by May Dawson
I glance one more time at the grass and dark sky behind the doorway, and then follow him into the door. When he reaches up to snap down his eyepiece as I crowd behind him, I stop him with a hand on his arm. “Light, please.”
His lips part slightly, as if he didn’t realize I would be perturbed by following a stranger into a pitch-black tunnel, and then he snaps the eye piece back into the mask. “Of course.”
He reaches behind us and closes the door, which shrieks again, the sound almost human. The two of us are in the kind of deep, simmering blackness where I can’t make out his outline; I want to reach out and touch his chest to make sure I’m not alone. My breathing quickens.
If I had my magic, I could form a ball of light in my palm. Most of Avalon turns the lights on and off with magic; I’m as helpless here as a child who can’t reach a light switch.
He murmurs a word, and the lights turn on above us. The long glass tube running along the ceiling turns on the lights in six-foot-chunks, brightening the plain stone hallway that stretches away as far as the eye can see.
“Let’s move,” he says. “I don’t like to depend on the stupidity of the True.”
“You don’t like to depend? Do you make a habit of rescuing girls who don’t want rescuing?”
“Most of the girls I rescue are a bit more grateful than you.”
“So you do have a habit.” My accusation comes out sounding more flirtatious than perhaps it should.
“Maybe it’s a bad habit.”
“It certainly is in my case.” I have a few handsome bodyguards looking for me right now; I don’t need another. But I do find the nameless noble a bit…intriguing. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”
“I leave the name behind when I wear the mask.” His low voice is gruff and sexy at the same time.
“Really?” I repeat, following his broad shoulders down the tunnel. “Very dramatic. Did you practice saying that in the mirror?”
He turns on his heel, walking backward. “Are you always this difficult?”
“I didn’t ask for a rescue.”
“Noted.”
“Where do you rescue all these other girls from?” A picture pops up in my mind of a magician setting up runaway trains and hurricanes to rescue women from.
“Valisk,” he says shortly.
I frown at that. I don’t know why people would need rescuing from Valisk, the country to the north, which has a problem with dimensional rips and an even bigger problem with shirty magicians. “Then why are you here now?”
“I heard you were evil. I was curious to see the state of your soul for myself.”
“Any thoughts yet?”
“I’m pretty sure you are.” His hands suddenly settle on my hips, pushing me up against the wall. A smug smile crosses his lips above that handsome jaw. My palms find his shoulders, my fingers sinking into the powerful muscles there. “I think you might be harmless, though.”
I want to kiss this forward man in the mask, but instead, I shove him away. He’s lucky I don’t knee him in the balls. “That would be a mistake.”
As he takes a step back, his grin widens, a quick flash under the edge of his mask.
“You can’t kiss a girl when you won’t tell her your name or even show your face.” I step in to him, breathing in the scent of his cologne, and run my fingertips over the edge of his mask. I want to get it off him. “Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”
“Did yours?” His hand falls over my wrist, his touch gentle but firm as he pulls my hand from his mask. “I don’t want you to see my face, Tera Donovan.”
My fingers knit around his, and I pull him with me, because we have to get moving down the tunnel. “You have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name. My face is plastered on books and magazines.”
“They don’t do you justice.”
“I’d say.” And not just because they keep using that damned school photo. In hindsight, I should never have put those stupid barrettes in my hair.
“I never much cared for my name,” he says. “It’s easy for me to leave it behind.”
“I’d love to do the same.”
“Because your father’s name follows you everywhere you go?”
Because I don’t intend to choose evil, as he did, even though choosing good is a big pain in the ass.
“I’m going to have to give you a nickname,” I say. “I’m going to tell my friends about this bizarre encounter.”
“Tell Airren you shoved me away when I tried to kiss you. He’ll love that detail.” His voice is dry.
“How do you know him?”
“Oh, no. He doesn’t know who I am, and I’m not giving it away that easily.”
“It seems you have all of us at a disadvantage.”
“Most of all, I have the True at a disadvantage, and I intend to keep it that way. My apologies if that’s inconvenient for you.”
“Go ahead and bring the True down. I don’t mind.”
“I meant because you can’t know my name—”
“I’m going to name you after a flower. An orchid, maybe? Or a rose? Something nice and feminine.” I snap my fingers, the noise too loud in the dark. “The night-blooming flox we passed.”
“The flox?”
“You left your name in my hands.”
“It sounds like some kind of phlegm you’d cough up during a truly awful long winter.” The dour tone in his voice makes me smile. Then, more brightly, he asks, “Isn’t the colloquial for the flox flower simply fox?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“You should trust me. You’re the one who said most nobles are stupid.”
“Not me.” He squeezes my hand quickly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t live long.”
“What’s going on in Valisk?” I ask.
We reach a T in the tunnel, and he tugs me quickly to the right.
“Do you read the newspapers?”
“Not often, despite my best efforts.” Perhaps I should pick up a paper that doesn’t have my face on it. There’s an awful lot of history for me to catch up on, and I have so many questions about how the world changed while I was gone.
