These Wicked Desires (Fates #3)

25. Kai

Kai

The heat from Ellis’s flames burns hotter than a normal fire. Even knowing I can’t be killed by them, I hesitate just slightly. Harpy fire isn’t something I’ve ever trained for. For all I know, it could kill me. But my beloved is in that room and I’d die to get to her. I’d walk through the burning pits of hell to save her.

I hold my hands in front of my face in an attempt to shield against the heat that batters me in a searing wind. My eyes are dried out, my skin too tight over my bones as the fire tries to crispen me. The clothes I was wearing are singed and tattered, a few small fires burning in the fabric. But I pay them no mind as I reach the door to the torture room.

The metal is too hot to touch, so I use my shoulder to shove it open. The blast of hot air almost knocks me backward, and only my supernatural strength and determination of finding Ellis keep me from shrinking away. I scan the room, squinting at the dry wind and brightness of the flames. I can’t see anything except a faint impression of a body. And that body is in the center of the swirling vortex of the fire.

I know without a doubt it’s Ellis, and the flames are emanating from her in a furious storm that no doubt comes from her emotions. I don’t want to know what emotions would make her react in this way.

“Ellis!” I scream, lurching toward her, but my shout is lost in the roar of her flames. Inching closer, holding my hands up to shield my face, I kneel next to her. What I see makes me falter.

She’s thrown herself over Cade, and he’s laying motionless under her. Everything pulls away from me—my thoughts, my feelings, my very soul—it all pulls away like a tide receding before a tsunami. The breath I suck in burns, and not just from the inferno heating the air around me.

“Ellis?” I rasp, gently reaching out my hand. It passes through the hottest of her flames, the flames surrounding her and Cade. I hiss at the blistering heat, but it doesn’t burn my skin away.

As soon as my hand touches her shoulder, the flames nearest us suck back inside of her. The roaring crackle and hiss disappears instantly, leaving my ears ringing in the sudden silence. The building groans ominously, and I know I have to get them out of here now.

Ellis turns her tear streaked face toward me. I have never seen such despair in her eyes. She shudders and sucks in a breath before her eyes roll back and she collapses. I catch her on instinct alone and haul her to my chest. She’s naked but I see no major injuries on her. Her heart is still beating, it echoes in my chest slow and steady. She’s just overused her magic. Rest and food will help her recover.

My gaze travels to Cade and my own heart stutters. His clothing is singed like mine, like her fire didn’t want to hurt us, but the ferocity of it still beat through all the barriers that surrounded us to keep us safe. It’s not the singed clothing that steals my breath though. It’s the bloodied hole in his shirt, right over his heart.

Is Cade dead? Is that why Ellis had lost it? Why her fire had burned so fiercely?

My fingers shake as I reach out and tug Cade’s tattered shirt aside. Fully expecting to see a gaping wound, I’m startled to see pale, smooth flesh. With Ellis still in my arms, I scoot closer and see his chest rise and fall with steady breaths. My body sags under the realization. Something bad happened here, and Ellis must have done something to save Cade.

The ceiling cracks above me, and I glance up to see spiderwebs fissure across the charred and blackened ceiling tiles. This entire structure is going to come down around us. Gritting my teeth, I throw Ellis over one shoulder and snag Cade around the waist, hefting him onto my other shoulder. My legs shake as I walk out of the room, a combination of fear, relief, and exhaustion making me weak.

While Ellis put out the fire in the torture room, the rest of building is still aflame. If I had time, I’d stop to admire the way the golden tongues lick and dance along the walls. There’s no smoke, but they put off an incredible amount of heat as they eat away at the building.

More groaning and cracking sounds in the hallway, and I hurry my steps as fast as I can. I’m honestly not positive I’ll be able to climb the stairs with both of them. Before I have to try, a figure shimmers in the heat behind the flames. For a second I freeze. Is that Sam? Did he not get caught in her inferno? Before I have to make the decision to put Cade and Ellis down to fight, the figure clarifies. Connor.

His clothing is smoldering, but he is uninjured by the fire. Whatever Ellis did to create this inferno, it doesn’t appear to be harming our family and friends. Connor’s gaze is somber as he takes in the two bodies thrown over my shoulders.

“Are they …”

“They’re alive,” I rasp. “I don’t know what happened. They’re both unconscious, but breathing.”

He nods and takes Cade from me, lightening my load. My muscles almost scream in relief. Normally, carrying both of them wouldn’t be an issue. But the heat from the fire has sapped my energy, not to mention the tidal waves of fear that washed through me before I found them both alive.

