“I know you can’t say anything back,” Ruckus said to her telepathically. “Just nod to let me know that you really are okay. If he’s done anything to you, Delaney, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Because Trystan wasn’t connected to the Ander, he wasn’t able to read thoughts from his mind, or the ones he sent into Delaney’s. It made it safe at least for him to tell her things privately, though if they weren’t careful, the Zane would definitely pick up on what they were doing.
“None of this is your fault,” she repeated. “It really is going to be all right.” She wanted to tell him about the arrangement she’d made, but she knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t take the same kind of comfort from it she did. She’d tell him, just not yet.
“We’ll find a way.” Ruckus smiled.
She tried to tell him with her eyes that she was serious, and hoped she was portraying confidence and that he would understand what it meant. There was no way of knowing for sure, however, and too quickly she heard Trystan straightening from the wall, adjusting his clothing in that annoying and frankly pompous way he did.
The fact that she could make out the slight rustling of his clothes and know what he was up to was further proof that he was ridiculous.
“It’s time to go, Delaney,” he said crisply, leaving no room for argument.
Her feet felt rooted to the ground, every fiber in her being screaming to resist, even though logically her mind knew it was useless. She’d only make it worse for her and Ruckus if she didn’t go, and yet she hesitated, her gaze trailing across Ruckus’s face.
“Hey,” Ruckus said softly. “I love you.”
“Delaney,” Trystan growled darkly. “Now.”
She took a step away from the cell and pulled herself together. Making sure her voice was loud enough for everyone to hear, she stared at Ruckus and told him, “I love you, too.”
CHAPTER 14
The one good thing about being in Inkwell was that it was too cold for short dresses.
Her wardrobe was now made up entirely of outfits with pants, including the forest-green ones she was currently wearing. They were a material similar to leather, and pretty formfitting, but more comfortable than anything she’d ever had on before.
Delaney was in the process of scowling at the mirror—mentally scolding herself for actually caring about the damn pants when clothes had never mattered before—when the entrance door in the middle room opened with a heavy bang.
She jumped and rushed out to see what was going on, surprised when she was met with a fast-moving Trystan. He almost bulldozed into her, in fact, and she had to grasp on to his arms to keep her footing. Before she could send him a glare, he was gripping her wrist and tugging her out into the hall.
“What the hell—”
“We’re under attack,” he cut her off, swiftly moving them down the left side of the hall and into the west wing of the building.
For a second she was too shocked to respond, certain she’d misheard him. A fierce wave of déjà vu swept over her, and her earlier anger at him flared tenfold. This was all Trystan’s fault. If anything happened to Ruckus and the others while they were locked down there, she’d kill him. She didn’t know how exactly, but damn it, she’d find a way.
Unless … what if it was the Vakar? What if Tilda had changed her mind or somehow rescued Olena, and now she was coming to help Delaney?
“It’s the Tars,” Trystan told her then, snuffing out the seed of hope before it could fully sprout.
“How did they find us?” she demanded.
“Our location is hardly being kept secret,” he said with a grunt. “My father and the Basilissa thought it politically best to keep the people informed. It’s supposed to ensure they don’t attempt to openly rebel.”
It was meant to supply further proof that she wasn’t being held hostage by the Kints, he meant. Handy. Of course they’d be using any tactics they could to keep the public in line.
The sound of gunfire ahead had them both pausing, and he swiveled and brought them down a different hall. Everything in this building was painted silver and white, with shots of light and dark blues thrown in. They were moving through the west wing so quickly, all Delaney got was a mass blur of these three colors, and it was beginning to give her whiplash.
“How many are there?” she asked, straining to hear if any of the shooters were following. When the sounds suddenly seemed to be coming from in front of them yet again, her heartbeat picked up.
Were they headed straight toward the Tars?
“Many.” He pulled them tight against a wall and then quickly peered over the edge into another hallway. The sound of echoing boots hitting the floor clued her in that wasn’t the right way to go.
She tugged on his arm until he gave her his attention, though it was clear by the calculating look in his eyes that he was distracted.
How close? she mouthed, then pointed around him to indicate she meant the approaching Tellers.
His only response was a curt shake of his head. Then he was back to plotting on his own.
Delaney narrowed her eyes—not that he noticed. This affected her, too. If they were here to kill them, her life was also on the line. She wished he’d let her keep her fritz. At least then she wouldn’t be left completely defenseless.
As if reading her mind, Trystan activated the one on his own wrist, slashing his right middle finger in the air over his pulse point. An almost imperceptible hiss was emitted as the weapon unfolded and formed from the thick metal band. In less than half a minute he was holding the alien equivalent of a gun. A row of dim navy lights flickered at the side, and he tapped the top of the weapon, instantly turning the lights off.
“Stay near,” he said, pushing his voice to her telepathically so that it felt like it was brushing against the inside of her skull.
Delaney shivered, but before she could decide whether it was because she was completely disgusted by the intrusion, he whipped them around the corner and started shooting.
