16. Max
Max
“Close the door, please,” I called.
“Wolf, go close the door.” Nikolai jerked his chin at Caspian.
“Why can’t you fucking do it yourself, vamp?”
“I’m down an arm, wolf, if you haven’t fucking noticed.”
“You still have the other.”
“You two will bicker at your own funerals,” I sighed, struggling to get off the bed.
Caspian got to the door and shut it with a click of victory. “I was already going. The vamp just had to bark first.”
I slid off my armguard, willed it into a pocketknife, and opened my palm.
“What are you doing?” Both of them lunged, both reaching and halting.
I closed my fist over the empty cup and let my blood stream.
Nikolai’s pupils blew wide as the scent hit him, his nostrils flaring.
“Back the fuck off, vampire.” Caspian put himself between us.
“Stop, Eirath. You’re still weak. Stop, or I won’t touch it.” Nikolai turned his back on the one thing in the world he wanted most and made for the door.
“Nikolai, stay.” I set the cup on the nightstand, because if our fingers brushed on it, we’d both burn and it would fall. That inch of forced distance cut deeper than the knife had. “You can’t drink from my veins anymore. You can still drink from a cup.”
“Max, you don’t have to,” Caspian said. “He can have more of mine.”
“Nobody’s blood but mine can heal him fast enough.” I opened my hand and showed them the cut already knitting closed. “I need you at full strength. Now drink it.”
“Thank you for taking care of me, Eirath,” Nikolai said gently. The warmth in those crimson eyes was hard to look at.
He took the cup and emptied it in one swallow. His arm started to regrow in front of us. Flesh sheathing over bone. Fingers flexing new. The hollows under his eyes filling in.
“Shit. It’s like a miracle.” Caspian gaped at the other prince’s new arm.
My blood was ten times what it had been, with the Dark Grace running in it.
“It always is,” Nikolai said quietly.
He knew something had changed in me. Everyone had seen the power come out of me like a star exploding, and not one of them knew to call it Dark Grace.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Downstairs, resting,” Nikolai said.
I licked my cracked lips. “Who else didn’t make it? Other than Bryn.”
Nikolai took a moment before he gave it to me.
“Jace. He died on the bridge. Everyone else was wounded as well. We thought we’d lose Marco too, but he pulled through, barely.”
“And Xander’s prisoners?”
“Seven came out with us. They’re downstairs, recovering.”
Both heirs took turns filling in the part I hadn’t been awake for: the team crossing that bridge over piled corpses to the rendezvous, Enna carrying me the whole way, and the undercover agents driving us across the city until we reached the warehouse.
“They’re hunting us street by street,” Caspian said. “We can’t sit anywhere long.”
“How long before they sweep this district?” I asked.
“Local agents put it at midnight,” Nikolai said. “Every house, shop, and building on the east bank.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Caspian said. “We leave tonight. There’s another safe house near the border. We make the run from there.”
I nodded.
Then tears rose out of nowhere and I couldn’t stop them.
The bridge. Bryn falling to her knees, an arrow piercing her armor and protruding from her chest. My team screaming. Caspian and Nikolai fighting toward me, battle rage twisting their faces, bloodlust in their eyes. Their fear for me made my heart ache.
Dark Grace erupting out of me.
“It’s my fault.” My body shook as I sobbed. “I should never have let Bryn come. Rogue and Kaid and Desta followed me, and look how that ended. I should’ve learned. I thought I’d gotten strong enough to shield her. I got cocky, and my friend paid for it.”
“Don’t pin this on yourself.” Caspian pulled me into his arms with cloth between us and no skin touching. “She knew the odds better than you did. Every one of us knew the risk.”
Pain lanced through me, white-hot, straight through fabric and flesh to my bones. Caspian gasped, and we sprang apart like two hands flinching from a burning stove.
“Fuck.” Something broke open in the green of his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Careful, wolf,” Nikolai snarled. “You know better.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
Nikolai couldn’t stand to see me hurt, so he’d found the nearest thing to bite. I let it go.
The silence afterward hurt worse than the burn.
Even that. Even a comfort that small was impossible. Xander hadn’t only taken my future. He’d reached into the smallest human corners of my present and salted every one of them.
I blinked back tears, and the memories played anyway, cruel in their clarity. Caspian’s hands on my skin. Nikolai’s mouth between my thighs. Aelindor moving inside me, fucking me, taking his time about it.
None of them would ever have me again. The chastity belt had locked around me the moment Xander walked me into that dance and invoked the contract.
Rage broke across both their faces. Caspian’s edges flickered, fur shivering in and out of existence, a wolf hunting for a throat to blame. Shadow blurred Nikolai’s features for half a second, which was new. I’d never known he had shadows in him at all.
“I’m going to kill that fucker.”
“Wait in line, wolf.” Nikolai pulled his lips back, fangs showing. “Xander’s mine!”
I needed to calm them down, but first, I had to shove the grief and the horror into an iron box and swallow the key.
I couldn’t break. Not when breaking would break them.
They needed me more than I needed to fall apart, and I’d been holding for a decade. I could hold a few more hours.
“Nikolai. Caspian.” Their names, said like that, brought both of their heads around. “We’ll figure this out. I’m not going to fall apart on you. I’ve got you two, and Aelindor and Drakken, and a whole team, and an army. That’s more than I’ve ever had.”
“Then that’s what we work with,” Caspian said.
“And we work fast,” Nikolai said.
My gaze traveled between them, and I let them see what they were to me. My rocks. My everything. Their eyes brightened, green and crimson.
“Is my sister safe?” I said, because facts were solid ground. “Any word?”
“None yet.” Caspian’s mouth set. “But I’d stake my life that Drakken is standing over Missy right now.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The room tilted, and I made it obey.
“We need to bring Jace and Bryn home.”
Nikolai nodded. “We’ll be at the border late tonight.”
The Dark Grace wouldn’t answer tonight, and I knew it. I was scraped out. It had nearly killed me on that bridge, and nothing remained in my head to tell me where the edge lay.
“I have a feeling tonight won’t be quiet,” I said.