Reckless Cruel Heirs

by Olivia Wildenstein

  I sprang awake, my heart in my throat, certain we were under attack. A quick sweep of the room showed me we were alone.

  “Don’t. No!” Remo writhed next to me, forehead glistening with sweat and lids clamped so snugly they were bracketed by tiny lines.

  I sat, then placed a palm over his drumming heart. “Remo, shh. It’s a nightmare.”

  His eyes whipped open, brimming with such panic that I repeated my soft words, coaxing him out of whatever horrid dream he was having. A nightmare about me apparently. I hoped I wasn’t the villain in this one.

  His nostrils flared and then his hands shot up to my face and cupped my cheeks so suddenly I almost lost my balance. “You’re not dead. You’re not dead.”

  Keeping myself up thanks to the hand still planted on his chest, I wrapped my other one around his wrist, not to tow it off, but to reassure him that I was made of flesh and not ether.

  “I lost you. Again. I lost you again. The dile, it . . .” He shuddered so hard my bones vibrated with his trepidation. “The poison . . . you never woke up.”

  The memory of the dile usually made me scrunch up my nose, but I forced my fear away in order to reassure Remo that I was all right. That I wasn’t afraid.

  “That little sucker didn’t get me. You got it, remember?”

  As though to confirm I was solid, his thumbs grazed my cheekbones while his gaze traveled over my mouth, chin, neck, before returning to my eyes and resting there.

  Their intensity made me swallow more than once. “Do you get nightmares often?”

  “Not since I was a kid.” His lashes fluttered again, as though to sweep away the hateful images.

  I sighed. “It’s probably a side effect of the cupola.”

  “Better wear off fast, or I’m quitting sleeping.”

  “Troubled sleep beats no sleep, Remo.” I squeezed his wrist before releasing it.

  He lowered his hands from my face, returning one to the sheets and the other to his abdomen, just over his navel and the trail of hair that began there and ended . . . someplace I had no right ogling. I laid back on my side next to him, pillowing my head on my bent arm. I started to remove the hand covering his heart when he anchored it with his palm.

  A stillness fell over him. Over me, too.

  “How long do you think we slept?” The thumping at my temples told me it hadn’t been long enough.

  His gaze cut to the brightness edging the drawn curtains. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to head out or try to go back to sleep?”

  His head turned toward mine. “Have you slept enough?”

  “Probably not.”

  “How about you try to fall back asleep?”

  “What about you?”

  His pulse, although no longer erratic, beat fast. “I’d rather stay awake.”

  Was he worried something bad was about to happen? I was. Gregor’s prison loved nothing more than offering its residents a false sense of security before knocking it down. “Want me to sing you back to sleep? It worked so well on the snakes.”

  The corners of his mouth rose. “Can I shelve that offer for later?”

  Saving it for later implied we’d be sleeping next to each other again. I supposed it was preferable, while we were locked in prison, to sleep side by side rather than camp out on our own.

  His smile faltered when silence stretched between us.

  I sighed. “My offer is valid for the duration of our incarceration.”

  “What about after?”

  After? I wasn’t ready to go there yet. “You’ll either have to self-soothe or crawl into your mother’s lap.”

  “You do know I don’t live with my mother, right?”

  His index finger idled up the length of my arm to the ripped fabric at my shoulder, coaxing out goose bumps he thankfully couldn’t see.

  “I didn’t know.” My thick inflection revealed what my suit concealed.

  “I share a room with three other lucionaga in the guard barracks.”

  “How very . . . mainstream of you.”

  He dragged his finger back down. “We can’t all live in floating sea palaces.”

  Grated by his critical tone, I stole my hand off his body and nestled it against my own chest. “Because you think I have a choice?”

  His eyebrows dipped. “You’re not happy with your living arrangements?”

  I liked my house but wished others had been built around it. “I live under a magnifying lens, Remo.” I sighed. “I always wanted to live in a calimbor or in one of the smaller beach houses on stilts, or even in the Valley of the Five. Just somewhere more normal.”

