by Casey Hays
“Oh. Well…” He bows his head in mock appreciation, prompting me to give him a friendly punch in the shoulder.
“I’m serious. Kane may be an expert at playing human, but you know a lot more than he does about living like a Fireblood.” I pause. “I hope he gives you a chance to teach him a few things.”
“You can stop now.” He winks. “You’re flattery worked.”
“Okay, smart ass.” We laugh, sway in silence, and then…
“You really are beautiful, Jude. Inside and out.”
The swing comes to an abrupt stop. He stares at me, and I feel the blush come on.
“I think you’ve set your standards for me a little high.”
“I don’t,” he whispers. “I enjoyed getting to know the real Jude Gallagher in Portland. I hope to see a lot more of her. And frankly, if it were up to me, I’d never camouflage her again.”
“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing it’s not up to you. Because that would just be plain stupidity, Renegade.”
With a chuckle, he hops to his feet, sending the swing into full motion again. At the top of the steps, he pauses to hand me a final serious look over his shoulder.
“I never said I was a renegade, Jude.” He winks one fiery eye. “I just let you believe what you were told.”
I gawk at him. “Then, what?”
“I’m part of the new revolution.” He smiles; I nearly fall off the swing. “Welcome aboard.”
Twenty-eight
Fifteen minutes later, I speed dial Kane. It goes straight to voice mail.
“Kane, please pick up.” I wait a few seconds, then release a huge, audible sigh right into the receiver. “Okay. Well, I love you anyway. Call me.”
I toss my phone onto the sheets and flip on my stereo. I try to read; I can’t concentrate. I take a shower, eat a sandwich, play the piano, watch half of a cooking show. I call Kane seven more times and leave four more messages, but by midnight, he hasn’t called back. With a sigh, I climb into bed to stare at the circle of light made by my nightstand lampshade. The shape reminds me of my ring. I study the ruby, so familiar by now.
I don’t know if I’ll dream tonight, but if Kane won’t talk to me out here, I might as well take a chance at seeing him in there.
I slide off the ring and deposit it onto the nightstand. Snuggling down, I let my mind drift.
***
The room is cold; the eyes staring at me colder. They sit at a long table. Long enough to hold twelve people, shoulder to shoulder. Every seat is taken. A man in the middle lifts a gavel, lets it fall. The thud is like thunder.
“This action is now in session. Bring the violator forth.”
Beside me, Kane appears out of thin air. His hands and feet are bound with thick chains, and his wings are pressed in and tied with heavy ropes that encircle his entire body. He shakes with furious tremors. They rack his body so heavily that he can barely stand.
“Kane?” His name is a mere squeak from my mouth. He turns unrecognizable eyes my way, and his face tries to contort into someone else. I want it to be someone else—anyone but him. But no. It has to be him. I know this. Why do I know this?
“Kane!” I scream his name. “Stay with me.”
His face solidifies. His glazed eyes clear, and he looks straight at me.
“Jude,” he whispers.
“I’m here.”
I reach for him, but my hand slides right through him. A vapor. His image wavers like a digital picture. I reach for him again. This time, he’s too far away. Miles separate us.
“Kane, come back to me. Now.”
He whisks toward me, faster and faster and faster until he comes to an abrupt stop, an inch from my face. I lean in. My lips graze his. Our combined mantras soar to life, turning our two heartbeats into one long simultaneous rhythm.
“Stay with me,” I whisper. I nod toward the long table because I’m supposed to. Kane turns.
My brother has replaced the man with the gavel. He beats it over and over against the sound block.
“Take his wings!” He screams the words—straight from his lips. “Take the wings now!”
“No.” Kane shrinks away, crouching in a corner. “No. Please, no!”
“Stay with me, Kane.”
Our mantras beat in time, louder and louder, full of a power that can’t break us. Two men dressed in executioner’s hoods approach. They each wield a long sword, one for each wing. The amputation will be simultaneous and swift. Not too much blood.
Not too much blood…
It’s a lie.
“Stop!” I take a stand between them and Kane, barring the way. Confused, they stop, looking at the shadows seated at the long table for orders. But they don’t understand. This is my world, and I give the orders. “Drop you weapons and go.”
The swords fall with a tinkling clang. I catch Jarron’s eye. He nods his approval. His wings, stretching out behind him are beautiful.
I crouch with Kane. His chains fall away. He takes my hand.
A bell rings, shattering the dream in half like a ripped page in a book.
***
The bell rings. Over and over, it chimes its incessant singing until I want to scream. I push out of sleep. I check the time on my phone. It’s two a.m.
I roll over, folding my pillow over my ears and working to reenter my dreaming world. The bell rings again, followed by banging fists.
“Jude!”
I shoot up.