She was tucked so close to him, and he was so large, she couldn’t see around him. Not that she really wanted to. She was fine with hanging back and missing out on all the carnage, which she was positive there was a lot of because he kept firing as he walked them down the hall.
Strolled them down was more like it, as if he had all the time in the world to reach the end and wherever it was they were going. The fact that he was so collected should have played on her earlier anger, reminding her that he was a killer. Instead it was a relief.
Did that make her a hypocrite?
She hated how brutal he was, how dark he was willing to go, and yet the moment those predatory instincts were used on her behalf, she was glad.
The sound of heavy footsteps at her back pulled her away from those troubling thoughts. She twisted, catching Trystan’s attention. She felt the air shift as he turned to see what she was doing, and before she could overthink it, she reached back and grabbed on to his right wrist.
She yanked as hard as she could, bringing the fritz he was still holding up to her eye level just in time to rest her finger over his on the trigger as the first Teller came into view.
He rounded the corner, two others close on his heels, their own weapons drawn and aimed. They were dressed in shades of dark blue, and even though she found this fact interesting, Delaney didn’t hesitate.
She pressed her finger down on Trystan’s and watched as tiny balls of what appeared to be neon-blue light shot forward. Her first shot slammed into the center of the closest Teller’s chest, and he convulsed.
Her next two hit one of the others, and then the final shot slammed into the last Teller’s right shoulder. Even though it wasn’t as spot-on as the rest, it seemed to do the trick. The Teller started shaking and immediately dropped to the ground.
Delaney blinked, her mouth hanging slightly open. The Tellers were wiggling like they’d just been electrocuted. Even though this was hardly the time for her to stand there gaping, it was
a good minute before she realized the entire hallway had gone silent. When she listened for any nearby sounds down other corridors, she was met with more silence.
Had this really been all the Tars? Trystan had made it sound like there were dozens of them.…
She turned, intending to finally get a look at where all the shot Tellers were, but she froze when she saw Trystan’s bewildered expression. They stared at each other a moment, and then she realized she was still gripping his wrist. She dropped it, taking a single step back in the process.
“Zane?” Sanzie’s voice came from behind Delaney, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she found that the Teller had appeared and was uncomfortably standing among the ones Delaney had shot.
She frowned, stepping to the side so that she could easily look at both Trystan and Sanzie with a turn of her head. Something about this situation wasn’t adding up, and it wasn’t just the way the female Teller was staring sheepishly at the fallen. She was too calm. They were both too calm for a massive attack to be happening.
“One of you is going to tell me what the hell is really going on here.” At this point, Delaney didn’t care which. “Or I swear I’m going to make your lives miserable any way I can.”
When neither of them immediately responded, she swung around to glare at Trystan. From the corner of her eye, she saw Sanzie order a few soldiers to help her remove the bodies.
“What is this?” She waved at the Tellers currently being lifted from the ground.
“You informed the members of the high councils that you’d continued training while on Earth.” He crossed his arms, the move affectively making him seem larger. “I was curious to see if this was the case.”
She angled her head. “You set this all up to find out if I’d been telling the truth? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You do realize you could have just asked me, right?”
“I wanted to see firsthand how well you could defend yourself,” he countered, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“If you gave me back my fritz,” she stated, “I’d show you.” The threat was apparent. “Those Tellers—”
“They’re fine,” he answered before she could get the rest of the question out. “I set my fritz to stun this morning before coming to get you. They all knew what was in store, and they trusted I wasn’t going to deliver any killing blows. Fortunately, because it was my weapon you used against them, neither did you.”
She was more relieved by that than she should be—even if they weren’t Tars, they were still technically her enemy.
He smirked and held out his hand.
She looked pointedly down at it and then back up at him.
“Now who is acting childish?” He wiggled his fingers and waited.
“Touching you right now really isn’t an option for me,” she admitted when it became clear he was willing to stand here like that all day.
“Because you’re angry”—he didn’t lower his arm—“about this?”
“Definitely.”
He canted his head. “This is about the Ander.”
“And Pettus and Gibus.”
“But mostly about the Ander.”
She ground her teeth and prayed for patience. “You make it sound like he’s all that I care about. He isn’t. I don’t want any of them hurt, and yet they’re currently down there all messed up. Because of you.”
“Me?” He used his free hand to point to the center of his chest, and grunted. “My Tellers were told to stop any intruders from entering the palace—which is, as you well know, their job. It isn’t my fault your little band fought back. They were in the process of breaking into the home of their Basilissa, which is also considered treason. If I hadn’t taken custody of them, they’d be dead.”
“That’s bullshit,” she snapped. “Tilda wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, because she’s so very fond of you, is that it? If we’re going by your logic, if I’m to blame, she’s to blame. She’s the one who gave you up, after all. Even Magnus held out till the very end.”
