by Alex Lidell
I can’t move. Can’t escape, no matter how much I try to tell myself that things are different now. Because they aren’t.
His hand still on my neck, Zake twists me around to press my face into the wall. The sound of his belt pulling free of the loops fills my ears, mixing with the small puffs of his breath and the blood racing in my ears. The acrid scent of the man’s sweat wraps around my throat. Choking me. The stone walls and dusty supply shelves around me have disappeared entirely, making way for a narrow wooden stall, its back wall hard against my skin. One of the boards is unfinished, its rough surface leaving splinters in my cheek. Hay crackles under my bare feet, which are nipped red with cold. I’ve outgrown my old boots, and Zake hasn’t spent the money on a new pair.
With the flick of a knife, Zake nicks the top of my tunic, splitting the fabric open down my back. I have time for a single breath before the whistle of leather cuts the air, the sound slicing into my gut even before the strap lands on my shoulders, cutting right across the spine.
Pain explodes across my back, and I buck despite knowing it’s a mistake.
“You know better,” Zake barks into my ear. “Be still. Stubbornness and disrespect will only make it worse for you.”
Another lash cuts my skin. A third.
I can feel my insides growing small and cold. Silent. My mind traveling to a different place as always. A babbling stream, a mossy bank—
“What did you give them, wench?” Zake demands.
“Nothing.” My words are choked, my heart racing so fast that my head swims. I can already tell from the sound of Zake’s voice and the first strikes that this will be the worst beating yet. That I will spend a week unable to move, blood turning my pee red, the brush of a shirt against my skin a torture. But I will move anyway, saddling Zake’s horses and mucking his stalls because if I don’t, he’ll make it worse still.
“Don’t lie to me, damn you. What did you give the fae for the immortality I was due?”
“There are fae somewhere handing out immortality?” A familiar male voice enters the conversation, the slight tinge of amusement in it hiding a simmering fury. When my head turns toward the sound, I see a large emerald-eyed male, unruly red hair falling over his face as he steps inside the small stable Zake holds me in.
My eyes widen. Over my racing heart, the stable morphs back to the large closet it is, clearing the way for a yet more frightening present. Zake knows Tye is fae, while Tye himself does not. And the amulet burned into Tye’s flesh is ready to kill him to keep the secret.
“Run, Tye,” I yell even as the belt lands again. “Go. Now!”
19
Lera
Instead of heeding my order, Tye prowls toward Zake.
My heart pounds. Gathering my body together is an effort of will, my limbs shaking with the mix of pain and fear. “Tye, please.” I make the words sound strong, though I know that the moment Tye is gone, Zake will hurt me worse than ever. “Go.”
Tye’s hand circles into a fist, his sharply angled face pale, his eyes glinting with murder.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Zake says, his knife back in his hand, the blade now pressing against the base of my ear. “Touch me, and I’ll sever the wench’s pointed little ear. What do you think the dimwits here will make of it? How will the mobs sway when they realize you two fae have been hiding among them all this time?”
Tye stumbles at Zake’s words, his eyes glazing for one horrible moment.
“Fortunately, I am a man of business,” Zake drawls. “Tell me, you fae bastard, how much is your secret worth to you?”
“What the bloody hell?” Tye says thickly, his hands rising to his ears before he shakes himself like a tiger trying to dislodge a bur from his coat. “What did you say?”
“I said, I’m a hair’s breadth away from telling the whole Academy you two are fae,” Zake snaps, his patience clearly at an end. “How difficult is it—wait.” Zake’s voice changes. “Do you know you are fae?”
Despite the knife at my ear and the pounding fear rushing through my blood, my body coils, my elbow striking back to land a blind thud into Zake’s ribs. A distant burning sensation envelops the side of my head, something hot snaking down my neck as Zake stumbles backward. Twisting around, I lock my gaze on Tye’s, his face tight with pain beneath the amulet’s assault. He raises his hands to his ears as if to block some terrible sound.
“Tye, go,” I yell. Plead.
