I hung my head, and the tears that hadn’t emerged in Neverra trickled down my cheeks, evaporating almost as quickly as they fell. I cried for my lost hair; I cried for the floppy flower; I cried for Cruz; I cried because my brother still didn’t approve of the man whom I’d set my heart upon.
“What’s with the pity party?”
I spun to find Ace leaning against the doorframe. I glowered at him, and he smirked.
“Nothing like an annoying older brother to stanch waterworks.” One side of his mouth lifted, and he extended his arm. A folded square of paper flapped between his index and middle finger. “You’ll probably need this.”
I frowned at the paper. My stamp worked. I didn’t need a page from Ley’s book.
“For the hunter, dum-dum.”
I jerked my head up so fast my neck cracked.
For a long moment, we looked at each other, and then I lunged toward him and hugged him as tight as I used to hug him when I was little, and he would sweep me out of the palace to take me gallivanting through Neverra.
“I love you, lil’ sis.”
Not as much as I loved him. I finally pressed away from him.
“You look different.”
I palmed my nonexistent hair self-consciously.
“Alive.”
That hadn’t been what I had been expecting Ace to say.
I slid my hand off my head and signed, I look ugly.
He snorted. “Lily, even if you tried, you wouldn’t manage to look ugly.”
I scrunched up my nose and pointed to my hair.
“It’s different. Definitely not ugly. In a way it makes you look older, edgier, as though you belong on the back of a Harley.”
I snorted.
“Look, I’m not the most objective person in the world when it comes to you, but I guarantee that you look better than 99.99 percent of the women out there, faeries and humans included. The only person who tops you is my wife.”
I rolled my eyes.
“What? I said I wasn’t particularly objective.”
I shook my head, grinning.
Cat barged into the room. “I’m ready.” She sounded breathless.
I never expected Cat to be excited about returning to Neverra. Then again, she’d built herself a fabulous new house. Or maybe her breathlessness had to do with my brother not being stranded from the faerie isle like I had been.
“Don’t you look nice,” she said, giving me a once-over.
“See, I’m not the only one who thinks this.”
I made a face.
She handed Ace her bag, and then she strode to my vanity cabinet and opened it. She took out a black eyeliner, mascara, and a tube of lipstick. “Sit.” She pointed to the bathtub. “Look up.”
She poked my eye with the pencil, then rubbed her fingertip against my lid, and then she rolled mascara onto my lashes. She tortured my other eye next. Biting her lower lip, she studied my face, adding a touch of liner here and there. Then she capped the black pencil and decorated my lips with bright red lipstick.
“Can I object?” Ace asked.
“Nope,” Cat said.
“She’s going to garner way more attention than the hunter’s,” he said gruffly, which made Cat smile.
I had to admit, it made me smile too. Especially when I saw how serious Ace was.
“You’re ready.” She pressed the lipstick into my hands. “How are you getting to New York?”
Did everyone know about Kajika’s match?
“The portals?” she suggested.
I hadn’t even considered the portals. I suddenly worried that going through a portal would erase the ink from Ley’s page, but then remembered the book had already traveled to Neverra and back, and the ink hadn’t vanished.
I nodded, then chucked my cell phone, lipstick, and the piece of paper from Holly’s book into my favorite Valentino purse.
“I just gave two more pages to Gwen and Menawa,” Cat was telling my brother, while I speared a pair of diamond hoops through my ears. “We’re running out.”
“Not many people left to bring in.”
“Just the Daneelies,” Cat said.
“Not many will be coming, if any at all.”
I wondered if more had happened since I’d left, besides Pete becoming a hunter. Had Quinn and Kiera resurfaced?
I wanted to ask, but I also wanted to get to New York as fast as possible. We took off toward the boathouse. Ace and I flew while Cat ran.
The door to locker number four was still gaping.
“Ready?” Ace asked Cat.
She nodded.
“After you, my queen.”
Her hand shook as she raised it—she still didn’t believe it would work. She pressed her palm against the back of the locker, and her portal stamp flashed, and then she was gone.
“I’m going to need an escort.”
Right.
He extended his hand, and I clasped it. And then I pressed my fingers to the back of the locker, and we glided right through.
42
Madison Square Garden
My brother’s expression when he emerged from the portal would forever stay etched in me. Relief and joy. He wrapped an arm around Cat’s waist and pulled her against him, tucking her head under his chin.
I leaped off the portal, but then doubled back and tapped Cat’s shoulder. She looked away from the sea of courtiers who were slowly congregating around them.
I signed, I love my new house.
Her smile increased tenfold. “Come back quick, Lily.” Her voice was hoarse with emotion.
I nodded, then soared up. I hadn’t taken the Manhattan portal in a long time, but sort of remembered where it was. Sort of being the keyword. It took me three Neverrian minutes to locate the darn thing. Enough time for my pink-haired friend to flit beside me and ask me where I was heading.
I didn’t answer her, just kept scanning the floating disks.
The second I saw train tracks, I dove down and through the portal. I bumped my head against a door. Cursing silently, I opened it and stumbled out of the technical panel onto a dusky platform.
