by A. K. Koonce
And that, I know, is a fate worse than death.
Chapter Twelve
“Finally, you’re back. I swear, your dog has been whining nonstop since you left, and—what’s wrong?”
I ignore Kira’s onslaught of words as I step into the room. All I want to do is drop face first onto the bed and sleep for an eternity.
“What are you wearing?”
I’ve barely looked at myself since Sialen untied me, but at her disgusted tone, I look down. A paper hospital sheet covers my body and beneath it, I’m bare.
“Oh, did you have a checkup? I had my examination yesterday,” she whispers. It clicks then that she wasn’t there when I woke. She was being tormented and she doesn’t seem nearly as fazed by it as I am. “It’s my third time. I’m usually treated well if I don’t go dragon crazy, but they say it’s for my protection and everyone around me. My mom used to say the same thing. That’s why she brought me here. It’s for my own good.”
She’s so fucking optimistic, it makes me crazy.
I can’t deal with her right now. I can’t deal with her annoying happy voice or the way it rakes down my nerves as she talks so calmly about something that shouldn’t be calm at all! The sharp sound of it is like metal clinking against glass. It reminds me too much of that stupid fucking room.
“Kira!” I snap. “Stop!”
Because I can’t stand to hear her chatter in that brainwashed way that everyone else does. She has no idea that the medical examinations aren’t examinations at all, but experimentations. That I was just cut through like a Christmas fucking turkey while she talks a thousand words a minute.
“Ouch, rude. I’m just trying to help.”
I take a step towards my bed. Styx is lying on it in his wolf form, staring at me with wide, worried eyes. My omega knows something is incredibly wrong. He can likely smell the dried blood on me, see it in my eyes.
I slip on top of the sheets, and he presses his furry body next to mine. My fingers grip into the roots of coarse fur, and I feel the prickling pain of tears behind my eyes that I refuse to let fall. I bury my face into my pillow and work on steadying my breathing, but it seems impossible.
I was fucking tortured.
How do you get back from that?
I like to think of myself as strong. I want to think that nothing and no one can break me, so it’s hard to admit that for a moment there, it felt like I would break. Like Dr. Hyde knew it, too.
“Em?”
I ignore Kira’s prodding until eventually she slips away into the silence. I’m grateful for it, but wary at the same time.
“They need me for a follow-up examination this afternoon,” she says quietly, and I hate that she’s going back willingly.
I want to scream and pull her beneath the safety of the blankets with me.
But I don’t. I don’t say a fucking word.
It isn’t until I hear the door click open and shut that I register my own harsh breathing.
The bed at my side dips, and I don’t need to open my eyes to know that it’s Rue.
“Ma chère,” he whispers in his thick, romantic accent. “You have been gone for so long. I could feel your pain. What happened?” His eyes burn over my body. “Ah,” he says, as if realization has hit him. Probably the hospital gown gave it away. “Who did this to you, ma chère?” His voice takes on a deathly tone to it that sends shivers down my spine.
“Hyde,” I reply. No one told me to keep it a secret. Why would I? The bastard sliced and diced me, practically.
The wounds may have healed, but the hurt’s still there. The violation of what they did to me is still there.
A stillness settles over the room that’s worrisome, and then Styx emits a sharp whine that has me looking up at Rue.
I’ve never seen him look so deadly before. For a moment, I can tell he’s an Ancient One. I even feel his emotions inside me. Searching for death, demanding it as fiercely as my Holy Lady of Darkness does. For a moment, I am reminded of the Reaper of Sekar legends. A shadowy figure, a spectral being that comes for retribution among the dying, cruel souls. Unlike Styx, who guides souls into the afterlife, the Reaper condemns the living to death.
That’s who Rue looks like. I see a flash of Sekar legends within him. In the cruelty of his bleeding eyes and the demanding tone seeking both revenge and justice. In this terrible world, those are one and the same, after all.
But Rue doesn’t say anything. He leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. His lips linger against my skin, my soul reaches out for his, and I grasp flashes of anger and murder. I want to ask what he plans to do, but I don’t get the opportunity.
“Sleep now, ma chère.” Something sweeps over me following his words. A bone-deep tiredness I suddenly feel, and it’s so easy to give in to it that I don’t argue when he lays me back against the pillows.
His command is a hypnotic thing that lowers my lids and calms my mind.
And it’s his words, Reaper words, that follow me into a deep sleep:
“I’ll take care of everything.”
It’s the last thing I hear as my mind slips away into a nightmare and a memory.
“There is magic in your blood.”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I feel it run from my open wounds and slide into glass containers.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“I’ll extract the belladonna from it first. All the possibilities of the world in the strands of your DNA . . .”
That vile voice makes me feel fear like I’ve never felt before in my life. I try to open my mouth and respond, but all that comes out is a terrible croak.
“I’ll need more samples after you recover, of course,” the slimy voice whispers. It’s like he’s talking both to himself and to me. Like I’m not strapped down to a table with wounds gaping open. He wants to see if my body will heal itself. Like vampires. Like shifters. But I am a witch, and I rely on my magic. Without it, I can do nothing for my injuries. I tried explaining, but he doesn’t listen.
