by JA Wren
He tried to muffle it, but Rayna caught his distinctive chuckles, which she had to admit was better than the wounded puppy vibe he’d been throwing off a moment ago. They’d shared a hot—well, she assumed hot—night together, whether she could remember it or not, so really this shouldn’t be so bad.
Except it was because peeing in front of someone else was definitely reserved for spouses and maybe siblings. Hell, she didn’t even think she’d ever peed in front of Kally, and they shared everything.
She turned to glare at Asher, his lips clamped together to hide his laughter. “Hey, it’s really not that funny,” she huffed.
But he grinned harder, that one dimple shining through clearer than ever. Damn he was gorgeous. Best looking guy she’d ever met, for sure, but it was deeper than that. Something radiated from within, sparkling in his eyes. Which, if she looked closer, she swore flecks of copper had threaded through the dark chocolate brown.
She couldn’t do this. It was way too personal and crossed a boundary she wasn’t ready to breach. “You know what? Never mind. I’ll just hold it. Until we can get rid of this freaking glowy string.”
“I told you,” he said, low and solemn. “You’re the only one capable of taking it off.”
Great.
Because she had no clue how to do that. And apparently no one in this fancy academy knew either. They had living statues and spelled rooms that demanded the truth, but they were bested by a tiny little thread tying two people together. Somehow that was too difficult for anyone to figure out.
Unless—
Rayna tapped on her crystal necklace. “Tink? You in there?”
Nothing happened. No glow. No sparks. No hum buzzing from the pendant into her sternum like it had when she’d met the Omenology Professor.
Asher sighed. “She won’t know.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to ask, now would it?”
His features hardened. “You willing to trust her, even if she does offer up a suggestion?”
Good point. But she’d helped them get into the academy when Hale had denied her access in the first place. Rayna patted the pendant again, and this time little ripples of lightning flashed inside the raw crystal. “Tink?”
She poked her flamy head out, then flew right up to Rayna’s face and folded itty bitty hands over her nose. Like a kid waiting for dinner, bored at the table, she rested her rounded chin on top of her hands. Eyes drowsy, she’d obviously been sleeping and wasn’t too pleased about being woken.
“Uh.” Rayna held up her bound wrist. “Any clue how to get this off?”
She could’ve sworn the Wisp rolled her eyes, then nodded.
“Really?”
“Gods, here it comes,” Asher mumbled.
As though he hadn’t spoken, Tink flew to Rayna’s wrist, studied the string, then touched a tiny hand to it. Rayna held her breath, waiting for the string to fall away. Melt. Disintegrate. She’d accept a mini explosion at this point, as long as it got the thing off of her.
But nothing happened.
The Wisp took off, spinning through the room with a blazing trail of crimson light, then came back to Rayna’s wrist. She zipped around it until thick bands of intense, red glow circled the string. She flew faster, turning into a blurry mini-inferno.
Hope surged within Rayna. This had to be it.
Finally, she’d be free.
Able to pee by her damn self without a sexy audience.
Except Tink slowed, the trail of light behind her growing wobbly. Then she stopped altogether. Her tiny body sagged, barely able to hold herself up, let alone fly in crazy-fast rings.
Rayna scooped her up with her free hand and the little Wisp curled up in her palm, a tight ball of fading light. Her glow was faint, showing more of her fairy-like body than before, revealing near-transparent wings with glittering veins.
Rayna’s eyes burned with the threat of tears. “Shit, I’m sorry, Tink.”
“She’ll be fine.”
Rayna gaped at Asher. “That’s what you said earlier when she nearly died in that ice wall thing.”
“And I was right, wasn’t I?” He crossed massive arms over his chest, dragging her hand along. With a frown, he relaxed his arms so she wasn’t forced to hold hers awkwardly while he practically sulked. “Besides, she didn’t almost die. You saved her.”
She wasn’t convinced about that, but she held the Wisp closer to Asher, right under his nose so her fingers almost brushed his lips. “And now look what I’ve done.”