  “You could move into the barracks. I’m sure there’d be no objections from my roommates.”

  A smile quirked over my lips. “How magnanimous of you, but I think I’ll pass rooming with four men.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t be sharing with four of us. Just with me. I’d kick the others out.”

  My heart tripped. “For someone not in the market for a relationship, you’re awfully possessive.”

  For several seconds, his jaw worked, as though his mouth were forming plenty of words but then obliterating them. “We’re bound by the Cauldron,” he finally said.

  He’d obviously missed my whispered confession last night, so I rehashed it loudly, “Please don’t feel an obligation to be with me because of a magical object, Remo.” I sat, then swung my legs over the side of the bed, and got up.

  “Amara—”

  “We should head out.” My braid had held, which was nice, since I was all out of hair ties.

  As I made my way to the bathroom, Remo called out my name again, but I shut the door and dropped onto the closed toilet lid, and then I laid my face in my palms and shut my eyes. I hated how upset Gregor’s grandson could make me one minute and how special he could make me feel the next. But I especially hated myself for allowing him to have so much pull over my mood.

  I needed some distance, but how the hell was I supposed to find any in this magical jail cell?

  Besides boarding the train alone . . .

  I stared at the door and contemplated leaving before him. Fear won out. I might’ve been a little brave but most definitely not brave enough to face this world alone. That was the reason I waited for him once I’d let myself out of the bathroom and he’d gone inside.

  The only reason.

  27

  The Explosion

  When we set off toward the train, the mist belted the calimbors, masking their crowns.

  Remo climbed onto the hovering platform with the ease of a gymnast. He offered me his hand, but I didn’t take it, pretending not to have seen it. I was done holding his hand. With the grace of a steel rod, I hoisted myself up and over.

  While Remo grazed the modern touchscreen, I settled on the curved bench and stared out the window until the outside world disappeared behind opaque barriers. And then I curled my palms around the lip of my seat and readied myself for the molar-shattering voyage. I wondered if we actually traveled or if the train was static and the world around us reorganized itself. If it was the latter, then the juddering was unnecessarily cruel.

  Then again, this was prison, not some spa with coconuts fitted with striped straws and fuzzy rainbow loungers.

  Remo turned around, pressing his palms into the ceiling to keep himself steady. I felt his eyes on me but still refused to look at him. He’d kissed me, confessed he’d liked me for years, and then he went and ruined everything by bringing up his sense of duty to the Cauldron. Most importantly, though, why was I so offended? It wasn’t as though I’d harbored feelings for Gregor’s grandson. I probably cared because I was drained, physically and mentally, and exhaustion made me slightly grouchy.

  I thought about our kiss, wishing I hadn’t felt anything. It would’ve made it all so much simpler. Feelings couldn’t get hurt when none were involved. The train finally stopped shaking, but my skull didn’t. I swiped my Infinity to release medication into my bloodstream when I rem
embered the damn thing didn’t work in this damn world.

  “Are you okay?” Remo asked as the windows and door retracted.

  I really wished he could go back to being an ass, because that made not liking him way simpler. “Just my head, but it’ll pass.”

  I got up. Because the compartment was small and he wasn’t, my wedged-in breasts made contact with his firm chest. I chided my skin for tingling. It needed to stop doing that.

  “I’d rather a punch than your silence, Amara.”

  I stared at his jostling Adam’s apple, and not because I was contemplating punching it—his neck was bruised enough—but because it sat in my direct line of sight and Adam’s apples didn’t stare back in the hopes of excavating your soul.

  “Do you think any of this is easy on me? I kiss you, I confess stuff to you that I assumed I’d take to my flowerbed grave, and then you give me the cold shoulder, because I reminded you that we’re bound by the Cauldron—”

  I whipped my gaze up to his. “You reminded me? Because you think I forgot?” I tried to step back but the backs of my knees hit the bench. “I’m not mad because of that.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Then why are you mad?”

