Lorn rolls to his back. Groans. From somewhere above us, there’s a click. I feel the air-conditioning unit shut down, and Lorn’s chaos lusters lose a little of their jaggedness. They’re still sluggish, though. Being in my world as weak as he is isn’t good for him.
I press my hand to his forehead, checking for a fever.
Stupidly checking for a fever. Fae are always hot when I touch them. His chaos lusters heat my skin, and I pull my hand back. I think he does have a fever, though. Sweat mixes with the blood caking his temple, and, even in the moonlight, his pale face looks flushed.
“Will this help?” Kynlee’s voice comes from behind me.
I look over my shoulder. She’s standing in the sunroom’s doorway, holding something that looks like a glass of milk.
“Yeah,” Nick says. He rises to take the glass from her, then he hands it to me. “She drinks it when she gets migraines. Prop his head up.”
He throws a decorative pillow on the floor. I pick it up, then slide it under Lorn’s head. Before I give him the drink, I sniff it. Um, definitely not milk.
“Hey,” I say, gently. “I need you to drink this.”
I place the brim of the glass on his busted bottom lip and tilt it back. Pretty much all the liquid trickles down his chin.
“You need to drink,” I tell him. This time, he murmurs something—Lena’s name again?—and I use the opportunity to pour the liquid into his mouth. He chokes on it, coughing and wincing and, eventually, opening his eyes to glare at me.
“Poison?” he asks.
Smiling, I say, “I hope not. Here.”
I make him drink more. After a few sips, he shoves my hand away. I take that as a good sign. A few minutes ago, I don’t think he had the strength to lift a finger.
He closes his eyes in a wince as a wave of pain passes over him. “Should have gone straight to Lena.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t,” I say.
“If the false-blood killed you, I wouldn’t get my revenge.”
“He sounds like he’s worth saving,” Nick mutters, grabbing Lorn’s wrist to lift his hand away from his stomach wound.
Lorn hisses in a breath and starts to curl to the side, but I hold his shoulder down, keeping him in place.
“What else can I do?” Kynlee asks from the doorway.
“Scissors. Towels,” her dad says.
Kynlee nods, starts to leave.
“The whole medicine cabinet.”
She stops, frowns. “Really? Everything?”
Nick’s jaw tightens. “Just the hydrogen peroxide and any gauze or bandages we might have.”
“Need a healer,” Lorn says. “Not human medicine.” His voice is raspy, like he has liquid in his lungs, but he’s alive. I think he’d be dead by now if some really crucial organ were injured. It’s him bleeding to death we need to worry about.
“Stop talking, Lorn.”
Suddenly, Nick’s gaze snaps to me. “Lorn? As in . . . the Lorn?”
I think I see a tiny smile bend one corner of Lorn’s mouth. If Nick hasn’t been to the Realm since Kynlee was a baby, Lorn’s been around a long time.
“That’s his name,” is all I say.
Nick drops Lorn’s hand.
“How, exactly, did you come in possession of a tor’um?” Lorn asks. I’m surprised he’s cognizant enough to ask the question.
Nick goes still, then, after a handful of heartbeats, he presses the heel of his hand into the fae’s wound. Lorn cries out.
“Hey!” I say, trying to shove Nick away.
“She’s my daughter, asshole,” Nick says, leaning toward Lorn’s face. “Not a possession or something for you to condescend to.”
“Nick, stop!” He’s not listening. I ram my shoulder into him and manage to knock him off Lorn. He falls onto his back, but he looks ready to kill.
“I have the stuff,” Kynlee says. Perfect timing.
Nick doesn’t acknowledge her, so I do, motioning her in. She drops her armful of towels down beside me. The small pile is topped by a pair of scissors, hydrogen peroxide, and . . . a box of Disney Princess Band-Aids.
I pick up the latter, raise an eyebrow.
“It was all I could find,” she says.
Yeah, so not going to help.
I set the Band-Aids aside and grab a towel. I use it to wipe some of the blood off Lorn’s face. Most of it is from a cut on his forehead, but his cheekbone is swollen to twice its normal size, and his lip is bleeding from more than one cut.