“The train to White Plains will be departing in five minutes on platform one hundred and thirty two. Five minutes.”
I rounded a staircase and was instantly swept up in a crush of bodies. Grand Central Station was always crowded, whatever the time of day or night. A man yapping into his cell phone bumped into me. I didn’t think he would apologize or reach out to steady me, but he did both. And then he ended his call and slipped his phone inside his suit pocket.
“I am so sorry.” The man still hadn’t let go of my leather sleeve.
I’d gone with my brother’s suggestion of adding a leather jacket. Not for warmth—I no longer needed clothes to keep me warm—but for style.
His eyes scurried across my face, then down my body. Subtle. Although I was surprised by his intense attention, I was also flattered. If a complete stranger found me appealing enough to spare more than a quick glance at me, then I couldn’t be that hideous.
I shrugged him off.
Flustered, he scratched the back of his head. “Wow. I don’t know what came over me.”
I smiled to ease his distress and then I climbed the stairs, weaving through an even denser crowd. I felt more than one pair of eyes land on me as I strode through the cavernous concourse, and I suddenly wondered if perhaps I glowed. Nonsense. Humans couldn’t detect faeries. Maybe my lipstick had smudged. I checked my reflection in my phone’s photo app to make sure my lipstick was where it was supposed to be. It was, so I sped up, my heels clicking against the buffed stone.
Outside, I took off running, but then cast wita around me and sailed upward. Pedestrians would see a girl enter a restaurant, not a girl taking to the sky. I flew to the circular roof of Madison Square Garden, then lurched off it like Spiderman, casting illusion upon illusion. Once I’d landed on the sidewalk, I collected my dust and walked casually toward the entrance. I didn’t have a ticket, and the m
an at the entrance said the match was sold-out.
I was about to tell him who I was when I noticed a ticket hawker a couple feet away. I walked to him and pointed to the ticket.
“Three hundred bucks, take it or leave it.”
I was taking it. I fished around for my wallet, but I’d forgotten it in my haste. I dug through my bag, desperate to locate a stranded bill, but found nothing. The hawker lost interest.
I did something I never thought I would do…I created bills with wita. I tapped his shoulder and extended the three green hundreds. He inspected them, then tucked them into his back pocket and handed me the ticket. I hadn’t really cheated him since they would stay in bill form until the day I died, which was probably going to be a long time after him.
I walked back to the ticketing counter and handed over my ticket. The man scanned it, then let me through. The excited hum in the stadium electrified my pace. I hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time. A voice boomed from a loudspeaker, announcing Kajika’s name and then his opponent’s name, and then the crowd roared, cheering, whistling, chanting.
On the landing, I stopped to catch my breath and to take in the lit Octagon below. This was a far cry from the dingy ring back in the barn.
A hostess asked me for my ticket. I distractedly handed it to her, too busy peering over her shoulder. She gestured toward a seat in the middle of the stands. As I trailed her down, the hunter trotted in, bare-chested and glorious. The crowd went wild. I stopped to stare at him as he raised his gloved hands over his head to acknowledge his fans. I waited for him to spot me, but he didn’t. I smiled to myself as I headed down my row, careful not to step on anyone’s feet.
I took my seat and lowered my bag onto my lap just as Kajika’s opponent erupted into the ring—a monstrous man with a body that looked carved from a calimbor trunk. The crowd cheered, but nowhere as loudly as they’d clamored for the hunter. That only amplified my thrill. Not that I thought the hunter basked in applause…I was pretty certain Kajika hated recognition, but it didn’t prevent me from being proud of him.
The tournament started, and I could tell Kajika was holding back as he kneed his opponent’s thigh, then later, as he delivered a flurry of punches. He barely broke a sweat during the first two rounds. He did let his opponent land a few jabs, I assumed for showmanship. During the third round, though, Kajika’s concentration broke. He had his opponent clinched against the fence when his face jerked up and his gaze scanned the crowd.
I ducked behind my handbag. I didn’t want to distract him.
The crowd jeered. I peeked over the top of my bag. Kajika was sprawled on the canvas, and his opponent rained blows over him. The referee broke them up. During his minute break, as a young aid squirted water into the hunter’s mouth, Kajika scanned the stands again.
When his gaze slammed into mine, goosebumps scattered over my arms and legs. I couldn’t tell from his expression how he felt about my presence. My heart held extremely still as the fourth round was announced. He pushed himself away from the ropes, still not breaking eye contact.
This time, he clobbered his opponent, no longer even attempting to make the fight look fair. During his next water break, he didn’t look for me, didn’t raise his eyes off the mat, and my pulse flattened.
The fifth round began and ended the same way the fourth had. That Kajika’s opponent managed to walk out of the Octagon was a miracle. Kajika was awarded a bulky belt. Bright camera flashes twinkled around the stage and the clapping intensified. When the hunter still hadn’t looked my way, I stood, my knees threatening to give out.
I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but certainly not that.
I climbed up the stairs and then once through the doors, away from the cacophony, a long breath ratcheted up my throat. I eyed the doors I’d skipped through earlier, so inanely hopeful.
