by May Dawson
The man suddenly lunges toward me. As he passes Cax, he throws an elbow at Cax’s sternum. He’s so focused on me that his attack on Cax is almost like an afterthought.
I spin on my heel and take off, knowing it’s too late. The man’s stretching hands snag my shoulders. I jump to one side and drop, making myself small. His booted foot kicks me hard in the side as he tumbles over me.
I hit the ground hard on my knees, feeling a jolt up my kneecap. I stumble to my feet. One of my knees feels loose and painful, but my adrenaline is up and my legs will carry me for now no matter how broken my body is.
Cax is a blur; that elbow hasn’t taken him down at all. My attacker is already stumbling. Cax steps into him, tripping the man completely then follows him down, one hand already gripping the back of the man’s jacket, and drives him to the pavement with a fist to the kidneys.
That other man is in front of me though, too close. I can’t let him get between me and escape. I drive my shoulder into his stomach, wrapping one arm around his thigh, throwing all my body weight into his mass. He stumbles back but keeps his footing. Despair washes over me. I’ve been here before, with my petite body against a full-grown-man’s mass. I step behind him, and my heel catches his, and he finally starts goes down.
Cax grabs my shoulder to steady me. As soon as he’s made sure I’ve caught my footing—his eyes are a quick flash of fury as he gives me a once-over—he falls onto my attacker. He pins him with a knee and mutters quick words of magic that bind the man’s hands to the sidewalk, as if invisible vines have grown up through concrete.
Cax shouldn’t know that magic. That’s warrior magic, forbidden to anyone who isn’t military or law enforcement.
“Cax, stop!” I beg as he cocks back a fist. “Let’s just go. Let’s go.”
I don’t want him to hurt these men who have been hurt so badly already.
His eyes flicker up to me. I’ve never seen Cax like this, his eyes heated and his cheeks flushed with high color. He hits the man hard across the jaw, just once, and the man’s head smacks into the pavement.
Cax scrambles up. He’s panting slightly as he reaches out to grab my hand in his. And then, being Cax, he side-steps to grab the bags that have been kicked over in the melee.
“Come on!” I beg him. Finally the two of us lope toward campus. A light comes on in an apartment above the storefronts. Even though of course they’ll be able to name us later—to name me, anyway, with my infamous face—I feel desperate to get away before someone tries to hold us.
No, I don’t just feel desperate to get away¸ which has been the case for the past five years. Right now, I’m frantic to get somewhere. I’ll feel better once I step into the dim hush of the library.
Because I feel safe with the three of them. Because apparently it takes three dangerous men to protect someone like me.
As we stride through town and reach the edge of campus, my knee stiffens, but I don’t want to slack from our quick pace. With my locked knee, I can still move fast, although my breath comes as short sharp pants.
“You’re hurt.”
Suddenly, there’s no ground beneath my feet; Cax has caught me with an arm behind my back and another sweeping my calves off the ground. He holds me cradled against his chest.
He takes off running. I close my arms around his neck, jolted by his quick pace. His arms tighten around me. There’s real pain written across his face, but he isn’t hurt. It takes a second for me to understand his pain is guilt.
“You didn’t do anything,” I tell him, too late.
For a few long seconds, he doesn’t answer; his eyes roam the quiet campus around us as he heads up the winding trails.
“Yeah, exactly.” His breath comes in short jolts now. “I didn’t keep you safe.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I was there too. We were trying to keep each other safe.”
I struggle in his arms, although my knee aches now, a desperate ache that feels worse every time it’s jolted but that I know would be agony if I were trying to walk.
“Let me down,” I say through gritted teeth anyway. “I’m not a princess.”
Anymore.
The house in the country—I can’t stand to call it my house anymore—had elaborate gardens of rose bushes and tiger lilies blooming in bright waves of color. My father used to strip the thorns from roses and link them together to tuck into my hair. A crown for now, until you’re princess of Avalon. He’d kneel and kiss my knuckles. I used to giggle. I didn’t understand what he meant until it was too late.
