A Tangle of Hearts

by Bella Forrest

  My hands fumbled in my lap, and I puckered my lips nervously, pulling them to one side like a kid. My strength had slipped away from me so quickly that I once again felt all soft inside in front of a man who had been at the center of my affection for as long as I could remember.

  “You’ve really changed,” Field replied, his voice reaching new depths.

  “Hm? What do you mean?”

  “I think I’m looking at you, and I can finally see you for the first time. The real you,” he said. “You’re not the loud little wolf-girl anymore.”

  My knees were so weak I was grateful to be sitting down. I smiled and looked away, my eyes wet and my throat parched.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “Look at me, Aida.”

  My heart stopped again. I did as he asked, holding my breath.

  His face was in perfect conjunction with his words; he looked at me differently, like he really was seeing me for the first time. His eyes shifted focus from my eyes to my lips, then further down and back up, blinking slowly.

  “I never stopped to consider that even the loud little wolf-girl can grow up and become a strong, beautiful woman.”

  My stomach tied itself up in knots. I was unable to look away from him. Something blossomed inside my chest, expanding outward in hot and cold waves, and I chewed on my lower lip again, no longer able to use my brain. What else was there to say?

  Field had always been the distant star I’d gravitated around for as long as I could remember. Maura’s presence in his life hadn’t pushed me away, but it had kept me at a safe distance, forcing me to cram my feelings down to the very bottom of my being. Upon hearing the news of their breakup, I’d desperately tried to ignore the glimmer of hope that was making all those muffled emotions scratch back to the surface. I’d kept it under control.

  Then, all of a sudden, in that cold basement in Eritopia, in the midst of all the dangers and tragedies unfurling around us, Field sat on a bed next to me and finally acknowledged me as a woman.

  Everything I’d kept locked deep inside of me broke free, crashing through the gates and drowning me.

  Jovi

  [Victoria & Bastien’s son]

  A couple of hours into our journey, we had yet to run into any shape-shifters, or any other creatures for that matter. The jungle was thick and dark all around us with gnarly trees reaching out above our heads and obscuring most of the clear, blue sky.

  Various critters buzzed and crinkled in the foliage, while an occasional breeze swept over us and tempered the uncomfortable humidity. The road we followed was a battered old trail, previously used by incubi armies to travel between the northern and southern citadels. Shadows rushed through the jungle on both sides, but they kept their distance.

  “They won’t come into the light,” Bijarki said, his voice low, as if reading my mind. He must have heard and seen them too. The incubus led the group, a few yards ahead of us, with one of the duffel bags on his shoulder and the crossbow loaded and ready to kill.

  I was second in line, with Anjani leaning against me to keep some of the weight off her injured leg. The herbal treatment had fixed most of the damage, but her torn muscles needed a bit more time to fully recover. I didn’t mind, as I was constantly in contact with her warm, voluptuous body. Her eyes twinkled in gold and emerald shards as they scanned our surroundings, crossbow resting on her right shoulder. She tried hard to walk on her own.

  But every few steps I felt her giving her leg a rest and depending on me again for support. Her persistence for independence amused me, and I tried my best to be respectful and suppress my childish smirks.

  My senses flared, not only in reaction to the potential dangers lurking in the jungle, but also to her physical presence. Her scent in particular, a mixture of freshly cut grass and mild spices, invaded my nostrils with each breath, making it a challenge for me to fully focus on the mission at hand. This succubus was dangerously beautiful, and I had to concentrate twice as hard in order to keep my head in the game.

  Serena and Draven walked behind me, mostly in silence. She carried the second duffel bag, while the Druid used her other shoulder for support. Once in a while, I heard them exchange a few words, but I didn’t pay attention to the details, as I was too busy staying alert while holding a gorgeous creature at my side.