  “Because, Remo, I’m confused. You’re confusing. Do you like me or not? Am I an obligation or a choice?”

  “You were never a choice until the Cauldron bound us.”

  “The Cauldron shouldn’t have changed anything.”

  “But it did. Just like this place did. Just like watching you die did.” He tossed his hands in the air, disrupting the flyaways around my face, which had fallen out of my braid during the night. “Tell me something . . . did you ever consider making out with me before we were tossed together in the Scourge?”

  My cheeks brightened. “No, but that’s because you were hateful.”

  “And yet you kissed me back, Amara, so admit this place changed you, too.”

  I notched my chin a tad higher. “This place changed how I saw you but not what I want. And what I want is a real relationship, not an ordained one, and certainly not one with an expiration date because the other party isn’t into long-lasting monogamy.”

  “You barely know me. Maybe you’d hate dating me.”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t hate it.” Was I still pink or had my complexion veered right to purple? “But dating isn’t even a possibility, because dating means strings, and you don’t want strings, Remo, so why are we even fighting about this?”

  His eyes lowered to my lips.

  I stepped to the side before he could kiss me. I suspected that would be a bad idea considering how much it had scrambled my brain back in the mud field, and I wanted . . . needed . . . to keep a level head. “Don’t.”

  “Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why can’t it just be something?”

  “Because I want what my parents have. What my aunt and uncle have.”

  “What if what they all have is only due to their brands? Both Kajika and your mother were branded by their partners.”

  My ribs contracted. Giya had brought up the same point during one of our many discussions about boys and hearts. I’d hated her insinuation, because it meant magic was mixed into their love, and I didn’t want magic to have anything to do with that feeling.

  “My grandparents aren’t branded, and they’re crazy in love. And my mother was branded by Cruz Vega first, and she never loved him. Besides, those brands are used by faeries to track humans. Unlike captis, they’re not used for seduction.”

  “But what if—”

  “Then I’ll find myself a human consort once I’m out of here and brand him!” Infuriated, I spun on my heels and bustled out of the train and onto a platform that was carved right into a giant gray boulder.

  Huffing a little, I scanned our newest cell—spectacular rock formations, a dark cyan forest denser and more tropical than the one in Neverra, and a glittering waterfall.

  My lips popped apart at the sight. “This isn’t too bad.”

  Remo grumbled, “We can’t even see the ground, Trifecta.”

  Even though I now knew the nickname wasn’t pejorative, I still didn’t love it. “It’s undoubtedly full of creepy creatures, but there’s a waterfall. I love waterfalls.” Sure the sky was pasty white, and it was eerily silent, but I was still hopeful this world would be kindlier than all the others.

  But then my hope vanished when a tinny voice erupted from the train: “Countdown to self-destruction will begin in ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

  Self-destruction? What was about to self-destroy? This cell? The entire prison?

  “Six . . . five . . .”

  “The train’s going to blow!” Remo said.

  I blinked up at him.

  “Jump!” He grabbed my hand and dropped into a crouch, and then we sprang off the boulder.

  The ground came at me hard. So hard my teeth knocked together, and my bones juddered, but the metallic sound of “three” had me scrambling back upright.

  As a rumbling began, Remo tugged on my hand. “Run!”

  My legs windmilled so fast they were probably blurring. It must not have been fast enough to Remo’s taste, though, because he hauled me forward.

  The rumbling turned into a bang that sent us both sailing onto our stomachs. Hot, white sand cushioned our fall as a spray of rock and tongues of fire lapped at our backs. I clapped my hands over my ears and burrowed my face into the ground, trying to sink right through it. Unfortunately, I didn’t sink, and the chunks of debris lashed my back.

  As pain crosshatched my skin, I thought up new ways to torture Gregor Farrow, but then dismissed all of my ideas. I’d have him locked in here, then order the destruction of the portal. A heavy weight settled over my back, and I thought the entire train car must’ve come loose, but the weight had a heartbeat. Praying it wasn’t a wild animal about to tear through my flesh, I twisted my face to see what or who had landed on me.

