Reckless Cruel Heirs

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “Is there anyone else around?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s a fact that our choice of partner is limited.”

  A sneer twisted his lips. “We didn’t have to kiss at all. It isn’t like we’ve been stranded in the Scourge for years and are slaves to our baser needs.” He stalked toward me, then threaded his hand through my hair, tipping my face back up toward his. “Besides, I didn’t kiss you because you were my only choice, Amara. I kissed you because when you died, I wanted to die, too.”

  I covered his hand with mine. “That’s called guilt.”

  His eyes shone darkly. “I have never wanted to follow in the footsteps of the people I’ve killed.”

  I knew Remo wasn’t angelic, but hearing him admit to having ended lives made me remember just how ruthless he was.

  “When that cage let me out, I told myself that if you came back, I’d confess a whole bunch of things to you. Like how, ever since that dile stung you, I haven’t been able to get you out of my damn head.”

  My eyebrows squished together. “I was twelve!”

  His thumb stroked my bottom lip. “I know.”

  “You’ve . . . not hated me for five years?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation.

  “That’s ludicrous. You’ve never shown an ounce of interest in me. Or kindness, for that matter.”

  “I hunted and killed the dile that stung you.”

  Okay . . . I dragged his hand off my mouth, because his caresses were distracting, then folded my arms. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been a first-class bagwa to me. You told the entire school a drop of my blood would kill them if it got on their skin!”

  “I was jealous. Guys were starting to notice you. They were starting to talk about you and your ridiculously gorgeous mouth and eyes, and it was the only way I found to efficiently detract them from buzzing around you. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know how to deal with my attraction.”

  My eyes turned as round as the shell rafts that bobbed atop the Glades. “You destroyed my reputation because you liked me?”

  “Yes.” He linked his fingers together and cupped the back of his head, drawing his elbows close as though this were the most painful conversation he’d ever had. “Skies, Amara, I’m so fucking sorry. If I could go back in time and not act like a world-class, insecure jackass, I would. In a heartbeat, I would.”

  “Here I thought I was just loathed by the entire kingdom.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  A beat passed, its silence awkward and loud. “Is it also the reason my personal guards rotate so often and aren’t allowed to speak to me?”

  “No.” His lids reeled up. “That’s so they pay attention. I don’t want them distracted. Distractions costs lives. And your life, it’s . . .” His Adam’s apple was so jagged it seemed about ready to cleave through his neck. “It’s important.”

  “No more than anyone else’s.”

  His emerald gaze grabbed me, held me. “One of the scenes I saw in the elevator back in the second cell was your mother crying.”

  “That’s a . . . rare occurrence.” I wasn’t even sure I’d ever seen her cry.

  He disconnected his fingers from the back of his skull and let his arms fall back to his sides. “She’d just had another miscarriage.”

  “She had many before I stuck around.”

  “Your parents wouldn’t survive losing you, Amara.”

  I bit my lip. People survived insurmountable grief. As long as my parents had each other—

  “I wouldn’t either,” he murmured.

  “That’s just your guilt over tossing me off the cupola rearing up.”

  His pupils pulsed.

  I made the spear gun reappear, then held it out in front of him. “Here. You’re surely better at shooting things than I am.”

  “Amara . . .”

  When he cupped my cheek, I took a step back. I needed to get my head straight. In a rush of folly brought on by getting a second chance at life, I’d kissed him, but unless I was certain I wanted to do it again, I was keeping my lips to myself. “I’d really like to get home, Remo.”

  Lips thinning, he took the proffered weapon, then lifted it and shut one of his eyes. After a steadying breath, his finger flexed on the trigger, and the arrow soared, arcing through the cottony air, piercing the portal in its very heart before drifting past it and plummeting back into the squishy mud like a fallen star.

  “It’s an optical illusion,” I murmured. “There’s no way out of here.”

  “No, I think it’s real, but I think we may need salt to turn it solid.”

