“She’s back,” Nic said as he exited the building to have a private chat with Jonas.
Jonas looked up at the hawk circling above them. “Yes, I noticed her earlier.”
“She’s not going to give up.”
“She should.”
“You should talk to her.”
“I don’t want to talk to her.”
“She could help,” Nic persisted.
“How? By getting someone else I care about killed?” He hissed out a breath. “Fine. Go back inside. I’ll handle this.”
“Don’t be too hard on her, all right?”
“Can’t promise anything.”
Nic nodded grimly, then disappeared back into the building.
It was far too hot for cloaks in Kraeshia, so instead he pulled his cotton shirt off over his head and threw it on the grass in front of him for Olivia to put on. Then he turned his back.
And he waited.
Just as he’d suspected, it didn’t take long for him to hear the sound of flapping wings. He felt a charge in the air that raised the hair on his arms, making him swallow a quick intake of breath. He waited several more moments before he turned around.
Olivia stood, barefoot, six paces away from him, wearing his shirt. He’d always known she was gorgeous, but her beauty seemed much more obvious now that he knew she was an immortal. Her hair wasn’t ordinary black; it was obsidian, and her brown skin shimmered as if lightly coated in gold dust. And while before her eyes had been just green, now Jonas saw they held the shade and depth of dark, otherworldly emeralds.
“Figured you’d need some clothes,” he said. “I don’t know much about Watchers, but I do know that most girls are modest about that sort of thing.”
Her expression was tense, her gaze fixed on him. “I’m sorry, Jonas.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said the last time I saw you.”
“I couldn’t tell you what I was before.”
“Why not?”
“Would you have asked me to join you if you knew?” She exhaled shakily, then straightened her shoulders. “I know I made mistakes, but please remember that I did save your life by healing your wound.”
“And then you let Lysandra die.”
“I wasn’t ready. I had no idea our paths would cross with his so soon. My magic is substantial, but it’s no match for the fire Kindred. Timotheus warned me to avoid him at all costs, that it wasn’t my job to fight him, only to protect you.”
Jonas blinked. “What the hell are you talking about? The fire Kindred?”
Olivia nodded solemnly. “Kyan . . . he is the fire Kindred. An elemental god previously imprisoned in an amber orb.”
Jonas now stared at her with undiluted shock. “And you chose to wait until now to tell me that?”
“I told you, it wasn’t my job to explain. Only to—”
“Yeah, only to protect me. Got it. You’ve done a stellar job, by the way.” He rubbed his eyes. “Tell me, Olivia, why would you need to protect me?”
“Because Timotheus told me to.”
“I’ve no idea who Timotheus is. And yet, Kyan mentioned him too.”
“He is my elder. My leader.”
“Another Watcher.”
“Yes. He has visions of the future. One of those visions included you. Somehow, in some way, you’re important, Jonas. Phaedra knew it too. That’s why she watched over you. That’s why she sacrificed her life to save yours.”
“What role could I have possibly played in this Timotheus’s vision? I’m a poor vineyard worker from Paelsia, a failed rebel leader. I’m nobody.”
“That’s exactly what I told him,” she said, nodding. “That you’re a complete nobody. But still he insisted.”
He gaped at her. She presented her insulting words as simple facts, without a sliver of belligerence.
“You can go now. I don’t want you anywhere near me. Go, fly off to your Sanctuary. Or have you exiled yourself on my behalf, just like Phaedra did?”
“Hardly. The mystical walls that kept us locked inside our world fell away when the new sorceress’s blood was spilled. If the others knew this, they might try to leave, thus putting themselves in danger with the fire Kindred on the loose. So Timotheus is keeping it a secret.”
Jonas’s jaw tightened. “Go away, Olivia.”
“I know you’re angry about Lysandra. I’m angry, too. But we can’t change it. It’s done. I couldn’t have saved her anyway, even if I’d gone against Timotheus’s orders.”
“You could have damn well tried.”
Her expression tightened. “You’re right, I should have. But I was afraid. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m back, and I mean to uphold my duty to Timotheus—even if it means I must occasionally break the rules.”
“So you’re back to stay, to keep me safe for some unknown future event.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t care about the future. All I want is for you to leave me alone right now.”
“I can’t do that.” He shot her a look of outrage, and she shrugged. “I will redeem myself in your eyes.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“I will stay and protect you whether you like it or not, Jonas Agallon. But it will be much easier for us both if you don’t try to fight this arrangement.”
She was utterly exasperating. But now, standing right before her and staring into her determined eyes, he found he couldn’t hate her for flying away when she had. If Kyan really was what she said . . .
. . . Then they were in worse trouble than Jonas already suspected.
And the fact that there were three others out there like Kyan made the wrath of King Gaius’s evil seem no more serious than a stubbed toe.
If Olivia was telling the truth about the current state of the Sanctuary, that meant her magic was just as strong as ever, not fading the way an exiled Watcher’s did. And that certainly seemed to be the case: she could shift into a hawk at will; she had healed Jonas’s fatal wound with earth magic.
“If you stay, we do things my way,” Jonas said. “This time you’re not only protecting me. You’re protecting me and all of my friends.”
