by Eva Muñoz
“Gaige—”
“What?” Zaire bent over me.
“Gaige’s lab.” Cold sweat dotted my forehead. I grabbed his arm. “Take me there.”
Chapter Thirteen: Answers
COLD.
I lay in a dark place, on my back, unable to move. The chill seeped into my bones. Heavy arms, numb legs. In the distance, someone called my name. Mom? Every breath rattled my lungs. My chest struggled to rise. Fatigue clung to me like a second skin. My insides had turned to ice.
Smell.
I picked up the sweetness of honeysuckle and greedily inhaled more. The icy air faded except for a spot on my right hand. Someone called my name—soft, melodic, but not deep enough to be the one I wanted to hear. Nevertheless, I let the sound take me away from the frozen, dark numbness.
“Zaire,” I said and breathed in more of his scent.
“How did you know, little cat?” he asked.
“We were supposed to have a picnic, right? Well, that’s not happening now.”
A gentle, hitching laugh touched my cheek. I turned to face its source and opened my eyes. Zaire sat by my bed with his face close to mine, lips quirked into a grin. Dark shadows under his eyes made their blue so startling.
I couldn’t lift my arms. I couldn’t even wiggle my toes, but I still felt them attached to my body. Zaire gripped my fingers like a lifeline. At least that meant I wasn’t paralyzed. Where had my super strength gone? And all that blood? I shuddered as the memory came back to me.
“How do you feel?” Gaige asked from behind Zaire.
“What’ve you done to me, Gaige?” I aimed for menacing tiger, but only managed irritated kitten.
Gaige smiled, which aggravated me further. “As much as I hate to ask this question again, I really have to know: how are you feeling?” He mimed rubbing his belly.
“I’m tired and weak, not deaf, you jerk. I’m the complete opposite of a few hours ago.” I closed my eyes and took another whiff of Zaire. “It’s just a few hours ago, right?”
“A day, actually,” Gaige said as he tapped something into a silver tablet.
“I’ve been out a whole day?”
“Yes.”
“Where am I? Are we still in the palace?”
“The Medical Wing. Beside my lab.”
I grimaced. “How bad is it?”
Zaire’s grip on my hand tightened.
I knew it. No one could puke that much blood and live. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”
Gaige’s curious smile and the hint of triumph in his eyes baffled me. “Not today.”
“But at the deli, all that blood….” I couldn’t finish. It hurt to remember. “What about the Inshari who saw?” I glanced at Zaire.
“I took care of it,” he said.
I began to think I had no control over anything when the Inshari were concerned. Quite humbling and doubly annoying, actually. These Inshari got under my skin faster than anyone in my life ever had. The million-dollar question: How far would I be willing to let them in? The door had already been left ajar. Could I let them slip through? Who could it hurt?
“Thank goodness Zaire was with you,” Gaige practically rejoiced.
I wanted to get up and smack him silly. Whose fault was it that I was on my back, weaker than a newly hatched duckling?
“What you did to him is unforgivable, Braylin!” Zaire snarled.
Gaige rolled his shoulders and stood his ground. “What’s done is done. He’s alive and my research is moving forward. You’re one to talk, Demarcus. You shouldn’t even be with him. The only reason you’re being tolerated is because—”
“Know your place!” Zaire said through his teeth.
“Fine.” Gaige sighed, then leveled his gaze at me. “I’m sorry for what happened, Camron. It—”
“You’re not,” I interrupted.
“It was unexpected,” he continued. “But we were able to contain the damage the formula had done to your body. Nothing permanent. The healing helped too. You’ll be weak for a while, but I don’t expect it to last long.”
The IV stuck to my left arm chafed, and the beeping machine attached to my chest annoyed the patience out of me. I hated hospitals. I couldn’t recall how long she had lain in a hospital bed wasting away after the day she complained of dizziness. Not once had my father visited my mother in the hospital. The butler had taken me to see her after school every day, until one day, I arrived to find nothing in her room except for an empty bed. No one had told me she had passed away until a nurse saw me standing outside my mother’s room—unmoving.
A crash brought my attention back to the present. Zaire had a self-satisfied grin on his face. Gaige picked himself up from a corner of the room, his silver tablet forgotten on the floor. And the cause of Gaige’s current dishevelment stood by the door, a raging bull ready to charge. My breath caught and my skin tingled at the sight of him.
Troyan stood tall, fists clenched and trembling. His blue-black hair cascaded over his broad shoulders. Everything he wore was midnight black. He looked like a dark pirate ready to swing onto the deck of a ship. I wanted to touch him, to trace my finger over his skin. I hadn’t seen him in a while and a part of me missed him terribly. My gaze climbed to his face. His expression radiated tension and leashed energy—eyes alert and intense, lips in a half grin, chin jutting out in challenge.
“Gaige, why did I have to learn from Lev about what happened to Camron?” he asked in a voice that caused delicious tremors to dance all over me.
Gaige simply shrugged. “You were attending Assembly at the time. I thought I’d wait until he was better to tell you.”
Some of Troyan’s calm chipped away. “Brother, never have I come so close to killing you as I am right now.”