“The nobles that stand against Curran are being imprisoned as he tries to turn his revolution into an empire.” His voice comes out short.
“Are you from Avalon or Valisk?” I ask.
“Both.”
“Do you ever give anyone a straight answer?”
“Only if they kiss me.”
“Why do you even want me to kiss you?” I ask in exasperation, even though I’ve felt a pull toward him all night—as much as I’ve tried to get him out of my way.
“I like my girls a bit wicked,” he says. “And anyway, it’s the surest way to catch a glimpse of someone’s soul.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard tonight, and I talked to two True.”
His gaze flickers toward me. I don’t know why I just told him that I’ve talked to the True, to two of them, except the question beats steadily in my mind. Why did two True seek me out? Usually, I keep my own counsel—but with this guy, my thoughts seem to overflow and cross my lips. It’s like I trust him.
“You should stay away from the True,” he warns me.
“Perhaps.” But that’s easier said than done. I can make myself useful, cleaning up Avalon, or I can find myself banished again. I would never choose the True, and I have to be loyal to the Crown in order to survive—even though the Crown shows no inclination to be loyal to me.
“Tera,” he says, and his voice is worried.
“You really think that you can read someone from a kiss?” I demand. I don’t want to hear what he’s going to say next. I know there’s plenty of reason for me to be afraid, but I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I want to fake brave, if that’s the best I can do.
All I can see of his face is his lips above that jaw, but they’re expressive, pillowy lips, and their shape alters tellingly from worried back to
playful. “Yes.”
“Read me then, Fox.” I use his ridiculous nickname as I catch his lapels in my hand. He leans toward me without hesitation, his hands settling firmly on my hips. His lips brush mine in a sweet tentative kiss.
A door bursts open across from us, a hidden door in the side of the tunnel.
The Fox steps in front of me, flinging up his hands, gold sparks flying from his fingers.
“Oh, come off it.” Airren’s voice rings out as he slams my new friend against the wall. Behind him, the bright lights of the dorm shine out from the hole in the tunnel wall.
Apparently, I’m never going to hear what the Fox ‘read’ in my lips.
Then Airren cold-cocks the Night-Blooming Fox across the jaw.
The noble grabs Airren’s shoulders and slams him against the opposite wall. The two of them struggle. From their tall, leanly-muscled bodies to their fighting style, they’re evenly matched.
“I’m just trying to get Tera to safety,” my noble grinds out through gritted teeth.
Airren slams him into the wall. “You’re just trying to meddle. We have everything under control here.”
The Fox ducks under his arm and, as Airren whirls, the Fox kicks him in the thigh. “That’s why she was almost taken by the True?”
Airren hisses in pain, then ducks low, catching the Fox around the waist. The two of them land heavily on the ground. “I’m not discussing strategy with you.”
“So you do know each other?” I ask as the two of them wrestle on the ground, rolling into the walls as they struggle.
Cax steps through the doorway. His worried green eyes meet mine. “Tera, you’re okay.”
“More okay than I intended to be tonight.” I thought I’d be kidnapped. I pull off my mask. The guys had said I wouldn’t be alone tonight. Has one of them watched the night unfold through my eyes, on my heels even though they couldn’t quite reach me? Did one of them watch me hesitate, on the verge of kissing the Fox?
Airren and my would-be rescuer continue to wrestle across the hallway. Cax looks at them, one fine blond eyebrow rising, and then shrugs. “Let’s leave them to it.”
When Cax holds his hand out to me, I take it, and the two of us step together into the brightly lit hallway on the first floor of Rawl house. I’ve been through this doorway a few times before, when the police have come for me.
“Should I leave them?” Cax asks Mycroft, jerking a thumb toward doorway. Grunts and the sound of punches landing rise from the dark tunnels. “I’d hate for the True to follow them in.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Mycroft promises. He pushes his sleeves up on his brawny forearms as he steps through the doorway.
I heard one solid thud, then another, and I wince at the sound.
“It seems like they have some history,” I say to Cax.
“So I gather.” Cax reaches down and takes the mask from me, our fingers briefly intertwining. “Really, are you okay?”
Before I can answer, Mycroft, Airren and the Fox step through the door. There’s a trickle of blood from the corner of Airren’s lush lips, and the Fox’s chest is heaving as if it’s hard for him to breathe. He nods to me, nonetheless polite, even as he leans an elbow against the wall and tries to draw a full breath. “You’ve always fought dirty, Airren.”
Airren touches his split lip. “I wish I could tell which Valisk you were from that distinctly feminine punch you threw.”
“Drew your blood.”
“Enough,” Mycroft says. To the noble, he says, “You have to go. We’re trying to draw the True to us, and you’re interrupting our mission Were you seen?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t believe anyone recognizes who I am.”
“Which is?” I glance around in exasperation at the set faces of the men around me. “Do any of you know who he is?”
“We don’t,” Airren says curtly. “We know what he is. A fool who wants to be a hero.”
“Takes one to know one, brother.” The noble claps Airren on the shoulder as he passes him, heading toward me. He slides one finger under my chin, tilting my face up to his. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Airren warns.