Delaney opened her mouth to retort and then quickly shut it the second she processed his words. “What?”
“There were things I couldn’t understand,” he continued, the small space between his brows wrinkling as he frowned. “Certain things you’d done and said that didn’t add up. My suspicions got worse when Olena—the real Olena—arrived an hour or so after she’d supposedly departed on that ship with the Ander. It didn’t make sense that he would abandon her now, make her return without him. And her excuse for running from me in the hangar? For boarding and flying off?”
She held her breath, already knowing she was going to hate whatever he said next. They were supposed to have prepared Olena on what to say and do. Had they not bothered, or had the Lissa just been stupid?
“She was afraid I was with the shooters.” He shook his head, clearly disgusted by this notion. “I’d taken a zee for her only days before, had killed my second-in-command only hours before, and she had the audacity to claim she was afraid I was with those attacking her?”
Technically, he had been in the beginning, but Delaney didn’t bother voicing this fact aloud.
“As the days passed, it became increasingly obvious she wasn’t the same woman I’d done those things for,” he said. “Little by little, it became difficult to stick to my earlier assumption that she was different because of her time on Earth. After all, if that had been true, a single trip into space wouldn’t have magically reverted her back. Would you like to know what she did that first night she was here?”
Delaney was certain she did not, but he wasn’t really asking, so he didn’t wait for an answer.
“She screamed at a servant for bringing her bergozy.” He held her gaze. “Apparently, she has tried it, and it’s not to her liking.”
She would have groaned and slumped against the wall if it’d been anyone else telling her this. Really, how stupid had they all been to believe Olena could pull it off? They’d thought that because it’d been her life on the line, she’d put in an effort. Obviously, they’d been wrong. According to Trystan, she hadn’t even made it twenty-four hours before giving them up.
“It wasn’t the drink,” he said before she could say anything. “That factored in, but to be honest, I didn’t even think much on that detail until later when I was alone and playing it all back. It was how she’d spoken to the servant that jarred me. The girl I’d been spending time with would never talk to someone—someone other than me, of course—like that. You’d made a point to treat everyone here with respect, even Lura, after she’d attempted to poison you.”
“How long?” Her throat was dry, so her voice came out rough and low. She tried to swallow, but when that didn’t work, she cleared her throat. “How long did it take you to figure this out?”
What she really wanted to ask was how in the world did he correctly guess that someone had been altered with unknown alien tech? That seemed so far out of the realm of possibility, even for Xenithians, that it would have been nuts for him to suggest it, let alone think it.
“Two weeks. I mapped out all the inconsistencies, ran background checks on the few people you had shown an interest in, and eventually broke into Gibus’s facilities and hacked his notes. He’d deleted all the information on how the technology had been created, but had left mention of its existence in his systems.”
For a bona fide genius, he hadn’t been very smart.
“You went to the Basileus with your assumptions?” Even with the Sutter’s notes, that seemed risky.
“No.” A hint of his good mood vanished, and if she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she may have missed it. “I went to my father.”
Right. Why would he involve someone else’s king?
“I needed to formulate a plan, and I needed to convince him of its worth. I told him all the ways it could benefit Kint, and how it was a better solution than the one he himself had proposed when betrothing me to Olena. I raised the point that the Basile
us and Basilissa had blatantly lied to us, playing both of us for fools. After that, it was a matter of honing the details, finding loopholes to ensure you would be put on their throne with little to no resistance.”
“And somewhere in there, Magnus was killed.” It was starting to sound like that hadn’t been the plan.
“Like I said,” he stated, “I knew someone had pretended to be Olena, but I didn’t know who. It was the who that really mattered. You.” His eyes searched hers. “Finding you was what mattered. Yet they wouldn’t give you up. So my father took it further than I expected. The Basilissa didn’t hesitate to talk after that.”
“The Rex had just murdered her husband,” Delaney hissed.
“It was his choice not to give you up. He’s dead because of that choice. He didn’t want to appear weak and broken by a Kint. That is why he refused to tell me who you were, not out of loyalty or gratitude toward you. For him, it wasn’t about you at all, Delaney.”
But to Trystan it had been; that was what he was not so subtly trying to convince her. Was that the whole purpose of this little talk? He wasn’t big on explanations, and yet they’d been standing in this hallway for at least ten minutes now while he rambled on. There had to be a reason, but she wouldn’t play into his game this time. If he wanted to tell her how important she supposedly was to him, he could man up and say it directly.
“We’re wasting the day,” Trystan said, putting an end to the discussion as swiftly as he’d started it. “Let’s go.”
He turned and headed down the hall in the direction they’d been initially going before his men had “attacked” them. All the bodies had been cleared away, leaving no sign that the shootout had even happened.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, mostly to distract herself.
What she really wanted was to dissect the information he’d just unloaded, but she had to admit: She was a bit curious where they were heading. What was coming next?
CHAPTER 15
“Not even if you paid me.”
Between Frost and Fury Page 15