“Jude!” The voice is muffled.
“Kane?”
I flip on the lamp and try to orient myself to the voice.
“Jude!”
Yep. It’s Kane.
At my window, I press my nose against the glass pane. He stands in the middle of the lawn with his hands cupped around his mouth, ready to holler my name again. But he sees me, and with a wave of his hand, he disappears under the eaves right as Mr. Tomlinson’s porch light clicks on.
I make my way downstairs, disarming the alarm and dragging open the door. The porch light hits one side of Kane’s face, leaving the other in shadows, but I don’t miss his expression. It reeks of regret.
Frowning, I lean against the door jamb, not inviting him in. As much as I’d rather crawl into his arms and forgive everything, I decide I should be mad. I mean, there’s no way he didn’t see all my missed calls. So I cross my arms and settle back on my heels, determined to make him sweat it out for a bit.
That ploy doesn’t work.
He swoops over the threshold and gathers me up, pinning my own arms between us. My feet leave the ground, and there I am—helplessly dangling, eye level.
“Your dream,” he whispers. “I was there.”
I squint, allowing the discombobulated images to recapture my mind. A bench full of judges, a gavel, my brother… and Kane, bound and terrified. The scenes scatter across my brain in no particular order, but I work to fit them together like a puzzle until a clearer story scheme emerges. I squirm out of Kane’s embrace, dropping to the floor, and I study him closely.
“Your other dreams weren’t like this one. Last Saturday? That one was different. It was happy. But this? It felt real, like it was happening to me. It—”
He can’t finish the thought; his lips tremble with a heaving breath, and I just stare at him, awestruck. I did it. Somehow, I dreamt exactly what Kane needed to see, and I let him in. I have no idea how I did it, and at the moment I don’t care. It worked, and that’s all that matters.
“How did you do that?” he whispers. “How did you show—”
He breaks off again, shaking his head and exposing every bit of his fear.
“I don’t know,” I shrug.
“Well, that dream scared the hell out of me.” His eyes flare up, sending little flecks of gold fire dancing across his irises.
“It should, Kane.” I shiver as I say it. “Dreams don’t always make sense, and sometimes they mean nothing, but this one? I might not have all the components right, but the message should be loud and cl
ear.”
“How can you trust it if dreams sometimes mean nothing?”
“Because sometimes, they mean everything.” I let the images penetrate. “When I was with Jarron, we linked. We shared… our whole lives in like this massive slide show. It was weird. A sibling thing, I guess. I can’t really explain it, but in one blink, we knew everything about each other.” I think a minute. “He called it batching. So when he told me he could dream the future, I believed him. He doesn’t know you, Kane, and still he saw what they did to you. He had no reason to make this up.”
He pierces me, a real indication of the seriousness of our situation hitting home.
“I wanted to tell you all about my brother last night,” I change the subject. “But you kind of blew off in a tantrum.”
“Yeah, I know. I just—” Finally, he closes the door and half-sits against the backside of the couch, bumping his fist against his lower lip. “Rylin.”
I sigh.
“You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“So… you didn’t link with him?”
I blink. And here we go…
“Yeah,” I shrug. I could never lie to Kane. “I did actually.”
A half-laugh, half-sob escapes him. He compresses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Were you going to tell me?”
“Did you give me a chance?”
My anger raises an ugly head, but I take a breath and hold it off. I grab Kane’s wrists, pulling his hands away from his face. He drops his eyes away, but I plant myself right between his knees and force him to look at me. “Mom was trapped in my brother’s room, and he wasn’t having a good day, okay? It was literally our only option to get her out of there.”
He stares at me, his eyes burning with fire and filling with tears simultaneously. And then, he clears his throat.
“And Rylin? What do you feel for him?”
“You have it all wrong.” I take the biggest breath of my life. “You tell me it all boils down to the mantra, but that isn’t true. I might never have understood that if Rylin and I hadn’t linked.” I curl my fingers over the tops of his hands where they rest on his thighs. He tenses. I keep talking. “Don’t you get it? Even before you revealed yourself to me, we already had something real. Something unbreakable. Something… out of this world. I felt it—no, I feel it—deep in my bones. I’ve never felt that way about anyone else. And the other night, when we decamouflaged together, it was validation. Our mantras aren’t what hold us together. They just strengthen what we already have.”
If he didn’t get it before, he gets it now. The shift in his eyes proves it. I smile as my tears pile up, and he takes a moment to slip his hands from beneath mine and swipe both thumbs across my cheeks, cupping my face in the process. I edge in, chest to chest until I feel the thump-thump of his heartbeat against mine.