“You asked a question, she was the one who decided to go all glowy on the Moon Thread.”
“Exactly. Like you said. I asked—” She broke off as Tink’s glow started returning and the little Wisp sat up. “Tink?”
The Wisp fluttered into the air, wavered between Rayna and Asher, but slowly made her way back into her necklace. It blazed to life for a second before the crystal dimmed back to its inert state.
“Guess she’s out of ideas.”
Rayna glared at Asher. “Fine. Let’s do this, before my bladder bursts. Or I put Tink in any more danger just so I don’t have to embarrass myself. Apparently, you’ll be watching me pee after all.”
“I won’t look, if it makes you feel better.”
“Not really, but I’d still appreciate it.”
She grumbled all the way to the bathroom, then turned the water on while he gave her his back, bending his arm at an angle that looked super uncomfortable so she could maneuver better. Rayna sat, wishing her life hadn’t led her to this almost-painfully embarrassing moment.
Worst of all, she was too nervous to pee, her bladder freezing despite being full.
Because of course things had to be more difficult to put her at peak levels of shame.
“Could you talk?” she asked, voice as soft and hesitant as she felt, desperate for some kind of distraction. “So I don’t die of embarrassment?”
A beat of silence filled the bathroom before he asked, “What do you want me to talk about?” There was a hint of amusement in his voice, but not mocking.
Thank God.
She might’ve died right on the spot if there’d been even a trace of mockery. She almost hoped he’d have his turn at this, just so she wasn’t the only one.
“Anything. I know you’re sworn to secrecy about me, but you can still tell me stuff about you, right? Your life. Family.” She bit the inside of her cheek, thinking about how his skin had cracked and literal flames had burst from him. “Who you are.”
What you are.
She refrained from asking the last one, though it felt like the most important question of all.
“Okay,” he murmured, but then took forever before he continued. “I had two brothers once. Both younger. Ember was our middle brother, always the cautious one, always thinking through everything before he did anything. He bottled his emotions like he was saving them for a rainy day, locking them up where no one could get to them. And Khol.”
Asher laughed, a rich sound Rayna wanted to hear every day for the rest of her life.
“He was the opposite. Khol wore his heart on his sleeve, everything out in the open for the world to see, always jumping into things like he’d spontaneously combust if he didn’t. A literal hothead.” Asher’s head tipped to the side, his voice going low. “They were like me, you see.”
He paused a moment, and Rayna got the idea. “You mean fire sprouted from them, too.”
He nodded. “You might’ve guessed I‘m not entirely human. The simplest answer is I’m a shapeshifter.”
“Shapeshifter?” Rayna mumbled, repeating the word to hear how it sounded leaving her mouth. This was all so foreign to her. “Like a werewolf?”
Asher laughed. “Basically. Except I’m a phoenix. Firebird. Whatever you want to call it.”
She’d finished peeing, thank God, but she’d finally gotten him talking and didn’t want him to stop, too eager for more details. Maybe he’d slip up and drop some hints about her. “So, what does that mean, exactly?”
<
br /> “My father is Apollo, Olympian god of the sun.”
Rayna sucked in a hard breath. God of the sun? Her instinct was disbelief, but after the day’s events and given where they were, nothing seemed impossible anymore. Not to mention the fact they’d told her she was the goddess of night’s daughter.
Day and night.
Something about that realization sent a queasy wave through her stomach, her throat tightening again like it had earlier.
Asher shifted his weight from one foot to the other and scratched the back of his head like he was suddenly uneasy. “Apollo created me and my brothers, and gifted us with immortality, like the gods. But we’re different from them. He crafted us into shifters with the ability to transform into giant, fiery birds. I can either fully shift, or partially shift—”
“You mean the wings you sprouted to get us out of the labyrinth?” she asked, interrupting to make sure she understood all this.