  My eyes widened. “We left the bag in Frontier Land! We need to get back there. We’ll just ride the train, without getting off until—”

  “Even if we had salt, I doubt that’d be enough to unlock the door from the inside.”

  Despair crawled over my disappointment. I wanted to cry and scream. Both. I wanted to do both but did neither. “So we’re trapped.”

  He handed me the spear gun. “Just for a little while longer.”

  His optimism did nothing to improve my morale.

  As I liquefied our tool, I started to shake so violently that my teeth chattered. “What if no one comes for us?”

  He loosed another deep breath before raising a paltry smile, one I didn’t think he was feeling. “I’m the grandson of the asshole who built this place. He’s bound to figure out where I ended up.” Remo, to my knowledge, had never insulted his grandfather. “I’ll admit, I’m surprised he hasn’t yet.”

  Still, I trembled. I was sick of Gregor’s horrific playground and missed my parents and cousins. My grandparents and Nana Vee. I missed flying, swimming, fire. I missed getting dressed at the press of a button.

  Remo stepped toward me and startled me with a hug, tucking my head underneath his chin and stroking my spine.

  As I filled myself with his calm breaths and even heartbeats, I croaked, “I’m sorry you’re stuck in here because of me.”

  His hands stilled on my back. “Not your fault.”

  Felt like it somehow was.

  “And although the location isn’t ideal, the company . . . I couldn’t have wished for a better partner-in-crime.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

  It took everything in me not to crane my neck and give him access to my heart again, but using him to feel something other than despair wouldn’t have been fair. “Forced together because of treason, then stuck together because of a mistake. What a pair we make.”

  He didn’t answer, just held me a little tighter, and I melted into him a little harder.

  25

  The Return

  Although we walked side by side, we kept to ourselves, both of us lost in thought. Several times, I felt his eyes on me but kept mine on the forest floor until the shadow of tangled branches and leaves receded.

  When we reached the cliff where the golden cupola awaited, its door already propped open, Remo’s fingers rolled into stiff fists. I peered over the ledge to evaluate the feasibility of downclimbing the mountain. Too steep. Would wita-made rappelling gear be solid enough to carry us down?

  Even though my understanding of Gregor’s prison was still limited, I didn’t doubt for a second the mountain was infused with dark and terrible magic. The rock would surely crumble beneath our boots or rise higher. After all, Remo’s grandfather loved nothing more than playing games.

  “I fear the cage is our best option, Remo.”

  His jaw was clenched as hard as his fists, and his skin tone had greened. “I’m not going back inside.”

  “I’ll be with you this time. And we’ll keep the door open.”

  He huffed. “What if I kill you again?”

  “I won’t let you.”

  He shook his head, his red hair spiking like a wildfire around his wan forehead. “That cage turned me into a psychopath.”

  I wrapped my hand around his fist and dragged it away from his rigid thigh. Prying his fingers open,
I said, “I know how to defeat the cupola.”

  “No.”

  I peered down again. “I suppose we could try to hang off of it . . .”

  Remo’s gaze flicked to the pulley system. “We’ll climb down the rope.”

  I eyed the rope, not trusting it. “I know!” I released his hand and pulled my dust out, shaping it into a parachute. I didn’t have enough wita to make a harness, but I had fashioned four sturdy handles along the sides. We’d have to hold on and hope it would keep us afloat, or at the very least slow down our fall.

  Although my resourcefulness didn’t magically reassure Remo, it did unstiffen his body. He picked up my creation and stared a long moment at it, and then he handed me one side and took the other. “Thank you.”

  “How about you don’t thank me until we make it down?” The moss seemed much too far below us. Even the calimbors seemed stunted and calimbors were not small trees. “Ready?”

  “When you are.”

  Knuckles whitening on my handles, I inhaled a deep, deep breath before nodding.

