Treat (Terraway Book 5)

by Mary E. Twomey

I examined the piece of cheese, turning the chunk over in my hand. “I guess I don’t know your world well enough to judge. I just think you’re better than that.”

  “Better than what?”

  “Better than the bare minimum of kindness and strategic goodness.”

  “And what kind of goodness are you doing that you don’t get anything in return for?” he challenged.

  “Um, other than saving a world that’s only tried to kill me, abduct me, and starve me? Not too much lately other than the whole Omen thing.”

  “I believe the job pays well enough for you to live comfortably.”

  I raised my eyebrow at him. “Would you call Mariang comfortable? I bet she’d trade that mansion and a whole pot of leprechaun gold for one more year with Danny.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We stared at each other for a hot minute before he jerked his chin toward the plate and opened his mouth. I fought off my blush as long as I could, but when his lips touched my fingers, I knew the flaming pink had found my cheeks. We finished off the rest of the meal like that, his hand on my back as he reclined next to where I sat on the bed, and me feeding him the occasional bite. My days of anxiety slowly came to a halt in our little island haven, giving me an adrenaline crash that made me yawn. “Lie down,” he offered, patting the spot next to him. “I know you’re exhausted.”

  I set the empty plate on his brownish orange coral nightstand. Part of me wished there was a guest bed to sleep on, but the guilty side of me was glad there wasn’t. I’d been abducted too many times to feel safe going off on my own, even if it was just to another room in Finn’s house. I touched his arm as my nerves built, pushing out my fear in a nervous, insecure ramble of, “Will you stay with me?” Then I shook my head. “Never mind. I know you’re busy with your paperwork and stuff. Forget I asked. Go do your thing.”

  My words tapped into something precious inside of Finn, his gaze saying too many things before his mouth opened. “Of course I’ll stay with you.”

  I gusted out a breath of pure nerves. “Thank you. I’m usually not such a wuss, I promise. It’s the whole abduction thing. It’s messing with my head. We’re safe here? You’re not leaving right away?”

  He sat up and kissed my cheek. “If I’m around, you’re safe.”

  I draped my arms around his shoulders in a hug of gratitude for the friendship I needed in my vulnerable moment. My chin rested on his shoulder, and for the briefest of minutes, I let myself breathe. In a world of catching my breath and always looking over my shoulder, Finn gave me a safe place to exhale. It was a luxury I didn’t take for granted.

  Finn pressed his lips to my ear, and then stood up on his knees to tug the hanging fabric behind him that stretched from ceiling to floor around the edge of the large circular bed. The red velvet draped us in darkness and probably too much secrecy. My mouth went dry as it dawned on me that I was completely stranded on a figurative desert island with Von’s arch nemesis, who was pulling me down next to him in the soft, concealed enclosure of his bed.

  “Of all the women I’ve had that wander into our land to see the beautiful Mermaids, I’ve never brought one to my bed before. I usually rent a room near the palace on the land.” He pointed in the direction of where we’d just swam from with his lit fingers. The gentle light fell on our faces, illuminating only the most prominent features useful for highlighting conversation.

  “Would you rather I slept on the floor? Because I’m cool with that. I totally get it if you don’t want me in your space.”

  Von had taken up space in my bed, but it was the space in his future he had a problem with me being so permanently in.

  Finn rolled me over to face him and stroked the outer curve of my leg, pulling my knee to sandwich between his. “If I had my way, you’d sleep in my arms every night. Then I’d know you were safe. Your Duwendes are careless if you’ve been snatched at this many times.”

  I frowned at this. “Well, then when we get back, could you teach us how to do it better? I don’t want to get taken again, and they’re good guys. But we’re all new at this.”

  Finn considered this, nodding. “I can do that for you. But part of it can’t be taught. It’s earned. People fear me, as they should. Some dismiss Mason, and the other one’s a joke.”

  “Von’s not a joke. It’s a crappy time for all of this – to break in a new Omen. This stone business is making everyone crazy.”

