Is this how my brother felt? Did he die as prey too?
I round a corner and slam into a wall. Gasing, I step back.
I can’t go back.
I can’t go forward.
Fuck. The torch drops to the ground, and I turn slowly to face my death.
15
Dwade
We’ve never run so fast in all our lives as when we move through the secret tunnels beneath the school. Rayne had taught us ways to navigate this place, to avoid the traps set up to stop people, and to avoid the creatures charged with killing any who should trespass.
But it might not be enough to reach her in time.
I stretch my senses out and her fear is so powerful that I nearly stumble. Esmeray, our Esmeray, is afraid. And she’s never afraid.
As we draw closer to her, Lucian shoves at the secret door, but it doesn’t budget. I push him out of the way and grit my teeth. At any other time, I might not have the strength to move it, but this time I do. Pulling the heavy wall of stone to the side, I open it just enough to see Esmeray on the other side.
I don’t hesitate. As her huge eyes fall on me, I grab her and pull her in behind me. A groan tears from my lips as I drag the door back into place. Seconds later, there’s a sound on the other side of the door. A strange, deep sound that sends every hair on my arms standing on end. I stretch my senses out but feel nothing.
What the hell can hide itself like that from a fae?
Someone grabs my shoulder, and I turn to see Bron gesturing that we need to go. I look at Esmeray. Her shoulders are drawn back and her eyes have that fire that belongs to her and her alone, but she’s also pale. If we do nothing else in life, we have to protect her. I know that down to my very soul.
We surround her as we start forward, and none of us speak or slow until we come to our room deep in the tunnels. The one place we feel relatively safe down here. We close the door behind us, sealing us in, and even though there are a few bulbs in this part of the tunnels, Lucian lights torches to chase the shadows away.
When he’s done, I turn to face Esmeray. She still looks terrified, and somehow angry too.
God, I want to touch her. I want to hold her and bring her comfort more than anything in this world. When we were kids, she always seemed to mask her emotions with anger, or with an I don’t care attitude, but I would hug her, and slowly she’d let down her walls. I hate that things are different now. That instead of holding her, I just freeze, not sure if I have the right to touch her.
“Are you okay?” Bron asks, and I can sense the terror he felt when he couldn’t find her, even if Esmeray can’t.
Her chin lifts. “Yes, I’m always fine. But you three have a lot of answering to do.”
She sounds so confident, so angry, but I can still feel her terror echoing through me. It shatters something in my soul that tells me I failed her. I’m supposed to one day lead my people. I’m supposed to one day direct the armies of the fae and handle the training of our youth. But how can I do any of those things if I can’t keep my mate from feeling like that?
Suddenly, Bron seems to come to life. “We have a lot of answering to do?” Rage awakens in his hazel eyes, and he steps closer to her, towering over her small frame. “You fuck with our minds, disappear, and end up in this cursed place and you think we have a lot to answer for?”
“How about for lying to me?” she says, her voice low and threatening, and I swear all three of us flinch. “How about for knowing the truth about my brother and hiding it from me? How about for having something to do with his death?”
The air rushes out of the room.
“No--” Bron begins.
I cut him off. “She deserves the truth.”
Bron and Lucian look at me, and I know we gave our words. I’ve never broken my word before, but if there’s anyone I would lose my honor for, it’s Esmeray. Lucian and Bron might think that we can come back from this, but I know the truth. My family might be known as warriors. We might be feared by most people. But we also knew that it’s hard to run from the truth.
“Tell me,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
Bron doesn’t back down. “We can’t, because we can’t trust you to be smart with this information. You’ll go and get yourself killed.”
“And what does it matter to you what I do?”
Lucian speaks, his voice gentle. “You have to know how we feel about you…”
And that’s when I see it for the first time. Surprise. Confusion. Does she really have no idea?
Hell.
“Wh-what…” She freezes. “I just want to know the truth.”
Bron closes his eyes. “Esmeray. What can we say to get you to let this go?”
“Nothing,” she answers with ease.
And I believe her, even if I can’t sense her emotions any more.
“Your brother was murdered.” It feels strange to say the words aloud, but when those grey eyes fall on me, I know she’s relieved I said it too. “He became obsessed with knowing the truth, and no matter what we did or said, we couldn’t stop him. So, at first, we humored him. We decided it was better for us to be with him than for him to get hurt alone. But no matter how hurt he got, no matter how many close calls there were, it was never enough for him.”
Suddenly, I can’t speak anymore. I can’t find the words to tell her what we did. And it kills something inside of me. I’m a warrior. If I can’t face the woman I love with the truth, then I’m not half the man I thought I was.
“What happened, Dwade?” she asks, and I’ve never heard her sound so small.
I have to swallow around the lump in my throat. “The week your brother died, we sat him down and said that we’d had enough of his obsession and that we wouldn’t enable him anymore. We told him if he was going to keep doing dangerous things, he’d have to do them without us. We thought losing us might be enough to finally get him to see reason. But instead…”
Bron opens his eyes and the pain of losing Rayne all over again suddenly flows off of him. And for the first time I realize how much he’s been holding back, because the pain he feels echoes through my very soul. And so I decide to be brave too. I drop the walls around my emotions, and a second later I feel Lucian do the same. The room is suddenly filled with such an intense sense of loss that I feel tears prick my eyes.
