In the mirror, his eyes met mine and something shimmered in their depths, something that made my toes curl and lips tingle. The way he looked at me was mesmerizing. There was an intense hunger there. Something primal. Something more dangerous than the marks he’d drawn on me with his claws.
He bent to softly whisper against my neck. “It’s perfect.”
“The ink?” I rasped, lowering my shirt.
Aries blinked rapidly as if coming out of a daze. “What?”
I craned my head to the side. “You mentioned the ink. Is something special about it? Is it magical or something?”
His eyes bore into mine. “The ink is made from my blood.”
The ink is made from Aries’s blood…
I blinked, trying to make sure I heard him correctly, because the fact that the ink was made from his blood made absolutely zero sense. Maybe less than that. “I thought we were trying to get rid of the blood because the others could smell it on me, and now you’re telling me it’s in my skin?” My voice shrilled at the end, fear taking over.
They would definitely know where I was now. If they could sense Aries’s location from his blood, wouldn’t they innately sense it humming beneath my skin? How would I hide from them now? They would undoubtedly find me as soon as I stepped outside.
He spun me to face him, still running a thumb over my mark. “Don’t worry, Larken. I told you that I will protect you. I wouldn’t have suggested the mark if it meant putting you in harm’s way. Your scent will mask the blood in the mark. They will not scent or sense you, but my blood sings to me, which means I will always know where you are. I’ll always be able to find you and come to your aid in an instant.”
Only inches separated us. He leaned in and let the tip of his horn rake into my hair. I shouldn’t have liked it. I should’ve turned away from him. But his hand was warm and rough on my side, and for whatever reason – whether it was the pledge or not – Aries wanted to touch me. And I needed to feel something other than fear.
I liked the feel of his hand on my hip as it slid down and pulled me closer. Closer. Closer.
Until my chest bumped against his and he inhaled loudly. A strangled sound escaped his parted lips.
I reached up and brushed my fingertips over his horn and watched him shudder. His eyes, when they weren’t focused on my lips, tracked my every movement.
He closed them as I let my fingertips graze his horn again, drifting over every obsidian bump and ridge. His hand tightened against my side, the tips of his claws digging in ever so slightly. His free hand cupped my jaw as a rumble tore from his chest.
“You tempt me,” he said. There was tension, accusation, and something more profound in his voice.
The dark slashes that were his eyebrows furrowed as I lowered my hand, taking it away from his horn and brushing it down his chest, over his black tunic. His breath hitched as I slid it back up to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. I didn’t know what came over me.
Maybe it was the fact that he was so close, or the gravity of the situation in which we’d found ourselves. Or the brazen but reverent way he held his hand against my skin, against the mark. Maybe it was the look in his eyes that told me he wanted me to touch him back.
Whatever it was, something had shifted between me and Aries… something dangerous. Because if I was going to survive him, I couldn’t allow myself to fall for him.
I forced myself to step away and his hand fell to his side. “Kes has filled the tub. I’ll leave you to bathe,” he rasped.
“Thank you.”
He nodded once and stepped outside.
PART
TWO
Things That Threaten
12
Aries’s blood is in my skin, I thought as I floated in the tub, staring up at the dark ceiling and tracing the silvery patterns that swirled through the tiles on the wall. Maybe that was why I touched him. I wanted it to be something other than hormones, but was afraid it wasn’t. Aries was ridiculously hot.
He touched me first, in my defense, but I let him. I didn’t tell him not to. He would’ve stopped if I had. He’d never done anything to make me uncomfortable, and whatever the pledge did to him to make him want to protect me wouldn’t have allowed him to lay the tip of his claw on me if I told him no.
“I need to fetch something from my rooms,” he said through the door.
I sat up. “Fetch away. I’m fine.”
Nothing was going to happen while I bathed. I hoped… Then I remembered that every horror movie worth its salt always had a quintessential bathroom scene.
I closed my eyes, sank back into the water, and reveled in the warmth. Bubbles formed over the skin cloaked beneath the surface and sometimes slid to the top, popping around me. My ears were underwater. All sound was muffled. It was peaceful.
Until something slippery slid against my calf. I put my feet down and looked around. The water was clear. Nothing was in it but me and my soap bar.
I was being ridiculous. The soap bar brushed my skin. That was all.
I relaxed back into the water again, but didn’t close my eyes.
The brush with Gemini this morning, even from afar, left me shaken.
Shook.
I was shook.
That was all.
I took a deep breath to calm my shaky nerves, just before I was jerked under the surface. A vice-like arm clamped around my stomach and dragged me to the bottom of the pool and held me there. I thrashed but wasn’t making enough of a splash to alert my protector. The water above looked too still. It wasn’t sloshing at all.
Is he still in his rooms? I panicked, thrashing to get free.
My lungs burned. I needed air.
I pushed against the arm, clawed at it, but couldn’t see it or to whom it was attached. I felt it, though. I jerked and kicked and tried to break free, but the arm held me tightly, pinning my spine and shoulder blades to the bottom.
A small stream of water trickled down my throat from my nose. I couldn’t hold my breath anymore. My lungs were on fire. I had to breathe in.
