by Theresa Kay
I’M PERCHED ON THE ARM of the easy chair, swinging my legs back and forth as I study the three E’rikon before me. And they study me in return. Wariness twists around all of them, but the two females emit a slow simmering rage. Hatred, too.
The male—Jax’s friend—has placed himself between me and them. As if he could stop me if I wanted to go over there. I don’t. But still.
I cock my head. “What did she say?”
Golden eyes go side to side, thinking, considering which words he should use.
I tap my head with the tip of one finger. “I felt her. My sister. Could have heard her if I tried.”
The smile he gives me is strained. He blows out a slow breath before speaking. “She was warning me someone might come after Trel.” He tilts his head toward the pregnant female. “My sister.”
“Little late for that.” I smirk at the body on the floor in front of me.
“Well, I told her you’d handled it already, so…” He rocks backward on his heels. Another awkward smile.
It’s an accurate assessment, so I let the room lapse into silence. Only unspoken words are between us now. Like who he is and why that one over there tried to kill me.
I hop down from the chair arm and walk closer to him. He takes a step back. “I know her name, but not yours,” I say.
“Rym.” His voice cracks the slightest bit, and he clears his throat. “My name is Rym.”
A flash of memory. “You were there. In the city. You helped Jax get me out.”
He nods.
My gaze goes to the female with matching golden hair who stares at me with cutting eyes that leak pain and grief and rage. “And you are his sister, Trel.” I slide my eyes to the third. “Who are you?”
She gapes at me, her yellow eyes wide, but doesn’t answer. Anger rolls off her too, but it’s more… impersonal. She’s mad at an idea, a concept, rather than from personal insult. Because I bested her? No. She was angry when she came to kill me. She’s angry on another’s behalf…
“You sent her. To kill me,” I say to Trel.
Trel’s lips press together into two thin lines of pure hatred. She nods, only a slight dip of her chin.
Rym slides into the space between us with his hands up by his chest. “I think we should all—”
I quiet him with half a thought and turn my attention back to Trel. “Why?” The failed assassin attempts to move toward me. I roll my eyes and lock her limbs. “You stay there. I’m only asking a question.”
Trel steps out from behind her brother—despite his silent protests—and takes three steps forward, her chin raised and her shoulders back. Only inches from me, her eyes, swimming with raging loss, meet mine. “Because you took everything from me.”
The force of her words, the pain behind them, sends me back a single step. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what I took. But I feel the truth of what she says. I know what it feels like to lose. And if her rage was directed only at me, I’d gladly let her take her revenge. Even if I don’t know her, I know that pain, and I’d throw myself at her feet right now and pray my death could bring her peace. But some of her anger is misplaced, and I won’t leave Jax in danger. “But what did my sister take from you? Why threaten her?”
Confusion washes over her face, and she darts a glance at her yellow-haired lackey. And the lackey looks away. How interesting.
I study Trel’s face as she struggles to regain her composure, but their silent exchange told me more than enough. “You didn’t know about that,” I say. “Didn’t order it.”
She pauses for only a second, then gives a sharp shake of her head. “No.”
“I did not threaten her,” bites out the lackey. “I merely implied that if she was as easy to kill as him, she would be no match for the Reva sire. He… misinterpreted.”
Laughter bubbles up from my chest, and I half stumble backward till I find that chair arm again and rest my forehead in my palm. I release my hold on the other two in the room. Rym sends me a hard glare while the lackey goes straight to her mistress’s side. My shoulders shake with yet more laughter, and the E’rikon’s glares turn into hastily exchanged glances.
I shake my head and hold up a finger while I get myself under control. “Easy to kill… if not… if she hadn’t… I would have let her.” My eyes fly up to meet Trel’s and I let her see all the pain I hide behind them. “If my death will bring you peace, please take your friend’s blade and give me mine.”
