The Redeemable Prince (The Star-Crossed Series Book 9)

by Rachel Higginson

  “You’re not,” she agreed with me. “Sometimes your selfishness and thoughtlessness too.”

  I looked at my feet and tried not to smile, although I did not quite succeed. “Stop before you make me blush.”

  She cut her eyes to me in an unamused glare. “We’re never going to get through this, Bastian. One of us is going to kill the other before we ever get close to Terletov.”

  “I promise it won’t be me that kills you.”

  "And you’re okay with me killing you?”

  You already have.

  “If I thought you could really hurt me, I wouldn’t have asked you here.”

  “I’ll try to play nice.”

  Her words rippled over my skin like an electric charge. Fissions of lightning and energy licked at my bones like live wires. I didn’t want her to play nice.

  I wanted her to play rough and a little bit dirty.

  Maybe a lot dirty.

  “Only do the best you can,” I taunted her. I shouldn’t want her to be angry and worked up. I should let her be. I should give her a chance to move on. I should give myself a chance to move on.

  But as I watched her stand in the middle of my suite, with the late summer light spilling over her hair and shoulders, her skin aglow from the sweet, warm sun, I knew I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t let her be. It wasn’t in me. I would push her, fight her, and antagonize her until she fought back.

  Until she gave me what I wanted.

  Even if I didn’t fully realize what that was yet.

  “And you don’t think I have it in me to be nice to you?”

  “I don’t think you have it in you to be nice to anybody. It’s not specifically me you have an issue with. You hate everything.”

  Her eyes flashed with fury. A brewing storm panted beneath her carefully constructed mask of posh snobbery and refinement. She might have all the manners in the world, but she stood at the edge of a precipice, her storm gathering strength and volatility. She would explode soon.

  And when she did, I would stand in the path of her destruction and let her annihilate me.

  “I’m a different person than you dated. You don’t know me anymore.” Her voice sounded sharp and cutting, but her eyes flashed with something pained.

  I instantly regretted baiting her. I wanted to draw her into heated banter, not hurt her. I was a bastard.

  Yet, she wasn’t completely innocent in this. And she was wrong. I did know her. I knew her better than anyone else on this planet.

  I couldn’t let her forget that.

  “You’re different now? You own a house? You moved to the remotest place you could find and now you’re journey to self-discovery has revealed someone I have never met?”

  I hadn’t realized I’d moved until I stood over her, our bodies just a breath apart. She gazed up at me and blinked away the tears that pooled at the lashes.

  “Seattle is hardly remote,” she sniped, but it lacked the heat from earlier.

  “Maybe it’s not isolated in terms of people, but from this Kingdom? It is. You’re running. You’re in self-imposed exile.”

  Her eyes grew big, as if she just realized how close we’d become. She took a step back and sucked in a steadying breath. “I need space.”

  “You said that already. A year ago. Have you had enough space? Have you had enough time to grow? Mature? Spread your wings?”

  “You’re being cruel.”

  “I’m being curious.”

  “I should go.”

  Stay. My chest screamed in pain and my Magic reared in protest.

  “I need to find my room,” she continued with a glance at the door.

  “You could…” Stay here. Stay with me. You could stay in my room. I glanced at the door that led to my bedroom and stifled the urge to toss her inside and lock the door so she couldn’t leave until I allowed her to. “You could have done that before you found me. You didn’t have to rush straight here.”

  I struggled to pull myself together and had to turn away from her in order to do so. I felt her eyes on my back, the intensity of their gaze searing through my starched oxford and burning me down to the bone.

  She shrugged but didn’t say anything. She made her way to the door where her abandoned luggage sat against the wall. I thought about offering to carry it for her, but recognized her retreat for what it was. An effort to get the hell away from me.

  “Seraphina,” I called after her. She turned around halfway through the door and raised her eyebrows. “If you’d like to see me tonight, no need to pull me into the apocalypse. Just knock.”