“You can’t walk on that knee, Tera,” he says. “You’ll hurt yourself worse. And you don’t have magic to heal yourself.”
The words sting, and I grab his shoulders, pushing myself up out of his arms. He grabs at my waist, but he can’t hold me now, and I slide through his grip. I land heavily on my feet and pain sparks in my knee all the way up to my hip. That leg doesn’t hold me, and I plummet to the ground. As I throw my hands out to catch myself, the shock radiates from the heels of my hand up my forearms. Pain blurs my vision.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Cax demands.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Even from the ground, I hope the finger I point at him is imperious, instead of ridiculous. It’s only because I point at him that I realize I’ve scraped the heels of my hands painfully on the brick.
He squats to eye level, his elbows braced on the inside of his knees. “Do you think we could save the argument? I’d like to get to safety.”
“Safety? From what? From people who have every reason to hate me?”
“They don’t.” He holds his hand out. “Come on. If you won’t let me carry you, at least let me help you walk.”
“I can’t count on you.” I can’t start counting on him when there’s no future here; I’m only going to cause him trouble and get myself hurt in the process. The old Tera Donovan would have run the second my intuition prickled. No fight, no danger, no possibility of Cax being arrested for assault and for illegal magic.
Pain flashes across his face, and too late, I realize there are two ways to take that.
“Have it your way.” His eyes blaze, as if he’s about to walk away, leaving me sprawled here on the ground with my swollen knee. I stare at him blankly, forcing down the fear spiraling through my body. I can’t be defenseless.
He suddenly launches himself forward, his shoulder settling gently into my stomach, and lifts me off the ground. My toes kick into his abs—first by accident as he stands, and then on purpose as he carries me flung over his shoulder like a sack of wheat.
“Let me down,” I growl through gritted teeth.
“I have every intention of taking care of you,” he says. “My money, my magic, my muscle—anything I have is at your service.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask again. Blood rushes to my head in this position, and I twist, trying to push myself up.
He glances over his shoulder at me as I struggle. For the first time, I see a flash of humor replace some of the fury in his eyes. “Well, there’s quite a list. But for one thing, I have terrible taste in women.”
Chapter 23
Everything looks different upside-down. We cross the quiet, wood-lined library without meeting anyone but a shocked-silent librarian, and then Cax jogs down the stairs. He fumbles with the key to the warehouse room for a second.
“Do you maybe want to put me down now?” I demand, not really excited about entering our office ass-first and red-faced.
“Nope,” he says, finally getting the key into the lock. He turns it and then takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “You might want to forgive me now. We’re both in trouble. Might as well be on the same side.”
“Why would we be in trouble?” I demand. I try to straighten, and he finally sets me on my feet, despite what he said. I imagine the cops coming to visit me again, and my stomach tightens. “We were defending ourselves. You tried to talk them down—”
His arm catch
es my waist, holding me against his body so that I don’t carry much of my own weight on my good leg. The pain radiating from my knee through my thigh and down my shin is so intense now that I can barely catch my breath.
“I should’ve been able to,” he mutters. “They were so angry. They weren’t hearing a word I said.”
You’re the same age my daughter should’ve been. Those words repeat in my brain, filled with hate and grief and longing. A shiver runs down my spine, but not for myself.
“I shouldn’t have come back here.” Airren asked me before what I want now that I’m home. The truth is, I don’t remember what the hell I was imagining when I climbed into that cab. I’d wanted to believe that everything would be fine when I came back, but any damned idiot would have been able to guess otherwise.
Cax’s eyes soften. “Well, I’m glad you’re here.”
I stare back at him, and he adds, “Even though you kicked me.”
“You should’ve listened.”
He shakes his head slightly, his hand palming my cheek. My breath hitches again, but this time, it’s not from the pain.