As I sucked in a huge gulp of water, the arm was torn away. No longer restrained by a spectral arm, my natural buoyancy rocketed me to the surface with a pop, coughing and spewing water. I watched dazedly as a lithe, muscled man made entirely of gold wrestled a mostly invisible, enormous fish woman. There was no other way to describe her. As they fought, I scuttled to the corner. “Aries!”
I grabbed a towel and skirted the pool, slipping over the tile along the tub’s side just as Aries burst through the door, his eyes finding me as surely as a magnetic pull. They raked over me, assessing my skin for damage. “Pisces is… near,” he breathed. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, but he’s not!” I pointed to the golden man fighting the fish woman, whose scales had morphed from transparent to the orange and white of koi. Her eyes blinked at me languidly as she circled him, sloshing water all over the floor.
She wasn’t afraid of her attacker at all, or of Aries. Why was she looking at me like that?
The gilded man looked at Aries and nodded, extending an arm from his side where a trident appeared, golden as the sun. He stabbed it toward the fish woman, who slipped out of his grasp into the water and disappeared again. He speared the water once more, but she was gone.
Aries held his arm out and I slid closer to him. The mark wasn’t on my face anymore, but that fish thing didn’t care.
“Pisces,” the golden figure spat, slapping the water’s surface and causing a mammoth splash. “I’ve been tracking her. She’s been with Taurus, Libra, and Sagittarius. They’re planning more attacks.” The strange newcomer focused on me. “You held your breath longer than I thought you’d be able to. Well done.”
Uh… thanks. I coughed in response, nodding to him and clutching my towel tighter. “Who the hell are you?” I fina
lly asked.
The young man chuckled. His trident shrank and then sort of absorbed into his gilded skin. He stepped out of the water wearing a tiny cloth, like the one Aries had woken up in. It, too, was gold.
“Aquarius. Water bearer,” Aries greeted with a bow. “I owe you my thanks.”
“I should be angry,” the man responded brazenly. “And at first I was, but ultimately the rest was good for me. It gave me clarity at a time I needed it most.”
Aries inclined his head. “The way things were headed would have been catastrophic.”
“At least you had the foresight and wisdom to see it and the courage to do something about it. That’s more than I can say for myself and the others,” Aquarius said.
Aries called for Kes, who showed up looking absolutely terrified. “I’m fine,” I told him.
“Where were you?” he stepped toward Aries menacingly.
“I went to retrieve something from my rooms. I was only gone for a moment,” he defended, but the hurt in his voice made my heart wobble.
“A moment is all they need, Aries.” Kes turned to me. “I am so very sorry, Larken. I never should’ve left you.”
“You can’t watch me twenty-four-seven. I told you that, Kes. There are times I’ll have to be alone. Times like this.”
They were just scared. So was I. Emotions were running high and Pisces must have been waiting for a moment like this. One where I was in water. One where she was in her element and could catch us off guard.
“How did Pisces find her?” Kes asked Aries.
“She washed my blood off, but it was still in the water,” he mused. “That must be it.”
“Pisces would have scented it in an instant,” Aquarius agreed.
“So, now that it’s off, she won’t be able to find me?” I asked, hopeful that this mess was over and needing confirmation that not having his blood on my face was a safer option.
A muscle ticked in Aries’s jaw as he stared at the water angrily.
“Easy,” Aquarius calmed him. “The girl wasn’t harmed.”
“She was nearly drowned while I ran a thirty-second errand!” he raged, swiping my things across the counter. My cosmetics, or what was left of them, clattered to the floor.
Kes grabbed Aries by the horns. “Look at me.” His eyes snapped to my brother. “Calm down. I’ll drain the water and then I’ll watch over her. In the meantime, you two go talk,” he advised the two Zodia, letting go of Aries’s horns.
Aquarius led Aries from the room, but we locked eyes before he turned the corner. Guilt and fear swam in his. The brazen attack on his turf had frightened him.
It had terrified me.
I didn’t realize I was shaking until they left and I had a moment to sift through my emotions. I surveyed the puddles of water all over the tiled floor, at my things laying in the water, the clothes I’d picked out soaked.
“I’ll clean it up,” Kes offered quickly. “Go to your room and get dressed.”
I hesitated, afraid to leave his sight.
“I’ll be right outside,” he reassured me. “It’s okay.”
Ugh. I thought bathing was safe, too, but had been very, very wrong about that.
I walked to my room on wobbly knees, my hands trembling as I plucked out new clothes.
I’d watched plenty of movies and read copious stacks of fantasy books. Usually in these situations, the heroine figures out she’s endowed with magical, kick-ass power. Then she uses it to save herself and the world. But I was just me. I wasn’t half-fae or a newborn vampire. I wasn’t even a wolf shifter.
I raked a shaking hand through my wet hair.
Some supernatural power would be great right about now. Some kind of talent. Something. Because I needed to be able to bathe without requiring supervision.
This was the second attack today, if you could consider the encounter with Gemini an attack.
Aries considered it exactly that. He thought Gemini was going to hurt me or he wouldn’t have reacted like that. I remembered the way he felt toward the man whose head he had torn off. She was lucky he hadn’t decapitated both of her heads.