“Yes. It’s harder than a full shift, believe it or not, but possible.” He rolled his shoulders, like speaking of his wings made them want to pop out from between his shoulder blades. She hoped not. The confines of the compact bathroom would never hold all that fire and she didn’t feel like being roasted alive.
“Or I can manipulate fire. Any kind of heat, really. Like I did with the sword.”
She fidgeted, then stepped passed him to wash her hands at the basin. “And how does that work?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, the ones she wanted to explore to find where the fires erupted from. “How do you know how to breathe? You just—do.”
“But that’s a human body function. Bursting into flames isn’t exactly a human thing. Or a bird thing. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a feathered friend spew flames.”
He ran a hand over his dark hair, ducking his head so she couldn’t meet his eyes. “It started with my father. Sun god, remember? He gave us these abilities because he wanted my brothers and me as his own personal weapons. But when we defied him, refused to follow orders, he punished us. Cursed us to die every one hundred years by literally exploding into flames, then rising from our own ashes to live again and repeat the cycle.”
That sounded awful. Painful on a level she couldn’t even comprehend.
“It didn’t exactly have the desired effect on us, however.”
She raised her brows. “Why?”
He clenched his jaw tighter, muscles working as he gnashed his teeth. “Because being used as a weapon for someone else’s games—someone else’s war—is torture. Having your will stripped, forced to do things you loathe, is the worst fate anyone could ever be handed.”
Rayna swallowed the lump in her throat, sympathy flooding her. She didn’t know what to say, or how to soothe him, if that was even possible. And she was too shaken to even reach out and touch him. Besides, he was lost in his own thoughts, held firm by invisible memories.
“When we continued to defy him, Apollo killed my brothers—permanently since he’s the only one who could end our lives forever, without the chance to rise again. He hoped it might teach me a lesson, force me to do as he said.”
“Did you?” she whispered. She wouldn’t think less of him if he had, but she wanted—needed—to know the truth.
Asher nodded. “For a time,” he said, voice low and eyes staring at anything other than her. “Until I met someone. See, a goddess took pity on me. I was lonely without my brothers, so she sent one of her daughters to spend eternity with me, destined to never be parted from me.”
“The woman didn’t get a vote?” she mumbled, unable to keep the judgy hint from her tone.
Asher smiled, the tension falling from him. “We are two halves of one whole. Bound by fate or destiny, whatever you want to call it. Soulmates perfectly suited for each other. Our love transcends choice.”
Flowery words from someone who could literally wield a sword made of flames, but the dreamy look on his face told her he meant every sentiment. She was a little unsure about this woman being forced into an arrangement with him, but she couldn’t doubt his love for her.
We are two halves of one whole.
Are. Not were.
A pang of jealousy twinged in her gut, which was totally absurd.
She didn’t even know where this woman was—who she was—and yet she was jealous? For all Rayna knew, she’d died a painful death. Not something anyone would be jealous of. She wanted to ask, to demand to know why he’d been naked in bed with her that morning, giving her scorching kisses all day when he had a soulmate destined to spend eternity with him.
She was pretty sure eternity hadn’t quite ended just yet. Which made him distinctly unavailable.
Much to her disappointment.
With a grunt that erased the love shimmering in his eyes, he switched gears. “Of course, that pissed Apollo off even more. Living and dying alone for all eternity was meant as a torment, not to give me lifetimes of love and happiness with my soulmate.” His face darkened, lines of tension appearing around his eyes. “So, he punished me further.”
The basin creaked. Rayna glanced down to find Asher clenching his fits so hard she worried he’d break the porcelain. She swore there were fine cracks that hadn’t been there a second ago spearing through the delicate glaze coating.
“Part of it,” he said through gritted teeth, “was condemning me to one thousand years of solitude, my soulmate torn from my side—” He broke off with a weird sound, like he swallowed back words so they didn’t spill out, perhaps something too painful to say aloud. “I was shackled inside a volcano. Trapped deep below the ocean water. Still cursed to die every century, with the molten fires within engulfing me, seeping into every pore so it coursed through my veins. Then I’d come back to life and do it all over again.”
