by Theresa Kay
“Little late to be sleeping, isn’t it, cousin?”
The arm rises again, and Rym narrows his eyes at Lir. “I have a headache. The little one’s been following me around all morning, along with the blond girl. One of them chatters in my head, the other in my ear. It’s exhausting. Thankfully, your friend Stu came along to entertain the kid before I went completely insane.”
I want to laugh, but, as if he knows what I’m thinking, Rym’s glare moves to me. It’s not my fault Ethan adores him. Lir is the one who sicced the kid on him. And Bree… Well, since Emily’s still in the infirmary and Stu has been spending a lot of time there, Bree’s been watching over Ethan. She does talk a lot, but she’s not half as chatty as Peter. I manage to quash my laughter, but not the amused grin forming on my face.
“Don’t laugh too much,” Rym says. “If the kid keeps shadowing me, someone might be smart enough to figure out what he is, and who knows what the humans would do with that information. I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned any of your friend Gavin’s warnings to Ethan’s caretakers.”
He’s right. I need to have a talk with Stu, Bree, and Emily about making sure to keep Ethan’s identity as a hybrid quiet. I’m pretty sure no one would think much of him following Rym around, but still, Ethan’s young, and he could easily let something slip. Nobody but us knows Ethan’s true heritage, not even Gavin, and I’d like to keep it that way.
I gesture for Rym to scoot over. He sighs with exaggerated irritation, then moves into a sitting position. I plop down next to him and prop my feet on the table.
Lir sits in the oversized chair on my right, leans back, and lets out a long, slow breath. Stress and exhaustion have pulled much of the color from his face, and dark circles shadow his eyes. Rym may have to deal with the inconvenience of a persistent—and admittedly, sometimes annoying—kid, but Lir’s stuck dealing with a bunch of people who don’t want to listen to him, don’t care what he has to say, hate him on principle, or all three.
Rym’s expression softens. “Things not going well on the negotiation front?”
“You could say that,” Lir says.
I reach out through the bond and draw some of his worry away. Or try to. It doesn’t work very well, and I end up yanking on the connection instead. Sorry. I tried.
It’s okay. Lir glances up at me, a slight smile on his face. It will take time and practice for you to fully develop your other enhancements. When we eventually return to the city, we should probably find someone suitable to train you.
“You’re doing it again,” Rym says in a flat voice.
Lir shrugs and reaches for my hand. “Well…”
A pillow smacks him in the side of his head, and Rym laughs. “Well nothing. Stop with the lovey-dovey stuff and tell me what happened. It’s not like I’m invited to these meetings.”
Lir clears his throat. “The general is still avoiding me, and I doubt his subordinates are passing along all, or even most, of what I tell them. He doesn’t seem to understand the threat Jastren poses, or that the threat is much bigger to this base than it is to the city. The E’rikon have the numbers and the weapons to defend themselves, or at least hold Jastren off. That is, if they don’t choose to join him. But the general seems to think Jastren will only be interested in fighting the E’rikon, that he’ll leave this base alone, because… blazes, I don’t know. Because he’s a short-sighted idiot.”
“But Jastren’s not the only threat. There’s also…” My voice drops. “… Jace.” I close my eyes and push back the surge of tangled emotions that comes with saying his name. It kills me to call my brother a threat, but that’s what he is—no matter how I feel about him.
Lir’s hand tightens around mine, and I open my eyes to find him gazing at me with a knowing look. The warmth coming from him wraps around me, and I let my limbs relax, my gaze never leaving his.
At times like this, when I can truly feel the bond between us, a glowing string connecting my heart to his, I wonder how I could have ever doubted him. Still, there’s a slight, involuntary mental flinch as I prepare myself to be bombarded with the doubt and guilt and confusion Jastren put in my mind whenever I so much as thought Lir’s name. I’m not sure how exactly the shikiza works, but Jastren’s skill with it was such that the thoughts and feelings he planted rarely felt foreign to me. I may no longer be under my grandfather’s control, but there will always be a piece of me that’s terrified I still am and just don’t know it.