  “Those are excuses for a job poorly done. No one would lay a finger on you if you were mine.”

  I don’t know why that struck a chord with me, but I couldn’t look away from his earnest green eyes. They drew me in with the promise of never getting my back sliced up again like it had been. Though Finn was a monster to many, he’d saved me, healed me, and was looking down on me with tender affection. He soothed the fear I worried might never stop clawing at me. “Don’t say nice things like that. I want to hear them too badly.”

  The guilt acted like an aphrodisiac, making me want things I knew I wouldn’t dream of in the daylight. My safest bet was to fall asleep as quick as possible and run to Von, if he would still have me after getting his brother murdered.

  The corner of Finn’s full lips twitched upward, his glowing fingertips cupping my cheek with hands that I was surprised knew how to be gentle. “I’ll teach you to swim, and you can teach me all your silly ideals, and everything you think I need to become.” He grinned at my frown, and I noted his use of “I will” instead of “I would”. Things were getting too serious, and I wasn’t sure how to derail the train that part of me very much wanted to be on. “You’ll stay here and let your mother take the stone to the well in Lumipad, if it’s not there already. She can take it to the other lands, too. Let her loud mouth keep the warfare away.”

  I shook my head. “She doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into. I won’t have her risk her neck when she’s just barely started to get her head on straight. She’s not built for it. She gets upset when she has to work five minutes past closing at her receptionist job. It’s not fair that I’m here, and she’s doing my job.”

  Finn’s eyes glinted at me as if he had a thousand angry things to say on the subject, but wouldn’t because it didn’t play into his master plan. “She can sacrifice herself to make up for how horrible she is. You should’ve seen the fit she threw when she found out we would have to sleep out in the woods.”

  I chuckled at the image of Bev camping. “It’s not her. The stone warps her mind.”

  “I don’t care how warped a person is. I won’t let anyone talk about you like that.”

  I swallowed hard, my gaze breaking from his. “If there’s more she said, I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter how she talks about me. I know who I am.”

  As lost as I was in our own little desert island, that night I closed my eyes treasuring the time I could take in Finn’s arms to breathe. Of all the things I’d lost, I still had bits of myself. Terraway hadn’t managed to cut it all out of me, though Serena had tried. Terraway hadn’t starved it out of me, beat it out of me or scared it out of me completely.

  Beneath all the craziness of both worlds, I was me. And that night, it was just enough to get me through.

  Thirty-One.

  Playing House with Finn

  I suppose it was too much to hope I saw Von in my dreams. I couldn’t imagine him sleeping much, what with funeral arrangements being made for Bishop and whatnot. I couldn’t imagine sleeping ever again if anything horrible happened to Ollie. I spent my dream with Philip, eating and making love with my imaginary prince. He even held me while I confessed all the horrible things Serena had done. He promised to avenge me like the knight in shining armor my pretend man was to me.

  A few times in the night, I’d woken in a blind panic. Once was when thoughts of Serena infiltrated my dreams of Philip. A bleat of distress had woken me when I recalled the bite of her blade cutting up my back. Later in the night, Finn shook me awake from a nightmare I was having about hundreds of little
children in Terraway. They were sobbing that they were hungry, and calling me “Bev” because I had the ability to feed them, but wasn’t.

  Finn was a gentleman and held me through the worst of it, the first time assuring me that no one was going to carve me up or abduct me here. The second time, he didn’t know what to do with me. “You can’t keep children from starving, sweetheart. There’s literally nothing you can do from here. That’s not on you; that’s on Lumipad for not monitoring their people. You can go back to work as soon as it’s safe up there.”

  I was barely lucid as I sobbed in his arms. “Mariang’s probably reaping herself haggard every day. What if she dies before I get back? What if I could’ve saved her, but I’m busy being lazy and laying around here? I can’t let her die, Finn. I’ve got one sister who left me; I couldn’t take it if my only sister left up and died!”