“Everything you’ve been saying is crazy talk,” he says quietly. “I’m not going to listen to that. You shouldn’t be here, you don’t deserve to be protected—”
“I meant, you should’ve listened to me when I said—” I interrupt hotly, still mad that he carried me.
Cax’s eyes are bright with heat too. Normally, I’d be paralyzed by the anger of a man like this, with the hard wood of the door pressing against my back and his arms pinning me in place. Even though Cax’s body is tense, I’m sure he would never hurt me.
His lips brush against the corner of mine suddenly, and I realize I misunderstood the heat in that gaze.
I turn my mouth into his, but he rests his forehead against mine, breathing out a frustrated sigh.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get through this,” he mutters, to himself more than to me. His hands tighten on my hips, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders, letting him carry my weight.
“Me either,” I whisper.
He slides his arm under my thighs again, to cradle me against his chest again. He cocks an eyebrow at me, and that rogue tumble of blond hair falls into his eyes again. “All right?”
I nod, and he lifts me off my feet. I exhale as the pain fades away; it’s dulled when I don’t try to stand alone.
He shoulders open the door and carries me into the warehouse. The door to our hide-away room stands open, light blazing out against the dim light of the warehouse. Before he can take two steps, Airren and Mycroft rush out to greet us.
“Is she all right?” Airren demands, his voice low but vibrating with intensity.
“She’s fine,” I say tartly. Cax’s arms are wrapped around me tightly. If he lets me go, I’ll slide down and get to know this slick wood floor as well as I know the sidewalk outside.
“What happened?” Airren’s eyes blaze as they meet Cax’s. He doesn’t need to swear; his tone itself is profanity.
“Let me see her.” Mycroft slides an arm around my waist, his face coming intimately near mine. There’s a scruff of black shadow across his hard jaw, making his face that much more handsome and dangerous.
Pain runs through my knee as I’m transferred into Mycroft’s arms. It’s a sharp hot jolt like metal burning inside my knee, and I groan. It’s the thinnest, smallest sound, but it makes all three of them freeze.
“Come on, put her down,” Stelly says, shaking her head. “You’re a pack of morons. Handsome morons.”
Airren’s brow furrows. He’s on the verge of a taut, low-toned scolding that will include all of us instead of just me. His worried eyes flash to my face, and he gestures Mycroft toward the room.
Mycroft carries me into the room in a few quick strides and settles me onto the edge of the hard wooden table. His hand flashes and then he’s holding a small silver blade. He kneels with it at the hem of my jeans.
“No,” I say. “Absolutely not. I only have like two pairs of jeans—”
“Cax’ll buy you new ones,” he says, but I plant my good foot—gently—in the middle of his chest. He looks up at me in surprise.
“Stelly will help me,” I say. “You clear out. All three of you.”
Stelly looks oddly smug, but the three of them stare at me like it’s not happening.
“Come on, please? Two seconds.” My tone is softer now. They want to help, and it’s bizarre and maddening and touching all at the same time.
“You heard the woman. Shoo.” Stelly pushes broad biceps and backs without particular regard for their owners, ushering them out the door. She slams it shut behind them and returns to the table.
I’m already unbuttoning my jeans and leaning back to struggle out of them. It’s one thing for them to see me in my panties and entirely another for them to see me flopping around like a dying fish trying to get my jeans off. My knee’s locked up. I wiggle my jeans down my thighs but then can’t quite get them further.
Stelly regards me patiently. “Are you going to let me help? Or did you just need to get the beautiful men out of your space?”
“Would you stop?” I ask. “One of them is your brother. It’s weird.”
“We’re a beautiful family,” she says placidly.
“And would you please—” I indicate the jeans twisted around my thigh hopelessly.
Her smile is sweet as a sweat-beaded glass of sugary iced tea on a hot day. “Of course. We all want to help you, Tera.”
I grunt. I’m not sure I can handle much more help, but of course, without them, I’d be in a whole different kind of trouble. My stomach clenches as I imagine running for my life from those men in town. I have to get magic on my side soon. Without it, I’m still helpless.
