Chapter 13 Quinn
Quinn
I sat in the Alun with my crystal magic lighting it. The dragon purred in my arms while Ezra held Xan’s body in his lap. The fight was gone—erased so completely that only the dizzying patterns of glowing lines and shapes remained.
“I just… put him on the floor?” I asked.
‘Yes,’ Xan said in my mind. Just like your other dragons. The Alun will neutralize the magic and send it back into the currents of the world.’
I looked at Xan’s motionless, slack face. He was trapped in my head now. But what would happen when he didn’t need to be?
‘We don’t have to label it,’ Xan responded to my thoughts. ‘We don’t have to go fast, but we want to explore the possibilities with you.’
I took a deep breath. “We.” Not him, but the XanRa unit. Unwilling to have that discussion, I put my hands under each of the dragon’s little wings. “You’re a flying cyclone of destruction, part me, part Professor Holiday. But it’s time to rejoin the circle of life.”
The opening of The Lion King burst into my head. ‘Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba!’
‘What is this?’ Xan asked.
I didn’t know how to respond to him, but I hoped he guessed, as the movie was still running in my background thoughts while I set the dragon down. For a moment, nothing happened, and then his back claws dissolved into the floor, followed by his legs, causing every line to glow and twist.
His wide dragon eyes said he didn’t want to go, but he understood, and he loved me anyway. Faster and faster, the Alun pulled him in until he was just gone.
I burst into tears. I hadn’t even liked the creature at first, but he’d stayed by me through everything.
‘He was better than all of us. Animals love unconditionally.’
Ezra wrapped a tentative arm around my shoulder. When I didn’t jerk away, he pulled me close and let me cry on his shirt. My outburst didn’t last long. I’d only had the dragon for a few days, even if he had been oddly adorable and utterly dedicated to me.
I pulled away from Ezra before I could make myself cry again.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Cayden needs us, whether he wants to admit it or not.”
Ezra nodded and started to move Xan’s body to my lap before hesitating. “I need to open the hatch. Are you willing—”
Ezra’s partner lay unconscious because of me. It didn’t matter what our history was. I held out my arms before he finished his sentence and cradled Xan’s head onto my thighs. I had the weirdest image of Xan seeing himself.
‘I can’t see anything unless I look out of your eyes or go back to my own body. However, I would love to know how intimate a cuddle you’re giving me.’ I could picture Xan batting his eyes, like he had from across the table at breakfast.
We, mostly Ezra, lifted Xan out of the Alun and into the afternoon light. The gray sky occasionally spat a bit of rain, but the weather was otherwise what I’d come to call ‘Scottish nice,’ also known as not freezing and pissing it down.
A small horse-drawn vehicle—part truck bed, part medieval cart—waited with a handful of mounted enforcers around it.
We settled Xan across the lowest section.
Rowan, sitting on his massive Clydesdale, was decked out in his enforcer blacks and covered in weaponry.
Mounted on his Friesian, Cayden still wore his trainee uniform.
I’d never seen him with weapons before, but a crossbow hung off his waist and a sword along his back.
‘Talk to me.’ Xan’s words joined my thoughts. ‘Show me myself through your eyes. I want to know everything.’
I pulled my gaze away from my guys and watched Ezra tuck a thick blanket around his lover’s body. Xan was experiencing my life right now. His request sounded so simple, but it was mind-blowing.
I needed to process before I answered. Space was very limited in the cart.
After a moment, I wiggled myself into a corner where I could put Xan’s head on my lap.
Cayden tied his horse to the back of the cart and perched on a hump that used to protect a tire, just above my shoulders, while Everly climbed in after us.
I half expected to see Brit, but she wasn’t joining us for this little adventure.
Probably for the better, her muscles would scare off the remaining Lawsons.
Xan didn’t chuckle at my joke. He was still waiting for an answer.
‘I’ll start if it makes you more comfortable,’ he offered.
‘It would.’ I don’t know if the two words came out like that in my thoughts, but Xan got the point.
I ran my fingers through his hair as a vision of me appeared in my mind. Magic twisted around us. The cart rumbled forward. Despite the noises and the bumps, Xan’s memories became my world.
Xan’s version of me was breathlessly stunning. My hair sparkled as I trained with him in the Alun. We sat in the library, where I told him about the evil Architect trying to control me. The romance books sparkled around me as he hung off every word, even the ones that hurt.
‘Mine are not as positive,’ I ‘said’ after he finished. ‘I don’t know if I want to share them.’