  “If I want to see you tonight, I’ll remember that.”

  She disappeared down the hallway and slammed the door shut with her Magic. I sunk down into the nearest chair and let my face fall into my hands.

  Her departure felt like the abrupt but familiar sting of rejection. I tried to sort through the multitude of thoughts in my head and tried to decide if I wanted to be okay with that or not.

  I wanted her.

  I didn’t want her.

  I loved her.

  I didn’t love her.

  I wanted to kill her.

  I wanted to make love to her.

  I couldn’t untangle my thoughts long enough to pull one strand from the other. They muddled together in an indecipherable soup of unwanted memories, nightmares, hopes and fears.

  I took a deep breath and purposed to move on once and for all. My confusion regarding my ex was hardly comparable to the mission at hand. I needed to focus on capturing Terletov.

  Capturing and then killing him.

  Seraphina could wait. At least until we’d secured the fate of the world and doomsday didn’t loom on the horizon. The four horsemen of the apocalypse weren’t currently planning their first holiday to earth; this was not the right time to have girl problems.

  At the very least, I could wait until Mimi called me back with the information I truly wanted- how much real estate in Seattle I could purchase without looking suspicious.

  Chapter Eight

  Seraphina

  A knock at my door had me jumping from my lazy position at the end of my bed. I closed my eyes and tried to send out my Magic ahead of my body. My heart hammered in my chest, but my Magic didn’t feel him, so I hoped I could answer the door without stabbing whoever stood on the other side.

  Namely Sebastian.

  If he’d come to taunt me some more, I definitely planned to teach him a lesson.

  With a knife.

  I was so tired of his bullshit. Hot and then cold, friendly and unfriendly, hero and nemesis. The guy had major personality problems.

  Like schizophrenia.

  “Open the door, Sera! We know you’re in there.”

  Roxie. Thank God.

  I gave a lazy flick of my wrist and the door pulled open. Roxie practically tumbled in with the two blonde girls close on her heels. My spicy Latina friend jumped back to her feet with a fierce glare.

  I just smiled and showed off my pageant wave.

  “You could have warned me,” she growled.

  I nodded, agreeing. “I could have.”

  The sisters shared a look of scared bewilderment. Oh, brother. I wasn’t that scary.

  Most of the time.

  One of them shut the door and Roxie gestured for them to follow her closer to me. Roxie and I had been through enough of these together that we’d developed an easy friendship.

  We didn’t have all that much in common in our non-mission lives and so we weren’t exactly best friends. But I would die for this girl. Without a second’s hesitation.

  And I knew she would do the same thing for me.

  Sometimes I wondered if the bond of battle was heavier than any friendship. Friendship was nice and comfortable. But there were things that went deeper, things that bled thicker. There were Immortals I would do anything for and the closest to a real conversation we’d ever gotten was helpful tips on how to kill whoever was attacking us.

  Roxie jumped on
to the bed next to me and shoved my thigh. “You know Liv and O?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “So you don’t want to be here or what?” Liv asked with all that sharp-tongue-feistiness Jericho routinely bragged about.

  I raised my eyebrows at her and wondered if there were a way for her to possibly understand the complexities of my hatred for Sebastian. “My ex-boyfriend is the lead on this mission. I’m less than thrilled to be part of a team he doesn’t want me on.”

  Roxie snorted. “I’m pretty sure he wants you on something... Maybe not his team… but, ahem, something.”

  “You’re so dirty,” I said through a laugh.

  “Sebastian?” O, the younger sister seemed to need clarification.

  “Yes.”

  “You guys dated?”

  I bit my tongue to keep from lashing out unnecessarily. I didn’t like the flash of interest in her pretty face or the familiar tone she said his name with.

  I didn’t have to want him or like him, but that didn’t mean I wanted other people to be interested in him.

  And I wasn’t foolish enough to think he hadn’t moved on from me in every way.

