Allow me a day’s recuperation, he mumbled, and I will be a spritely and delightful companion once more.
I didn’t point out that he’d be lucky to walk under his own power in a mere day. Winding the roll of gauze up, I tucked it into Zak’s alchemy kit, open on the ground beside me. I hadn’t realized it was also a first aid kit.
The druid sat nearby, slouched against a tree trunk with his eyes closed and his hand on his ribs.
I capped a small bottle—a potion he’d instructed me to drip onto Ríkr’s wounds to speed healing—and tucked it back in the cloth kit, then spent a few minutes inspecting the soles of my feet. Scraped up but not bleeding. This was the last time I’d take my shoes off anywhere but in my own apartment.
Crossing to the boulder at the water’s edge, I collected my hiking boots and socks. Balligor’s body was a massive, reeking heap in the water. I returned to the shade where Zak waited, though the shade wasn’t necessary anymore. A soft orange glow radiated from behind the western slope of the mountain, all that remained of the fading sunlight.
Sinking down beside the druid, I tugged a sock onto my foot. “How did it go at the crossroads?”
He sighed without opening his eyes. “Pointless. The whole area was abandoned.”
“Too bad.” I pulled on my other sock. “Seeing as you ditched me here so my useless witch weight wouldn’t slow you down, you probably don’t want to know what I learned about the fae killer while you were gone.”
Zak cracked his eyes open. “You learned something? From Balligor?”
I nodded, still too irritated that he’d ditched me to feel smug. “He said the killer can devour its victims’ spirits—which must include their hearts too—by ‘calling’ them. Animals have no defense, but if you have a name, you can resist. Trying to resist might make you go mad with rage or fear, though.”
He sat up a bit straighter, wincing with the movement.
“If the killer knows your name,” I continued, stuffing my foot in my boot, “you have no defense. It can devour your spirit even if you aren’t nearby. That’s probably how Arla died. Jason told the fae her name so it would kill her.”
He swore. “That means he can have the fae kill anyone whose name he knows.”
“And that means it’s extremely unlikely Laney knows about the fae or its powers. If she did, she’d already have given it my name.” Shoes on and tied, I turned to the alchemy kit. “Do you need anything before I pack this up?”
“Vitality potion. The purple one. And the gray one with bubbles.”
I pulled out an amethyst-colored potion, uncorked it, and held it out. Keeping a hand against his ribs, he took the vial and downed it like a shot. I found a fizzy gray one, my nose wrinkling at its astringent odor. “What’s this?”
“Pain killer.”
A heavy-duty one, I suspected. I passed it over and he tossed it back.
“Are your ribs broken?” I inquired grudgingly, not really wanting to know how badly he was hurt.
“Bruised. I think.” He scrunched his eyes. “The pain killer will help. My main issue right now is the aftereffects of the strength potion I took before fighting Balligor.”
I’d been surprised the huge fae’s blows hadn’t crushed him. Lips pressing thin, I folded the alchemy kit up, then checked on Ríkr again. He was dozing, his breathing steady despite his terrible wounds.
Balligor had almost killed us all, but Lallakai had slain him with so little effort. I glanced down the shore to where the Lady of Shadow was ambling along the waterline, her long hair fluttering in the breeze—though I couldn’t feel a breeze, only sticky humidity. She didn’t seem concerned about the battered state of her druid.
She and Balligor had both talked about Zak’s lack of magic. My gaze turned to his right forearm, his scarred druid tattoos hidden against his flat stomach as he held his ribs.
My eyes narrowed. I seized his wrist and pulled his arm up. Blood smeared his hand from scrapes on his palm.
As I retrieved the gauze again, I bit my inner cheek against the question fighting to get out. I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Why did you save me?”
“I’ve done that a few times now.”
“I’m aware.” I poured disinfectant on a gauze pad and wiped the largest scrape clean. A faded rune—a spell of some kind—was tattooed across his palm, now damaged and useless. “You’re a self-confessed murderer and the most wanted rogue in Vancouver. You have a million-dollar bounty on your head.” My eyes lifted to his. “Why are you going out of your way to keep me from dying?”