“Well,” I add, “we can’t just sit around here waiting for something to happen. If the general’s so sure Jastren won’t bother the base, then he won’t mind if we leave and take our concerns up with the E’rikon instead.”
Rym and Lir share a look. “I suppose that’s an option,” Rym says, “but it would take us weeks to get there. Who knows what Jastren would do in that time? It might be better if we stayed put.”
My brows draw together. “But what about the ship? It’s not like anyone else here can use it, and it kind of belongs to you.”
Rym frowns. “About that…”
“They locked it in one of the hangars,” Lir says. “I doubt we could fly it out of here without the general’s permission, and I am quite certain he wants to keep it, whether he can fly it or not.” Lir glances at Rym and runs a hand over his face. “Actually, I know he wants to keep it. The ship… it was part of the agreement to let us stay here.”
“What?” Rym and I both yell at the same time.
Lir drops his chin to his chest. “I did not realize it would be this difficult to get the human to see reason. I thought… I am not sure what I thought. It was stupid.” He closes his eyes and bites down on his lower lip. “The whole alliance idea is failing.” His shoulders drop.
This time, I squeeze his hand. “I’ll talk to Gavin—”
“There is nothing he can do that I have not already tried,” Lir snaps. Then his voice softens. “Sorry… I do not mean to be short with you. It is all so frustrating, and I am completely lost as to what to do.” A wistful note enters his voice. “I was supposed to have many more years before I had to take on something like this on my own.”
I squeeze his hand again. “You’re not on your own. If you’d told me you needed me at these things… I would have come.”
“I did not wish to burden you. It—”
I hold a hand up, silencing him. “Not wishing to burden me” sounds an awful lot like he was doing what he thought was best to protect me, and I imagine whatever he was about to say would only irritate me. A lot. “Please, burden me. We’re a team now, so that means we share our burdens.”
A flash of warmth and light and love rushes through the bond, and Lir breaks into a smile. His gaze turns heated, darts down to my lips, and—
“Still. Here,” Rym says dryly. “We all get it. You love him. He loves you. Blah, blah, blah… spare me the kissing. You two can discuss this later. Right now, we have a dinner party to attend.”
“Dinner party?” I glance back and forth between the two boys. “What dinner party?”
Rym levers himself up off the couch. “Some welcome-to-the-neighborhood thing? I’m not sure.” He walks over to the table and holds up a hanger. “Emily dropped your outfit off an hour ago. I thought you knew about it.”
My outfit? I shoot the draped hanger a skeptical look. When did Emily have time to pick out clothes for me? And… why? She didn’t mention anything about a dinner party earlier.
I glance at Lir, my brows raised.
He shrugs. “I wasn’t aware of it either. When is this supposed to be taking place?” he asks Rym.
Rym shuffles his feet. “Emily said seven. She also said it was important for us to be there… something about how it would be good for some of the humans to get to know us.”
Lir’s eyebrow goes up. “Get to know us?”
“I don’t know,” says Rym. He throws out his hands and shrugs. “She was taking the kid off my hands. I didn’t ask many questions.”
Lir chuckles and shak
es his head.
I grab the hanger from Rym’s hand. “I guess I’d better go find out what kind of skirted monstrosity she’s come up with for me this time.”
I’M IN BETWEEN ADMIRING THE EMERALD-green dress Emily picked out for me and wanting to put on a pair of jeans when there’s a knock at the door. It opens enough for Lir to poke his head in.
“Are you, uh…”
“Decent?” I ask. It’s rare to see him tongue-tied, and I have to laugh a little even if I’m feeling awkward too. I mean, Lir has seen me without clothes before, and we’ve been sharing a room—and a bed—since we got here, but we haven’t done anything aside from some heavy kissing.