He can’t.
He’s too far gone into his own madness.
“I’ll have to cross-mix your blood with the blood of others to see how compatible you are with different, weaker races. If we can’t see it in our lab, we’ll have to test you in other ways. The other ways are much more fun, I promise.” A hand touches my bare skin, and a pathetic little whimper comes out of my throat. I barely recognize the sound, barely recognize that it’s coming from me.
“Don’t worry, Miss Lucero,” the memory of the doctor’s voice whispers like the cold of death brushing across skin. And then I feel something. Metal and cold against my body, burrowing beneath my skin like an animal burrows into the earth. I scream, and through the piercing pain, all I hear is his toxic voice mingling with Rueren’s. “I’ll take care of everything . . .”
Chapter Thirteen
Days pass in quiet emptiness. No one has come to demand I attend classes, and no one has ordered me to kill again. I’m completely alone. Rue, Sia, and Styx give me space at my request.
Kira hasn’t returned.
My mind drifts to worried thoughts of her in between trying to process what happened to me.
My body was violated, my freedom taken. I was cut open and abused, and there is nothing worse in the world than feeling powerless to stop those bent on hurting you. All my life, I’ve been attacked for what I am, and I was always able to protect myself. The violence and hunting didn’t matter because I had the power. I’ve always been strong enough to protect myself. Things are different now, and I wonder if death would have been better than enduring this.
The nightmares that plague me each night are memories of what had happened. It’s going to happen again. Dr. Hyde is going to strap me down and poke and prod me until I’m nothing more than a husk of a witch. Or he has other ways that I can’t even begin to imagine.
I’ll be a shell.
Just like Sialen.
Tears sting my eyes, and instead of releasing them, I releas
e the anger building in my chest. The scream tears from my lips like wrath and rage, and I don’t want to contain either one of those feelings in this moment. Even as my arms jut out, and I fling the textbooks and papers on the nightstand to the floor.
The work goes tumbling to the floor with a wafting thud of crumpled pages and wide-open books.
But it isn’t enough.
The lamp on the table near my bed is cooling my palms in a matter of seconds. I arc the weight of it high above my head and slam it down with an angry crack as it shatters against the helpless little nightstand. Over and over and over again, I swing it like an axe. So many times that I’m just faintly aware of the heaviness of my breath, the wetness streaming down my cheeks, of the broken bits crumbling in my palms and making me bleed.
And still I feel like a fucking rat in their trap.
I was supposed to feel safe here.
I don’t feel safe. I feel imprisoned.
I feel fucking used.
I feel fucking violated by the things they haven’t yet done to me.
I fucking—
“Em,” a hesitant voice whispers.
It’s such a hesitant sound, I don’t recognize the tone against his lips. It’s out of place and foreign against his deep, tortured voice. It’s a beautiful gentleness I’ve never heard before.
I turn and lock eyes with the only other Sekar in the entire world. And the most emotionless asshole I’ve ever had to call my mentor.
Sialen’s eyes are like liquid silver as the moonlight shines into the intense concern highlighted in his tragic features. He stands in the darkness just in front of the closed door. He doesn’t come closer. He doesn’t reach for me.
He just stands there. Probably seeing me in all my messy glory for the first time in our screwed-up lives.
Of the three of them, he’s given me the most space. He’s left me to process.
And I don’t know why I hate him for that.
“I’m fine,” I cut out before the emotions in my throat can attack the simple words.
His hands push slowly into the pockets of his jeans. “You . . . you don’t have to lie to me.” He says it like he knows everything I’m feeling. I suppose he does. He was there with me, after all, and he’s been here longer than me. He has the fucked-up scars of our people to prove it. That’s what’s wrong with him. They experimented too hard, too much, and now he’s hardly a Sekar anymore.
Is that what's going to happen to me?
My heart cracks a little more. Every day it falls apart a bit more. A little here and a little there, and I don’t even know what the fuck is holding the little black thing together anymore.
“And you don’t have to pretend to be the mentor who actually gives a fuck. You can go. I’m fine.” I jut my chin up high, and it just makes me all the more aware of how wet my cheeks are.
A tremble wrecks through my hands and fingers before I can stop the reckless feeling. I throw the broken bits of lamp down and shove my arms across my chest hard, and then I’m holding myself.
I’m fucking holding myself together in this nightmare of an academy.
And he’s still here.
Waiting.
For what?
“Come here,” he says, rasping and graveling and sending an all-new shiver through my tense shoulders.
“Why?” It’s defensive. Of course it is. Why the fuck would I come to him? Why? Why? Why? That’s all I ask myself where this man is concerned. He didn't care about my feelings when I slid off that table, and he all but rushed me through the halls.
His pale hair hangs down into those deadly penetrating eyes of his. Even as he tilts his head at me and really studies me.