  Finn got up and brought me a tissue, and then held me while I sobbed incoherently about all the people in Terraway I couldn’t save, and the guilt that weighed on my heart. Von and Mason usually pulled the baser emotions from me so I didn’t have to dwell in this dark place. I was without them now, and my aching conscience tormented me in my sleep, and then bled into my wakefulness.

  “Okay, I can’t even understand you anymore. You have to calm down. You’re not responsible for the mess Terraway or Mariang are buried in. You’re one person, and we were broken long before you came into the picture.”

  My face was wet from tears as I sobbed and hiccupped disjointedly until the words couldn’t stay in me any longer. The thing that haunted me since I first kissed Finn bubbled to the surface. “If I don’t leave you and go back Topside to reap, you’ll die. To keep you, I have to leave you.”

  It was like I’d slapped Finn with the harshness of the obvious truth. The stung look on his face mutated to anger, then pain as it dawned on him there was no escaping that reality. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. We’re together now, and that’s what matters. Be with me while you have me. Everything else is a problem for another day.”

  His lips pressed on my cheek after he pulled me back down and slid the blanket up over us. He cradled me in his arms until my sobs turned to pathetic whimpers, my eyelids drooping as exhaustion claimed me. I treasured the tenderness he exuded that only I got to see. His arms stayed wrapped around me until I drifted back to sleep.

  I’d felt Finn shift to wakefulness before the sun came up, kissing my lower lip before I was aware enough to protest. The colors flooded me, and I could barely piece together enough of reality to tell Finn that a kiss was certainly not kosher (which he already knew, the sneak). “Finn, we can’t,” I murmured through my green and silver-smeared haze, batting at him and missing as the curtains around us slowly began to materialize through my blur.

  Finn buried his head next to mine, panting from the simple one-way kiss that made him see things I was certain I didn’t want to know about. His hard gasps of breath in my ear made me feel things I knew I shouldn’t and couldn’t, but somehow did. “Beautiful,” he whispered in wonder. “I don’t get a lot of beautiful in my life. I get an ocean of ugly.” His emotions were raw and uncensored when he came out of the vision, and I didn’t ask him what he saw. The wonder on his face hit a decrescendo as he looked down on my nervous expression, taking in the apology that didn’t match his own elation. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t… It won’t happen again.”

  “Finn, I’m sorry!” I was barely lucid, but I knew I’d hurt him before I’d even set foot out of the bed.

  “Don’t worry about it. It was my fault.” He shuddered as a residual high rippled through him. He collapsed onto me, panting anew.

  I didn’t know what to do. I mean, dude was wrecked from something I hadn’t even meant to participate in. His head migrated to my chest, his ear tuning into my heartbeat. I tried my best to calm him down by running my fingers through his short brownish-blond hair. His cheek nuzzled my breasts as if I was his safe haven, instead of the other way around. He was big and scary outside of his home, but here in my arms, he was a kitten. I didn’t take the gift lightly that I got to see him so unraveled, so without the right words and without the angry wrinkle between his eyes.

  I fished for a change of topic so we didn’t say things we shouldn’t while we waited for his heartrate to slow. “How did you start working for Banak?” I asked, my fingers doing their best to relax him as they brushed down his stubbled cheek.

  He paused, and I could tell he was debating between the PG version of his beginning, and the real-life HBO edition. “My parents didn’t know what to do with me. They’re both Merpeople. My race is an anomaly, which is why there aren’t as many Kataw. The Mer call us Kataw ‘sandwalkers’. Most sandwalkers are given to the Academy to be looked after. See, we can stay underwater for hours, but we can’t live there. And Merpeople can breathe fine above water, but they can’t walk on land, obviously.”

  A frown pronounced itself on my lips at the thought of being separated from your parents just because of a flip of the genetic pool. “That must’ve been hard for you. And for them, actually. How terrible not to be able to live with your baby.”