  I caught a brassy flash of hair and a whiff of masculine sweat—Remo.

  Another detonation. His body tensed over mine as fiery pellets hissed through the air. Even though I was glad for his protection, I worried for his safety. I tried to free my hands and access my dust but could barely squirm. I balled my fist, touching the tips of my fingers to my tattoo, but couldn’t get my wita to adhere. As though I were swimming through drying cement, I spread my arms wide and raised them over my head. When my palms connected, I coaxed my dust out, then parted my hands, fashioning a transparent dome to cover our sandwiched bodies. I probably should’ve made it a tad larger so I could wriggle out from underneath Remo, but comfort hadn’t been my first priority. A cacophony of pings and clangs layered itself over the ringing inside my ears as more pieces of the train hailed over our shield.

  Remo slid off me, but had to stay on his side, and me on mine to fit under my egg-shaped dome. His face glistened with sweat and trails of black smoke, but at least there was no blood.

  Sand coated my lips. “Remo?” I raised my hand to his arm.

  He winced.

  When I lifted my palm, it was stained red. I tried to glimpse the rest of his back without touching him. But besides rips in the navy fabric, I couldn’t lever my head high enough to see anything in the cramped space.

  “The shield”—his labored breaths struck the tip of my nose—“good call.”

  If only I’d brought it out sooner.

  Another cloud of detritus fell over the curved glass. I curled my head into my neck and my arm over the exposed side of my face, worried our defenses might crack, but Karsyn’s dust—Karsyn’s incredible, amazing dust—held steady.

  I didn’t raise my head again until the banging and thumping came to a stop. And even then, I waited a dozen heartbeats before lowering my bent arm back alongside my body and peeking around.

  Remo’s complexion had gone as ashen as when he’d been imprisoned in the cupola, and his eyes were feverishly bright.

  “Are you okay?” My voice sounded like it was coming from another
planet.

  “Yeah.” His, too, sounded faint and distant. “You?”

  I nodded. In spite of the confetti of tiny pulses beating in my eardrums, skull, waist, ankles, I was alive and conscious, so I was okay. Funny how standards changed when in survival mode.

  “Do you think it’s over?” The air beneath the dome was so balmy that fog blurred the glass.

  He looked over his shoulder at what he could see of the boulder platform, and then, gritting his teeth, he pressed his palms into the rounded glass and heaved it up so he could sit. Although my blood felt like it had spilled out of my body, I pushed up too. For a moment, all was gray, and then color returned in splashes, and the fuming crater crenellating the rock came into soft focus.

  “It’s over,” he said, “but unless a new train appears, so is cell-hopping.”

  A chill swept over my overheated body, icing the slickness on my skin. What if this world was the worst one yet?

  “One down, one to go.” I didn’t think Remo was murmuring but it felt like he was.

  “What?” I croaked.

  “If this world works like the others, we only have one more fun occurrence in store.”

  I returned my gaze to Remo’s, which was shadowed by the waving blue-green fronds above us. “Do you think it self-destructed by accident or did you press a button?”

  His gaze tapered. “I didn’t activate any dead-man’s switch.”

  “If I’d been the one manipulating the touchscreen, you would’ve asked me, too.”

  His stony silence endured, pigheaded faerie that he was.

  I pressed my lips into a thin line as I kneeled and reeled my dust back into my hand. “Let me see your back.”

  When my fingers crept to the hem of his tunic, he said, “If you think you can get me naked after blam—”

  I growled, which made him chuckle. I edged the fabric up, revealing a patchwork of little cuts. None looked particularly deep even though they all dribbled blood, thickened by clumps of sand.

  “So? What’s the prognosis, doc?”

  As gently as when I’d pulled the fabric up, I inched it back down his curved spine. “You’ll live, but we should get to the waterfall to wash out the blood and sand. Can you walk?”