  Some time passed before I found something interesting to say. I’d thought about ways of starting a meaningful conversation with her, but every time I opened my mouth, I backed down, fearing mockery. Anjani brought out an insecurity in me that I’d never felt before. Whatever I said it had to be smart, and it had to demand her attention and respect. For a guy who normally didn’t give a damn about much, this was new and murky territory, murkier than any shape-shifter-infested jungle of Eritopia.

  “Tell me about your tribe,” I eventually said, unable to bear the silence between us anymore.

  I glanced sideways at her, enough to see a shadow of a smile animate her delicate, shimmering face. Her hair had been cleaned and combed to the side, pouring in charcoal-colored curls over her crossbow shoulder. It gave me a decent view of the soft line of her neck that made my throat feel dry.

  “We’re independent of the incubi nation in general,” she answered, constantly looking around her, following the occasional moving shadows. “We live away from the males and from the so-called civilized societies and their cities. We’ve been doing that for centuries, long before Azazel rose to power and ruined everything.”

  I looked ahead at Bijarki, wondering whether he’d ever considered leaving the army and everything else behind to live in the jungle, away from the bloodshed and turmoil, like Anjani’s tribe had done. His broad shoulders and firm jaw answered my question. The incubus had been raised for a military life. Devotion probably shaped his every decision.

  “We live in the northern jungles, where few Destroyers venture,” Anjani continued. “We hunt for our food, and the younger succubi gather nuts and berries from the nearby clearings during the day. We keep our distance from everyone. We rarely ever take a partner for life. We haven’t had a male living with us for a long time. We send the sons away to live in the city and keep the daughters. We use the incubi for pleasure and to ensure our tribe’s survival, nothing more, nothing less.”

  The last part stiffened my neck a little bit. I thought about Anjani and an incubus in an intimate embrace. I didn’t know what was more awkward, the frosty meeting between a succubus and an incubus, or the fact that I’d spent an entire minute thinking about it.

  “You only use men for physical pleasure and making babies, and then you kick them to the curb?” I replied with a raised eyebrow. She nodded, but I couldn’t read anything beyond that. “And they say men are terrible.” I smirked.

  “Yes, well, don’t worry, Jovi,” Bijarki called out over his shoulder. “The succubi like us about as much as we like them. They’re wildlings who like to bite and scratch. Most of us try to stay away from them, but every once in a while, a poor sucker stumbles upon one of these tribes, and he’s lost forever. There are cautionary tales about tribal succubi told around the campfires at night.”

  Anjani glowered at Bijarki. I wondered whether he could feel the fire on the back of his head. Her lips tightened to a thin line, and her nostrils flared. He’d managed to hit a soft spot, apparently.

  I swallowed my chuckle as she narrowed her eyes at him. I didn’t want her focus to shift to me in that moment; I’d felt the occasional wrath of a woman, including my sister, but never that of a succubus.

  “With males like you, you can’t blame us for not having much use for the incubi,” Anjani shot back.

  “We have no trouble finding ourselves a mate,” Bijarki replied without bothering to turn his head. “Just because you ladies are feral and like it in the jungle doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us incubi.”

  “So, how many of you are there in the tribe?” I quickly asked as soon as Anjani opened her mouth to continue the gender skirmish. I feare
d she’d eventually snap and shoot a poisonous arrow right into Bijarki’s spine.

  A moment passed as she regained her composure. It gave me enough pause to notice something I hadn’t before. Unlike Bijarki, Anjani didn’t have horns on her temples.

  “There are six families in the tribe, each with five to fifteen members,” she replied. “Our strength is not in numbers but in our skills as warriors. We are trained from a very young age. We are taught that we must kill or be killed before we learn about how babies are made.”

  I found that to be more sad than chilling. I could picture her as a little girl with glimmery skin, golden-green eyes, and curly black hair being given a knife and told to kill. I looked down at her and noticed a fleeting frown before I changed the subject again:

  “Why don’t you have any horns?”

  The look she gave me told me I had offended her, though I didn’t understand how or why. Her eyes seared into me and narrowed slightly for an added dramatic effect. It sent chills down my neck.