But it’s Bron who finishes our story. “Your brother didn’t stop. Each night he was gone longer, which meant he was going deeper into the tunnels, until he didn’t come back. He was always back by morning, but the day he died he didn’t return. We went into the tunnels looking for him, and we found…his blood.”
Her eyes are filled with tears. “Why didn’t he just go to you, then? Why did he come to me? If he’d have stayed on campus, maybe...”
Bron releases a slow breath. “There’s no cell phone reception down here, so he couldn’t have called us for help. However, awhile ago we found a rare transportation crystal. The user needed only to think of a place and they could go there. When we found his blood on the walls, we looked in our room for the crystal, but it was gone, so we knew he’d used it. The club I found you at that night is owned by a healer Rayne used to date. I thought maybe he used the crystal to get there. When I couldn’t find him, I realized I was wrong.”
“We didn’t know the weapon that had injured him was poisoned until we learned of his death,” I say, remembering the horrible moment we found out. A moment that will live in my memory forever. “We thought he’d gotten badly injured. We never thought…”
Esmeray slowly sits down, and tears track down her cheeks.
I settle beside her, but I don’t touch her.
“Are you okay?” Lucian asks, kneeling down at her other side.
The agony in the room only increases, but still, I can sense Esmeray keeping the walls tightly up around her emotions. I almost ask her to pull them down, to show us how she feels, but I realize that maybe it’s better if I don’t know. If she blames us now, if she hat
es us now, I’d rather her say it than have to feel it.
At last her gaze locks with mine. “What was my brother researching?”
That was the last thing I expected her to say. “Esmeray. You understand that this information consumed your brother, right? It led to his death.”
“If someone was willing to kill for it, then we should find out what he found out, right?”
Bron curses and kneels down. “That is not what you should’ve gotten out of that story.”
Her gaze sharpens. “No? Was I just supposed to realize that you all abandoned Rayne when he needed you most?”
Her words are like a blow. A fucking dagger to the heart, because she’s absolutely right.
But she doesn’t stop. “Or that you guys could’ve saved him if you’d just been with him?”
“Esmeray.” Lucian sounds like he’s about to lose all control.
“What was he researching?” she asks again, her tone cold and controlled.
I feel numb as I answer her. “He realized that all the documents on the dark fae have been altered and edited. Pages are missing. And there are huge chunks of our history that don’t make sense. He felt that someone was trying to erase very important information about the connection between light fae and dark fae.”
“And what did he discover?” Her face was a mask of calm, even though she’d just destroyed us.
I shake my head, trying to speak around the lump in my throat. “He kept his research somewhere down here, hidden. He said it was too dangerous for us to know. That if we found out, the people targeting him would target us too.”
She frowns, her mask wavering. “That doesn’t make sense. You were all down here. Why would only Rayne be targeted?”
I exchange a glance with Bron and Lucian. I don’t want to keep talking about this. I want to lie in the dark and try to pull the pieces of my heart back together. But I started this, and I can’t stop now, so I force myself to continue. “Well, first he stole things, even from the dean himself, to get these tunnels opened. They were guarded by spells that made it impossible to enter them. And when he broke them, they were keyed to know who was responsible for it. From the first day, there were several teachers and even the dean who started treating him differently. It was how we started to suspect who was hiding the secrets.”
“There’s more,” she says.
Bron curses. “Isn’t this enough, Esmeray? Isn’t your brother dying for a pointless cause enough?”
She doesn’t back down. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Fuck!” Bron shouts, leaping to his feet and pacing away from Esmeray.
She rises to her feet and follows him. She grabs the back of his shirt, and he looks back at her. “Tell me!”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do.” Her voice is almost a growl.
“Trust me...” he says.
“I don’t,” she throws back at him.
He bites his lip and looks at me for help. But I’ve said enough. I can’t…I can’t say this.
“Stop lying to me!”
And Bron explodes. “We weren’t the ones lying to you, Esmeray! Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think your brother might be the liar?”
She slaps him, and the sound seems to echo through the room.
Lucian rises to his feet and so do I. Tension swims between us, and I can feel within Esmeray emotions so powerful that they’re thrashing against the walls she’s created. If she doesn’t let them out soon, I have no idea what will happen. I’ve never met someone who could keep something like that inside.
Bron rubs his face and squares off with her. I can see it in his face. He’s debating. Debating about what’s worse: walking away now, or ruining her memory of her brother.
“I--”
Bron’s gaze slams with mine, and I stop talking.
He looks back at Esmeray. “Your brother killed someone. With his mind.”
She pulls back and her eyes are wide. “That’s impossible. He was a light fae.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
Bron shifts closer to her, leaning over her. “Well, he did. And…he started talking to ghosts.”