  “They kept me as long as they could. Then when I got to be school aged, they gave me to the Kataw Academy. Well, it’s an academy now. Back then, learning wasn’t the primary goal. We were trained to be soldiers, to do what the king needed without pause. I went through my classes and graduated at the top. I wanted to run the Academy. That was my goal. To teach kids about our people, our history. To take a kid that’s been given up and give him purpose.” He reached down and picked up my foot. My knee bent up, and he kissed it while he rubbed the sole of my foot with perfect pressure to relax me as he spoke. “Purpose is a powerful thing. Kids tend to drift without it. Adults, too. That’s one of the things I like about you. You have such a strong sense of purpose.”

  “Whatever. You like me for my big toe,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

  Finn tickled the bottom of my foot only enough to make me squirm, and then worked his fingers around each toe. He took his time with the tenderness he doled out only behind a closed curtain. “The Kataw Academy’s all about churning out soldiers, which we need, make no mistake, but I don’t like the way it’s done.”

  “How’s it done?”

  He was quiet a moment, as if seeing a memory he didn’t care to describe in detail. “A few of my scars that healed in the waters last night were from the beatings I got when I didn’t perform as I needed to.”

  My face twisted in horror. “Your teachers hit you? Hit you hard enough to leave scars? What kind of a crap school is this Academy?”

  “The kind you’re lucky to only get scars from. There are many of my classmates who didn’t make it out at all. If you survive the Academy, you deserve to get to keep your life.”

  My arms tightened around him. “Shut that nonsense down, Finn. I’m serious. Kids shouldn’t have to go through that. Is that what the Duwende Academy’s like?”

  Finn let out a light scoff. “Not even close. Duwendes are kind of a joke in our country. Our army’s terrifying. Duwendes don’t even have an army. They’re spread out all through Terraway and the Topside. They make us feel better and really are mostly useful to Omens. Their Academy’s like a Topsider school, with a bit more physical training added in. I ordered one for you while you’re staying here.”

  “Huh? Ordered one what?”

  “A Duwende. He should be here soon. That’s why I was getting up. I’ve got to go get him from the shore.”

  “For what?”

  Finn rubbed a spot behind my ankle that made my whole leg feel like it was one long noodle in his capable hands. “For pulling. You get a little high-strung without your Reapers. I just got those scars off your arms; I won’t see your skin marked up the very next day. Those claw marks kill me. It looks like you’ve been attacked by a wild animal.”

  “I don’t need a Puller who I don’t know. I can handle myself,” I said, tho
ugh we both knew I was lying. I was several days without my medication. If Bishop hadn’t blissed me out before he died, I would’ve been rocking and counting things for sure. Though, I was surprised how even-keeled I felt. I wondered if that pop in my brain I experienced when I went into the healing waters did something to balance whatever was chemically wrong in me. I closed my eyes, praying that was true.

  “I’m sure you can handle yourself just fine. But I promised Ezra I’d look after you. Those pills you take. Are they important?”

  Now it was my turn to debate between the PG version and the uncut one not suitable for people you didn’t want to look at you like you’d gone insane. “The Duwende can’t cure that, but it does help. Thank you.”

  “What are the pills for?”

  I hated the direct questions that hit right where I couldn’t take it. “Nothing you have here. I get a little messed up in the head sometimes, and they help me think straight. I start to disappear without them. Bishop blissed me out, and was pulling regularly while we were locked up. Then I’m guessing the healing waters helped me over the hump, but I don’t last long as me without them.” I shrugged, as if none of that made me sad at all.

  “Do you start to become like Bev?”

  “No.” I gulped, knowing nothing would turn a man off more than the brutal truth. “And I don’t need to talk any more about it. I’ll be fine.” I secretly worried if that was true. “You saved the day again, getting another Puller. Thanks for that, by the way. Super awesome of you to look ahead for the potholes. You’re like, King of the Ocean or something.”

  “That’s me. Super awesome.” He mocked my intonation and made me sound like a valley girl. I forgave him the insult because he rubbed my feet like a practiced masseur. “And I’m second in command of our land, which is mostly ocean, so I’ll take the title of ‘King of the Ocean’, since Banak’s screwed his way into uselessness.”

  “Yeeshk. He seems like a giant child. Not sure why you work for him.”