  But I didn’t want to see the evidence standing in front of me. Or future evidence.

  Sebastian wouldn’t turn a girl like Ophelia down. She was gorgeous with her choppy blonde bob and bright orange eyes. She’d also recently come into the fullness of her Immortality.

  Her association to Jericho’s lady love made her a very interesting target for the single men in my circle. And there were so many of them.

  She probably had her pick of Friday night dates.

  I wondered if she had her sister’s weird hang up on Immortals or if she’d acclimated better. I found myself hoping she despised Immortals as much as Olivia once had. That would keep my forbidden thoughts pacified.

  But I doubted it.

  With Olivia fully on board the Immortal-train, Ophelia was sure to follow.

  Roxie pushed my leg again and I realized I had never answered her question. I’d been too busy plotting a subtle way to get rid of her.

  Ahem.

  Not as in murder, obviously. But… in other ways.

  Not that I would. I didn’t even care that she seemed interested in Sebastian. I didn’t want him, so why couldn’t she have him?

  Obviously, she could.

  I wasn’t going to stand in her way.

  I wasn’t.

  “We did date. A long time ago.”

  “Not that long ago,” Roxie cut in. “They’ve only been broken up for a few months.”

  “A year. And a lot has happened since then. I can hardly remember being with him at all.” Liar. I was a big, fat liar.

  Roxie snorted again, calling me on it. I shrugged one shoulder and gave her a “what?” look. She just shook her head and stretched out her short legs.

  “Why did you break up?” O pressed.

  I wanted to snap at her to mind her own business, but I realized that might look like I still harbored feelings for him. So instead, I cooled down my raging inferno of a heart and took a deep breath.

  “We fought all the time,” I explained. “Neither of us was happy in the relationship. We both wanted… different things.”

  I wanted marriage. He wanted to be a hero for this Kingdom.

  I wanted him to want me to be a part of his future. He wanted to leave me behind while he “found himself” on the battlefield.

  People told me I couldn’t blame him for wanting to make a name for himself, but they were wrong. I could blame him.

  I did blame him.

  “That doesn’t seem like Sebastian,” Ophelia mumbled thoughtfully.

  My eyes bugged out a little bit and I wanted to turn back into the bitch I fought so diligently to bury. Was she serious? Roxie pinched my kneecap to get my attention.

  When I looked at her she shook her head in warning. I barely bit back a scream, and fought to see things from their perspective.

  To a girl like Ophelia, I was sure that Sebastian appeared in all his laid-back, sarcastic glory and the underwear just melted off her body.

  However, to someone that knew him as intimately as I did, I could have told her, fighting with me was his favorite pastime. Even more so than Fifa for PlayStation.

  Which was a major accomplishment on my part.

  “Date him for three years and then tell me how he seems.” Ophelia’s eyes flashed with regret and I immediately felt bad for the bitterness lacing my tone. I sighed and admitted, “I shouldn’t have said that. That makes him sound like he was a terrible boyfriend for all that time. He wasn’t. We loved each other. Things just didn’t work out in the end.”

  “Are you friends at least?” Ophelia asked carefully.

  I glanced at Roxie. “We’re working together on this mission. That has to count for something.”

  “So you loved each other a lot,” Olivia concluded. No question. No doubt. She looked at the facts I gave her and announced judgment.

  “It was serious,” I confirmed. “And if Terletov wouldn’t have shown up when he did, we might be married by now. So, at least we were saved from making that monumental mistake.”

  Liv’s brows furrowed over her expressive eyes and she shook out her blonde bob. “Relationships are hard. All of them. Even the happy couples have to work their asses off to stay happy. It doesn’t mean the work isn’t worth it. Or the pain and heartache.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip and thought over those words. Her relationship with Jericho seemed perfect. They were always nothing but smiles and goo-goo eyes for each other. And they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves.

  When I said as much, she frowned again and announced, “We need wine for this!”