We’re together. I love him. I trust him. But with everything else going on… Sex isn’t something we’ve had a chance to have much of a conversation about. To be perfectly honest, the warmth he can create in me scares the hell out of me. Which in turn scares the hell out of him, because he can feel my fear, and even if he won’t admit it, he takes it personally—like he’s failing me. Plus, he’s not any more experienced with all this than I am, so there are a lot of fumbling fingers and awkward moments.
It’s a delicate dance, but even the silly moments, like when we laugh curled up in each other’s arms after smacking foreheads, are leading to something I’m finally ready for. I’ll never forget what happened at the cabin, but that’s in the past, and I won’t let it control my future anymore. I don’t want to be a victim. I want to be a survivor.
And I want Lir.
If we didn’t have someplace to be right now…
As if he senses my thoughts, Lir inhales sharply, and a smile spreads across his face. His desire trickles across our connection like a soft caress against my skin.
“Stop that. It’s not like you’ve never seen me in a dress before,” I say with a shy grin as I sit down on the bed and smooth the fabric over my legs.
He moves into the room and shuts the door behind him, a mischievous sparkle in his green-gold eyes. “Once,” he says. “I have seen you in a dress once. And I did not exactly get to enjoy it.” He sits down next to me and pushes my hair behind my ear.
My face heats as my eyes meet his. I smile softly.
Lir’s fingers trail down my cheek, and he returns the smile. “If you don’t want to go…”
I reach up and cover his hand with mine, leaning into his touch. “I don’t. Not really. But it could be a step closer to getting you in to see the general. You know, rubbing elbows with the humans.” I release his hand, then grab his shirt and pull him closer so I can whisper into his ear. “We could leave Rym there and cut out early…”
I lean back and give him a mischievous grin. His eyebrow rises, but he stays silent. I trace the arch with one finger. “I don’t know why, but this was one of the first things that made you seem not so alien to me.”
His smile widens, and he presses a quick kiss to my lips. “It means a lot to me that you’re willing to go to this thing and put up with… people for me.”
“I’m always willing to put up with people. They don’t always like putting up with me.”
A chuckle vibrates through his chest, and he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me closer. “Well, I like putting up with you.”
“Thanks,” I say with a mock glare at the bottom of his chin.
We sit there for a moment, wrapped in silence, with the warmth of the bond flowing between us. It’s the feeling of home, of contentment, of safety, of love, and about a million other happy things. In the storm of uncertainty surrounding us, the bond is a safe harbor, a place to rest, and the only place I can truly let my guard down. It doesn’t shut out the world around me—nothing can do that—but it gives me the space to take a breath that isn’t tainted with grief and horror and loss.
It’s hard to explain, but I used to think the bond was more like a crutch, a weakness, something I would lose myself in. It’s not. The connection is a balance between Lir and me. Neither one of us disappears into the other. We don’t suddenly become one person with no thoughts of our own. And any strength I gain isn’t so much from the bond or from Lir, but from myself—as if the bond amplifies my own fighting spirit and filters out the parts of me that are less than confident.
Lir kisses the top of my head and tightens his arms around me. “It will be time to leave soon. I had better get ready as well.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I hold it for a moment before exhaling. “Okay.”
He releases me, rises to his feet, and tugs his borrowed shirt over his head. This time it’s my desire that sends flames licking across the bond. Lir smirks.
“You did that on purpose,” I say.
“Of course,” he replies with a grin.
I throw a pillow at his head, and he ducks out of the way. “What are you going to wear?” I ask. “Did Emily bring you an outfit too?”
“No…” He glances at the charcoal-gray fabric hanging in the closet, the uniform he escaped the city in. It’s been through the laundry, but he hasn’t so much as touched it. Regret and self-loathing slam into me. He quickly squeezes the flow of emotion into a trickle, but I already knew it was there.
His guilt over what he had to do when he and Rym escaped from the city is nearly eating him alive. He killed another E’rikon. Purposely. They never told me the details, but I picked up on that much. Violence isn’t something the E’rikon condone, not outside of their specialized askari, and certainly not from their… elite? Lir wasn’t a traitor, no matter what lies Vitrad told, but he certainly feels like one now.