He looked away, leaning his head back against the tree trunk. Eyes distant, shuttered, hazed with shadow.
“Have you ever lost everything?” A soft question, his voice low and raspy. “Ever had a moment when you realized everything that matters to you is gone, you fucked up, you lost it. And all that’s left are the worst parts of your life and the worst parts of yourself.”
I gripped his hand, his skin warm and palms calloused, and breathed silently through my nose to calm the seething emotions his words had awoken. “What does that have to do with saving me?”
His green eyes slid to mine, exhausted down to his core. “Do you ever want to be someone else?”
All the time. Every day.
But I wouldn’t admit that. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why did you save me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
That he was repeating an answer I’d given him didn’t escape my notice. “Bullshit.”
“Truth. I saved you from that bear fae because I’m not completely heartless, and because I wanted information from you. But beyond that, I don’t know. I’ve always worked alone. I don’t know why I accepted your help with all this, or helped you, or stuck around. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this right now. It’s not like me.”
I squinted at him.
His chest rose and fell with a deep, slow breath. “But I don’t want to keep doing things the way I always have, so … here we are.”
Cursing under my breath, I returned my attention to his hand. This man was incomprehensible. He was a murderer who saved children. He was a rogue who wanted to bring a killer to justice. He was the druid consort of a deadly darkfae while holding her at arm’s length. He was powerful but had lost some or most of that power.
I just didn’t understand him.
Thoughts churning, I scrubbed the mud off his hand, then dug the small piece of gauze between his middle and ring fingers. It rubbed across rough skin. I peered at the gap between his fingers, expecting to see another scrape—but it wasn’t a cut. Not a recent one.
It was a scar.
My body froze, every muscle locking. No air in my lungs. No heartbeat in my chest.
And utter chaos inside my head.
Memories were flooding my brain, rushing in like a burst dam, sweeping away everything else. Memories I’d seen only as disjointed glimpses for the past ten years. Memories I’d thought were gone forever, lost to my trauma-fueled amnesia.
I was fifteen again, sitting in a stuffy attic.
I was holding my switchblade. I was swinging it down, stabbing it into the floorboards. A dark-haired boy snatched his hand away. Blood ran from between his fingers.
“Saber?”
The deluge continued, relentlessly pouring every lost memory into my consciousness until I was shaking and gasping, my sightless eyes staring into a past I’d never wanted to relive.
“Saber?”
Hands were on my shoulders, shaking me. I blinked, and green eyes appeared before me. Zak. His voice sounded again, distant, echoing with words that couldn’t penetrate the madness screaming through my skull.
My newly whole memories flashed and spun, over and over. My switchblade stabbing downward. The boy snatching his hand away. His bemused expression as he’d watched it bleed. Dark hair. Fair skin. Eyes …
Green eyes.
For the first time in a decade, I remembered t
he boy’s face. It was there, in my mind, clear as the first night I’d met him. Tousled hair and straight nose and full lips and those beautiful, unforgettable green eyes. I’d fallen in love with those eyes. Fallen in love with him.
And I was staring into those same eyes right now.
A scream burst from my throat. Hoarse, agonized, inhuman. All the broken pieces inside me writhed and whirled in a maelstrom of slashing pain, of shattered hopes, of crushed innocence.
My knife was in my hand and slashing toward him.
He flung his arm up. The blade caught it, dragging across flesh. Blood spilled down.
“You bastard!” I screamed. “You bastard!”
I lunged for him. We tumbled across the grass, his gasps of pain the only sound I heard. Strength I’d never known powered my limbs. Adrenaline. Rage. Brutal, animalistic bloodlust.
Saber!
I wanted to kill him. I would kill him. He needed to die—right now, right this second, before his presence, his very existence, tore me apart even further.
Saber!