  Eyes locked together, we jumped. The fabric flapped, and then it tangled and our bodies smacked together. Remo stretched his arms apart, and yelled at me to do the same. Skies only knew how, I managed to drive my arms apart. The fabric snapped, and we were yanked up so violently, both my shoulders almost popped out of their sockets.

  Gravity took ahold of our makeshift vessel, and we drifted like a dandelion floret over the neat row of calimbors, all devoid of windows and doors, except for the one housing the candy shop. When my boots bumped against solid ground, my knees bent, and I stumbled into Remo, who caught me.

  His hand lingered on my body long after I’d regained my footing, doing all sorts of things to my already chaotic insides.

  Lowering my gaze to the moss, I stepped aside and reeled in the parachute. “Do we head to the train?”

  “I think we should rest the night here and board in the morning.”

  I stared up at the white sky. “You think night’s about to fall?”

  “I don’t know how time works here. All I know is that we both could do with a bath and a warm bed.”

  The warm bed part reminded me of the one I’d wanted to crawl into earlier. It also reminded me that I’d seen only one. I didn’t bring it up. Not yet.

  As we made our way down the aisle of tall trees, tendrils of mist rose from the moss and curled around our boots. Even though the ground hadn’t changed texture yet, in other words it hadn’t sprouted thorny, tubular bodies, I sang softly. Remo’s knuckles brushed against mine, sending bursts of heat up my arms. When the mist thickened, turning as dense as cotton, his fingers slid through mine.

  We’d held hands before but never like this. Never with our palms flush and our fingers twined. My concentration was so focused on all the points of contact between our bodies that I almost walked right past the candy shop. Thankfully, Remo’s awareness hadn’t faltered, and he tugged me inside.

  My pulse was so jumpy it impaired all of my senses. Besides touch. Touch was the one sense working entirely too well. So well that the minute the turquoise door clapped shut, I pulled my hand out of Remo’s and spent the next few minutes it took to reach the first floor of the calimbor rubbing my tingling fingers and palm on the leg of my black suit.

  While Remo vanished into the bathroom, I searched the small apartment for a second bedroom but found only an empty closet. Water gushed, sounding a lot like my pressurized pulse.

  “There’s no soap, and the water is cold,” he said.

  I gazed up from the bed, biting down on my lip. “Better than no water.”

  He bobbed his head as he approached me. “Ladies first.”

  I ducked past him and entered the bathroom, closing the door. I thought about peeling off my suit and washing it, but in the end, I only kicked off my boots, then stepped into the frigid water fully clothed. However uncomfortable, the fabric would eventually dry. I laid back, letting the mud soften and melt off my long tresses, and then I scrubbed my scalp.

  The water turned a muddy yellow. I drained it, rinsed off under fresh water, then stepped out of the bath and ran Remo a new one. I grabbed one of the seashell-stitched towels and frictioned my body and hair, shivering from the cold. Wrapping it around me, I stepped out of the bathroom.

  Remo frowned. “You bathed with your clothes on?”

  “My suit was filthy, and removing it is a pain.” I stared longingly at my deadened Infinity.

  “You’re going to catch cold.”

  Catching cold. Such a foreign concept for people made of fire. “It’ll dry faster on my skin. Besides, imagine something happens, and we have to bolt for the train.”

  He pursed his lips. I was about to tell him that it wasn’t because of him, but wasn’t it? If there’d been two bedrooms, I might’ve considered stripping.

  Before I could say anything more, the bathroom door clicked closed behind him. Unlike me, Remo stayed a long time in the bath. I couldn’t imagine it was out of pleasure—how could one enjoy soaking in icy water?—but the privacy was surely welcome. Neither of us had had much of that in the last day . . . days? How long had we been gone? I was braiding my damp hair, wondering if the cloud cover would ever lift, when he finally came back out, a towel wrapped around his neck and his pants back on, even though his top wasn’t.

  “Are the snakes back?” Water dribbled off his hair and streamed into all the nooks and crannies of his chest.

