live here with anyone but you.”
The idea of him selling the house—her house—of anyone else living here, was one she didn’t like it. Maybe it was naive and foolish to want this. Maybe it was crazy to think a relationship with him could work, that they could just fit together with no experience. Maybe they would crash and burn. But she did want it.
“What’s the more you need?” she asked.
He offered her his hand, palm up, and she took it. “I need to be your partner, Kyrie. I need you to trust me. I know that isn’t easy for you, and I understand why. But at every stage of this mess, I’ve told you I need the truth, and you only ever tell me part of it.”
His free hand cupped her face and his thumb stroked against her cheekbone. “I love you. And I just found out I could have gotten you killed at any moment because you weren’t honest with me. Because you still don’t factor me into your decisions.
“You don’t owe me anything. If I’m not what you want, then tell me that.”
She couldn’t tell him that. Not now. She had managed to before, but she never wanted to do it again.
His hand slid down to the nape of her neck. “But if Elijah is the only thing that’s kept us apart, if you want to be with me, I need it to be equal. I’ll follow your lead. I’ll trust you to know what you’re doing. But don’t ask me to stumble in the dark with half the information while you risk your life.
“Don’t ask me to wake up one morning without you, wondering if I could have changed everything if I’d known what you know. I can’t lose you like that.” He swallowed. “I can’t lose you.”
Valkyrie had no intention of being lost. But she understood in that moment that she was going to lose him.
Why couldn’t he have waited one more day to have this conversation? Just a day, when she could be on the other side of this mess and give him the promise he wanted? But the adnexus, Elijah, Danvers—they were all too dangerous for her to risk involving Random any more than she already had.
She could—would—end this. Tonight. But she couldn’t take him with her when she did.
“Then don’t lose me,” she whispered, the words more request than command. She leaned in and brushed her lips across his. “Make love to me, Random.”
She threaded her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth back to hers. She sank every ounce of her pent-up longing and need into that kiss, hoping he would take her passion in place of a promise.
“Kyrie.” The syllables were prayer and plea, desire and hesitance, as were the hands he settled on her waist, his fingers curling against her. He was too smart not to realize she hadn’t promised him anything. But he was also a man who wanted her badly, and she had no qualms about using it to her advantage.
“I want you.” She kissed the corner of his lips. “I need you.” She kissed the opposite corner. “Make love to me,” she repeated.
Because they hadn’t really done that yet. Everything about their physical encounters had been hot and explosive and it had been wonderful. But she was asking for the opposite side of the coin, now. For sex that neither of them could pretend was just sex.
“Kiss me like you did after Jace’s wedding.”
His eyes softened. She had him, then, and they both knew it. He took her mouth, softly but intensely, like a drowning man who’d just found oxygen. Just like he had when he’d found her after Jace’s wedding. She felt everything in that kiss: his love, his need, his fear.
She parted his lips with her tongue and tried to say everything she didn’t know how to put into words: I love you, I trust you, I’m sorry.
She turned him toward his bedroom and walked him back to it with kisses and touches. At the side of his bed they paused, and he undid the buttons on her shirt with deliberate slowness, his mouth claiming every inch of skin as he exposed it.
“You are so beautiful,” he said when the shirt was finally gone, and she believed it, because he did. He guided her back to the bed and she laid down, content for once to let him do what he wanted, to let him take control.
He kissed her breasts, his tongue teasing her nipples to hard peaks before his lips trailed lower, before he settled between her legs with a groan. He licked and sucked at her outer folds, his slow, thorough devotion making the ache growing within her nearly unbearable.
“Random.” She curled her fingers into his hair. “You’re killing me.”
He made a low, pleased rumble that vibrated through her, but he didn’t stop. His tongue thrust into her. She’d thought she remembered how good it was the first time he’d done this to her. But they’d been frantic with need, then, and he’d made quick work of her.
There was nothing quick about the attention he gave her now. It was soft, slow, exquisite torture. When he finally worked his way up to her clit she was so desperate she couldn’t stop herself from grinding against him.