Rym makes another attempt to step between us, but Trel stops him with a hand on his chest and a silent mental exchange. The yellow-haired one hands Trel that strange glowing blade, and Trel steps in front of me. Rym grabs her arm and yanks her back before she can make a cut.
“Do you want to start some kind of blood feud?” His eyes rest on me, pleading, for what I’m not sure. He grabs his sister’s chin and forces her to face him. “Jax would not like this.”
“I do not care what Jax would like! This is not about her.” She jabs a finger into her brother’s chest. “This is my right. This is my vengeance.”
Rym wraps a hand around his sister’s and pulls her into his chest, wrapping his other arm around her shoulders. “You do not know what it is like to be a killer. It would not make you feel better. You do not want blood on your hands. Not like this.”
Trel’s face is streaked with tears when she pulls back to gaze up at her brother. “How will I ever look our daughter—Kov’s daughter—in the face, knowing I had a chance to avenge her father and did not take it?”
“Nothing you do can bring him back. He would not want this for you, this unending hatred eating you from the inside. Blood for blood is not our way.”
Her shoulders shake with sobs, and she buries her face in her brother’s chest.
The yellow-haired one steps forward and retrieves her blade, which dropped out of Trel’s hand sometime during the exchange. She meets my gaze with a hint of respect in her eyes. “My name is Vi’Elamiri.”
Well that explains a lot. “You’re one of the honor guard?”
Her brow furrows. “I am one of the Vi’askari, personal guards to the Linaud family.”
“Same thing.” I shrug. “Grandfather tried to create one of his own, but it’s rather pathetic if you ask me. He even named them Jas’askari.”
This time it’s Rym with the furrowed brow. “Grandfather? You mean Jastren, right? He tried to create his own askari? What exactly did he do?”
Another shrug. “Nothing really. Told a few of his more fervent followers to… follow him around all the time. I never saw much point to it.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Rym releases his sister, but keeps her tucked against his side with an arm around her shoulders. “The Vi’askari have to be… altered to become what they are. Humans could not fulfill that requirement. So why would he care enough to name them Jas’askari?”
“You’re asking the wrong person. He didn’t spend much time explaining his plans to me.” I pick at the edge of my thumb. “He was kinda pissed when he found out the records from Dane’s lab were gone. Maybe whatever was going on there has something to do with it.”
Rym shakes his head. “Something tells me that’s important, but I’m not the scientist around here. Do you think it’s safe to go out there? I think we should go see your father.”
The word doesn’t register at first, and when it does… “My father is dead.”
Rym’s eyes go wide and dart to the floor. “Uh…”
I rise to my feet, confusion and anger warring in my chest. “My father is dead.”
His eyes close. “No one told you.”
“No one told me what?” The words are sharp, like tiny knives cutting into Rym’s composure.
“Your father is here. Alive. He—”
“Stop.” I squeeze my eyes shut and curl my fingers into my palms. “That’s impossible. He… he… he…”
“Jax said—”
“She knows?” I fling an arm outward, and some invisible force c
racks against the wall. An aching pain burrows into my head as I struggle to put this all together, make it fit in any arrangement that doesn’t lead to…
She betrayed you. She betrayed you. She betrayed you.
An endless beat behind my eyes in someone else’s slimy voice.
And it’s the opening he waited for, the opening he’s been testing for all evening.
Grandfather’s power slams into my mind on a blinding wave of white-hot light.
See how she lied?
She deserted you.
She betrayed you.
And she lied about it.
“Stay back!” someone yells.
Screaming. I’m screaming as Grandfather bores further into my head, making new paths to the weakest parts of me, trails of fire burning bits of me behind them.
You should have stayed in Bridgelake where I put you.
The floodgates of my mind open at his command, spewing out every thought, every dream, and every experience I’ve ever had. I’m floundering under the force of it all, my lungs struggling to inflate and my mouth gaping. But Grandfather… he picks through each little trickle until he finds the ones he wants, braids them together, and shoves them down my throat.
