7. Chace
Istepped into the back alley behind the pub and, through measured breaths, forced myself into a place of clarity.
Only…
Dire. Raven’s injuries had been dire. And she hadn’t wanted me to know.
I pressed my fingers to the center of my chest. For all the pressure present, Raven could be shoving the heel of her boot into my ribs, crushing the bones. Yet she wasn’t. Not physically, anyway.
But she was now good. Healed. And as it would seem, safe. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Aoes was correct. Until I had a better understanding of the situation surrounding Raven, I couldn’t blatantly storm up to the palace to talk to her, much less bring her back with me.
She was well positioned to make forward progress, and I had both the queen’s demands (the suggestion I leave the citadel immediately…and that was close to a week ago) and the unknown kidnapper/torturer to consider. An individual likely searching for me. Wishing me further harm.
The curse, the inability to reap, was a vital concern, but it wasn’t the only concern. Evidence that much more was afoot was becoming increasingly clear, especially if I were to take the twins’ drawings and Aoes’s comments regarding my energy signature to heart.
I just wasn’t sure I wanted to accept what I was seeing…hearing. Or what those things truly meant for me.
Aoes implied I wasn’t completely reaper, but something else as well. Something that might be growing more dominant within me. The thought caused every muscle and bone within me to tighten to the point of breaking.
If I wasn’t fully reaper, the only thing I had ever known, then what was I? Who was I?
And the pictures the twins had presented…
One of Raven battered and bloody, while surrounded in some ethereal glow. And another of me, or as they said they saw me with their gifted sight.
I needed to wrap my mind around all the new information. I needed a sounding board. Given my current limitations, I needed Raven.
Earlier, one of Camilla’s daughters, the unaffected one, had given me a black pencil and two blank pages. Upon those pages, I’d scripted a message for Raven once, twice, three times, then I tore them apart and tossed each attempt. In the end, I decided opting for the simplest of words was best.
I just needed to make contact. Establish a line of communication with my only fellow reaper within the citadel walls.
Like it or not, the two of us were in this stinking reap together, and our elder, Aldine, was now gone. We desperately, sorely, needed to talk.
I pulled Raven’s contraband crow clicker from my pocket and pressed the button, then I turned my gaze toward the gray sky. The cloud cover camouflaged any hint of the citadel’s barrier magic, not that that was my intended focus.
My attention speared to the flap of black moving in my direction.
I rubbed the back of my fingers along the too-long stubble covering my jaw and followed the crow’s retreating path until sight of the feathered messenger became obscured by the crowded homes and businesses of the citadel.
Faith. I would hold faith that my letter to Raven would reach the intended destination, the intended recipient.
Bam!
I spun toward the sound of the pub’s heavy metal back door slamming to a close. Winter stood in the back alley, staring at me. A too-bright aura of misty white and icicle blue surrounded the intrusive prince. The sight sent a jolt of searing pain straight to my skull.
“What are you doing out here?” Winter’s gaze raked over me. Likely looking for hints of a bad habit or something worse, whatever the prince suspected had brought me to the back alley alone.
Only I could hardly think past the returning pounding in my head, or the rainbow of colors assaulting my vision, to entertain the prick’s delicate ego.
I blinked against the glaring gleam, pressed the heel of my palm firmly to my temple, and opened my mouth to speak. “Are you—”
Following me, I meant to say, but my words cut off mid-sentence with the sway of my body and instant clouding of my brain.
My arm shot out, seeking support against the nearest wall. A wall that felt too unstable beneath my touch. Everything around me spun in on itself, compressing into nonexistence.
In the blur of the vanishing world, I spied the foggy image of Winter rushing forward. The landscape tilted, and before I could suck back a life-sustaining breath, my face slammed to the earth.
A hand grabbed my shoulder, and a shout, one not of my own, echoed in the alleyway.
Minutes that could pass for hours, or hours that might have been seconds, swam in the spaces surrounding me. A slight sense of movement, my body being lifted and relocated, lingered in the recesses of my faculties.
My existence was black, and blurry, and black for longer still.
I awoke, barely, to a summoning whisper trapped not in my head but somewhere in the room with me.
Awaken, it said. Stop stalling and awake.
With a groan, I peeled my eyelids open, tearing against the crust that fought to keep my eyes closed.
My pupils dilated, adjusting to the darkened place.
Although new to me, the room where I lay looked familiar.
The underground expanse beneath the pub.
