by Addison Fox
She wasn’t quite sure which upset her the most.
The guy she’d seen earlier—the one who looked like he’d been smashed through a blender—opened the door and walked into her room. Although he looked moderately better than earlier, there was a distinct hunch to his broad shoulders that she found eerie. Like he was hiding something.
“What do you want?”
“Eris wanted me to check on you.”
“I’m locked in a windowless room. What the hell was she expecting? A tap dance routine?”
The endless string of women-in-danger movies she watched on Sunday afternoons had prepared her for a slap or a scream or some form of retaliation, but the guy simply held his ground across from her, an odd, speculative stare on his face.
“You’ve taken up with the Warriors, too?”
She battled between saying nothing and using his overture to get some information. The same innate curiosity that had called her to the legal profession reared up and she knew there was no way she could keep her questions to herself.
It was inevitable.
Like the way she loved Grey or the fact that she would peel at that polish on her toe.
Loved Grey?
The knowledge had her stumbling over her next breath, but she held herself steady as she took air in and out in slow, easy gulps.
She couldn’t love Grey. It simply wasn’t possible. Smart, successful women didn’t fall for bad boys, no matter how well pressed or expensive the suits they clothed themselves in or quality of the wine they drank.
But she had. Oh God, she’d fallen for Grey.
“Are you going to answer me?”
She pulled her attention back from her wildly flinging thoughts. “Answer what?”
“You’re just like my sister, taking up with one of the Warriors.”
“Why do you care?
And why was he so chatty? Although she realistically knew Lifetime Movies of the Week weren’t necessarily a stand-in for real life—hell, she’d read enough case files to know that for certain—she also wasn’t expecting a casual conversation about her whereabouts for the past week.
“Curiosity.”
“Well, take it elsewhere.”
He didn’t move from his spot, his breath steady and even. “You’re the bargaining chip. You know that, don’t you?”
Adrenaline ricocheted through her body, and Finley felt the recoil as it kicked through her stomach on a return trip. How to play this? Brazen and bold hadn’t really worked on Gavelli and his men in the warehouse, but playing dumb didn’t seem like an effective tactic, either.
On a silent prayer, she tried brazen and bold once more. “Forget me. What about you? Why have you done this to your sister?”
The quiet, almost subdued demeanor he’d walked in with morphed in the blink of an eye. What replaced it had her taking several steps back as he stalked across the room, his movements surprisingly sinuous for such a large man.
“You know nothing about me and my sister.”
Finley stayed on her guard, but there was no way she was keeping her mouth shut. She’d seen the haunted look in Emerson’s eyes and with startling clarity realized she was looking at the man who’d put it there. “I know that you’ve nearly destroyed her with whatever it is you’ve become.”
“I’m fulfilling my destiny.”
“Is that Eris’s sales pitch before she turns you into a freak?”
“And that fuckwad my sister has taken up with isn’t? Don’t delude yourself. I’m as powerful as they are.”
“With a side of psycho to boot.”
Magnus didn’t move, his posture so still she almost wished he had leaped at her to shut her up. Instead, a sudden, distinctive feeling washed over her as his dark gaze bored into hers, and she took a few steps backward.
Prey.
He kept her in his sights, his dark eyes almost hypnotic as they stared at her, unblinking. As that gaze continued to bore into her like a drill, a large snake unfurled off his back.
Where it came from, Finley had no idea, but she took a few more steps back. The frenzied urge to move quickly nearly overtook her, but she kept her pace even—measured—as she sought to put space between them.
It wasn’t until her shoulders hit the heavy concrete blocks that made up the walls of her prison that she finally allowed herself to scream.
“I’m not staying here, Drake. Don’t even think about it.”
Drake tossed a casual glance at Emerson as he paced around his room, opening drawers and dragging out a variety of weapons. He’d considered and discarded several as he crisscrossed the floor with determined steps. “You can’t go.”
“You can’t keep me here.”
“Emerson, you’ve been hurt. I can’t see you get hurt even more.” The image of her lying against the far wall of the parking garage wouldn’t leave his mind’s eye, no matter how many times he looked at her—no matter how many times he touched her to reassure himself she was okay. “I can’t worry about something happening to you again.”
“This is my brother we’re talking about. You know he’s a part of this with Finley.”
“So is Eris, which means you need to leave this to me. My Warrior brothers and I will take care of this.”
“It involves me, Drake.”
“Emerson, you’re a liability if I spend the entire time worried about you.”
She slipped off the bed, the frustrated anger that had simmered under her words for the duration of their conversation shifting into something far more confrontational.
Something far more lethal.
“Let me tell you something, Ace. You use that condescending tone with me one more time and I’m going to hurt you.”
