THE ELECTRIC HEIR

by Lee, Victoria

  “That’s . . .”

  “That’s Lehrer,” Dara finished, opening his eyes again and tossing Leo a self-deprecating look. “Nothing new there. But then Lehrer canceled a dinner reservation he’d made for us—I never got to spend time with him, you understand, not proper time where we could actually . . . talk, instead of lessons, or . . . and he canceled it. To meet Álvaro.”

  “Doesn’t sound like that’s Álvaro’s fault.”

  “Oh, none of this was Álvaro’s fault. Maybe you haven’t realized it yet, but I’m not a very good person.”

  Leo didn’t say anything to that, just kept watching Dara until Dara continued.

  “Lehrer started bringing Álvaro to our meetings. Our private lessons. And—I’ve had a lot of time to think about why that bothered me as much as it did. I’ve pretty much decided it’s because I was afraid of what Álvaro might notice between me and Lehrer. That he might take one look and realize that I was . . .”

  Desperate.

  Only that was Lehrer’s word. Dara refused to own it.

  Not anymore.

  “I thought Álvaro would realize what Lehrer did to me. I was so self-conscious of everything that happened in that room. I hated Álvaro for witnessing it. I hated him for stealing Lehrer’s affection from me. I hated him for adoring Lehrer so completely—for trusting him more than he’d ever trust me.”

  “It was a difficult situation.”

  Dara laughed bitterly. “Well. What made it worse, of course, was that I was madly in love with Álvaro from the moment I met him.”

  Leo arched a brow.

  “Not at first sight the way you’re thinking,” Dara said before Leo could get worse ideas. “I used to have telepathy. That was my presenting power. So from the moment I was in Noam’s mind, I knew him—and it didn’t take long until I knew him better than anyone else could ever hope to. Better than he knew himself, in some ways; most people have shockingly poor insight into their own thoughts and desires.”

  “Oh,” Leo said, but it was in a tone that made Dara think he understood, perhaps, what Dara meant.

  How overwhelming it had been to encounter a mind like that.

  Noam had been equal parts fascinating and infuriating—brilliant but stubborn, passionate but misguided, full of so much emotion and intensity and vibrance that it . . . scared Dara.

  Still did sometimes.

  He’d wanted so badly to be the subject of all that fire. For Noam to take the fervor he had for philosophy and politics and focus it on Dara instead.

  Even if it terrified him.

  Dara pushed one corner of his mouth up, then glanced back to Noam, who hadn’t moved since Leo got here. Dara wanted to slip onto his knees at the edge of Noam’s bed and press Noam’s hand between his, kiss his motionless fingers.

  “Besides,” Dara said, “he didn’t see me the way other people did.”

  And that had been worth more to Dara than anything else life had given him.

  When Leo left, Dara got up out of the chair and shifted to sit on the edge of the bed by Noam instead. Noam squirmed in his sleep, his face twisting up in a mask of discomfort. Dara pulled one of those pills out from the bottle under the bed and parted Noam’s lips with his fingers, tossed it toward the back of his tongue. Held Noam’s jaw shut until he swallowed.

  Then he pushed the covers down and settled on his side, curled in close against Noam—close enough to lend Noam his heat. Dara tipped their brows together and let their noses brush, Dara’s hand a knot against Noam’s chest.

  “Be okay,” he pleaded, demanded.

  He wished more than anything that he could force Noam to obey.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  NOAM

  The pain veined through him like thousands of threads drawn taut. And for a moment Noam was suspended in space, trapped somewhere white and gauzy—and he couldn’t muster the energy to remember where he was, if he ever got out of that apartment or if this was the limbo between life and death, if he still lay on Lehrer’s living room floor with his blood seeping into the carpet.

  Then he blinked open heavy eyelids, and a dim room swam into view.

  He was under a thin sheet, the bed beneath him unfamiliar and dull early-morning light streaming in from the window. There was a chair drawn up near Noam’s knees, and Dara was curled up in it, his head tucked in against his elbow and his lips parted in uneasy sleep.