It starts out well enough—Flint and I at the lake. A happier time, when we saw nothing but each other. Fast-forward through our first touch, our first kiss, our first everything.
And then the lake is filled with blood.
And I’m holding him under.
And he’s going still and cold and dead.
My stomach turns, and I retch on hands and knees. I claw at my hair, my head, my anything I can get to that might dispel the image locked inside my mind.
Bloated.
Cold.
Dead.
And my hands covered in blood.
Another heave, dry and painful, takes all my strength, and I crash face first against the floor. My heart beats. My limbs twitch. My lungs inflate. Just enough… He wouldn’t be so kind as to grant me unconsciousness, not when I need to pay. Grandfather pulls at creeks and streams and rivers of memories and imagined horrors and pours them on my already drowning mind.
And all I can do is let him.
“No!” A female voice.
“… to try!” A male.
“Wait!” Another female. “… worked before.”
A hand grabs mine, and I’m too weak to warn it not to touch me. I’m poison. I’m death. I’m darkness. Despite those things, the hand holds strong.
“Sorry… another way,” the male voice says as a fire lights in my upper arm and another mind grabs hold of mine, this one golden, soft, and welcoming. Instinctively, I pounce on that mind, bringing every horrible thing that lives inside my head along for the ride.
I’M HALF OUT OF BREATH as the top of the chapel’s spire comes into view. Thank God. Our mad dash has been draining, and who knows what else we might have to face when we get there. Hopefully not another contingent of men. It’d be nice if it was just Ethan and Stu there, safe and sound and completely oblivious to everything else. Is that too much to hope?
We round the next corner, the chapel now fully visible at the end of the street, and I pause to catch my breath. There’s time now. No men surround the chapel, and I can just make out two shadowy forms on the roof. They’re here. They’re safe. I can—
A roiling mass of mental power slams into me, almost dropping me to my knees. I lean heavily against a wall with my teeth clenched and my eyes tightly closed. There’s no sense in it, no words, no images, just darkness, pain, and fear. Jace. It has to be Jace. But what’s going on?
Jax… Rym’s voice. It’s weak and breathy. You need to help me. I can’t hold him. He… he…
The rest of his words are washed away into the darkness.
Everything stops, and terror crashes into me. I have no idea what to do. If I have anything that will match up to my brother’s shikiza, I don’t know how to use it. Maybe if I was there with them… but I’m not and I’ve never used my enhancements over this kind of distance. Except one. The pulling one. But which one of them do I pull? Jace or Rym? Is it possible to pull both?
My mind races trying to piece together what to do, but I’m lost in the frantic pace of it, and nonsensical half thoughts keep crowding my head and hiding the solution from me. What do I do? What do I do?
Just relax. Rym again. The shuvata—pull—would be overkill right now. You need to access the liteka enhancement, the one that helps you draw things away like Ethan can.
But I’ve never—
You’ll be fine. Relax. I have faith in you.
I let out a slow breath. I can do this. One thing at a time.
“Jax?” Gavin’s voice is curious, as if he’s figured out something strange is going on.
And that means Lir has too. His eyes are focused solely on me, the green-gold depths moving from confusion to shock to outright betrayed as the bond reveals to him a hasty sketch of what’s going on. Now, for the first time since I’ve known about the telepathy, he’s purposely skimming along my mind and taking stock of the situation for himself. He’s doing it knowing I don’t know how to block him. His lips are pressed tightly together, and the more pieces of the puzzle he steals from my thoughts, the darker his expression gets.
You knew he was out. You knew he was there. With my family. And you did not think it prudent to tell me? He practically spits the words at me as he vibrates with a fiery rage.