“You’re asking for a promise I don’t have the authority to make. You are the only one I’m assigned to protect.”
“I never asked for a personal guardian. You can tell that to your precious elder if he makes a fuss. This isn’t negotiable. If you want to stay, you will commit yourself to protecting everyone I care about.”
“But how am I supposed to—?”
He held up his hand. “No. No arguing. Yes or no?”
Her eyes flashed. “You’re lucky that I even came back to protect you, mortal! And you dare to act as if you have any say in this?”
“But don’t I? You can watch me from above, flapping your pretty wings while I throw rocks at you and lead myself into danger, or you can stay down here on the ground and fight with us. What’ll it be?”
Olivia glared at him, challenge in her eyes. “Fine.”
He cocked his head and challenged her right back. “Good.”
Then she flung off his shirt and, in a quick blur of gold, bare skin, and feathers, transformed into a hawk and took off into the air, squawking with displeasure.
Jonas watched as she perched on the edge of a neighboring rooftop.
Felix had wanted another chance at life, to redeem himself for his past mistakes and set forth toward a brighter future. Jonas was sorry he hadn’t given his friend that chance.
He’d give it to Olivia instead.
CHAPTER 24
FELIX
KRAESHIA
He didn’t scream at all during his first day in the Kraeshian dungeon, but that resolve didn’t last long. He wasn’t that surprised when the howls came forth. As a Cobra, he’d quickly learned that enough torture would break anybody. Even him.
Especially torture meted out by prison guards faced with a Limerian accused of killing their royal family.
After a week in the dungeon, his back ha
d been lashed into raw meat. A hundred, five hundred, a thousand kisses from the whip. He didn’t know anymore. He hung limply from the chains bolted to the ceiling as the blood oozed down his ruined back.
“Go on,” a guard taunted him. “Cry out for your mama. It’ll help.”
Felix didn’t know the guard’s name, but in his head, he called him the demon.
“Hey, remember this?” The demon threw something onto the dirt floor right in front of Felix. “Now you’re looking at yourself.”
A filthy eyeball stared right up at Felix.
How much simpler things had been earlier today, when it had been in his head, before the demon-guard took a dagger to his left eye socket.
“Why don’t you get on with it and kill me,” Felix sputtered.
“Where’s the fun in that? I have to work here, with you stinking, disgusting murderers, day in and day out. Why would you deny me a little joy?”
“Your joy is wasted on me. I didn’t kill Emperor Cortas and his sons.”
The guard smiled thinly. “Of course you didn’t. You’re completely innocent—just like the rest of the scum in this prison.”
“That bitch you call a princess framed me for her crimes!”
“Oh, not this again. Beautiful, sweet Princess Amara, killing her father and brothers? Why would she do something like that?”
“For power, of course. Trust me, there’s nothing sweet about her.”
The demon-guard snorted. “She’s nothing but a woman, what use would she have for power?”
“You’re so stupid, I almost feel sorry for you.”
The demon-guard narrowed his eyes and rose to standing. He took his dagger out and used the tip of his blade to poke the wound where Felix’s tattoo used to be.
Felix cried out at the sharp, sudden pain.
“Aw, does that hurt?” the guard asked, grinning.
“I’m going to kill you,” Felix gritted out.
“No, you’re not. You’re going to hang there in chains and let me keep hurting you until it’s time for you to die. And then I’m going to beat you some more before I finally eviscerate you.” He scraped at the flayed patch of skin again. “Yeah, we know all about you and your Cobra Clan here. You lot think you’re so tough, so elite. Well, you were right to slice your meaningless tattoo off. Because now you’re nothing. Can you see that? Can you see you’re nothing?”
“Go kiss a horse’s arse.”
The guard trailed his blade up Felix’s arm, along his shoulder to his neck, and up over his chin and cheek until the sharp tip came to rest right beneath his right eye. “Maybe I’ll take this one, too. Maybe I’ll take your tongue and your ears, too, and leave you blind, mute, and deaf.”
He thought about reminding the moronic guard that taking his ears wouldn’t make him deaf—he’d witnessed someone in the Clan make this mistake before—but he said nothing.
There was a knock at the door of his cell. The demon-guard answered it, speaking to someone through a small window.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, turning back to Felix, “but I have to leave you for a bit. I promise I’ll be back later. Rest up.” He cranked a wheel that lowered Felix’s chains, relieving him from standing on the tips of his toes and sending him slumping down to the floor. “Look at you, red with your own blood. Red is the color of Limeros, isn’t it? I’m sure that King Gaius would be proud to see your patriotism now—that is, if he gave a damn about you anymore.”
Laughing, the guard left him.
“Well, now,” Felix mumbled to himself, “this is certainly an unfortunate situation, isn’t it?”
He choked out a laugh, but it barely sounded human.
The walls of his cell were covered in foul-smelling slime; the floor was nothing more than a mixture of dirt and bodily waste. He’d been given nothing but filthy water since he’d woken up there, and not a single scrap of food. If it wasn’t for the chains holding him up, he didn’t think he’d be able to stand on his own.