  Ophelia ran off to find us some and Olivia continued. “I love Jericho. And a lot of the time our relationship is easy and fun. But there are other times when we have to work hard just to like each other. Our relationship can definitely be a huge struggle. It’s not always the pretty destiny I want it to be. And, I mean, you could tell me that if I have to force myself to be with Jericho than I shouldn’t be. But I don’t believe that. I chose him. He’s it for me forever. That means, yeah, sometimes I’m going to want to be selfish or detached or give up or whatever and there are times that he feels that way too. But we’re it for each other. That’s the decision we made and we’re going to work as hard as we can and do everything possible to make sure we stay together. To make sure we stay happy. So it might not always be the perfect fairytale relationship that only exists in fiction. But, it’s exactly the place I want to be in forever and he will always be the man I want to spend it with.”

  “I get that.” Kind of. “But our issues were deeper than that too. I wanted to get married. He wanted to go run off on some crazy mission and risk his life.” I felt the anger bubble up inside of me again. I swore up and down that I’d gotten over this and that I’d moved on. But this still made me so angry. His actions. His abandonment. I just couldn’t get over it. “And you know what? It wasn’t even about marriage. He could have put that off for however long he wanted. I just wanted some outward show of commitment. I wanted to be considered with the rest of the plans he made for his life. You know?”

  “You told him that?” Olivia asked with a serious expression making her look older… wiser.

  I nodded while feeling the opposite. I felt young, immature and so not ready for any kind of curveball Sebastian would bring to my settled life if I had to be around him much longer.

  Olivia’s frown deepened. “I don’t know Sebastian that well. But it sounds like you were right to break up with him. He has to know that.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what he knows. He acts like I betrayed him. Like I gave up on him. And maybe I did.”

  Roxie patted my back awkwardly. She wasn’t known for her gentle affection and the gesture made me smile. I shot her a look over my shoulder and she scowled at me.

  “What? I feel bad for you,” she laughed
.

  I laughed too. A real laugh from the brittle corroded places inside of me I thought had withered when Sebastian left me for this. “That’s so compassionate of you.”

  Roxie’s smile spread and transformed her bitchy-resting-face into a shockingly pretty expression. “I’m a very compassionate person.” She looked up at Olivia. “What? I am.”

  And then we all dissolved into laughter.

  Ophelia came back a few minutes later carrying four bottles of wine- one for each of us. Of course, we tried to be ladies like about it and only open one at a time. But by the time I waved a drunken goodbye to the girls sometime in the middle of the night, all four bottles had been emptied and I had laughed more than I ever had in my life.

  I wanted to feel threatened by Ophelia’s potential interest in Sebastian, but after dissecting every man on the mission, talking about the guys they’d dealt with in the human world and picking apart my ex-boyfriend to the bone over Malbecs and Cab Francs, I couldn’t.

  I stumbled to the bathroom and giggled at my purple teeth and red lips. Laughter felt easier after all of that wine. My chest seemed less rusty, less… atrophied. That felt really good. Very cathartic.

  Sebastian and I broke up and then my entire world spun into depressed-survival. With Terletov on the loose and friends missing or dying, there was hardly time to heal before I would be faced with more unthinkable grief.

  Things weren’t over by any means, but they were getting better.

  If we could just stop Terletov first.

  I tried to brush my teeth and scrub off the wine stains, but I wasn’t entirely successful. I stumbled to bed and threw myself on the handmade quilt and feather pillows. My fuzzy brain spun around and around as Sebastian’s face danced in my mind’s eye.

  A night of rehashing our relationship and all of the reasons we went wrong brought him to the front of my thoughts. I wanted to send him back to the nameless place I dumped all of my unwanted emotions, but he was stubborn.

  In real life and in my subconscious.

  My body felt weightless on the comforter, detached from reality and consequences. I was too tired and drunk to fight the memories and the aching loneliness that burned through my body like wildfire whenever I thought about Sebastian.