“Is he dead?” Kynlee asks. Lorn hasn’t moved since I shoved Nick off him.
“No,” I say, finally getting Lorn to uncurl from his fetal position. “Fae disappear when they die.”
“Disappear?”
The mix of fear and curiosity in Kynlee’s voice makes me look up.
“We’ll talk later, Kynlee,” Nick says gruffly. “Go to bed now.”
“We learned first aid in my health class,” she says. “I can help.”
“Go,” he repeats.
A chaos luster jumps across Lorn’s face. Weakly, he says, “You haven’t taught her anything, have you—”
“Lorn, let’s not antagonize our host.”
“—Nick Johnson?”
Nick Johnson? I frown at Nick. His last name is supposed to be Walker, but the way Lorn meets his gaze makes it clear he knows the human.
Nick is as still as glass.
“I’ve kept her safe,” Nick finally says in a cold whisper.
“Lorn,” I say, not taking my eyes off Nick. “Just in case you die”—or Nick kills him—“why don’t you tell me what you know about the false-blood?”
Lorn’s gaze swivels to me. “You’re becoming quite mercenary, McKenzie. Good for—” His last words are lost in a cough that makes him grow pale.
I take Lorn’s hand—the one not holding his stomach—and squeeze it. Despite my misgivings about his character and his involvement in this war, I have a soft spot for Lorn. I want him to be a good person. I definitely don’t want to see him in this much pain.
“Kyol is almost here,” I tell him.
“Kyol, the son of Taltrayn?” Nick asks.
When I say yes, Nick shoots to his feet.
“He knows you’re here?” he demands. “Who else knows?”
“No one,” I say.
“If Taltrayn knows, the king knows.”
“No one knows,” I say quickly. Then, when he takes a step toward the living room, I add, “The king is dead.”
He stops, looks over his shoulder. “Dead?”
I nod.
“And Taltrayn’s alive?”
I nod again.
“And Taltrayn hasn’t told anyone else where I live? That’s bullshit.”
“Oh, no,” Lorn says, a smile in his voice. “Not bullshit at all. I imagine it’s quite an interesting story, actually.”
I slap a damp cloth hard against the cut on Lorn’s forehead. When Nick looks at me, I just say, “It’s complicated.”
Lorn’s chuckle turns into a cough. Serves him right. He makes himself extremely difficult to like sometimes.
• • •
I wait on the Walkers’—or the Johnsons’—front porch for Kyol. It doesn’t take him long to find me. He does it in close to the same amount of time as it took me to drive here. Since he can fissure within line of sight, he can travel incredibly fast, faster than I was able to find him in Corrist. But the pull of the life-bond is the same, basically shining a beacon of light down on my location.
When he fissures one last time, exiting the In-Between a few feet in front of me, I say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to pull you away from what you were doing.”
“What’s happened?” he asks.
“It’s Lorn,” I say, my gaze scanning the street for any other slashes of light or sparks of blue chaos lusters darting across someone’s skin. “He gave my location to the false-blood.”
Kyol stiffens. “He did what?”
I wince at the iciness in
his voice. Most people describe anger as being hot, but it’s not. Not with Kyol, at least. His anger is so cold I shiver.
“It’s okay. Well, it’s not okay, but he didn’t give the elari my location willingly. He’s hurt.”
“He’s inside?”
“Yes, but he needs—”
Kyol slams open the door.
Damn it. I hurry after him, but catch up only when he suddenly stops at the entrance to the sunroom. He’s not staring at Lorn, though. He’s staring at Nick, who slowly, silently rises to his feet.
If it wasn’t for the life-bond, I’d have no idea how surprised Kyol is. His face is a mask of stoic calmness. There’s no sign he’s startled or confused.
“Nick,” is all he says.
The human clenches his jaw. “Taltrayn.”
“I see you two remember each other,” Lorn says. Finally, Kyol’s gaze swings to the injured fae.
“He needs a healer,” I finish what I tried to tell him on the porch.
“Please,” Lorn adds.
Kyol angles his body slightly to look at me. “I left you only a few hours ago, and you’ve managed to find Lorn and Nick Johnson.”