  Noam stared at him for a moment, mind slow to piece together what was happening.

  Then he remembered.

  “Dara,” he said. It came out thin and wispy, barely audible. He swallowed against a gritty throat and tried again. “Dara.”

  Dara opened his eyes.

  And then Dara pushed himself upright, dragging that chair closer to the edge of the bed and leaning forward to grasp Noam’s wrist with one hand. “Noam,” he breathed out, wide eyed and close enough Noam could count the cinnamon-dust freckles on his nose. “How are you feeling?”

  Noam considered the question. “Like shit.”

  “That sounds right,” Dara said, a tremulous smile crossing his lips. “You were—we were all worried about you. You were out for a while.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and Ames. Leo. Holloway too.”

  Something twinged in the back of his mind, a realization that made it all the way to the tip of Noam’s tongue before he forgot what he’d been about to say. “Ugh,” he groaned, dragging up a hand to press its heel to his brow.

  “You’re on a lot of narcotics,” Dara said. “It’ll take a while for that to wear off. Or—is it . . . do you need more?”

  Noam shook his head. “I’m good. But . . . thanks.”

  Dara caught Noam’s hand as he lowered it from his head, lacing their fingers together atop the bed. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said. “But if you—if you want to, I . . . you know I’ll understand.”

  Noam did know that. Even if he wished it weren’t true.

  It was starting to hurt, staying propped up on his elbow like this. His gaze drifted down to that wrist, which had been bandaged up in some kind of splint. He vaguely remembered Lehrer breaking that wrist.

  Not breaking. Crushing.

  He settled himself back down again, a low moan escaping from between clenched teeth. Dara’s hand tightened on his.

  “I didn’t fuck him,” Noam said, once he was sure he could speak without vomiting from the pain. “For the record.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” Dara’s words were low and cautious, like he thought Noam might flinch if he spoke too loud. “But . . . I’m glad. Not for my own sake, but—”

  He didn’t finish that sentence, but he didn’t need to. They understood each other.

  “You had a lot of injuries,” Dara said, when it became clear Noam wasn’t going to say anything else. “The broken ribs and wrist—a burst spleen. Punctured lung too. Holloway’s physician came and fixed you up, mostly. We’re hoping Bethany will come over this afternoon to heal the rest. Holloway’s working on making that happen without Lehrer wising up.”

  “Good,” Noam said, a little breathlessly now; the pain was rising up faster as the dull weight of the opiates began to fade.

  “I was able to be useful for once, you know,” Dara told him. “I gave you a blood transfusion. I’m type O negative—a universal donor . . . in fact, it was the one time my not being a witching anymore will ever come in handy, I suspect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Witchings can’t donate blood to baselines, of course—the infection risk—but we can’t donate to each other either.” Dara cocked a brow. “As long as the other witching’s blood stays in your system, you can use their magic. People have died because a recipient was draining their magic and they didn’t realize it.”

  A sudden hollow feeling bloomed in Noam’s chest. “They go fevermad?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Shit. Shit.

  Noam shoved himself uprig
ht again, ignoring the way the room pitched as vertigo swam black into his vision. Suddenly he found it impossible to catch his breath, ruined lung straining against his bandaged ribs.

  “What is it?” Dara asked, already on his feet. “Are you—should I get someone?”

  God, Noam was such—such a fucking idiot, how could he have . . . he . . .

  Noam fixed Dara in his gaze and made himself just . . . say it. “Dara. Lehrer’s fevermad. He’s . . . he’s fevermad, I told you. I—I was right, and he—”

  Dara was looking at him with those ink-black eyes, confusion still traced in his expression. Noam’s stomach pitched.

  “I gave him a blood transfusion.”

  “You what?”

  Noam swallowed hard. “I know. I know, it . . . terrible fucking idea, it—”

  “When?”

  “Right after the assassination attempt. I—I’m—it was stupid, I never should have done it, and I regretted it immediately afterward, but now. He.”