I started toward them, but stopped and turned. Had I been expecting that Kajika would scale the ropes and run to me? That he would swing me into his arms and take off with me in front of all his worshipping fans?
I checked the date on the ticket. It had been almost three weeks since I’d seen him. He had every right to be disconcerted by my return.
Besides, the hunter didn’t do displays of affection.
I crumpled my ticket and tossed it in the trash, and then I sought out the entrance to the underbelly of the stadium.
I might not have been able to fight in a ring, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t fight for what I wanted. And I wanted the hunter.
43
Locker Room
It took me a couple minutes to locate the path to the locker rooms. No one stopped me, but I garnered many suspicious gazes. When I noticed the badges flapping around the staff’s necks, I whisked my hand in front of my chest and created a matching one. That lessened the attention coming my way.
I walked through what felt like a maze of hallways, trying to find a sign showing Kajika’s name. But then my palm flashed, reminding me that I possessed the greatest tracking device. I curled my fingers and followed the direction it fed me.
I located him just as he strode into a room, trailed by a middle-aged man in a gray suit. His manager, I imagined. I didn’t move for a long time, waiting for the suit-clad man to emerge from the room.
When he finally walked out, bellowing for someone named Jake, I took out my cell phone. They walked down the hallway, right past me. Although I felt the man in the suit glance my way, he didn’t stop. I walked fast. Ran. A girl with glasses lifted her face from a clipboard to study me, so I slowed before she alerted the authorities.
Once in front of the closed door, I rubbed my clammy hands against my suede leggings, then spread my fingers around the knob and twisted. My ears buzzed and my forehead prickled. I thought of my hair again, but cast my worries aside and let myself in.
Kajika sat on a bench facing the opposite wall, his broad back to me. No muscle twitched underneath his dark skin. Only the dust adorning the top of his spine and one of his thick shoulders pulsed.
I closed the door.
“Look who returns.” His voice was so low and gravelly it sent a chill up my spine. His biceps moved as he unwrapped the tape from his fingers.
You’re mad at me.
He snorted, and it echoed through the small locker room. “I am not mad.”
Then why don’t you look at me?
“Because I do not want to.” He coiled the tape and placed it beside him on the bench.
My heart clapped like the thunder that had echoed through the Daneelie barrack. Are you disgusted by my appearance? Is that it?
He shook his head.
Then what?!
Slowly he turned. At first it was only his neck and face, but then his shoulders pivoted and he lifted one leg, then the other. His expression was careful, guarded, distant almost. There was no frostiness in his gaze, but there was also no warmth.
I swallowed a breath. You found someone else, didn’t you?
His eyebrows jutted.
You replaced me.
“I think you have us mixed up, Lily.”
I crossed my arms and held them tight against my torso. What is that supposed to mean?
“Did you think I would not find out about your new engagement?”
My new engagement? To whom am I engaged?
His pupils pulsed. “You tell me.”
I have been unconscious for three days and working on fixing the lock for one, so I’m not sure when I would’ve had the time to conjure the Cauldron and tie my essence with someone else’s.
Kajika’s cautious stare turned hooded. I liked hooded better than cautious. At least he was displaying emotion. “What did you do the remaining seventeen days?”
What remaining seventeen days?
“You have been gone for three weeks!” There was the heat I’d come to associate with the hunter.
Three human weeks! That corresponds to four days in Neverra!
The hunter sat up straighter.
&n
bsp; Who told you I was engaged? I was still seething, still yelling into his mind, angry that he would put stock in such a rumor. Did he not know me? Did he really believe I would get myself a new fiancé?
His Adam’s apple joggled in his freshly-shaven throat. “Your brother,” he finally said. “Your brother told me you had decided to marry Silas. He told me I should move on.”
The silence was crushing.
My brother… He’d made up a lie to drive the hunter away?
I was suddenly so angry with Ace I wanted to throttle him. How could you believe I would do that?
“I did not want to believe it, Lily, but he asked Silas to confirm it, and the faerie said you had been seeing each other for some time now.” The hunter dipped his face into his neck. “I remembered the way you had looked at him the night I was attacked, so I did not question his word.”
I let out a rough grunt. Silas is a friend. Well, until now. I was benching him as a friend until I got to the bottom of this. I am not attracted to the draca. Never have been and never will be. I trembled so hard my teeth clattered. The only man I have ever loved beside you was Cruz, and well, he’s no longer here.
My fire swept through me in great, livid waves…not waves. Breakers. Breakers that were breaking against me…breaking me. Kajika shot to his feet, then lunged toward me. He gathered me against him and held me, waiting for the storm of my fury to pass. It took excruciatingly long minutes.
Long minutes during which the door to his locker room opened, bumping into my spine. He bit out some words that didn’t register inside my overheated mind and shoved the door closed. I felt like my body had turned into a live wire. I expected to see smoke rise from my nose any instant.
Kajika tightened his hold on me, then began to whisper that he was sorry. Sorry to have believed it. If my body was scorching his, he didn’t show it. Didn’t add any distance. Didn’t hiss through his teeth.
Slowly my rage ebbed, but I kept my arms crossed. Not that there was much room to uncross them. Did you replace me?
Raging Rival Hearts Page 25