“It’s not condescension; it’s the truth. I won’t let you go back into that. I nearly got you killed earlier. I’m not going to knowingly take you into another situation like what we faced in the garage.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
Whatever sedate abilities she believed he carried were nowhere in evidence as fear and frustration rocketed through him in equal measure. “Fuck if I don’t.”
He was across the room in a heartbeat, dragging her into his arms, desperate to make her see reason as he pulled her close. “I can’t lose you.”
“I’m in this.”
“No, you’re not. I’m in this. Grey’s in this. Even Magnus is in this. You’re not.”
The large ceremonial sword he’d taken off the wall, then rested against a large armoire after deciding it lacked the degree of subtlety he was looking for, shuddered against the wood of the chest before drifting toward them. Drake watched it move, almost mesmerized by the floating steel, until he registered its intent. As the sword moved across the room, it picked up speed until it raced for his throat in a heavy, sweeping arc.
With a tight grip, Drake ported them across the room, the sound of the sword clattering to the floor greeting his ears as he and Emerson landed. “What the—?”
Had she really done this?
The fire had been one thing—expected, almost—but this?
Before he could tighten his grip on her—before he could even stutter out a few questions—Emerson was out of his arms and crossing the room, her hands outstretched. The tip of the sword hit the floor a few times before it was again airborne and headed for her hand.
Drake heard the self-satisfaction in her voice before she turned with a matched smile. “Now do you believe me?”
“How did you do that?”
“Remember the drop of ice cream?”
Ice cream? “The one from when you were a kid?”
“Yep.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“Same principle.”
Pride and wonder mixed with raw fear made an awfully strange combination, but that was the exact brew that boiled in his system as he crossed the room toward her. “Same principle, my ass. This is a forty-pound ceremonial sword. It’s nothing like a drop of ice cream.”
“Actually, magically speaking, it is.”
“I thought you couldn’t do inanimate objects?”
“I’m not doing anything. I’m moving it and using its physicality to my advantage. There’s no spell on the actual object.”
“But you just moved it across the room.”
“Right. I moved it through space. I can’t put an actual spell on the sword. On any inanimate object.” As if to prove her point, she extended it to him by the hilt. “Go ahead. Hold it.”
When he took it from her, he almost expected it to light up with some sort of electric shock, but the sword felt just as it had when he’d removed it from the wall. Like a heavy, lethal piece of metal. “It doesn’t feel any different.”
“And it won’t. It isn’t different.”
“You just tossed it across the room.”
“Which would be no different than if you had held it in your hand and ran it across the room. I didn’t do anything to it.”
“How did you do it?”
“Magic.”
Drake shook his head, trying to make some sense out of this new development. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“Not really.”
“Yes, really.” Drake searched her wide eyes and innocent cupid’s-bow mouth, but other than a very stubborn hand cocked against her hip, she didn’t offer up any further protest. “I knew you had skills. Power. But this…” He turned the sword over in his hand once more. “This is just not possible.”
“You can throw your body into the space-time continuum at will. I can move things. Do you really want to talk to me about possible?”
“This doesn’t change my mind.”
“It has to.”
“I can’t put you in that sort of danger.”
Her small hands folded over his where he held the sword. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you get how much more powerful I am when we’re together? What we can do when we’re joined, just like those fish on your back?”
As if her words conjured their response, the tattoo on his back leaped in seeming agreement. Unwilling to acquiesce, he sought some other argument to change her mind.
To make her see reason.
“It doesn’t change the fact you’re mortal.”
She pried his fingers off the hilt, taking the sword. With her free hand, she linked their fingers. “Watch this.”
A small painting sat above his dresser on the far side of the room. The image depicted the twelve signs of the zodiac in a circle, with lines crisscrossing between the twelve, evenly demarcated signs. The lines all came to a point in the middle of the circle, at the exact center point of the painting.
As her fingers tightened on his, Emerson lifted her other hand and let go of the sword. Rather than fall to the floor, the weapon sprang from her hand and flew toward the painting.
Drake watched in awe as the tip hit dead center.
Chapter Twenty
Emerson marveled at the raw power that coursed through her veins as she looked at the sword embedded in the wall across the room.
She’d done that.
She knew she had power. She’d honed it over the many lonely years of her life, to both celebrate her gift and to stave off boredom. But she’d never shown it off to another.
And she’d certainly never before been willing to show off her magic—or display the full dimension of her power—for the man she loved.
It was exhilarating.
“You look awfully proud of yourself.”
“I am. And I’m also trying to figure out what took me so long.”
Drake turned toward her, the delight in his gaze only reinforcing her satisfaction at finally showing her true self.
“I’ve been hiding this from you and now you know. And you seem to still want to drag my clothes off.”
“I think you’re amazing. Always.” The evident pride that sparkled in the flecks of gold in his green eyes morphed into something even more seductive. “And I always want to drag your clothes off, too.”
“Well, you can’t right now. We’ve got a job to do. I presume Quinn’s already got a council of war going downstairs and we should be a part of it.”
