Chapter 16
Quinn
Ibit into the Thai chicken wrap, taking a moment just to appreciate the crunch of the crisp lettuce, the tangy sauce filling my mouth, and the fresh breeze that brought a refreshing coolness over us in the glade where we’d stopped to eat our takeout lunches.
An elm tree offered a swath of shade over the sole bench that seemed to be left over from when this spot might have been a more happening park of some sort. At the moment, it didn’t look like much more than a weedy field a short drive off the main road.
I chewed through a few mouthfuls, took a gulp of my water, and glanced over at Rollick, who appeared to be very pleased with the Caesar salad wrap he’d opted for. He licked a fleck of dressing off his thumb, and my gaze focused a little too long on the sculpted perfection of his mouth.
Jerking my eyes away, I brought my thoughts back to more important matters. Like what the hell I was going to do now that I’d doubled down on my commitment to this quest. It was still kind of hard to believe the demon next to me had offered me a free ticket out of this mess. But I’d been able to feel how much he meant everything he’d said.
He’d always been a strange mix of callous and considerate with me. I’d assumed the considerate parts were solely to advance his own agenda. Had that changed during the time we’d spent together, or had I always been a little too hard on him?
I guessed the answer to that question wasn’t really important now, only how we moved forward.
“You said you don’t think I could be powerful enough to use my sorcery on the head honchos,” I said. “But you didn’t think they’d be able to manipulate the warriors that the Highest sent either. We should test out my magic. Because if I can control the villainous duo, then all we have to do is find them and our problems are solved.”
Rollick gave an amused hum. “Forgive me for not believing the solution could be that simple. But I agree that we should evaluate your newly enhanced powers. You seemed to work the magic faster than I remember from before when we sent off that lackey the other day.”
I nodded. “It felt easier… like I was more sure of what to do, even though it’s still instinctive. I had the feeling I could do a lot more than just that.”
My companion grinned with his shiny veneers on full display. “You already had the benefit of a powerful lineage, and then you got a particularly strong demon’s essence on top of it. I’m assuming most sorcerer families make do with lesser beings. That should give you some kind of leg up.”
A surge of conviction gripped me. “Then maybe I will be able to work my magic on those two. I could try with you—you’re at least almost as powerful as one of them, right?”
“I’d like to think we’d be on a similar playing field,” Rollick said. “But it’d hardly be a fair test. You know me a lot better than you know them—at this point, you know more about what matters to me than just about anyone. It seems like having a personal understanding gives your powers a lot more punch. You might be able to turn me into your puppet, but it wouldn’t prove anything about going up against those menaces.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you just trying to get out of becoming a test subject? You didn’t have any problem offering up other beings for that purpose.”
He spread his hands, putting on an innocent expression. “Feel free to make me your slave if you can manage it. I’d be curious to see what you decide to do with me for as long as you can hold on to the control. But it’s obvious that a deeper understanding makes it easier for you to command someone. How else could you have managed to keep my three mutinists away for so long otherwise? You hadn’t gotten a power boost back then, and they were no slouches as far as shadowkind go.”
He was right, but the reminder of how I’d sent the three men away—and the fact that they hadn’t come back yet—put a damper on my enthusiasm. My throat constricted.
I forced down the last of my wrap, staring off across the field toward the sedan. “Maybe it has worn off. Maybe they just haven’t wanted to come back in case I’d manipulate them again.”
Rollick snorted. “I think it’s more likely that they decided to start a rock-n-roll band and are currently touring New Zealand than what you just said. The only thing I can imagine that could keep those three from sticking close to you is magical compulsion.”
He sounded so confident that I wanted to believe he was right, but the ache of loss didn’t subside. I clenched my jaw. “I knew what I was doing. I knew it was kind of an awful thing to do to them. The most important thing is that they’re safe.”
“Quinn.” Rollick let out a huff and turned toward me. He tucked his hand beneath my jaw, resting his fingers lightly on the underside of my chin to draw my gaze to his. “I saw how they were with you. I know you well enough by now to comprehend how you earned their devotion. There isn’t anything in either realm that I can imagine keeping them away from you other than you yourself.”
“You can’t know for sure,” I had to say.
“Well, if it isn’t the case, then at least you have me for company, even if I’m not a very good substitute.”
My eyebrows rose of their own accord. “Humbleness—not something I thought I’d ever see from you.”
A sly smile curved Rollick’s lips. “I have all sorts of dimensions you’ve yet to uncover.”
A quiver that wasn’t entirely unpleasant raced over my skin from where he was still touching my chin. The memory of the moment when I’d thought he might kiss me this morning flitted through my head, and my cheeks flushed with a mix of desire and shame.
I didn’t want to be thinking like that. Why couldn’t my brain get the memo?
I was tensing to pull back and wishing it didn’t require as much effort as I was finding it did when three forms burst from the shadows amid the trees.
I startled and jerked around. Next to me, Rollick stiffened, but only until he’d recognized the figures facing us.
There was no more than an instant when Torrent, Lance, and Crag stood there a few feet from us, perfectly familiar other than the hint of uncertainty crossing all their expressions. I gaped at them, losing my breath. My lips parted, my heart leaping and stuttering at the same time, and then Lance was launching himself at me.