My blade flashed as we wrestled, and he couldn’t overpower me. I was too strong, and he was exhausted, injured. He was bleeding. He would die. He would—
Saber! Ríkr yelled inside my head.
A sharp pull on my hair wrenched me off him and threw me backward. I landed on my ass, knife clutched in my hand.
Lallakai towered over me, her emerald stare piercing. Zak was half sprawled behind her, propped up on his elbows, bloody and breathing hard. My knife had reached him. More than once. I couldn’t tell how many wounds or how deep.
Not deep enough.
His eyes were wide, disbelieving, stunned. He stared at me as though he’d never seen me before. As though I were a ghost come to life after ten years in the grave.
Careful, Saber, Ríkr hissed warningly, struggling to stand where I’d left him under the tree.
I pulled my feet under me and stood, unable to look away from Zak. “You bastard.”
“No.”
My hand tightened around my switchblade at his guttural denial.
“No,” he rasped again. “You’re not her.”
I drew my arm back.
“You can’t be her.”
I took aim.
“She was—”
I flung the blade. It spun in a perfect arch, straight for his throat.
Lallakai’s hand flashed out. A splatter of blood. Elegant fingers curled around the blade she’d caught in midair, and she cocked her head, her crystalline eyes gleaming.
My chest heaved. Emotions, sensations, sights, scents, sounds—the memories, so agonizingly fresh, were boiling through my subconscious, and my eyes burned. No. No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Inexcusable. Unforgiveable. I wouldn’t. I would never let him see me cry.
Whirling, I sprinted for my bag. I grabbed it, scooped Ríkr up with my other arm—and I ran. Ran hard. Ran fast.
Zak didn’t call out. He didn’t make a sound.
My feet pounded against the hard-packed trail. Trees whipped by, the shadows deep. I was screaming inside. Pain, rage, hate, agony, anguish. Loathing. For him. For me. For being a fool. For letting him in. For trusting him.
And I’d made the same stupid, unforgivable mistake twice.
My chest was on fire. My legs were giving beneath me. I kept running until I knew I was out of sight, out of earshot, out of reach.
I collapsed to my knees in the middle of the trail. Clutching my backpack and Ríkr’s feathered form. Whole body shaking, trembling. The broken shards of my heart and soul spinning and spinning, grinding and slashing.
I curled in on myself, tears streaming down my face as the memories I’d repressed for ten years rose up and buried me in the darkest, coldest night of my life.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The smell of percolating coffee clouded my head with jittery nerves. I could hear it from the kitchen, that odd, sharp burbling noise only coffeemakers made.
Aunt Ruth sat in her favorite armchair, the floor lamp beside her casting a warm glow over her brown hair as she studied something on her laptop screen. Her reading glasses, propped on her slim nose, reflected a white spreadsheet.
Before she could notice my gaze, I bent over my notebook, a thick calculus textbook beside it on the coffee table. Sitting on the floor hurt my back, the tight waist of my designer jeans cutting in my stomach, but Ruth liked to see me working.
Her ward must be smart. Must be polite, demure, perfect.
Ruth didn’t think I was any of those things. I was stupid, rude, pathetic, weak. But I had to look perfect or it would reflect poorly on her. Not too perfect, though. I couldn’t look better than Ruth, or I’d pay even worse for that.
The coffeemaker let out a loud gurgle, and I scribbled random numbers across my homework. Tonight was the last night. I wouldn’t have to be afraid after this. In no time at all, she would be dead and I would be far from here, alongside the boy I’d fallen in love with.
Tonight, I would finally learn his name.
Excitement buzzed through me, and I understood why he’d wanted to wait. The small, sweet pleasure of learning his name was so easy to focus on. It calmed me. It reassured me.
Ruth closed her laptop lid. I struggled not to tense as she rose, straightened her cashmere sweater over her slim hips, and walked into the kitchen. The clink of a mug. The clatter of the carafe sliding off the hotplate.
My nerves buzzed, adrenaline spiking. I’d slipped the poison into the carafe shortly after she’d started the coffeemaker. Her drink was already tainted. All she had to do was swallow a few sips.