Drake crossed the room to yank the sword from the plaster, his smile falling. “None of this changes how I feel.”
“About my clothes?” She tossed the joke back at him, knowing full well what he meant.
“It doesn’t change how I feel about you going with us. It also doesn’t change the fact that while you wield a very powerful magic, you’d still have to use that power on your brother.”
Drake’s words stopped her, as her memories of the fight in the garage ran through her in a cold shiver. She’d turned her fire on Magnus twice now. Had taken her magic and not only used it against another, but used it against a loved one.
What did that make her? A betrayer of her gift or a betrayer of her family?
Or both?
“It doesn’t change how I feel, either. I’m in this and I want you to accept it.” When he turned to argue, she added, “I need you to accept this.”
Drake settled the sword back against the armoire, his movements gentle for such a large man. Her gaze drank in the broad stretch of his back and the raw physicality of his form.
He was a Warrior.
And when he turned back to face her, the responsibility of that calling was etched across every inch of him.
“Do you know why I never married that woman? The one I was betrothed to?”
That familiar spurt of jealousy at the knowledge he’d been engaged to someone was quickly tamped out by curiosity. “No.”
“I didn’t love her.”
Emerson had thought about his story—hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since they’d sat in the library—and she’d come to her own conclusions. “From what you said she was a child when you met. You’d have come to love her. Would have come to love the family you made with her.”
A small smile ghosted his lips as Drake nodded. “You sound suspiciously like my father. But he was wrong, and so are you.”
“Drake, come on. You lived in a time when people didn’t marry for love.”
He never moved from his spot across the room, but his words held a strange, enthralling power she was helpless to ignore. “Another one of my father’s arguments. He claimed I had a duty to uphold. A duty to my family and to my country.”
“And you felt differently?”
“I did, even though I couldn’t put a name to it.”
“What was that?” The question rose to her lips on a breathless whisper. “Why did you feel differently?”
“I wanted love.”
“Everyone wants love, Drake. It’s part of our human existence.”
“Do you think so?”
Emerson heard the question beneath the question. “Don’t you?”
“I think many people want what’s convenient. Or they want the idea of love, but they’re not really interested in the sacrifices that come with it.”
“Maybe people aren’t brave?”
“Or maybe they don’t realize what it takes. What’s required of them to love another.”
“And you think you know?”
“I always thought I did, but now I don’t know. I want to support you, Emerson. I want to believe in you and give you the freedom to be who you are. Because you’re the woman I love. You’re the woman I knew was out there.”
With slow steps, he crossed the room. She felt that large, powerful body wrap itself around her as he took her in his arms. Felt him shudder as her arms went around his neck.
“But the gods help me if I’m brave enough to let you be who you are.”
Finley curled on the small couch in the windowless room, unable to stop the shivers that racked her body. What had she done? And why hadn’t she listened to Grey?
His heavy-handed tactics had chaffed more than she wanted to admit, but he had protected her. Had worked to keep her safe. But the stubborn, willful heart that beat in
her chest had finally made a decision that would be her end.
Her hubris was her doom.
Although Magnus had held the snake at bay, using it only to taunt and frighten her, she saw in his eyes what he was capable of.
She’d first thought it was malice, but after a long hour spent shivering in mind-numbing terror, she acknowledged what it really was that lived in his dark eyes.
Fear.
She’d lived her entire adult life around criminals and she’d learned early on that fear was a far more dangerous emotion than malice or greed or even out-and-out evil. It was what turned a good man bad and decimated his soul.
Magnus Carano lived in a constant state of dread from the woman who’d made him and of what he’d become.
And she’d come blithely calling at the devil’s door.
On a deep breath, Finley wrapped her arms around herself and willed the shivers to subside. She tried fervently to resurrect the spirit she knew she’d buried somewhere inside at the sight of that horrible snake.
On a heavy breath, she willed her nerves to calm as she fought to think rationally about her situation.
In…out…
What did she know?
Although it felt like she’d been in this room forever, she knew the reality was that she’d only been here a few hours. She’d simply run out for a late lunch—the corner deli a block from her office—when she was grabbed by the mystery woman. She’d even brought the security detail Quinn had assigned to her along.
But it hadn’t mattered.
Halfway down the block, her hand had grabbed her arm. Before she could even struggle, her body had been thrown into that disorienting sensation Grey called a port. Then she’d been shoved into this room and the door had slammed behind her.
In…out…
What else did she know?
She’d already surmised they were holding her in some sort of basement and also suspected they were still in the city because she could swear she heard the heavy throb of traffic at regular intervals.
In…out…
Where could they have taken her?
The door banged open and Finley leaped to a sitting position, the heavy exhalation of breath catching in her throat. A small cry echoed across the cavernous room as a small, petite body fell through the door before it was slammed closed once again.