“You loved me before I realized what love was, you know?” I continue. “You’ve protected me. Guided me. You’ve sheltered me from the world to keep me safe. It’s why I’m still alive. You stepped up when you didn’t have to, and I trust you more than anyone else in my life because of it.” I search his eyes, see his resolve caving. “And now, I need you to trust me with this. I need you to recognize that we can both make room for Rylin in our lives and not lose what we have. Because we could really use him as a friend. I think we kind of need him, actually.”
“That’s a stretch,” Kane whispers. I laugh on a hiccup.
“Give him a chance to prove himself. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Can’t you just trust us?” He eases me away, keeping a gentle grip on my jawline, one thumb caressing my cheek in a slow, circular motion. “Why do we need him?”
“Kane, I don’t think you realize how powerful Rylin is. His abilities are strong, and he’s really skilled at being a Fireblood.”
“That’s what scares me.”
“We don’t have be scared if he’s on our side. He wants to help. And for the record, he’s not a renegade.” I pause, thinking. “I’m not quite sure what he is just yet, but I believe we can trust him.”
He absorbs this for a long minute, eyes fixed on my face, and then he pulls me close. His arms tighten, encompassing me in their strong embrace, and I sense a relief in the gesture, like he’s been waiting for me to say this so he could believe it. I sink into him, sliding my arms into place around his waist.
“We have to run away.”
He says it quickly—his commitment solidifying in a Fireblood’s will—and his breath disturbs a piece of my hair. It tickles my forehead, but I don’t move. I just squeeze my eyes closed as tight as I can as relief floods in and overtakes every single cell in my body. Finally.
“Then let’s run,” I whisper.
Our sudden coming together on this issue jars us into complete silence. Kane tenses; my skin warms. That’s when I remember my ring, still sitting on the nightstand upstairs. I chance a peek. Arm against arm, our mutual glow lights up the dim room.
“If we do this,” he says. “I’ll be defying my parents. It could really come down on them.”
“I know.”
We’re silent after this. I get it; Kane is sacrificing a lot. But what else can he do? I for one am not going to talk him out of it. I sense him the second he slides into my head.
“We’ll be in direct violation of a Contingent order.”
“Just like Bonnie and Clyde.” I raise my head, handing him my best smile. “It’ll be fun.”
“You know they died in the end, right?”
“Yeah,” I shrug. “But they weren’t Firebloods.”
“They weren’t?”
I laugh, but it dies out quickly. Because that actually gives me something to think about. With a wink, Kane kisses my forehead, leaving his lips planted against my skin for a second. And with that one tiny gesture, everything is set right between us.
“You’d better text Rylin.” For the first time, he doesn’t scowl when he says Rylin’s name. “He’s the only one who knows where we’re going.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
Our eyes connect, full of fire, and his dimples make a quick appearance and slide out of sight. “Dreams are strange.”
His random announcement causes me to break into a wide grin. He glows and flies and bursts into flames. He can compel and speak into someone’s mind and camouflage his appearance. His mantra sings the song of his life, and yet it’s something as simple as a dream he finds baffling.
After all is said and done, he might be more right than I ever imagined.
Then again, I’m not sure there’s much left for my imagination.
Postlude
There’s a brand new casino just off the north end of the strip in Las Vegas. The entire front of the building is covered in widescreens that portray live video of dancing flames, giving the illusion that the place is on fire. This is further supported by the smoke machines that send billowing, black clouds into the night sky. Those who choose to stay here are escorted from the airport in limousines with black, iridescent wings painted lengthwise across the doors on each side and tires that spin with fire. The rooms are decorated with paintings of beautiful angel-like beings depicting fiery wings and crystal eyes—the kind of pictures that shift and morph into something else if you move to a different position. The name of this casino?
SINGE.
Right in the heart of Vegas, Firebloods live in the open… disguised… as Firebloods.
We’re moving into the third week of the most extraordinary summer of my life.
Get ready.
Acknowledgements
I'd like to give special recognition this time around to my volunteer team of BETA and proofreaders: Cheree Castellanos, Mary Clark, Robin Gonzales, Marla Layman, Cheer Papworth, and Lori Standring. These women have been dedicated sounding boards and error-finders for nearly every book I've written, and wow! How blessed does that make me? Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for being there for me every time I've asked. Thank you for being h
onest with me about my story and for supporting me to the end. This book is polished to near perfection both in content and mechanics because of all of you.
Molly Phipps, keep rocking my book covers!
Anna Faulk... I think I've already said it in every way possible, but thank you for the mountains of time you dedicate to my projects. Ready for the next one!
Table of Contents
Prelude
One
Sonata
Two
Sonata
Three
Sonata
Four
Sonata
Five
Sonata
Six
Seven
Eight
Sonata
Nine
Ten
Sonata
Eleven
Twelve
Sonata
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sonata
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Sonata
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Sonata
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Postlude