“He’s Kynlee’s dad,” I say, nodding toward Nick Johnson or Walker or whoever he is. “And I didn’t find Lorn. He found me.” All I wanted to do when I got home was curl up under the blankets and sleep.
Kyol’s expression softens. He releases his grip on his sword hilt and places his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently.
“It’s okay, kaesha,” he says. I stiffen, expecting to feel some wave of regret for calling me kaesha, but there isn’t any. Roughly, the word translates into loved one, only, it’s so much more than that. For the last decade, it’s been Kyol’s way of telling me that he loves me. He used it rarely since we weren’t supposed to be together, but that only made it more special. It’s still special now.
He senses my confusion, my unease, and drops his hand.
“You’re safe here?” he asks. In other words, the false-blood doesn’t know I’m here.
“Yeah,” I say. He takes another look at Lorn, then at Nick. He must trust the human because he tells me he’ll bring back help before he walks out the back door to open his fissure. Even though a pane of glass separates us, I get caught up in his shadows and the warm mix of emotions tumbling through my stomach. I can’t tell if they’re mine or his. Both, most likely.
A headache starts hammering behind my eyes. My personal life is one big fucking mess. The guy I wanted for a decade would finally and fully return that love now, but I’ve fallen for someone else, someone who wants nothing to do with me.
And I hate this. I hate hurting someone I care so much about.
I ignore the look I get from Nick as I pull a burgundy throw off a nearby chair and drape it over Lorn.
We wait. I watch Lorn breathe. He answers a few simple questions with grunts, but his sarcastic humor is gone. I’m worried about him. I don’t know how long it will take Kyol to bring back help. Most fae know basic first aid, quite a few are the equivalent of techless doctors, but a healer is the only thing that can save Lorn’s life now.
He falls into a restless sleep.
Sometime later, two fissures split through the night air. Kyol and Lena. They both look regal, standing next to each other in Nick’s backyard.
Backyard? Why not fissure directly into the house?
I look at Nick. “You have silver here?”
He nods stiffly. “In the insulation.”
Kyol opens the back door for Lena. She enters, her gaze locked on Nick as she walks to Lorn’s side.
“You’re alive,” she says as she kneels.
Nick doesn’t respond. He just rises and leaves the room.
“You know him?” I ask when he’s gone.
Lena removes the throw and the bloodied towel that’s been doing a poor job of staunching Lorn’s bleeding. She looks at his side wound, then places her hand over it.
“He gave the throne to Atroth,” she says.
I glance at Kyol.
“What do you mean?” I ask when she doesn’t go on and he doesn’t add anything. A human can’t just give a throne to someone.
“He slept with fae. Many and often until he had sex with the wrong woman, Casye, the daughter of the former high noble of Ristin Province.”
Ristin is one of the four provinces Lena reinstated. Tholm is on its western border. A small line marks the division between it and Corrand Province, just above the Imyth Sea, on the old maps of the Realm.
“Her father slaughtered all the tor’um in Ristin because of that,” Nick says from the threshold of the sunroom. “Because of me. Killing and banning humans from his province didn’t satisfy him.”
He takes a sip of the drink he’s poured himself, and it’s like he’s downing a shot of regret.
Kynlee. Nick must have saved her from the slaughter. But who is she? She can’t be the result of his affair with Casye—or any other fae for that matter. Fae and human can’t reproduce. Plus, fae aren’t born tor’um because of something the parents did or didn’t do. It’s a completely random occurrence.
“Atroth stopped it,” Kyol says.
Nick looks at him. “What?”
“Atroth stopped the cleansing. A few tor’um were killed, but not all of them. Not most of them. Atroth had Lord Kelyon arrested and executed for what he did.”
“And he dissolved Ristin Province instead of allowing another fae to rise to the position of high noble,” Lena adds bitterly. “That laid the groundwork for him to dissolve the other provinces. Without that precedent, he wouldn’t have been able to remap the Realm and strengthen his position as king.”
The others included Adaris, her home province.
No wonder Nick hasn’t been back to the Realm. Anyone in those dissolved provinces along with anyone else who opposed Atroth would blame him for what happened, and in a world as violent as the Realm, they’d kill him.