He closed his eyes, lines crinkling around his mouth. “I know that might be hard to believe, but it’s the truth. I can retell it inside Hale’s office if you’d like.”
Where a lie couldn’t be uttered. Where no truth was hidden.
She was tempted to drag him back there and interrogate him, but right then she felt too bad for him. It took a moment before she could say a word, her voice struggling to work its way around her dry tongue. “I believe you.”
Asher opened his eyes and turned to give her the faintest smile possible. “You do?”
She nodded. “I saw you with that giant fiery sword, remember? Let alone everything else I’ve witnessed today.”
His dark eyes lit up, not quite the coppery flecks, but a brightened expression after the haunted look from a moment ago.
“But how are you standing here now?” she asked, indicating the bathroom and everything beyond it. “I mean, I’m happy you’re not still suffering inside a volcano in the depths of the ocean, but how did you escape?”
“I didn’t.” His eyes blazed with something she couldn’t name. “A thousand years passed, and my prison sentence came to a fiery end.”
Rayna frowned, about to launch into her next questions when a knock on the door stopped her.
Nineteen
“Bad news,” Evelyn said the moment Rayna swung the door open. “There was a little, uh…hiccup while retrieving your things from your apartment.”
“What kind of hiccup?” Asher asked, voice harder than ever.
Evelyn waved her hand through the air, her megawatt smile firmly in place despite the tension in her shoulders. “Nothing you need to worry about right now. But it does leave you minus a change of clothes and such.”
She held out a shopping bag and shook it. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of buying you an outfit until your own stuff arrives. Figured it’d be better than you and your plus-one over here traipsing around bound and bloodied.” She laughed, because, sure. That was hilarious. “Call it a ‘welcome to Labyrinth Academy’ gift.”
Stunned by the thoughtful gesture, Rayna took the bag without a word. She was grateful, because yeah, the Siren had a very good point about walking around with bloodstained and burn
ed clothes.
But what the hell had happened at her apartment?
More of those wolf things, or something even worse?
And, more importantly, was she safer within the academy walls?
Or were these incidents because of the academy? Because she’d accepted the invitation and stepped into the labyrinth. Taken part in the trials.
Evelyn darted a quick glance at Asher, then settled back on her, almost hesitant now where she’d been overly confident before. She brushed her hair behind her ear, her smile turning coy. “I hope you like it. With your gorgeous red hair and fair skin, I went with a goth-glam style that should look amazing on you.” She dipped her head, her iridescent gray gaze travelling up Rayna’s legs. “I threw in a pair of over-the-knee socks since they look so cute on you.”
Was she—no, couldn’t be. Rayna had to be imagining it.
She smiled back, trying to shake off the feeling of Asher staring at her.
Okay, he totally was.
The heat of it climbed up her spine and over her neck, making her acutely aware of his arm brushing close to hers, stirring the air between them, but not quite enough to touch. She wished he’d step closer. Press them skin to overheated skin.
But she had to be imagining the tension coiling around the three of them. Probably due to her crazy day. Her imagination was in hyper-drive, seeing things that weren’t there. Had to be it. “Thank you. That was really sweet of you.”
While Evelyn’s eyes sparkled brighter, practically glittering, Asher’s gaze stayed on Rayna, heavy as a bowling ball wedged on her chest.
Not that she’d ever had a bowling ball on her chest. That would be plain old weird. Even weirder than the last twenty-four hours, or the way Evelyn was smiling at her.
“You’re welcome,” the Siren chirped. “I also got you some other goodies you may need, since you’ll want to make the best first impression you can at breakfast tomorrow morning. You’re the new girl everyone will be talking about. And what with your lineage and all, everyone will want a piece of you.”
That…didn’t sound good.
Her expression must have shown her true feelings because Evelyn reached out and took her free hand, cradling it between her palms. Asher stepped closer, invading Rayna’s space along with the Siren, and she couldn’t help feeling crowded. Practically sandwiched between them.