Angling his claws carefully away from my body as he always did, he caught me in his arms with no sign of concern about my vest, lifted me up, and spun me around with his face buried in my hair.
“We’re back. The magic’s gone. And you’re okay.” He paused and twisted around to press his hand over my mouth, gently but insistently. “No more magic-y words. You don’t tell us what to do like that again. All right, baby girl?”
He stared me down, his violet eyes flaring beneath the tumble of his wild black curls. Tears welled up behind my own eyes.
He was here. They were all here, and it felt as if I could finally properly breathe again for the first time since they’d left. But at the same time, the terror that had gripped me before at the danger they’d already put themselves through and almost definitely would again wound around me. I couldn’t move.
Lance nuzzled my temple and then resumed his hold on my gaze, his hand still fixed over my mouth to prevent any speech. “You have to say it. I’m not letting you go until you say you won’t do that ever again. Promise us.”
Even after everything, he trusted me to tell the truth—trusted that I wouldn’t lie just to get free and then use my sorcery after all. As that fact sank in, my resistance melted. How could I deny that kind of devotion? How could I tell him that my worries for him mattered more than his dedication to me?
The tears behind my eyes overflowed. I grabbed him in a hug just as tight as the one he’d initially wrapped me up in and nodded emphatically.
Lance withdrew his hand, but only far enough to swipe at my tears as he drew back to look at me. His forehead furrowed. “Are you sad?”
“Not that you’re back,” I choked out. “That I made you leave at all. I didn’t want to, I just—I didn’t want to see you get hurt more than you already had been, because of me. It’s my fault you’re mixed up in this situation, and?—”
Lance’s growl cut me off. “Not your fault,” he insisted. “None of the hurt had anything to do with you. You didn’t ask for the beasties and whoever else to attack you. You didn’t make them use their tricksy magic. You make me nothing but happy. Except when you forced me to go away. That’s the only thing you ever did that hurt me.”
I blinked hard, but the tears kept coming. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You keep us with you, and you let us protect you from the vicious beings out there, and everything will be good.”
I didn’t think it was quite that simple, but then Lance pulled me into a kiss with all the eager passion he exuded so easily, and I couldn’t bring myself to argue.
He was back. All three of the men I loved were back. Maybe the other two wouldn’t forgive me quite as quickly, but they’d come, which had to mean they didn’t hate me.
Lance drew out the kiss with a pleased thrum in the base of his throat and then eased back to stroke his knuckles down the side of my face. He cocked his head. “What were you talking about with Rollick when we got here? He was touching your face too.”
Even though I’d been about to stop Rollick from touching me in that moment, guilt hitched in my chest. But the demon spoke up swiftly and smoothly before I had to figure out what to say.
“We were actually discussing the three of you—whether you would come back once our reluctant sorcerer’s magic wore off. She wasn’t sure. And she was quite despondent about it.”
Lance beamed down at me, apparently more than satisfied with that answer, and I soaked up his brightness. Then I glanced past him to the two men who’d arrived with him.
Crag strode over, his stony jaw looking starker than ever against his bronze skin. He hesitated just before he reached me, and my gut clenched, but then he propelled himself the last short distance to tug me from the dragon shifter’s arms. He enfolded me in his brawny embrace, holding me closer than he’d dared in the last day when we’d been together, and I let myself sink into his broad chest.
“I’m sorry, Softness,” he muttered in his usual gruff tone. “I pushed you away first. I didn’t mean to make you feel—I was so worried—but it was the same as you told me. It was the fault of those villains, not either of us. I won’t let them tear us apart again.”
My eyes started to burn again. “Good. You never need to protect me from you.”
“As long as you remember that the sentiment goes both ways, Ms. Fix It,” Torrent said, his tone as dry and even as ever.
I turned in Crag’s arms, not forcing him to relinquish me when he seemed determined to keep hugging me, and met the tentacled man’s sea-green gaze. He didn’t rush in to embrace me, but then, my relationship with Torrent had always been a little more complicated. I couldn’t tell whether he was being careful of my potentially awkward feelings or his own.
“How long did the spell last?” I asked. “How did you find me?”
“It only just wore off,” Lance announced triumphantly. “We came straight to you the moment we could.”
Torrent inclined his head. “We’d determined the general area you had to be in by keeping track of where your magic repelled us as that boundary shifted with your movements. And we spread out to get a sense of the larger reach of that magic, knowing you’d be in the middle of its circle. So we knew which direction to head in as soon as its effects dissipated. And once we were close to Rollick, Crag could pick up on his presence.”
“Speaking of picking up on my presence…” Rollick brushed his hands together and motioned toward the car. “I think we’ve lingered in this spot for long enough, especially since our enemies now have even more reason to want to hunt me down than they did before. But I have a property not too far from here where we can regroup. As long as you weren’t planning on ousting me from the group next. In the past, I think we’ve accomplished a lot more working together than going our separate ways.”
A twinge shot through me at the thought of sending the demon off now, but Torrent gave him a small but amicable smile. “I think we can manage to cooperate for a little longer in the interests of keeping Quinn safe.”