I hoped I’d added enough. The minty smell had been so strong. I didn’t want her to catch a whiff of it.
Ruth reappeared, a steaming mug in her hand. She set the mug on the end table beside her armchair and sank down. Pulling her laptop onto her thighs, she opened it and tapped in her password. The spreadsheet reappeared, reflected by her glasses.
I hid my shaking hands in my lap as I pretended to read my textbook. She studied her document. Her hand lifted. She picked up the mug and lifted it to her lips.
Paused.
Looked at me.
“Rose, did you complete your food journal for the day?”
She refused to call me by my first name, always using my middle name instead.
“Yes, ma’am.” Did my voice sound too thin?
She lowered her coffee mug a few inches. “And you kept under a thousand calories?”
“Yes, ma’am.” My aching stomach confirmed it. She always found out when I lied. “Nine-hundred and seventy calories.”
“Good. I won’t have an obese whale in my house. Left on your own, you’d eat like a heifer with her first calf.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her attention returned to her laptop. She lifted the mug back to her lips and blew on the hot coffee. I forced my gaze to my textbook, watching from the corner of my eye.
“Rose,” she murmured, still focused on her spreadsheet. “Tell me, what are your plans for the future?”
Startled, I looked up. “The future?”
“Yes, stupid girl. Answer my question.”
“I—I’d like to go to veterinary school. They’re competitive, but my grades—”
“Veterinary school? Please. Who would put the life of their pet in your incompetent hands? Any idiot can pass a test, but even an animal doctor needs at least half a brain, which is far more than you possess.”
Not responding was disrespectful, so I forced out another “yes, ma’am.”
Drink the coffee.
“Real intelligence,” she continued, the steaming mug in her hand, “is more than memorization or basic math.”
Just drink it.
“It requires deductive ability. Logic. Reasoning. An innate cunning, if you will.”
One sip. Just one.
“You, however.” She lifted the mug to her mouth. “Your ability to reason your way through a problem is utterly crippled.”
My stomach dropped with a mix of terror and elation. I gripped the edge of the coffee table, terse, waiting. Less than a minute, he’d said.
“For example.” She took another large gulp. “When someone deceives you, you’re hopelessly dense.”
I stared at her face. The first symptom was numbness. How would she react?
Pushing her laptop aside, she stood, mug in hand, and crossed the spacious living room to stand beside me. Her cold brown eyes gazed down at me.
“Poison, as an example.”
My brain stuttered. My limbs seized.
“Did it occur to you that a deadly poison isn’t likely to smell like peppermint oil?”
Paralyzed, I stared up at her as something inside me turned as brittle as newly frozen ice.
“Did you even question it?” Laughing, she upended the coffee mug over my head. Scalding liquid splashed over me. “Did you test the so-called poison first? Did you use your brain at all?”
The mug swung down, shattering on top of my head. I jolted sideways—then her foot slammed into my side. As I fell over, she picked up my heavy calculus textbook, snapped the sturdy cover closed, and raised it over me.
“Stupid—traitorous—whore.”
The book hit me. Again. And again. I curled into a ball, arms shielding my head.
“After I took you in. Paid for the best education. Bought you a wardrobe of beautiful clothes. Made your ugly face passable. Fed you.”
The blows rained down. It didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt, hurt too much, hurt like I was dying.
“After all I’ve done for you, you’d try to kill me? Ungrateful bitch.”
She kept ranting but I couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t fight her. Couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t do anything but cower and shake as she beat me. On and on, the worst beating she’d ever given me. It wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t end, and my entire world became pain.
Slowly, distantly, I realized it was quiet.
No more blows. My thoughts were fuzzy, my stomach twisting. The taste of vomit in my mouth. Slowly, agonizingly, I turned my head.
Ruth was back in her armchair, tapping on her laptop, her hair smooth and expression undisturbed.
The One and Only Crystal Druid (The Guild Codex: Unveiled Book 1) Page 19