“You know, I’ve never had to fight someone so much on every single thing. And I kill people for a living, Em.” His gaze looks murderous right now. Still doesn’t give him the ballsy right to call me over like a puppy. Screw him! What kind of asstroll demands someone the way he does? What makes him think he has any kind of power whatsoever over me? “Emmera. Come. Here.” He drags those three little words out with violent affection that drills through me and settles coyly right between my thighs, tossing out all hateful logic on its way down.
I’m left without a thought in my head. And too much energy building low within me.
Then I do exactly as he commands.
My legs carry me to him, and all I can think is about how relaxed his features are. There’s no anger in him. No frustration. Soft concern is all that smooths his good looks.
Holy Lady of Death, why is he so beautiful?
And what in the ever-cock-loving fuck is wrong with me?
“What?” I finally have the good sense to ask. Just harsh enough to cover my breathlessness.
Almost.
I glare up at him. He gently stares down at me. It’s a standoff of wits and wills, and I will not bow to him.
He’s known that from day fucking one.
Whatever his angle is, it’s not going to break me. I. Won’t. Break.
His long fingers lift, and he trails along a strand of my inky hair so delicately, it barely even moves against his fingertips.
I don’t know why my breath catches when he does that.
Why? Why? Why?
I may never understand the energy that courses between us when we’re near.
“Let me hold you,” he finally whispers. He says it like a question and a demand all at the same time.
He’s not the brooding asshole in this moment.
He’s comforting.
It all slams through my chest like sirens and alarms.
This isn’t who he and I are. We’re not companions.
We’re the last two Sekars in the world.
And we’ll always hate each other.
“No,” I spit out.
“Emmera . . .” Searching silver eyes hold mine, and his fingers are still held between the locks of my hair, not caressing, not touching, not moving a centimeter forward until I say so.
And I won't. I won't say so.
He’s a tool bag. A total fuckhole.
Fuck him.
“Emmera, do you want me right now?”
The silence that presses after his words is a slicing knife that I feel in my chest.
In my lungs.
In my soul.
And then I do break.
“Yes.” The word barely breathes out on a hush of a sound.
But he hears it. I know he does.
Because every part of him breaks for every part of me that’s already broken. His dark eyebrows tense with compassion I never knew he was capable of. His lips part with a shaking sigh. And the strongest arms wrap ever so slowly around me.
Warm fingers glide over my ribs, my spine, the small of my back. Even as his hot breath kisses my ear. He’s everything. And he’s all around me.
And suddenly, the hurt doesn’t exist in me anymore.
It’s forgotten for a teetering moment.
It’s like a push and pull of feelings swirl inside of me. He takes. And he gives. It’s so much so that a soft glow illuminates the darkness between us. It’s golden, and it kisses my skin.
It’s him.
His runes flicker to life with the touch of my embrace. Carving lines and sharp angles blessed by the Lady herself burn bright along his flesh.
It’s an intense sight to see.
Almost as intense as the groan he hisses out against my throat. That delicious sound shivers across my skin, and I can't stop my fingers from skimming along his smooth biceps. I trace every lit line drawn over his flesh. It’s hot to the touch. Hot and addicting. Magic stings there at the tips of my fingertips. The simple touch alone seems to affect him.
His sharp breathing.
His tense muscles.
His . . . hard dick.
“Sia,” I whisper as he holds me.
His palm slips lower, and my hips instinctively shift against this.
Everything in us lights up together and I just know: this is why
the academy paired us up. They wanted me to fix whatever is broken inside this beautiful man.
And along the way, he’s fixed me with nothing more than the magic of finding someone who understands what it’s like to be so rare and lost all at the same time. I just never ever realized it until now.
“Sialen,” I say on more of a sigh than a request.
The breath in his lungs fans across my collarbone as his nose gently grazes down the curve of my neck, and he breathes me in in the slowest savory way. Nerves fire through me, and I angle my throat for him, but he follows the line of my jaw.
He follows the soft curve of my features so far.
That his mouth lingers just above mine.
As he stares down on me with hooded, questioning eyes.
The warmth of magic alights our features with soft shadows and a mixture of uncertain lust.
It’s lust.
That’s all it is.
Nothing more.
Even if I do want it more than I want to escape this fucking academy.
I want . . . I want . . .
His lips brush ever so softly against mine.
“I want you.” The plea slips out like a cry in the dark.
He gives into that cry the moment I say it. He gives in just like I do. We do it in a way that makes me think our entire lives were building up just to bring us together in a mess of crashing chaos.
Soft lips slam hard against mine, and the pounding of his boots against the floor walks me back until my shoulders collide with the wall. His kiss is rough and soothing all at the same time. Every breath I breathe of him is like finding air for the first time in my gasping existence. It’s realizing I’ve never truly breathed easy until now.
And I never want it to end.
Steady fingers drag down my collar bone. They ghost over the thin layer of my shirt, and I can’t stop the shudder that races through me from the mere thought of his hand against my skin. My thrumming heartbeat counts the lost seconds as he steals my mind away to blissful oblivion with the simple strokes of his tongue.
Then his fingers stop firmly against the button of my jeans, and reality all comes flooding back to me. The kiss slows. Cold hesitancy settles in where heat once burned.