“Go ahead,” Gaige countered. “I’ll say it again. I don’t regret what I did and what I will continue to do.”
Troyan let out a growl and lunged. But Zaire had already wrestled Troyan back while Gaige watched. No one had ever wanted to keep me safe as determinedly as Troyan did.
“Release me,” Troyan barked.
“No,” Zaire said as he struggled to keep Troyan at bay. “I won’t allow you to hurt your brother.”
“Then take his place,” he said. “You should have told me about this too, yet you neglected what little responsibility you—”
Zaire heaved Troyan out of the room, cutting off the rest of his words. They moved so fast that I didn’t have time to protest. I looked to Gaige for an explanation. He came to my bed and fished out a syringe from the pocket of his lab coat. The machine by my bed beeped like an alarm clock.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“You need to rest,” he said as if his brother hadn’t threatened to kill him a second ago. “This is a synthesized version of our blood. It will help you heal faster. I’ve mixed in a sedative to help you sleep.”
“Bu… ugh.” My eyes lost their focus.
Gaige pocketed the syringe he had emptied into my IV. “You need to get well for what I have planned for you.”
Unable to protest, I let out a single breath and closed my eyes.
HOURS LATER I woke up alone to dim lighting. It took me a while to realize I still lay on a hospital bed in the Medical Wing. Each beep from the machine grated on my nerves. I wished the wall across from my bed had a painting or something. The fragrance of honeysuckle comingled with morning dew in the air. It was useless to wonder what had happened to Zaire and Troyan. They would be healed by now from whatever injuries they had inflicted on each other.
I sighed and tested my fingers. They moved effortlessly, no longer weighing like anvils. Whatever Gaige had given me worked. I lifted my right hand and stared at the lines on my knuckles. How long should I continue helping Gaige? How far would his experiment go?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow shift. The scent of morning dew that was faint only a moment ago now bathed every part of me. I closed my eyes and let the smell of him send delicious tingles through my
system. Again I felt safe, secure in the fact that he was with me in the room. Nothing could harm me anymore. I opened my eyes and smiled.
I rested my cheek on the pillow and asked, “How long have you been sitting there?”
Troyan sat with his elbows on his knees, brooding. His lips were hidden by his entwined fingers. His brow puckered.
“A couple of hours,” he said.
I gave him a half smile. “Standing guard?”
“More like trying to make sure you never slip into a coma again,” he mumbled.
“What can I say?”
Letting out a long and weighty breath, he unclasped his hands, then reached up to trace a line from my temple to my chin with his finger.
“Stop that,” I said. My face burned a thousand degrees.
Troyan stared at me. “Admit it. You like it when I touch you.”
I took several long, calming breaths. “Give me a break. You have more self-control than that. At least I’m hoping you do.”
“What Gaige did to you….”
“As much as I like this less uptight version of you, quit it.” I closed my eyes, willing the butterflies in my stomach to behave. Staring at him made me want to pull him to me. “Unlike you, I want to continue behaving myself.”
“I remember telling you to stay away from Zaire.”
“A sudden non sequitur. Fine.” I focused on the ceiling when I opened my eyes. “If I wasn’t with him, no one would have been there when I started vomiting blood.”
“He took you to our class.”
I winced, remembering my less than stellar performance. “How bad was it? Did I totally mess up?”
Troyan crossed his arms. “No. Beatrix kept talking about how new students always got too excited for their own good, trying to impress the professor.”
“Gee, I guess I owe her one.” Remembering her hand on Troyan’s arm made my blood boil. “Zaire told me about your engagement. Congratulations, by the way.”
For the first time, Troyan looked truly uncomfortable.
“Zaire should really learn how to keep his mouth shut,” he said.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” I waited.
“Our engagement was arranged centuries ago.”
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I swallowed the discomfort away and forced myself to speak. “Do you love her?”
He regarded me with those bottomless eyes. “It is my duty to my people.”
“Do. You. Love. Her?” I enunciated each word. “That’s an easy question to answer, right?”
“No,” he said.
“No, it’s not an easy question to answer? Or, no, you don’t love her?”
“I have no affection for her.”
Without thinking I touched his cheek. Surprise etched on Troyan’s face, but he didn’t move away. He closed his eyes, leaned into the contact, and groaned. I snatched my hand back. My own surprise caught up with me.
The look of silent determination in his eyes caused heat to gather in my stomach. I craved his presence. The relief that came with his admission of not loving Beatrix unnerved me. The emotions were different than the pure lust Gaige’s formula created in me. The lust I could understand. It scared me to think I could find myself caring for this Inshari sitting by my bed despite the confusion our connection presented.
“Can you do something for me?” I asked.
“Anything.”
The twist in my gut told me he meant it. “Take me out of here? Just for some fresh air. I’m feeling a little closed in.”
Troyan’s gaze drifted to my IV.
I pulled the needle out, then took off the pads stuck to my chest. Thankfully, my hospital gown wrapped around my body one and a half times, secured by several ties. Walking around with my ass crack showing wasn’t sexy at all.
An endless bleep rang out, and I wondered if a computer monitored my heart rate in a nurse’s station somewhere. Did the Inshari even have nurses?