  “Shit,” Dara said on a thin exhale. He tangled a hand up in his hair and spun on his heel, pacing toward the dresser and back again. “Shit, Noam.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s probably draining your magic as we speak. How are you supposed to fight him when he can end you, when he can just—just burn you out in a single—”

  “I don’t think he can,” Noam said. “In . . . yesterday, at his apartment, he said he was going to kill me. But he didn’t try that. Not that I could tell, anyway, and—”

  “Not that you could tell being the operative phrase, Noam!”

  Dara was right. Lehrer was dragging this out on purpose. There was no good reason to think he wasn’t capable of snuffing Noam out like a quenched candle with a single massive burst of magic. Just because he hadn’t tried it last night didn’t mean he wouldn’t try it in the future.

  And—and, in all likelihood, that was what Lehrer had done to Dara as well. He’d gotten his hands on Dara’s blood somehow—Dara was O negative; Dara’s dynamics had been strong enough to rival Lehrer’s—and he must have been injecting himself with Dara’s blood for months. Perhaps even years. Lehrer had drained Dara’s magic bit by bit until all that was left was a rotting husk, days from death.

  “Fuck.”

  “Correct,” said Dara, and he dropped his hand from his hair at last. “God. Anything else you want to share, while we’re at it?”

  Guilt twisted like a poisonous vine through Noam’s guts, tangling around his still-bruised throat.

  “Lehrer’s immune to the vaccine.”

  Dara’s lips drew into a thin line. “Are you serious, Álvaro?”

  “I didn’t see the point in . . . listen, okay, you’re right. I should have told you. But let’s not argue about that right now, okay?”

  For a second Dara looked like he was gonna blow right past that anyway, but after a beat he sighed and said: “Fine. Fine . . . so, that’s it, then. It’s over.”

  Noam didn’t know what to say to that.

  He didn’t have any better ideas.

  Except . . .

  “What if he couldn’t drain my magic?”

  Dara huffed in exasperation. “Yes, that would obviously be ideal, but—”

  “Suppressants.”

  Dara’s words dropped off midsentence. He was still breathing too fast, shoulders trembling as they rose and fell, but he sat down in the chair again with a heavy drop. “Suppressants.”

  “One vial for me, one for Lehrer. We go to the Independence Day thing; we get Lehrer to spend a lot of magic at once somehow. And then before he can draw on my magic to recuperate, I inject myself with suppressant. He’ll have to suffer through it on his own. He’ll be weak. Fevermad.”

  “And then . . .” Dara grinned as the realization dawned. “We inject him. His body won’t be able to fight the suppressant off if he’s already—”

  “Exactly.”

  It was a shitty plan, and both of them knew it. But it was better than the alternative.

  Neither Noam nor Dara could let Lehrer walk away from this.

  A knock came at the door.

  “Come in,” Dara said, twisting round in his seat just as Holloway stepped into the room.

  Holloway’s gaze fell to Noam first. “You’re awake.”

  “Barely.” Noam tried to smile, but it quickly became a grimace when he tried to push himself upright again.

  “Careful,” Holloway said. “Don’t overdo it. Even aside from the physical injuries, you came here dangerously close to fevermadness. You need rest.”

  “Thank you,” Noam said sincerely. “For letting us stay here. For . . . everything.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  Dara pulled his legs up onto the seat cushion and turned more fully in his chair to face Holloway. “Have you found a hotel?”

  “Still a work in progress, I’m afraid,” said Holloway. “Temporarily abandoned, as I’ve arranged for your friend Miss Glennis to meet us here and heal the rest of Mr. Álvaro’s injuries.”

  “Bethany,” Dara said with a clear note of relief. “That’s good—she’ll know what to do. She always . . .”

  He kept going, elaborating on some of Bethany’s more impressive healing feats, but something inside Noam had gone suddenly, horribly still.

  Holloway.

  He’s been mine from the beginning.

  Noam had forgotten—that memory buried under the weight of everything else that happened last night, driven from his mind by pain and terror. It emerged now, horrible and fully formed, and Noam jerked his gaze away from Holloway’s face so he wouldn’t be tempted to stare.