I—
No. I do not want to hear any more about how you know him, about how he is your brother and would not hurt anyone. You saw what he’s doing to Rym. I just got my cousin back, a piece of my family I thought lost, and now… He swallows noisily. That monster only wears your brother’s face. His eyes are hardened gems, glinting with his anger. But he was always a monster, was he not? Perhaps not to you, but he killed the one I called brother long before the shikiza, long before Jastren. And now, when his mind is in pieces, in violent, dangerous shards of insanity, you place what remains of my family in danger because you refuse to see, are too selfish to see the truth. Jace as you knew him is gone, and even if he were not, he deserves every bit of torment he is getting for what he did to Kov.
My eyes burn and my hand moves to cover my mouth, to hold in the sob building in my chest. I know this isn’t him, that all this is coming from a place of fear and worry, but I’ve never seen him like this, angry and spewing hatred. Is this the Lir who supported Vitrad? Is this the Lir who shunned his cousin for years because of a child’s mistake?
It sure as hell isn’t the Lir I know, the one I love, the one who stood there in front of me only hours ago telling me he didn’t expect me to hate my brother and he’d never ask me to choose…
The tears escape, but not the sob. There isn’t time for this now.
I lift my chin, pull my eyes away from Lir, and do my best to shut off whatever parts of our connection I can. I don’t want him anywhere near my mind right now. A quick swipe of my cheeks and I’m as ready as I can be. “Gavin?”
He’s stepped up beside me, his body tense. “Yeah.”
“I have something I need to do. Can you head toward Ethan and Stu? I’ll catch up when I can.”
“Sure.” He glances between me and Lir, clearly able to tell that our exchange wasn’t pleasant.
“Take Lir with you,” I say before sliding to the ground with my back to the wall. “I want to do this alone.”
“Jax…” Both Lir’s voice and his face have softened, and the bond is overflowing with his regret and his sorrow and—
I shake my head. I can’t deal with this right now. “No. Leave. Go with Gavin.” I lean down to pull my knife from my boot. “Here. Take it.”
“But what if—”
“You’re wasting time,” I say through my teeth. I take a deep breath, pushing my anger as far down as possible. It would be so easy to say something I’d regret right now. “I’ll be fine.”
And he goes for patronizing. “You cannot do something
so complicated on your own, not as untrained as you are.”
Even Gavin breathes in sharply at his words.
My gaze flies up to meet his, my face as hard and unfeeling as every word he’s said to me in the last two minutes. Get away from me before I selfishly break the bond so I can keep unwelcome intruders out of my goddamn head!
He steps back, hurt flashing across his face for a split second before being replaced by an impassive expression. “Very well then.”
I don’t watch them go, because if I do the anger I’ve been very careful to keep bottled up will explode. And Jace doesn’t need that. Rym doesn’t need that.
I close my eyes. This is an ability I’ve… dabbled in before. I know the feeling of it. I don’t have to find it, I just have to control it.
Reaching for the shaded connection with my brother, I skim along it until I reach the first block, a knot of black and red and bits of gold. I prod at it gently, feeling it out, determining its makeup. It’s exactly what I thought. Anger, pain, and fear, maybe the only three things my brother knows how to feel anymore. I brush against it and latch on, drawing away as much of the darkness as I can. At first it’s barely a trickle, but then the emotions flow across the connection in a steady stream.
I carefully restrict the flow so it doesn’t all come in at once and overwhelm me. It’s easier than I expected. I think of Rym’s words. I guess all I really needed was for someone to have faith in me. Too bad that person wasn’t—isn’t?—Lir.
My hold on the flow from Jace falters, and his pain and grief gush into me, drawn through the connection by my own. It’s nothing I can’t handle, though. I let it wash over me, moving with the flow of the emotions and floating above it all. Soon, I’ve untangled the ragged knot. I release the golden thread back to its owner and banish the frayed and blackened pieces. I push farther into my brother’s mind, soothing and comforting as I go. It’s a fragmented mess, but the pieces, they are Jace.
Images from our childhood. Jokes we shared. Games we played. Memories of me and dad and Flint. His entire life, his entire being, is here in tiny shards… shattered beyond repair.