  “That’s none of your business!” she hissed.

  “It’s because she’s really young,” Bijarki interjected. “The horns don’t start growing on females until they hit their first few hundred years. She’s just a loud-mouthed sapling.”

  I regretted asking the question, as I could feel Anjani’s temperature rise against my body.

  “Nevertheless, this sapling could still beat you into a pulp,” she shot back.

  “I would love to see you try, kid,” the incubus said.

  Her fingers clutched the crossbow tightly, and she looked like she was tempted to shoot him. The tension mounted, layer upon layer. Bijarki was obviously not afraid of her, but I didn’t like seeing her angry. It made my stomach churn.

  I looked around, trying to find something else to say. My hand instinctively gripped her side a little tighter, and my arm drew her closer. I heard her muffled gasp, after which she gradually relaxed against me.

  “I’m surprised we haven’t been attacked yet,” I managed to say, clearing my throat and casually glancing around us.

  “They can smell the poison from our arrows,” Anjani replied.

  “They?”

  “The shape-shifters running around us. The other creatures lurking in the darkness. They can smell the black thorn-weed and deadly nightshade. They’re not stupid. Most of them know to keep their distance.”

  “Where’d you learn all this stuff?” I was in awe of her. If only we’d known about these poison-dipped arrows before.

  “It’s part of our culture. We purchase or gather Eritopia’s deadliest plants and infuse them into poisons of varied intensities, from tranquilizers to crippling pain and paralysis to instant death and everything else in between,” Anjani said with peculiar pride. I figured this was her field of expertise. After Bijarki’s comment about her age, she probably needed to reassert herself as someone not to be messed with.

  “And this stuff kills shape-shifters?” I asked, pulling an arrow out of the quiver tied to her waist and carefully inspecting its iron tip, glazed in a dried dark purple liquid.

  “Yes it does. Be careful not to touch it. It’s extremely potent.” Her eyes were fixed on the tip.

  I couldn’t help but grin. “Worried I’ll die?” I aimed to make her smile.

  “I don’t really care. I just don’t want to spend the rest of this trip leaning against that self-entitled incubus for support.”

  She was as fiery as an active volcano and seemed to enjoy verbal smackdowns. Once again, she left me speechless. I had my hands full with this one, and breaking through that hard outer shell of hers was not going to be easy.

  I realized that I was eager for the challenge. I wanted to break through the hard casing. I wanted to get to her soft core and hear her whimper in my arms. The warrior succubus with silvery skin was hot as a summer’s day, but I wanted to find out what she was like beneath that fiery surface.

  Serena

  [Hazel and Tejus’s daughter]

  The trail leading up to the tribe was smooth, and we had sufficient sunlight to guide us along the way, despite the thick tree crowns stretching out above us. Even with Bijarki and Anjani commanding two deadly crossbows, I still felt on edge, fearing we’d soon be surrounded by more shape-shifters than we could handle.

  I’d wondered why the shape-shifters hadn’t attacked so far, but after Anjani told us about the poisoned arrows, my fear slowly subsided. Nevertheless, I kept my eyes on the dense jungle that spread out on both sides, on the massive trees and moving shadows.

  Draven walked by my side, his hand on my shoulder. My skin tingled beneath the fabric where he touched me, but most of my attention was aimed at whatever was lurking in the jungle. Somehow, he sensed that and squeezed my shoulder lightly.

  “It will be all right, Serena. Shape-shifters don’t usually come out so brazenly during the day. What happened yesterday was a rare occurrence,” he said in a reassuring tone.

  “I still find it weird that they’re not jumping us,” I replied, looking over my shoulder.

  “They can smell the nightshade,” Anjani repeated as she walked ahead, leaning against Jovi with her crossbow ready to shoot. “Unfortunately my sisters and I lost ours when we went hunting yesterday. We were looking for it when we were attacked,” her voice trailed off.

  “What were you hunting?” Draven asked.