  Fuck.

  Of all the safe houses they could’ve fled to, of course they chose this one. Of course they’d hidden themselves away with Lehrer’s third goddamn spy.

  Dara was still talking, an easy smile on his lips—relieved that Noam was awake, that Holloway had kept them safe, that they’d figured out a way around Lehrer’s secret strengths.

  What if Dara gave it all away? Holloway already knew about the Independence Day plan, but he still believed that plot involved the vaccine. If Dara told him the new order of events, it really would be over.

  If Lehrer wasn’t halfway here already.

  “Dara,” Noam croaked.

  Dara didn’t hear him at first, kept talking to Holloway—they were on the subject of breakfast now, Dara listing a shockingly long number of dishes he was apparently intending to force-feed Noam—

  “Dara,” Noam said again. This time Dara’s head swung round to look at him. Noam hated seeing the way worry etched the lines of his face so instantly, as if Noam were just . . . that, now. Something to coddle and protect.

  A burden.

  “Are you okay?” Dara asked, salt in the wound.

  “No,” Noam said. “Actually, I’m starting to feel kind of . . . dizzy, and I think I might try and . . . sleep. Some.”

  “Oh!” Dara was on his feet a beat later, glancing toward Holloway like waiting for his permission to leave. “Okay. We can—we’ll leave you be, then.”

  Noam caught Dara’s wrist. “No. Stay with me. Just . . . for a little while.”

  Dara flinched, and guilt immediately rose up dark in Noam’s stomach. God. He kept forgetting Dara hated being grabbed like that.

  He let go. “Sorry.”

  But before Dara could respond, there was another knock on the bedroom door. Panic surged up into Noam’s mouth, sharp and briny—Lehrer, what if it was Lehrer?—but when Holloway opened the door, it was Ames and Bethany on the other side.

  Bethany was pink-cheeked and wearing a dress that looked like she’d retrieved it—wrinkled—from her bedroom floor. She was across the room and at Noam’s side almost immediately, blonde hair fraying loose around her face, like some kind of disorganized mad scientist.

  Noam grinned despite himself. “You made it.”

  “Barely.” She made a face. “I had to make myself sick to get out of Swensson’s class. It was dis
gusting.”

  “Wait,” Noam said, holding up a hand. “Does this mean the time you fainted during basic and conveniently didn’t have to go out with the rest of us on that QZ obstacle course was—”

  “Turns out healing magic’s more useful than people give it credit for,” Bethany said with a crooked smile. “Now lie still—I have to concentrate.”

  Holloway politely loaned them some privacy while Bethany worked. After his footsteps had retreated down the hall, Noam gritted his teeth against the pain—Bethany was focused on knitting together his fractured ribs, which hurt like a motherfucker—and waved for Ames to shut the door.

  “We gotta get out of here,” he managed to choke out once Ames had turned the latch.

  “Tell me about it,” Ames said. “Honestly, it’s shocking Lehrer hasn’t sent someone to check Holloway’s house—he knows Holloway’s resistance. This is like the most obvious place in the world we could have gone.”

  Bethany moved on to his spleen, and that agony was one Noam felt deep and visceral, a broken sound ripping itself out of his chest as he twisted under the light press of Bethany’s hands. “Sorry,” she said, and Noam rubbed the sweat from his face with the flat of his palm.

  “Yeah,” he said, a little breathlessly now. “Well, Lehrer hasn’t checked for a reason. He knows we’re here already.”

  Dara and Bethany exchanged looks, Bethany’s magic still weaving through Noam’s gut.

  “Lehrer told me. While we were fighting. He told me Holloway’s . . . he told me Holloway’s a spy.”

  Ames drew closer, the color drained from her face. “Did he mean—I mean, Lehrer thinks he owns a lot of people, but—”

  “Do you really wanna take that risk?”

  “I should have guessed,” Dara said, voice gone tight. “I should have—of course. Because why didn’t Lehrer kill Holloway the second he realized? Or at least put him under persuasion—stupid. We were so stupid to think—”