Esmeray moves away from him, then shifts directions. Her hands move, but she doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself. “He was never able to… There’s nothing about him… This can’t be true. No, Rayne would’ve told me. He would’ve…”
We watch her unravel, feeling helpless. She paces. She wrings her hands.
And then she whirls toward us, and her arms open at her sides. When her emotions unleash, none of us are prepared for it. We crumble to our knees as helpless anger, loss, and grief pour and pour from her. It’s so overwhelming that for too long I’m lost in her emotions, completely unaware of my own feelings, or even my own body.
Is that what she’s been holding back? I hate myself for not being there for her. For doing nothing to ease this kind of mind-numbing suffering.
It’s strange. When I come back to myself, we’re all around her. Sitting in a pile on the floor holding her as emotions roll off of her until we slowly feel them easing. She’s breathing hard, tears rolling down her face.
“We all miss him so much,” Lucian whispers.
“He’s all I had.” She brushes the tears from her face as the words come tumbling out.
I can’t help myself. I catch her hand. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” she says. “I had you guys but then…then something changed, and I lost you.”
I can’t stop as I stroke her wrist. “You never lost us. We were just giving you time.”
“Time for what?” she asks.
I want to tell her the truth, but I can’t. “Time to grow up. Because the way we felt about you…it wasn’t the same.”
Her eyes widen. Hell. Did I say too much?
And then she leans forward and kisses me. I’m so shocked that for a minute I don’t react. I see Bron’s hands go to her waist as she leans forward in his lap, and Lucian’s jaw drops open from beside us. And then I close my eyes and give into the sensation of her soft lips on mine.
I’m lost to the world, to everything except her. Her lips part and her tongue slips inside, and I can’t think. My cock hardens, and I just enjoy this moment, knowing that soon it’ll be over. Soon she’ll put up her walls again, closing us off from her, and this is all we’ll have.
When Esmeray breaks our kiss and leans away from me, we’re both panting.
I don’t know what that kiss meant, but I swear I will remember it the rest of my life.
She glances at Lucian and Bron, then back at me. “So, how does this work? I’ve never had a foursome before.”
16
Esmeray
They’d stayed away from me because their feelings had changed for me? They wanted me as more than just a friend? After stroking their cocks in my room, it wasn’t exactly a surprise that they found me attractive. But it was a surprise that when they left, and stopped visiting, it wasn’t because of something I did or said.
For years I would replay that last visit in my mind. I was seventeen and so eager for them to return and fill my life with laughter and fun, but their entire demeanor had changed the second they came. I’d gone over everything in my mind over and over again and tried to figure out what I did wrong. What I did that pushed them away.
And now I knew. And it was nothing the loner dark fae had done.
Now all I wanted was to touch them. It might not mean anything tomorrow. It might just be a good lay, but at least tonight we’d have each other. At least for a little while I wouldn’t feel this soul-crushing loneliness anymore.
“Esmeray,” Lucian says, clearing his throat. “I’m not sure this is what you want.”
“Why don’t you let me tell you what I want?” I know how I sound, and I don’t care. Because light fae are always so strange about sex. They don’t understand that sometimes a good fuck is just a good fuck. And from Bron’s h
ard dick pressing against my ass, and the way Dwade kissed me, I know they want this, if they just let themselves.
“Maybe a good night’s sleep and a--”
“Fuck me,” I interrupt. “And I’ll show you how I like it.”
When no one responds, I get frustrated. I stand and slowly start to undress. None of them stop me. Jaws drop. Eyes widen. But no one tells me to stop. Which I take as a good sign.
When I’m naked, I cock a brow, then pick one of their bedrolls and lie down. I’m surprised when Lucian stands and takes off his shirt, before coming to stand over me, looking uncertain. And aroused as hell when he stares down at my body.
I spread my legs. “Come and taste me.”
Fuck, I’ve never seen him move so fast. He crumbles to his knees, and his eyes are wild as they stare down at me. “You just want me to--”
“Do you know how?” I challenge.
The look he gives me takes my breath away. “I sure as hell do.”
“Then put that dirty mouth to good use.”
He leans down, and I expect him to be a good boy and do as I ask. Instead, I watch him suspiciously as he kisses me. Did he not understand? I shift beneath him, feeling frustrated. But then his lips begin to kiss me harder and deeper, and I forget to be annoyed that he didn’t do just as I say.
One of his hands cups my breast, and I shiver, then feel every muscle in my body tense when he flicks my nipple. I’d heard light fae didn’t know how to get to the point in bed, but I found that it wasn’t as annoying as I thought.
“This is a mistake,” I hear Bron say, but he sounds horny as fuck.
We break our kiss, and I look over at him. I’m breathing hard as I push Lucian down, and he obeys, but stops to lavish my breasts. My back arches as his hot mouth closes around one of my nipples, and his fingers pinch my breast.
“Be. A. Man,” I pant.
Bron’s stunning hazel eyes narrow. “Trust me, I’m a man. But we just had a lot happen. Emotions are charged--”
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