  A moment passed, and a distant hiss sent shivers down my spine. Draven’s hand pressed my shoulder again. His senses were incredibly sharp from those herbs.

  “Shape-shifters,” Anjani replied.

  My jaw dropped. Looking at Draven, he was also taken aback, both eyebrows raised over his eye bandage.

  “Their blood is warfare material,” the succubus explained, noticing our stunned silence. I saw Bijarki looking over his shoulder. This seemed to be news to him as well.

  “Care to elaborate?” Draven asked. “It’s not something I’ve heard of before.”

  “We discovered it by mistake, a few years back,” Anjani explained, her voice somber and low. “A shape-shifter wandered into our camp one night and killed one of the girls. We reacted instantly and tore it apart. Its blood sprayed into the campfire, and it almost blew us away. It took us hours to put the fire out after it swallowed three of our tents. I don’t know what it is about their blood that is so volatile, but we now hunt these bastards and drain them for it.”

  It took us a while to digest this little piece of precious information. Draven and I seemed to be thinking the same thing.

  “This could be extremely useful in our fight against Azazel,” he concluded, and I nodded my agreement.

  “Why haven’t you shared this with anyone else?” Bijarki asked.

  “There isn’t anyone else to share it with. Most of the incubi have pledged their allegiance to Azazel. We’re not foolish enough to hand over such tricks to traitors,” she retorted.

  The sound of muffled footsteps approaching from the right startled me, and I stopped walking. Anjani, Jovi, and Bijarki stopped as well, turning their heads in that direction. Leaves rustled, and branches crackled as something came closer through the dark jungle.

  “Speaking of which.” Anjani aimed her crossbow at the creature as it jumped out from the shrubs lining the road. The poisoned arrow shot out with a whistle and hit the shape-shifter right in the throat. It fell back with a squeal, then started wailing and squirming as the nightshade mixture entered its bloodstream.

  I watched in awe as the creature suffered tremendous pain before it finally surrendered to death, its limbs twitching. It was half obscured by the greenery, so I could only see its legs and most of its chest and arms, translucent skin stretched out over raw muscles and sharp bones. More hissing came from where the shape-shifter had jumped at us. We watched in silence as the moving shadows stilled between the trees, then vanished deeper into the jungle.

  “See? I told you, even if they do come, they don’t stand a chance,” Anjani quipped. “It’s why we’ve been thriv
ing up north for generations.”

  Draven’s nostrils flared as he sniffed the air and nudged me forward. We resumed our walk and left the dead shape-shifter there on the side of the road. I left my tension behind as well. Anjani’s poisoned arrows made me rethink our chances of surviving the trip. We were in good hands.

  “I’m impressed,” Draven remarked, and Anjani lifted the crossbow in the air as a sign of appreciation. Judging by the way she leaned into Jovi, she still had some pain in her shoulder and leg.

  “And from what I can tell, that’s not an easy feat to accomplish,” I added quietly with a smile.

  He turned his head toward me and sniffed again. I knew what he was doing and felt my heart tighten in my chest. His knowledge of my natural scent made me feel naked in front of him, despite his blindness and the presence of clothes on my body.

  There was no better way to distract myself from what I was feeling than to resume my inquisitive mission.

  “I’ve made it to Elissa’s last entry in her journal,” I said.

  He kept quiet as we walked, his senses heightened and busy analyzing our surroundings. But I knew the impact of my question. I could see it in the tension drawn on his jaw.

  “Can you tell me what happened afterward?” I kept my voice as soft and gentle as possible, in order to try and get him to open up more.

  He slowed his pace enough to put a couple of yards more between us and the rest of the group and let out a heavy sigh.

  “There was another page in that journal, but I tore it out,” Draven said, prompting my surprise.

  “What? Why did you do that?”

  “I’ve read that journal countless times before you came along, and each time I smiled and cried and cursed remembering her and our time together. But nothing was as devastating as that last entry, so I tore it out. I couldn’t stand the sight of it.”