“Kynlee’s from Ristin Province then?” I ask.
Nick’s jaw tightens. He takes another sip of his drink and doesn’t answer.
Lena shifts her weight. A bead of sweat breaks out on her brow, but for the first time in half an hour, Lorn opens his eyes.
“Lena,” he murmurs. “Lena, you came.” He’s regressed to Fae again.
“Quiet, Lorn,” she says. Surprisingly, her tone is gentle, not impatient or scolding. Lorn’s so out of it, he just murmurs nonsense before he turns his head to the side and goes silent.
I sit beside Kyol on the wicker sofa. Nick leans in the doorway, finishing his drink. Five minutes pass. Ten. Lena’s still healing Lorn.
Kyol stands.
“I’ll return soon,” he says. Then he walks outside to fissure out. I’m staring at his shadows, itching to draw them, when I see Nick’s hand twitch in my peripheral vision. He’s staring at the shadows, too, and I’d bet a million dollars he’s not just a Sighted human. He’s a shadow-reader, too.
I hug my legs to my chest, then rest my chin on my knee.
“Do you know what happened to him?” Kynlee asks, breaking the silence. I’m not sure when she returned. She was supposed to be in bed.
“I imagine he miscalculated,” Lena answers, finally removing her hands from Lorn. She’s sweating profusely now, and her edarratae are agitated. It’s not easy healing someone on the brink of death.
“Kynlee,” Nick says. “It’s almost six. Get ready for school.”
“School? But—”
“Now.” His tone leaves no room for argument. Grumbling, she does as he asks.
When she’s gone, Lena says, “Taltrayn mentioned the false-blood had something to do with this.”
“I don’t know details,” I answer, “but Lorn said the false-blood interrogated him. He ended up giving him my location.”
“That’s all he gave?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “We didn’t exactly have time for a lengthy chat. Nimael and two other elari showed up as I was driving out o
f the parking lot. If Lorn had gotten there a minute later”—or if he hadn’t shown up at all—“I’d be dead.”
I look at Lorn. Why did he warn me? Since it’s looking more and more like I falsely accused him, I owe him, not the other way around.
Lena wipes the back of her hand across her brow. “I’ll talk to him in the morning. He needs to rest for now.” She looks at Nick. “Do you want him to remain on your floor?”
Nick clenches his teeth. The one-hour limit he gave me when he let us in has passed. He has every right to kick us out. Hell, he had every right not to let us in in the first place.
“There’s a guest bedroom down the hall,” he finally says. “He can stay until he wakes up.” A pause. “Are you all staying?”
“Just McKenzie,” Lena says.
Nick is silent for a moment. Then he says, “We have a media room upstairs. You can sleep on the couch.”
SEVENTEEN
AFTER MY SECOND shower of the night, I pull on a pair of cotton shorts and a T-shirt Kynlee loaned me, then find the stairs. They lead directly into the media room, the only room on the small second floor. With the electricity still off, it’s nearly pitch-black up here. The walls are painted a dark blue and are bare save for a large screen at the front of the room and a window with heavy drapes on the opposite wall. I pull those aside to let in some of the early-morning light.
Yawning, I turn around. Several large speakers and what I’m guessing is a subwoofer are set up in the corners of the room. A single leather couch is near the back wall. I head for it before I notice the closed laptop sitting on top of a side table. A thick cord leads into the wall. I’m guessing it connects to the projector in the ceiling. I’m about to ignore it and crash on the couch, but a flickering blue light catches my attention. The laptop’s battery is powering it. On a whim, I open the computer.
It’s not password protected. The home screen blinks on, and within a couple of clicks, I’m able to connect to the Internet. That surprises me considering Nick hasn’t turned the breakers back on, but I take advantage of the convenience and access my e-mail. Nothing from Paige. Nothing from Lee or Shane. There is, however, a notice from my employer saying that I’m being terminated. Despite the fact that I knew this was coming—my actions made it inevitable—it hurts a little. I’m a failure. I can’t even keep a simple, minimum-wage job. I’m going to lose my apartment, my car, and my chance at . . .
The Sharpest Blade Page 17