“I always find trouble,” the Fox says, his lips quirking up under the edge of the mask. “And you, Tera Donovan, seem like trouble.”
Part of me wants to close the distance between us and press my lips to his arrogant mouth. I have a feeling I can melt that ego. “Takes one to know one.”
He grins. As he turns away, he flicks his cloak behind him, and gold sparks fly through the air. I raise my arm to block the sudden blaze of light as he disappears into a wall of fire.
“That showy bastard,” Airren says, his voice frustrated as he shields his eyes.
The fire rolls up into the ceiling and disappears, a brief blaze of heat that’s already gone.
“Is he supposed to be going to Hell?” I ask, perplexed.
“Your magic sucks!” Airren calls after him. “You don’t even have a cohesive theme!”
The Night-Blooming Fox does not appear to bring out the best in Airren.
Chapter 11
“Let’s get you to bed,” Cax says, resting a hand on my shoulder. He casts a worried look at Airren. “It’s been a long, strange night, and tomorrow’s going to bring its own share of trouble.”
“What happened with the—” I start to ask, then glance down the hall; there are still students about.
“The campus is locked down,” Airren says. “The party’s over.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
Cax shakes his head. “Everyone is fine, Tera. Scared, but fine.”
Croft curses. “A True show of strength… this is going to—”
Airren flashes him a quick, angry look, and Mycroft breaks off.
“Whose room is she going to?” Cax asks Airren.
The two of them outpace me as we climb the stairs; my body aches from keeping that man from falling over the rail and from hours of dancing—and running—in three inch heels. My calves and thighs burn, and the polished wooden railing feels dangerously slick under my exhausted grip as I climb the stairs mechanically.
“Her own room?” I suggest half-heartedly. These men do not need to talk to each other about me when they could talk to me. But I don’t really want to be left alone, either; it’s been a long day full of kidnapping attempts and I’d like to rest the night without another.
For all their faults, I certainly do feel safe when I lay in bed with them.
At least, I know my body is safe. I’m in desperate fear for my heart.
“Mine,” Mycroft and Airren say at the same time. Mycroft’s voice is a low rumble behind me, right before he sweeps me off my feet. His arms are suddenly around me and I fall against his chest, my arms closing around his neck.
“Mycroft,” I scold. I can’t be this close to him without wanting to pull him even closer to me, without feeling a countering ache of rejection.
“You walk like your feet hurt,” he says.
“My feet do hurt. You could ask before you pick me up.” Or maybe he should just know how I feel, since we’re two of a kind that shouldn’t even make for friends.
“You’d say no.”
“You’re not helping your case here. You and I are not on good terms.”
“Is that why you’re calling me Mycroft again?” His face doesn’t change in the slightest at the revelation that we are not on good terms.
I suppose he already knew. He was a spy, after all.
“I guess that means my room.” Airren does not sound particularly sympathetic to Mycroft.
As Mycroft’s feet slow, Airren and Cax reach the hall in front of us and head across the polished hardwood for the stairs to the fifth floor.
Mycroft’s lips nuzzle my ear. “Is that what you want?”
His gravelly voice turns husky and low, threaded with the faintest raw need, and my heart rises in my chest.
Bastard, for sure.
“You need to pick a lane,” I tell him, my voice hard even though my heart is squishy when it comes to him. I squeeze his big shoulders in my hands, his muscle unyielding against my palms. “And you need to put me down.”
His eyes narrow, but he comes to a stop. He glances at the stairs, as Cax and Airren outdistance us. When he slides his arm out from under my knees and sets me down on the landing, even though he’s still standing a few steps down from me, he towers over me. “What’s wrong?”
“Really?” I pop my hands on my hips.
He mimics me, hands on his hips. “Really.”
“You don’t want me.” I stab his chest with my finger. “You told me as much.”
He shakes his head. “Pretty sure I never said that.”
“You said you couldn’t even be my friend,” I say hotly.
His hands skate over my thighs before they settle on my hands on my hips. “I don’t think I ever pretended I wanted to be your friend.”
“Friend is a good place to start.” When I twist in his arms, his hands drop away. I stop at the base of the stairs, yanking at the straps of my heels.
Mycroft stops at the landing as I head up the stairs. I call over my shoulder, “You hurt me. And you’re going to have to start at square one.”
There’s a pause, before he says, “Good night, Tera.”
I don’t know if I want to turn back to hug him and tell the big miserable lug that I don’t mean it, or if I want to throw him the bird over my shoulder.
And I do mean it. He did hurt me. I’m not going to hide it.
Since I can’t decide, I head up the stairs without answering.
If he wants to make things complicated—and both of us miserable—I don’t know that I can stop him. He can figure it out on his own and get back to me.
I leave him behind me as I jog up the last set of stairs. My calves ache pleasantly now, free of the damn shoes, which I carry dangling from one finger. They’re beautiful shoes, even if I don’t want to wear them again for at least another year.
Cax and Airren wait for me outside Airren’s door. Their faces are curious, as if they know I’ve left Mycroft behind for now.