What bothered me about Pisces was the cold, callous look in her eyes, like I was a pesky problem that needed to be fixed, and the only way to solve the problem was to remove me from the equation. She would have drowned me and not thought twice about it because she didn’t have feelings about it. She was cruel and unfeeling, as if my life didn’t matter at all. I guessed in her eyes, it didn’t. She was a monster. Aries might be the one with claws and horns, but he had a heart. In stark contrast, Pisces seemed heartless and empty.
The sliver of a glimpse I’d gotten at Gemini showed me she wasn’t void of emotion. Both of her personalities were filled with self-importance and the need for revenge. She would kill and feel vindicated, her egos inflated.
Libra… I prayed she didn’t figure out who Mom was to me, because if she used her as a pawn, I’d forfeit the game for her. I’d do the same for Dad. If Taurus found out he was important to me… I shuddered at the thought.
Forty-eight hours… Kes’s warning clanged through my mind. Mark or none, he might be right.
I dressed quickly, tugging on leggings and a cross-country tee, then added a hoodie for good measure because I was still shivering. My hair was still dripping, but I didn’t care that my shoulders were getting soaked. I was just happy to be alive and out of the water. To be granted the gift of breath and life for a few moments more.
I was grateful Aquarius had been following Pisces so closely. I just hoped Aries could trust him. Was he only pretending to help just to get close enough to strike? He admitted he was upset when he first woke from his Aries-induced slumber.
Suddenly, it was all I could think about. My breath went shallow and goosebumps blanketed my skin. I ran out of the room with Kes hot on my heels. “Where are you running?” he asked.
“Aries!” I shrilled, sprinting in the direction he’d walked with Aquarius.
Aries suddenly appeared in front of me, catching me, his hands wrapping around my arms so gently it was shocking. He was fine. He wasn’t hurt.
“What’s the matter?” His words were filled with terror.
My heart pounded. I looked him over as he did the same to me. His pink eyes slid over every inch as he held me away just enough to see all of me. Aquarius casually walked up behind Aries, his head cocked ever so slightly to the side.
“You’re trembling,” Aries noted, surprised. He looked to Kes beside me, who shook his head and shrugged.
If I told him what scared me Aquarius would hear, and then they would all think I was crazy.
“She thought you were in danger,” Aquarius said, intuiting my complete and utter meltdown succinctly. “She doesn’t trust me.”
“Is this true?” Aries asked, softening his grip on my arms, his voice heart-meltingly tender.
I nodded and swallowed thickly, embarrassed. “I don’t know friend from foe yet.”
Aries looked affected. He took my hands in his. “I am well. Aquarius is a friend.”
My eyes flicked to Golden Boy. “Are you sure?” I barely recognized the sharpness of my voice.
He nodded. “I am.”
There was no question in his eyes, no doubt whatsoever. Aries solidly believed Aquarius was a friend. So I had no choice but to believe it, too.
“Okay,” I relented, still watching Aquarius warily. Tension and fear melted from my muscles, leaving me tired even as adrenaline thundered through my veins.
A slow smile stretched across his lips. “She’s quite attached to you,” Aquarius commented.
Kes gave me a concerned glance and I gave him one that told him not to open his trap. The whole scene was more than a little mortifying as it was.
“Can I get some fresh air?” I asked Kes. He nodded, informing Aries he wou
ld take me to the balcony.
Aries watched me until I was out of his sight. I knew the moment I disappeared from his vision because I felt like running back to him, like the invisible string that tethered us to one another was stretched too far. What the hell is wrong with me? I pressed a shaking hand to my forehead, surprised to find a cold sheen of sweat across my head.
With legs that felt as wobbly as Jell-O, I followed Kes to the balcony. I still wanted to explore the whole castle, but with Kes or Aries a constant shadow and me getting attacked every two seconds, it didn’t seem possible.
Kes shut the door to the stairwell and stood beside me at the balustrade. I gripped the freezing stone for dear life as the frigid wind swirled around me. My wet hair would freeze into icicles if I stayed out there too long. It wasn’t as cold as yesterday when Aries addressed the questions from his people, but it felt the same as the day he brought me here.
The day he built this castle from nothing.
Kes was quiet and I didn’t want to talk, so we just stood there, brooding.
For a long, long time we stood, watching the sun move westward until I became increasingly concerned about the crowd huddled beyond the columns, patiently waiting for Aries to appear. “Should you tell them he’s busy right now?”
“They’ve been informed, but they choose to wait in case he shows up.”
“Will he?”
“I don’t think he will today,” Kes answered. “He and Aquarius have much to discuss. Aquarius has a lot of information Aries needs.”
“And he’ll just give it to him?”
Kes nodded. “He has a mutual interest.”
“Which is…?”
“Peace,” Kes answered. “He wants a peaceful existence.”
I scoffed, “He won’t find it as long as some of the Zodia crave war.”
He nodded again. “I know, but there is hope as long as some of them want it. Aquarius and Aries do.”
“And Virgo. She’s on our side, right?”
Things That Should Stay Buried Page 12