I sling Ellis down into both of my arms. Her wings drag behind us, trailing on the ground, but there is nothing I can do about that.

“The entire building is about to collapse,” Connor gasps. “We have to get out of here.”

I nod and follow him up the stairs, easier now that I only have one person to carry. The flames continue to crackle and burn. The building creaks and groans. Connor rushes to a classroom, and turning so his back is facing the wall, he shields Cade as he tears through the weakened structure.

I hunch over Ellis as debris falls around us. But Connor has made a man sized hole in the wall, and we both slip through into the cool fresh air. In the distance, I see Sterling, Cole, and Drew waiting, and we make our way toward them.

Sterling collapses to the ground when he sees me with Ellis limp in my arms, and Cade unmoving in Connor’s. When I reach him, I kneel on the ground in front of him, staring into his bleak blue eyes.

“Ellis,” he croaks, his hand reaching out and hesitating.

“She’s alive,” I say. “I think she just used too much magic.”

It takes all of my will power to hand her off to Sterling. He takes her with shaking hands and presses her tight to his chest, his entire body seeming to deflate when he sees her chest moving. But then he looks up, and his eyes land on Cade.

I take Cade from Connor, cradling him in my lap like a child. He was breathing in the warehouse, I made sure of it, but I need to double check. Placing my hand on his chest, I feel a steady thump under my palm as his heart beats. The last bit of tension inside of me eases.

“What happened?” Sterling asks, looking at the bloody shirt clinging to Cade in tatters.

I pull it aside and graze my fingers over his heart where the bloodiest part of his shirt had been. I couldn’t see it in the torture chamber, surrounded by Ellis’s flames, but I can feel it. A slightly raised patch of skin, no bigger than a bullet. My throat dries and I press my fingers to his neck, needing confirmation again.

“I think …” I swallow, the dryness in my throat causing my words to scrape all the way up. “I think he got shot.”

Just saying the words causes my heart to pound. Under my fingers, his pulse thrums. There is no denying he’s alive. But that is definitely a scar on his chest. A bullet wound he hadn’t had before we entered that building.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Somehow, Ellis healed him. She was laying over him. Her flames were burning so fiercely.” The image of Cade looking dead on the floor flashes in my mind, and I snap my eyes open.

Behind me, the building crumbles. Wood splinters and metal groans. And Ellis’s fire continues to burn.

I sit in the chair I pulled up to the edge of the bed and watch over the two people I love the most in this world. If I take my eyes off of them, panic creeps in, stealing my breath and making my heart race. What if they stop breathing when I look away? What if their hearts stop beating? It’s irrational, but the part of my brain that controls rationality has fled, leaving only the primal, possessive part of me.

“Cole picked up Agatha, they’re on their way.” Sterling drops into a chair on the opposite side of the bed, heaving a sigh as he rubs his hand down his face.

Neither of us has changed or cleaned up. We’re both still wearing torn and bloodied clothing, mine singed and turning crispy along the burnt edges. Downstairs, Allie fusses over Connor and Drew, making sure they aren’t hurt. After a quick assessment that Ellis and Cade were alive, I kicked her out of the room. The monster inside of me is too close to the surface, and I’m liable to lash out and hurt anyone who gets too close to my two loves. I think she recognized that and instead of arguing, has decided to distract herself with caring for someone else.

I’m exhausted. Every bone in my body aches. Every muscle overused. Moving requires too much effort when my body feels as if it weighs thousands of pounds. My eyes burn and it’s difficult to keep them open. I just want to curl up in bed with my loves and sleep for years. But even if I didn’t have that irrational fear of looking away from them, I wouldn’t be able to close my eyes.

The image of Ellis laying atop Cade, protecting him, mourning him, is too fresh in my mind. Her eyes when she’d looked at me were haunted, devastated, and completely full of despair. In the moment, with adrenaline coursing through my veins and my instincts roaring to protect them and keep myself safe, the fear had been dulled. But now that I’m no longer moving and my brain has free reign to think about everything, that terror fills me.

I’d thought they were both dead at first. Until Ellis lifted her head, I thought I had lost my entire heart. Then, I’d seen the blood on Cade’s chest and the pain in my beloved’s eyes, and I knew the worst had happened. It had been too hard to breathe past the band constricting my chest. All I could think about was how I’d care for Ellis, how I’d help her through her mourning, when I couldn’t even handle it myself?

When I’d seen the healed smooth skin of his chest, I knew she’d done something to heal him. The relief had been swift, and it had almost knocked me off my feet. I hadn’t lost them. They were both still here with me. But the fear was still there, just under the surface waiting for me to close my eyes and let my guard down. I won’t forget this moment. Ever.