Aoes’s spy space where I’d spent the last night.
“I’m surprised you shared this place with him.” Winter’s muffled voice came from the outer hall.
Stretched flat on the sofa, I twisted in my spot, gazed through the open doorway, and studied the shadow play on the floor and wall by the drunkard cell in the next room.
“I didn’t,” Aoes replied, his voice low. “I don’t know how he knew or found this place. But…under the circumstances, this would seem like the place for him to recuperate.”
“Because of whoever abducted him?” Winter asked.
“That, and because the queen told him to get out of the citadel.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Winter said simply.
The sound of two pairs of running feet raced across the ceiling. The twins moving through the pub above, I wagered.
Aoes laughed. “We should see to Camilla and the girls.”
“What about him?” Winter asked, a jabbed point evident in their cast shadows.
“Let him rest. Hopefully recover. I’ll check on him later.” Aoes led Winter out the side exit, the door locking behind them, and leaving me alone in the shadows of the windowless room.
What had gone wrong?
Besides my missing meds, the lingering physical distress from my days of torture, and the mounting mental and emotional strain of Aldine’s death?
Should I consider what my sperm donor―Ubel―would do in a similar situation? Did I care? From all that I had learned, remembered, I was confident Ubel was the type of ally I’d never want in my corner. Of course, I was uncertain about a whole hell of a lot lately, though.
Closing my eyes, I heaved a breath and squeezed my forehead between my thumb and forefinger. Rubbed.
If only I had my meds, my head…my thoughts…would be clearer.
“Merciful death, where did I leave my damn bottle of pills?”
A scoff and a footfall broke from the collected gloom in the far corner, and a tall silhouette stepped forward, bringing the full form of the Killian into view.
I immediately shoved, painfully so, to a sit. “Have you finally come to collect me?”
A sly smile snaked across the Killian’s face as he scrutinized me. “You need to readjust your mindset, soul hunter.”
I blinked and jerked back. My abductor had also called me a soul hunter. And Aoes, with the ability to see one’s energy signature, had suggested I was becoming something much more other than a reaper.
“What do you mean by calling me a soul hunter?”
“You tell me,” the Killian replied. “You, after all, are the one who was created to be the hunter.”
“Hunter of souls?” I inclined my head in question.
The Killian dipped his chin, his eyes narrowing with clear contemplation. “Let me ask you something, Chace Badden.”
At the mention of my name, and not some unknown title, I sat a tad taller.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that you and Ms. Gunn were the two sent to solve this problem within the citadel?”
No. I didn’t. I really, really didn’t. Not anymore.
My muscles sagged, and my only response to the Killian’s question was the droop of my shoulders.
One side of the Killian’s lips twitched higher. “Time to release this shroud, for it no longer serves you.”
He motioned to me with a lift of his hand, but before I could react, the Killian lurched forward. He grabbed the collar of my shirt, lifted me from the sofa, and thrust me through the room, straight into the drunkard’s cell. Dropping me on the bench, the Killian stepped back and closed me inside.
I leaped to my feet in an instant, pushing against the closed cage. Panic rose through every cell in my body, threatening to overtake me.
“Don’t,” I yelled. “Don’t put me in a cage.”
Not another prison.
My heart ricocheted off my rib cage in a mad rhythm, my breath hampered and uneven. Once more, the world turned to a haze, and I tightened a white-knuckled grip upon the bars, holding myself upright, clenching my jaw against the bile rising up my throat.
“This confinement is temporary. This”—the Killian motioned to the bars, the limited space within—“is to help ensure your safety while you detox.”
He produced a small bottle from a pocket hidden inside his cloak. My missing medication. He removed the lid and spilled the contents onto the floor.
With a firm step and twist, he began crushing each and every single pill.
I fell to my knees and grappled through the bars in an attempt to salvage any pill I could grab hold of. The Killian kicked away my efforts, and I failed to secure a single capsule.
My headache, the auras…
The reaper of reapers dropped to my level and met my glare. “Those drugs have inhibited who and what you truly are. Kept you trapped in a mental prison of sorts. The time has come to ride through the release. The reward, you’ll find, is on the other side.”
I lowered my gaze to the spray of pill dust on the ground. I gasped but found no relief of air in my lungs.
“Reward is on the other side,” the Killian repeated and peeled my hold free of the bars.
I toppled backwards and collapsed on the ground. Gave in to the darkness and lost consciousness.
And with a moan, my world began to transform.