He made another one of those noises that indicated he thoroughly approved of this behavior and his hands slid underneath her to cup her ass. He rocked her forward with each flick of his tongue, the steady movement and the sensation of him against her building her pleasure with each stroke, until her breath came in sharp, ragged gasps. He sucked her clit into his mouth, rolled it gently between his teeth, and she screamed as release tore through her.
She didn’t let herself relax. He’d made her shatter and he hadn’t even taken off his clothes. She pushed him back, rose to her knees and pulled his shirt over his head. She fumbled with his pants, waited while he slid off the bed to step out of them, until he was perfectly, gloriously free.
He slipped back onto the mattress and she fell back beneath him,, the length of him hot and hard against her stomach as he kissed her. When his mouth broke from hers she guided him to her entrance, needing to feel him there, to feel him everywhere.
He pushed inside her a scant inch and leaned down to suck her nipple into his mouth. She bent her legs and arched her hips, trying to take him deeper. He leaned back, his hands coming to rest on her knees, and only gave her another inch.
“So impatient,” he murmured. He sounded like sin and heaven all rolled into one, and given the excruciating slowness with which he filled her, she thought he might be the devil. He still wasn’t fully inside her when he drew back, so far he almost left her entirely, and paused, waiting.
Waiting for what, she didn’t know. “Random?”
“Yes, love?” His voice was a low purr.
“Do you have a death wish?”
He grinned. “Maybe. But only for a little death.” He held her gaze and buried himself to the hilt in one hard, defined thrust that made her toes curl. He built a rhythm that was almost lazy in its slowness, glorious in the time it gave her to savor the sensation of him moving within her.
When she slid her hand between them to stroke herself he halted, his fingers digging into her knees, his eyes half-lidded with barely-controlled lust. She clenched her inner walls around him, demanding movement again.
He complied and he lost the slow control, moving with fast, steady thrusts. She met his tempo. Her fingers worked her pleasure as their breaths grew shorter, their movements more desperate, until the ache inside her peaked and she came in a hard wave, bucking against him.
He rode her orgasm until his entire body went taught and he emptied himself into her with one final thrust.
She wasn’t sure if he collapsed onto her or if she pulled him down, but she wrapped her arms around his back to hold him there, his weight on top of her a comfort. He nuzzled the side of her neck, pressed a line of kisses up to her mouth before he rolled onto his side and pulled her with him so they lay face-to-face.
Now that need and lust were fading, exhaustion was evident in the lines of his face. She had no idea what time it was, only that the sun had gone down hours ago.
“We should get some sleep,” he said, his eyes already closed. “Problems wil
l wait for the morning.”
She wished that were true. But one way or another, their current problems wouldn’t see the dawn. They would be replaced with new ones, and if she survived, she didn’t know if he would forgive what she was about to do. She didn’t know if she would forgive him, if their places were reversed. But she couldn’t make herself change her mind.
“Random?” she said softly, not sure if he was still awake.
“Hmm?”
“Could you say it again?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up, and his arm around her waist pulled her closer. “I love you, Kyrie.”
She drank the words in. She laid awake and memorized his face, the way his hand felt on her hip, the way he twitched in his sleep like a cat in the grip of some strange dream.
Then she made herself get up, silently so as not to wake him, because the longer she stayed, the harder it was to leave. She found her clothes in the dryer, got dressed, and retrieved the magic-masking box Random had made from the bookcase.
She paused in the doorway and looked back inside the house. At the couch where she’d taken him, at the kitchen where she could see him if she closed her eyes. It would have been a good life, here with him. But that life was a fantasy, and she had her feet both firmly planted in reality.
Reality dictated that she had an adnexus to steal and a father to kill. And Random—Random couldn’t be a part of that. If saving Random Tremayne destroyed her, she would die with a smile on her face so long as she knew it was done.
16
Valkyrie glanced in the rearview mirror. Someone was following her. The car had been on her as soon as she pulled out of Random’s drive, and the driver wasn’t trying to hide the fact that they were tailing her. They hadn’t tried to run her off the road or otherwise get her attention, but when she sped up they didn’t let her lose them either. They kept the same distance behind their vehicle and hers no matter how erratic she made her speed, and they did so with a precision that spoke to exceptional driving skills.
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