“We came so close,” Sterling whispers, his gaze glued to our family on the bed. “Too close.”

I can’t respond because my throat has closed up, so I just nod in agreement. There is nothing else to say, really, and we lapse into silence, sinking into our own terror-filled thoughts.

After what felt like hours—hours of fighting the need to close my eyes and sleep—Cole knocks on the bedroom door and pops his head inside. “Agatha is ready. Can I let her in?”

Sterling nods and pushes from the chair with a groan. He looks just as worn down as I am. When Agatha steps into the room, Sterling bows his head to her. “Thank you for coming.”

Agatha nods back. “Alpha,” she says respectfully. Her gaze drops to the bed, eyes narrowing on Ellis and Cade’s unmoving forms. “Tell me what happened.” She sits in the chair Sterling had been using, her bones crackling as she does so.

“We don’t really know,” Sterling answers, taking a seat on the edge of the bed next to Cade. His tone is weary, matching his expression and slumped shoulders. “We were … taking care of a problem,” he says carefully, not wanting to divulge what exactly we were doing.

“I found them in a burning room,” I continue. Agatha is smart enough she’ll be able to connect the dots once the news of the warehouse hits the media. But I’m not too worried about her knowing. She already knows Ellis is a harpy. “The fire was Ellis’s doing, and she was laying atop Cade, cocooned in her flames. Cade had a hole in his shirt, covered with blood, right over his heart. But his skin is smooth and unharmed.”

“They have both been unconscious since Kai found them,” Sterling finishes for me as I trail off, unable to continue as my throat dries with just the thought of Cade and Ellis dying.

Agatha pushes to her feet, more popping coming from her bones and she leans over Cade. One gnarled finger rubs over the slightly raised scar on his chest. Her brows lower as she thinks, and I can practically see her sifting through all the knowledge she has in that ancient brain of hers. When she finally sits back down, she levels a stare at Sterling.

“It looks like a bullet wound,” Agatha says with brutal clarity.

Sterling nods. “Yeah, that’s what we think, too.”

“There are books and texts that have been long lost to society. The words in these books have been passed down to the wolves from generation to generation. Most of them are considered pure myth and legend, like harpy’s themselves. But there are still some facts among the tales.” Agatha rests her gnarled hands in her lap, pale gaze alternating between me and Sterling. “There is a story about a harpy that walked the earth long, long ago. On a battlefield, one of her Shields was slain. The harpy’s fury was all encompassing. Her flames destroyed their enemy in one blazing hot wall of fire. The story goes that she knelt next to her Shield, her tears freely streaming down her face as her flame surrounded her and her dead lover.”

I swallow thickly, imagining how all of this would have played out tonight in that torture room. Cade getting shot. Ellis losing her mind in grief and fury. Sam wouldn’t have stood a chance against her.

“What happened next was nothing short of a miracle,” Agatha continues, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “With the harpy’s tears on her Shield’s death wound, and her flames burning hotter and hotter, she somehow brought her lover back to life. She healed him of his mortal injury.”

Sterling and I both suck in a breath. We had suspected something like this had happened. It was the only way Cade could have a bullet-shaped scar right over his heart and still be breathing. But just hearing the words said aloud, by someone who has knowledge about supernatural creatures, I’m flooded with fear.

Too close. We were too fucking close to losing them both.

“They should both be fine after some rest,” Agatha says. “I imagine they’ll sleep for a while, so do not be alarmed. The amount of energy and magic Ellis had to use, and the simple fact that Cade is healing from death, will keep them both down for a while.”

Simple fact. I shudder.

Cade died. My … whatever he is … died. If it hadn’t been for Ellis …

I can’t finish that thought. I can’t even try to imagine what life would look like without him. Without both of them. I squeeze my eyes shut and listen to Sterling walk Agatha downstairs for Cole to drive her home. Kneeling on the floor next to the bed where Ellis lays, I bury my face in her neck, inhaling her scent. The rich aroma of her blood pumping through her veins by her heart that beats steadily. It makes my eyes burn.

I hastily wipe them to avoid getting blood everywhere, and reach a hand over her body to grasp Cade’s hand. It’s warm and I barely bite back a sob. They are okay. Both pieces of my heart are still here. I repeat those words over and over, letting Ellis’s scent and Cade’s skin against mine cement them inside of me.

Sterling returns and the bed dips as he sits next to Ellis. Her hair tickles my face as he tucks a curl behind her ear. “It’s going to be okay.” His other hand rests on my back, and his words sound like they are more for him than me. Like he’s reminding himself they’re okay. The same way I am. “We’re going to be okay.”