  I turned back toward the vista. “Can’t see much of anything through this mist.”

  After a solid minute of silence, he said, “I thought you’d be sound asleep already.”

  Is that why he’d taken his time? To avoid the awkward moment of discussing sleeping arrangements? Had he been hoping I’d be conked out, and he could just slip under the sheets and reserve the awkwardness for the morning after?

  He drew the curtains closed, all the while holding my gaze. “Get into bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  His gallantry blew my reservations away. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of keeping your hands to yourself.”

  His expression changed slowly. “I am, but are you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’ll be tough, but I’ll power through my lascivious fae urges.”

  He shot me a disarming half-smile.

  “Besides, I’m so wet, you’re not going to want to snuggle.”

  The smile vanished, and his jaw pinkened. He turned and rubbed the towel over his wet hair. Who would’ve thought snuggling would make Remo Farrow blush?

  The boy was such a strange mix of smugness and timidity. I liked him all the more for it, which was a perplexing insight to have before getting into bed—albeit fully clothed—beside someone. Especially since the bed was half the size of mine back home, and Remo was neither short-limbed nor narrow-shouldered.

  I hung the towel on the doorknob of the empty closet, then slipped under the covers in my uncomfortably damp suit. I considered removing it for all of a second, but good sense sparked and made me keep it on. A moment later, the mattress dipped.

  “I’m sorry about having walked in on you back at the inn, Amara. I honestly thought you’d be dressed.” Remo lay over the sheets, his gaze fixed to the timber ceiling.

  “Getting dressed here takes a lot more time. That’s another thing I’m going to do the minute we get back.” I refused to wallow in the possibility that we wouldn’t. “I’m going to change into all of my outfits just for the fun of it.”

  He smiled. “That’ll take you a month.”

  “I don’t have that many outfits.”

  “I’ve never seen you wear the same dress twice.”

  “That’s because my aunt is the head designer of Neverra. I get new outfits beamed to my Infinity for every occasion.” Okay, I did have an inordinate amount of outfits.

  “Your naked gold dress is my personal favorite.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “My naked gold dress?”

  His
skin tone looked as though it had darkened, but it was hard to tell in the obscurity. “The one you wore for your mother’s fortieth birthday.”

  “You mean the silk dress with the gold embroidery and sequins?”

  “Yeah. That one.”

  I smirked at him. “The correct terminology is nude, not naked.”

  A gleam entered his eyes but failed to brighten them. If anything, the green darkened. “I wasn’t referring to its color; I was referring to how it looked.”

  My breathing hitched. “It looked like I was naked?”

  “From afar.”

  I blanched. “A lot of people saw me from afar that day.”

  “You look a little queasy, Trifecta.”

  “People thought I was wearing strategically-placed golden sequins . . .” I whispered in horror. “Of course I’m queasy. The second I get back, I’m deleting it from my Infinity.”

  “That would be a shame.”

  “If you love it so much, I’ll beam it to you, and you can gift it to one of your many consorts.”

  “It looked good on you.” His tone was sharp and a little angry. “And stop alluding to me having other girlfriends; I don’t. You’re it.” He stared at the ceiling again. Glared at it. “Even if you don’t want to be it.”

  I wasn’t sure how to react to that, so I stayed quiet, picking apart every moment from our past, and analyzing them in a different light, one where I meant something to Remo Farrow other than mortal enemy. And then I thought of his last few words: Even if you don’t want to be it.

  I studied his sharp profile, his clasped lids, the tousled locks of hair that had tripped over his forehead, the purple skin ringing his neck, the rise and fall of his bare, hard chest. “I want to be someone’s choice, not someone’s obligation,” I whispered.

  I didn’t know if he’d heard me. I wasn’t even sure I’d wanted him to hear me.

  Sighing, I rolled onto my other side and stared at the turquoise wall until sleep erased it from my sight.

  26

  The Nightmare

  “No. No. No! Don’t. No! Amara!”