Zake grabs for the front of my ripped tunic, the cloth coming loose in his hand and leaving me bare to the waist. As I gasp, the man shoves me back into the wall, my hurt back striking the stone. My heart pounds against my ribs, letting in all the ghosts of our pasts. My breaths come so fast that the closet swims in front of me.
With a growl too primal to be human, Tye lunges for Zake’s throat.
“Down, fae dog!” Zake’s words drop the male to his knees with a shout of pain, a streak of blood now snaking from Tye’s ear. Zake barks a laugh. “I know what this is. It’s the stars’ own repayment for when you came to my stable. You remember that? Remember shoving me down in my own home? The corrupt magic inside you knows I’m right, doesn’t it? Recoils from the truth. Call a fallen fae a fae and—”
Tye’s pained whimper sounds like a kitten, lighting every nerve in my body.
Before my mind can protest, I close my hand into a fist and strike Zake’s mouth with every ounce of strength in my immortal body. It’s no contest. Teeth and flesh give way beneath my unforgiving knuckles.
Zake stumbles back with a cry, blood flowing from his broken mouth. His eyes widen, the self-confident rage in them changing to confusion. Fear. His nostrils flare, his balance wavering as he recovers himself.
Then he blinks, wiping the back of his hand against his injured mouth as his dark eyes settle on me. Furious. Vengeful. Sadistic enough to make a new wave of paralysis slam through me. “You dare strike me?” The man’s voice is thick with blood, shaking with rage. “You owe me your life, you piece of filth. Without me, you’d have died on the street or worse, sold your maidenhead for a piece of moldy bread and then—”
“And then you’d have found some other poor soul to whip instead.” The words spill from me in a torrent of truth as I watch Tye whimper and rock on the floor, clutching his head. Suddenly, it’s not just my pain at stake, but Tye’s and that—that—springs open the shackles of fear Zake has held me in my whole damn life. My gaze flashes up at him, my anger growing like a storm, spilling across my face.
I am immortal. I am a warrior. And the bastard before me is about to learn what that means.
“You think you did me a favor?” I say, my voice steel. I step forward, Zake retreating on bewildered instinct. Something shifts in his eyes. A predator who suddenly realizes he’s become the prey. The once-threatening scar across his face is now just a sign of human weakness, just like the blood still pouring from his mouth. Blood I put there. “You kept me in a prison of fear.”
“I was building your character. Work ethic. No one wanted you!” Zake’s palms and shoulders come up to protect his head, though I’ve not raised a hand again. Not yet. He gasps. “I took you in. That has to count for something, Lera.”
“Oh, it does.” I take another step toward him. Darkness swirls inside me, the pain and fear of my paralyzing nightmares gathering into an energy that dims the world. My eyes burn as magic pushes against its shackles, testing and probing and—
The candles stowed on the shelves flare up at once, the closet alight with hundreds of tiny lights and racing shadows.
Zake screams, and drops to his knees, the stench of urine suddenly filling the space. “Lera, please. I did my best with you. I waited for you. I would have given you everything. My estate. My name. I raised you the best I knew how—”
“Shut your mouth.” Standing over him, I wrap my hand around his fragile throat, his whimpering so at odds with the insurmountable male who’s haunted my nightmares that I have to blink several times to assure myself of realit
y. “You want to know the price of immortality, Zake? It was death. And I’m going to help you pay it right now.”
“Right now wouldn’t be convenient.” Coal’s low voice sounds from the open door, and I whirl, bringing Zake staggering with me. From the warrior’s relaxed stance, leaning on the doorframe, I’ve a feeling he’s been standing there for some time. Then I see the sparking purple gleam in his eyes, and I know he has.
Behind him, Rabbit—Gavriel must have sent him to find Coal after I sprinted through the library—stands panting, his hands still on his thighs.
My gaze meets Coal’s, and he nods once, just for me, as if reading all the conclusions my mind is racing to. Then, with the warrior’s signature casualness, the male juts his chin toward Zake, who still writhes in my steel grip. “Can this filth’s death wait until he tells us what the hell he is doing here, and who else he brought along to his party?”