Troyan unplugged the device.
“I think that will buy us some time,” he said. “And it will annoy Gaige.”
I grinned. “My thoughts exactly.”
In one smooth move, Troyan had me in his arms the way a prince carried a princess. Granted, he really was a prince, but still. I should have been embarrassed. Should have protested. What guy wanted to be carried around? Yet, at the back of my mind, in my most secret of places, I imagined myself in a fairy tale, like the ones Mom used to read to me at night when I was a kid.
I buried my face into the crook of his neck and inhaled. Troyan walked out of the room, a rumbling in his chest like a cat purring. I kept my eyes closed until he put me down and my feet touched stone.
“Seriously? The balcony by the throne room?” I asked while leaning on the banister. My hospital gown flapped against my bare legs. Someone had turned down the artificial sun, and the lights from buildings and streetlamps created an imitation of stars in receding semicircles. “The balcony by the throne room?”
“I take it Zaire beat me to it?” Troyan said as he stood beside me.
“He did. Almost blinding me in the process.”
“I cannot say I approve.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t.”
“Why were you with him, anyway?”
“Because I wanted to be.”
Troyan mimicked my pose. His arm brushed against mine, sending electric sparks all over my skin. Within the dreamer’s place in my heart, I had to admit I liked the way he made me feel.
I tore my gaze from the sparkling city below us and focused on Troyan. In his silence he looked so young. A contrast to the power he commanded. The way he handled Eli and his group when they threatened me had certainly been admirable. He commanded them like the Effendi Excelsi he was brought up to be. But I remembered how he told his father that he wanted to see the world, his expression changed. Beneath the uncertainty was real passion.
“Troyan?” I asked.
He turned to face me, an eyebrow raised.
I dropped my gaze and my ears heated up. His gaze always unsettled me. I gathered up my courage and asked the question I really wanted to ask.
“How does it feel to be the Effendi Excelsi?”
“You always ask the hardest questions to answer.”
I looked up at him. He returned his gaze to the city below. Something told me if I waited he would answer. To my surprise, my wait didn’t last long.
“My father is Excelsior, so by right of birth, I am the Effendi Excelsi. Heir to the throne.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question, though,” I said.
“I have a duty to my people,” he said.
I shook my head. “Still not an answer to my question.” I paused. “Do you like being the Effendi Excelsi, Troyan?”
He looked at me and blinked. “What makes you ask that?”
How to continue without exposing the fact that I overheard his conversation with his father? I shrugged and avoided his intense stare by counting the mansions that formed a semicircle below us.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I hedged. “It just seems like you’d rather be doing something else than being a prince. That time you drove me back to the dorms, you pointed at the travel stickers on my e-reader.”
“So what if I noticed a few stickers?”
“I just thought maybe you’d like to travel someday—”
The heat in his eyes interrupted the rest of what I wanted to say. I pressed my lips together.
Troyan closed the gap between us. A static current shot from my nape to my heels. He reached out and rested his hands on the banister, corralling me within the circle of his arms. The moment his lips touched my ear, I shuddered with such force that I thought the ground would crumble below me.
My mind screamed, yet my heart sang. The intimacy of his body pressed against mine scattered my thoughts.
“Did he touch you?” he whispered.
I swallowed, confused. “Who?”
“Zaire. Did he kiss yo
u?”
His growl reminded me of rolling thunder. I hesitated, unsure of how to answer. My control died little by little. The sheer masculinity of him overwhelmed me. I could no longer piece together a reason why I had to stay away from his touch. In answer to his question, I shook my head.
“Good.” His voice turned rough.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because–” He paused, his breath hot against my neck. “—you belong to me.”
Our lips met, greeting each other with a fierce kiss of welcome, of wanting, of longing. With one hand I gripped the arm he had around my waist while I lifted the other to his hair, snaking my fingers into the silky strands. His other hand lifted my chin, allowing him to deepen the kiss.
When Troyan broke free, I found myself gasping for every breath. My fingers on his arm hurt from holding on so tightly. My heart bounced around in my chest like a pinball. I couldn’t quite focus.
“Did I make my point?” he asked.
Like a cold shower, clarity overrode the euphoria brought on by our connection. The will to stop came from somewhere deep. A place not even the primal instinct of my body mimicking an Inshari could reach. A human place. One of hurt and emptiness.
“Let me go.”
“What?”
“It’s simple: Let. Me. Go.”
I breathed in as much of the frigid night air as I could. It helped bring me back to myself.
The silence between us grew thick and murky.
“Camron?” He spoke like he was holding back the power in his voice, the command that came from being a born leader.
Gathering my courage I looked up and said, “I’m tired. Can you take me back to my room now?”
Troyan’s expression returned to the cold mask he usually wore. He nodded once and walked away.
Chapter Fourteen: Connection
FROM THE balcony to my room, Troyan didn’t check to see if I was following him. He didn’t so much as glance back. Irritation squirmed inside my chest, but by some miracle, I managed to keep myself from throwing him against the wall like I had the last time he ignored me.
I’d panicked. Big deal. I wasn’t good when things got real.