Maybe that’s really what I hoped for, coming home: that I wouldn’t feel helpless.
Stelly’s hands gently pull the jeans off. She shakes them out and folds them, although she glances at me with a sniff. “You know, you should’ve let Croft cut them. I can buy you some new ones. These don’t do much for your ass.”
“How would you know?”
“We can all see it, sweetie.” She purses her lips at me playfully as I shift on the table, acutely aware of my skimpy black panties. “And it doesn’t even need the fifth floor.”
I sigh as she crosses to the door and swings it open. Airren comes in first, quick and watchful, and leans against the wall; Mycroft comes right to me, and Cax takes up position in the doorway as if he’s keeping a lookout.
Mycroft leans over my knee, touching it with gentle fingers. No matter how soft his touch, I grit my teeth. Then he takes my knee more firmly in his hands, his thumbs massaging into the sides of my kneecap, and I almost scream.
“Maybe something for the pain?” Cax asks pointedly as if he’s familiar with Mycroft’s bedside manner.
“She doesn’t like it.” Airren must be thinking of how I rejected his spell at the sundial.
Black spots bloom on the corners of my vision from the pain. “She’s open to possibilities right now,” I say through gritted teeth. “As long as you promise that you’ll take care of me during.”
That’s the real thing I’ve always been scared of; I can’t give up my fight-or-flight reflexes. That impulse to escape or lash out doesn’t serve me well most of the time. It makes me angry and impulsive and stupid at times. But on rare occasion, it keeps my heart beating.
“Of course.” Airren steps to my side. His worried eyes meet mine, and he rubs his thumb across my temple. His curled fingers rest against my cheekbone, warm and rough, and I want to turn my face into his touch. His wand is in his other hand, and he murmurs quietly to himself as the tip of the wand slashes through the air.
The warmth of his hand blazes hotter, but not in a bad way; it feels like all the warmth of a crackling fire on a cold winter’s night, the way the heat strikes your face as you hold half-frozen fingers over the fire. I hear myself sigh as much as feel it. The pain in
my knee fades away, and for the first time, other sensations flood in: the hardness of the edge of the table under my ass, the scent of Airren’s magic, salty and deep, like some scent I half-remember. I close my eyes and breathe it in, trying to place it.
“Better?” Airren asks softly.
“Better,” I say. “I don’t know what I was so afraid of.”
Mycroft glances up at Airren and says matter-of-factly, “You shouldn’t have used that spell.”
“It’s the best,” Airren says. “And setting that knee is going to hurt.”
“So’s her honesty,” Mycroft shoots back.
I can’t quite make sense of what he’s saying, and I cock my head at him. “What?”
“That spell has some unfortunate side-effects,” Mycroft says. “Akin to drinking heavily.”
“He means lowered inhibitions,” Stelly says. “Which, I’m not really sure you need around my brother.”
“Hey,” Cax complains.
“And a distinct drive to tell the truth to all and sundry,” Mycroft rumbles. “So we have to keep her out of public until her knee is healed and the spell’s worn off.”
“What’s wrong with my knee?” I ask. “I haven’t been this sore since some motherfucker from Avalon came through the portal to kill me.”
The four of them exchange glances. I run my hand over my thigh absently, and it’s a strange, faint prickle against my skin, less of a sensation than normal. “Weird,” I muse out loud.
Mycroft gave me a boring technical explanation about how my knee is dislocated and he has to set it.
“When did you become a doctor?” I purse my lips. “You could be a doctor for all I know. Your life is a mystery to me.”
“Like I told you. Cax talks enough for both of us.” Mycroft adjusts my knee slightly, his thumbs sliding against my kneecap; I sense it sliding, but this time, there’s no agony.
“And that’s fine for when Cax kisses me,” I say. “But you held my hand, and sooner or later, you’re going to kiss me too.”
Mycroft’s eyes flash up to mine, before he shakes his head, returning to his work. “Not interested, sister.”