20
Lera
With Coal and Zake gone, Rabbit trailing after them, I turn toward Tye, almost afraid of what I might find. The male kneels on the floor, shoulders heaving under his sweat-soaked golden shirt, head hanging low as if in prayer. Blood has dried in dark reddish-brown trails down his jaw and neck, the sight making my own blood freeze in my veins.
“Tye?”
He doesn’t respond, and I notice for the first time a fine tremor shaking his whole body.
I go to him and kneel by his side—hardly caring that I’m naked from the waist up, that the last time we spoke, it was to spit vitriol at each other. All I care about is if he’s okay, if it’s still Tye’s soul in there. Taking his rough cheeks in my hands, I pull his head up—and gasp. His emerald eyes hook mine so deeply, I couldn’t look away if I wanted to. They’re bloodshot, fiercely lucid, and swimming with tears.
“Forgive me,” he rasps.
“Why—?”
“Forgive me, Lilac Girl.”
“What—” My words catch, my heart skipping a beat. The name Tye used to call me in Lunos teases my skin, pulsating with meaning. “What did you just call me?”
With a shake of his head, he dislodges my hands, hesitates, then takes them so tightly in his that my knuckles crack.
“I remembered,” Tye whispers. “And I’ve been trying to work out why you did it, fought Zake to protect me. I certainly deserved none of it.”
I bite my lip against sudden tears, my body flooding with a relief that’s almost too much to bear. Too much to believe. With everything that just happened, it’s very possible that the only way for the amulet to have overpowered Tye’s memories would have been to kill him. My heart quickens in delayed fear of how close we might have come to that.
Tye’s chin drops to his chest again. “I remember everything. Remember wanting the cadet I thought you were, remember watching you fall off those bleachers, remember choosing the Prowess Trials over your word.” Each of his whispered words makes him flinch. “I remember it all, Lera. And I’ll bear any punishment you can think of.”
“Tye.” I swallow, my heart aching for him. For us. When the male refuses to lift his eyes off the floor, I take his face again, tracing his cheekbones, the square angle of his jaw. “The magic—”
“I should have fought harder!” Tye shakes his head, his red hair flying violently from side to side. Tears glisten on his cheeks, catching the flickers of torchlight in the hallway. “I failed you, Lilac Girl. And it nearly cost us all.”
I wipe his tears away with the back of my hand, the immortal male beneath my touch shuddering at each caress.
Tye looks at me, and at last, I see the faintest glimmer of a smile in his beautiful eyes.
Before he can withdraw again, I throw my arms around his warm shoulders, burying myself in his pine-and-citrus scent and velvety strength. The pounding of his heart against his ribs is so powerful, I feel each beat vibrate through my own body. Once. Twice. Then the male’s strong arms wrap tightly around me, crushing me against him.
“I’m not letting you go, Lilac Girl.” The whispered words ruffle my hair, tickling the back of my neck. “Ever.”
“Mearrrow!” Leaping off the top of a bookshelf, Minion catches himself on Tye’s bare shoulder—the male’s tunic now covering me—and scrambles up his flesh. Several of Gavriel’s treasured books, which the cat launched off, fall to the library floor in a cascade of slithering booms that make Rabbit tuck himself deeper into a corner.
Twisting lithely, Tye grabs the orange kitten by the scruff of his neck and holds him at arm’s length before him, the small bundle of fur hissing and clawing the air with demonic intent.
“I’ll kill him,” he says—the first words he’s uttered since I pulled him to his feet in that dusty closet and half dragged him here.
“Would you?” Gavriel asks, warm brown eyes looking hopeful. “It would be a great service to humanity indeed.”
“No!” Arisha lunges for her beast, her braids and glasses bouncing along with her.
Bringing the still-hanging kitten close to his face with one long sculpted arm, Tye locks green gazes with the sharp-clawed monster and growls, the noise rumbling from deep down inside his wide chest.
Minion’s air clawing stops at once, the tiny kitten suddenly meowing piously and licking his own nose with a tiny pink tongue.
“Not the cat,” Tye says, setting Minion back atop Gavriel’s books. “Coal.”