“What do you think about all of this?” He posed his question to the large, hairy spider in the far corner of the ceiling. Felix had named his ugly cellmate Amara.
In his nineteen long years of life, Felix has never hated anyone as much as he did Amara.
“What was that, Jonas?” Felix had also given a name to the spider’s most recent victim: a fly who’d haplessly wandered too close to the web and was now as trapped as Felix was.
He held a trembling hand to his ear. “‘Don’t lose hope?’ ‘Keep that chin up?’ Sorry to say, friend, but it’s far too late for that. For both of us, it seems.”
The only thing that was keeping him conscious, that kept him fighting to live through this hell, was a hopeless dream of vengeance. Oh, how he would ruin her if he ever managed to escape. That deceptive, conniving, ruthless, cold-blooded, power-hungry monster.
Just the thought of her now made him tremble with rage, a wracking motion that quickly devolved into a mess of dry sobs.
Oh come now, Amara the spider said. You’ve done more than your share of harm in your life. Wouldn’t you say you’ve earned this kind of treatment?
You’re as bad as they come, squeaked Jonas the fly. You’re a killer, remember? You don’t deserve a second chance.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” he replied. “But you two aren’t helping, you know that?”
He gingerly touched his face, feeling the thick, dried blood caked to his left cheek. His severed eye stared at him from the far side of the cell.
Amara had made him feel like he mattered to her—like he mattered at all—if only a little bit. And then she’d done this. Why? And why did the king so readily go along with it?
It didn’t make any sense.
Felix thought he’d earned the king’s forgiveness and trust, but perhaps that too had been a lie. Perhaps the king had only brought him along for this very reason—to have someone to blame, someone to punish.
He lay down on his side, shivering.
He’d felt lost and alone and hopeless before, plenty of times, whether or not he’d ever admitted it. But never like this.
“I’m going to die,” he whispered. “And no one in the entire world will miss me.”
Slowly, he faded into a semiconscious state—whether it was sleep or simply pure blackness, he wasn’t sure. But time passed. And then the rattling of a key in the door jarred him awake.
The demon-guard peered at him through the small window. “Did you miss me?”
Felix sat up quickly, his body screaming with pain. He scooted backward, as far as he could get from the iron door.
He didn’t think he could endure more torture. Any more and he was certain he’d lose his mind completely.
He was already naming insects and talking to them. What next?
The guard was about to open the door when, suddenly, a loud boom sounded out, roaring through the dungeon. The walls shook, dust falling from the ceiling in large clouds that made Felix cough and wheeze.
The guard turned around to look down the hallway, and then disappeared.
Felix pressed his head back against the slimy wall, momentarily relieved.
Another boom, even bigger than before, rocked the dungeon. A small crack started splintering along the wall and spread up to the ceiling, until a chunk of rock crashed to the ground only a few feet away from Felix.
This whole place was going to come crashing down on his head.
Felix supposed it was better to die this way than at the mercy of that sadistic guard.
He moistened his dry, cracked lips with the tip of his tongue, tasting sweat and his own coppery blood.
“I’m not afraid,” he whispered. “I’m not afraid of death. But I want it to come quickly. Please, goddess. No more pain. If that request makes me a coward, then so be it, I’m a coward. But please . . . please. I’ve had enough.”
He waited, straining his ears to hear anything out in the hallway. But after the second explosion, all had gone deadly silent.
/>
Minutes passed, or was it hours? He didn’t know how long he waited. Time had no meaning here.
Then, he heard it. Shouts. Screams. The clash of metal on metal, the crash of iron doors against stone walls. He strained to break apart his chains, but the cuffs only bit deeper into his wrists, rebreaking the wounds they’d already inflicted.
Someone was trying to escape. And someone else was helping him.
“Here—I’m in here.” He tried to shout it, but he could barely manage more than a rasp.
He had no idea who might come to his door, if he were calling out to friend or foe. But he had to try.
“Please,” he gritted out again. “Please help me.”
Finally, the clash and clatter hushed, and the battle sounds faded away to silence.
Felix inhaled, his breath making a shaky, pitiful sound, and he felt the shameful sting of tears.
He’d been left behind to rot.
He closed his eye against the dust and nothingness, hoping he could just fade away in peace. But then a small scuffle from the hall made him look up again.
Footsteps. And they were growing louder, closer.
Finally, someone came to the door. All Felix could see was a pair of eyes, briefly glancing in at him through the window before they disappeared again.
He heard a key turn in the lock, and his whole body tensed. He waited, barely breathing, as the door squeaked open.
Afraid to look up, first he saw a pair of mud-crusted black boots. Leather trousers. A dirty, blood-spattered canvas tunic with ragged, crisscrossed ties.
The glint of a sharp sword.
Felix began to tremble as he forced his gaze upward. Dust filled the air and Felix’s eyes burned from it as he tried to focus on the shape of this intruder.
Familiar. He seemed . . . so familiar.
The young man silhouetted in the doorway wore an expression filled with horror. “Damn it. What the hell did they do to you?”
“I’m dreaming. A dream, that’s all this is. You’re not really here. You can’t be.” Felix leaned back against the wall. “Oh, how funny. A dream about an old friend, just before dying.”