In an effort to change the subject, I quickly scoot off the edge of the bed and walk over to the dresser filled with a mish-mash of donated clothes. “I think I saw a couple button downs in here. The sleeves might be a little short on you, but you could roll them up, and no one would know.” I search through the carefully folded shirts and select one in a pale green. “Here. Now we can match.”
Gratitude. Appreciation. Something close to reverence. All those things swirl through Lir’s eyes, but all he says is, “Thank you.”
* * * * * * *
It’s a little after seven by the time we find the building where the party is being held. We enter the room to a decent-sized crowd of people all watching the doorway expectantly. My gaze moves around the room. It’s the streamers—yes, streamers—that are my first clue this isn’t the type of dinner party I was expecting. A sort of surprised confusion flows through the link from Lir, so he clearly wasn’t aware of this either. I look to Rym, my eyes narrowed.
“Not my doing,” he says, holding his hands up.
The people in the room are all smiling and staring at… me. What is this? Thoughts bounce around my head, fighting to be heard as I run a little mental math. The pieces are clicking into place, and I really don’t like the picture they’re forming. They wouldn’t have… Would they? Emily shoots me a smile. Oh God…
I can’t believe they…
Who…
What in the hell were they thinking?
If one person here yells “surprise,” I’m going to…
My hands clench into fists at my sides, and something must be getting through to Lir because he places a hand on the small of my back and leans in to speak into my ear. “I am certain their intentions were good. They would not have…” He trails off as if he’s not quite sure what he’s reassuring me about.
I’m not quite sure either.
Most people would be happy their friends set up a birthday party for them. Not me. Not now. Not this year. Not without Jace. How did they even know it’s my birthday? It’s not like I told them, or anyone for that matter. Not even Lir knew, which could explain the trickle of hurt flowing across the bond. I didn’t intend to hide it from him, or in general, I’m just not interested in celebrating it.
Anyone who knew me would—
My eyes land on the dark-haired figure sitting with Matt near the back of the room. Yeah, anyone who knew me would know better than to do this. And that’s just
it: Dad doesn’t know me. Not anymore.
The thing that kills me is the hesitantly hopeful smile on his face, as if he thought this… distraction would make up for everything. As if it would make up for leaving us. As if forcing me into finally talking to him was a good idea. Well, I’m going to relieve him of that idea right now.
I storm over to where Dad and Matt are sitting.
Dad’s pale, and clearly weak. Is he supposed to be out of the infirmary already? Emily’s injury was fairly minor, but he almost died, and—
Why do I care? I swallow noisily. This is the first time I’ve been near him since the ship on the way here, and then I barely spared him a glance. His hair is shorter than I remember, his face gaunter. The little girl in me wants to sit down next to him and curl into his side like I did when I was younger, but the rest of me can hardly stand to look at him.
On some level, I know it’s not all his fault, that even if he’d been there the things that had been set in motion would probably still have occurred at some point. Of course, I might not be so broken. Jace might be here beside me. Flint might not be dead…
Matt eyes me warily, but Dad’s smile stays in place. “Hi, Jax,” he says softly.
I’m silent. Any words I can think of are stuck in a whirlpool of conflicting emotions. I loved him once. He was my father, after all. He raised me for the first thirteen years of my life, and…
I cross my arms over my chest.
His smile fades a bit when I don’t respond, and his gaze moves over my shoulder. He flinches and offers another weak smile. “Hello, Lir. Are they, uh, treating you all right?”
Lir moves up behind me and places a hand on my lower back. “Well enough. Carter still hasn’t been willing to grant my request for a meeting.”
Another flinch. “Sorry. If I hadn’t been injured I could’ve—”
“Done nothing,” I say in a flat voice. “Just like you were doing when your son was taken over by that—”
“Jax,” starts Matt.
“No. You don’t get to sit there and defend him. You don’t even know him. He left us. He—”