“You can try,” I mutter, nearly laughing when I hear the warrior’s own words come out of my mouth. But laughing would be too much work. Everything hurts. My back. My ear. My heart. And that’s all before I can even get started parsing out the disastrous mess that we still have to deal with.
“He should have fought,” Tye mutters. “The bastard should have interfered sooner.”
“The gentle soul that Coal is?” I put my hand on Tye’s cheek, the light stubble scratching my skin. My voice softens. “Coal knew a great deal about what was happening in that closet. I think… I think I needed someone to trust in me more than I trusted in myself just then.”
Tye turns to me, meeting my eyes—reluctantly, it seems. The emerald green in his penetrating gaze is as beautiful as his hard body, each line honed to a deadly perfection. If I thought the male was ethereal back in Lunos, under Han’s harsh tutelage, he’s a predator incarnate. “So if you forgive Coal, do you think you might eventually—”
“Tye.” I raise my bow. “There is nothing to forgive. Not anymore.”
Tye shakes his head, his shoulders hunching, the four parallel scratches Minion left on his skin beading with tiny drops of blood. Around us, the library quiets, Gavriel setting his teacup gently on the porcelain. “You did it all,” Tye says. “Everything. And I tried to trip you every step of the way.”
“Not every step.” Sitting on a chair a few paces away, Arisha strokes the impertinently purring Minion. “And then there were all those times that involved no standing of any kind. I’m rather certain Lera enjoyed those.”
“Why weren’t they standing?” Rabbit asks, brown eyes wide.
“I’m trying to apologize, if you two don’t mind.” Tye swings his face around to glare at Arisha, his tight brow narrowing. “Wait. Does Braids know—”
“It’s a little late to ask now, don’t you think?” says Arisha.
I push Tye into a wooden chair and climb onto his lap before he can protest, looping my arms around his neck. Feeling his heart pound beneath me, I press my forehead to his. Absorb his delicious heat, the silver flecks in his eyes. “We’ll just give it time, okay?” I say.
He smiles with just a hint of the old Tye and angles his mouth toward mine.
“I like your ears,” a small voice says from the corner. Tye stiffens against my lips as Rabbit’s words register. “Is it true that they can hear everything?”
Pulling out of Tye’s embrace, I share a concerned gaze with the male before turning my head to Gavriel, whose frown mirrors the dread starting in the pit of my own belly. Coal’s memory returned without destroying his disguise,
but things are changing. “You can see Tye’s ears, Rabbit?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can’t.” Gavriel shakes his head. “Tyelor looks no different to me than he always has. Though I’m more used to seeing the young man fully clothed.”
Rabbit shrugs, as if the bit of news is utterly unimportant to him. “I’ve always seen them. But it seemed not so smart to say so. Since no one else seemed to see. Not even Master Shade and he, you know…woof.” Rabbit makes his hands into claws.
Tye squeezes my shoulders, then walks over to crouch beside the skinny boy, Minion following in his wake like a little furry honor guard. “What would have happened if you said something, do you think?” Tye asks the boy, his gentle voice at utter odds with his great size.
Rabbit’s chin lowers. “I’d be thrown out, and I have nowhere to go.”
Tye shakes his head, and I suddenly see the little boy he used to be, both in the veil-spun memories and his own past. The damn veil amulets didn’t just spin disguises—they exploited every pain to their advantage.
“Headmaster Sage was going to put me out,” Rabbit whispers. “Before you came and everyone thought Commander River was the deputy headmaster. But then River said I could stay. And everyone listened to him. Please don’t tell River who he is.”
My chest tightens.
Tye shakes his head. “Won’t happen, Rabbit. I won’t let it, all right?”
“Rabbit.” I crouch beside the boy as well, my knee brushing Tye’s. “Can you see Han’s ears?”
“Sure,” says Rabbit. “But he looks human.”
“That’s because he is.” Walking into the library, Coal surveys us with a grim face, his blond bun uncharacteristically mussed, the streaks of blood on his hands clearly not his. “I’d say I’m sorry to break up this feelings fest, but I’m not in the least.”