‘I will respect whatever you want to do, but I want to understand you. I thought I’d lost you. Friend, more than a friend, or even just a stranger in my family, Quinn, the Prophet had you for three days. You shouldn’t have to bear that alone.’
His words cracked my shield. Just like in the library, tears I hadn’t realized I’d been holding back burst out of me.
“Quinn,” Cayden shuffled down, wrapped me in his arms, and rocked.
For a heartbeat, I let his strength envelop me, but then I realized I was having a conversation with another man at the same time. One Cayden hated. I tried to push out of his arms. “Um, I…”
Cayden pulled me tighter. “Xan says you need this.” He kissed my forehead. “Let me hold you while he can’t. I’ll hate him later. You need an outlet. Don’t stop because of me.”
If it was possible, I bawled even harder.
What I gave Xan wasn’t curated. The Prophet’s brainwashing bled into me running through the forest, then standing on that table at The Rooster—knowing it was fake, wishing it wasn’t.
Matt’s triumphant gaze as he dragged Brit and me through tunnels.
One memory crashing into the next, until Xan was riding a roller coaster of my entire life.
The sound of squeaking wheels and stomping hooves slowly became louder than my thoughts. A second set of knees brushed my opposite side, and a large hand rested on my back. I’d just dumped everything onto Xan.
‘I wanted to know. You deserve to have someone at your side who understands, and I want to be that person more than anything.’
I took a deep breath. Cayden’s vanilla and cinnamon scent filled my nose.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t protect you.’ Tentatively, as if unsure it was okay, Xan’s emotions brushed mine, imprinting their truth into me. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to you the moment you woke. I will do better.’
“I’m sorry, too,” I said into Cayden’s shirt.
I clung to Cayden until my tears dried. The wheels turned, and the horse's hooves clopped as I processed. My world splintered like glass, but Everly’s soft voice, mid-story, cut through.
Slowly, I sat up and rubbed my face before stretching my back, which Rowan promptly rubbed, sitting on the edge of the cart above me.
I hadn’t noticed he had abandoned his horse to join us.
The dim rays of the evening light barely filtered through the gray sky.
The dark stone of Edinburgh had given way to brown crops and knotted trees.
I reached up and squeezed Rowan's knee in thanks as my back slowly relaxed, as much as it could in the bumpy wagon.
“Good nap?” Everly asked, pausing her story.
I hadn’t been asleep, but I felt lighter and more rested than I had in days.
An almost content purr rumbled to me from Xan’s mind, making my cheeks tingle. Instead of commenting on it, I focused on my friend, sitting across from us at Xan’s feet.
“Yeah, I needed that,” I smiled at Everly.
She reached out and squeezed my hand. “Anyway, I loved that dress.” Everly smiled faintly.
“Amanda did too. I thought I had a good childhood, until the contracts started, until my dad showed me what people outside our family were worth. Amanda was my shadow, always laughing, stealing sweets, sneaking out of lessons. And then one day… she was just gone.” Her hands clenched together. “One action destroyed everything.”
“I’m sure—” I started to reassure my friend.
Everly cut me off with a wave. “Collars are bad shit.” She bit her lips together.
“I don’t want to go back to my family. I have three contracts, and that’s only to start.
Two of them I’ve never even met. I know it’s a poor comparison, but sometimes I don’t feel different from the people my family collars. ”
The freedoms of my time hit me hard. None of that existed here. “A slave to biology and the bleak state the human race is in.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll do whatever I can, Everly. I don’t know what that is, but you deserve to be happy.”
‘We’ll do what we can, Quinn, all of us. Everly deserves a life of her choosing.’
Warmth filled my stomach at Xan’s words.
A tear filled Everly’s eye, and she brushed it away. “Anyway, I'm supposed to be teaching, not whatever this is.” She opened her pocket-void and pulled a metal collar out of it. “My dad made me put one of these in my void, just in case I needed it. I didn’t want him to be right.”
I barked out an inappropriate laugh. “You and my dad both.”
Everly’s shy smile flickered as she held out the collar. Despite the subject, I hung on every word—how she imprinted on the metal, then wove magic through the layers meant to capture and control. The negative parts of a tethered. The three spots on my back ached.
The sun set behind the gray clouds without a shred of color. Although we could only occasionally make it out, the almost full moon gave us and the horses enough light to plod forward. Cayden’s home loomed in front of us, growing ever closer.