Chapter 16
Vienne
I awaken to the sound of my doorknob rattling.
My gun’s under my pillow, so I slide my hand under and grab it. I’m in just my underwear, so I slip on some pants and a shirt as someone continues trying to get into my house.
Gun brandished, I sneak toward the door and stay low, so whoever it is can’t see in through my window. It’s dark, but the moon is shining, allowing me to see the tall figure outside.
“Raiden?” I say aloud, mystified.
“Let me in, Vienne,” comes the voice from the other side.
The first thing I think to do is to tuck away the book Mom gave me. I spent some time reading it last night, all written from the point of view of a man who spent most of his life trying to understand trollkin. “The creatures with whom we share this world,” as he often referred to them.
I don’t need Raiden seeing it, not after I learned what I learned about imprinting. “The mate bond,” the author dubbed it. If the constant emptiness in my chest tells me anything, it’s that Graz was telling the truth.
But I made an even worse discovery: when one mate dies, there’s a high chance the other will, too. Just great. Whatever happens to Graz after this—or to me—we’re now tied together.
I twist the doorknob, still holding my gun, and crack the door open. Sure enough, Raiden stands on the other side, his dark hair half covering his eyes.
Dashing and a total asshole. Just my type. Well, before Graz.
“Vienne.” Raiden shoves the door open, pushing me aside, and slips into my house. Reflexively I raise my gun and step back. He holds up his hands in surrender.
“You’re going to shoot me?” he asks with a sneer. “Your boyfriend?”
My stomach turns over. “You’ve never been my boyfriend.” I lower the gun, even though my instincts rail against it. If I accidentally shot him, I’d go right to jail. “What do you want? Why the fuck are you here in the middle of the night?”
He closes the door behind him with a click .
“I’m here about your resignation letter.” He fishes something out of his pocket and holds it up. Sure enough, it’s the note I wrote before I left. “I didn’t give it to anyone, by the way.”
I scowl. “Why would you do that? I quit.”
“Nobody knows that. I told the rest of the corps you were ill.”
There’s an odd taste in the air, and all my alarm bells are ringing. I don’t put my gun down, but I do keep it at my side, my finger on the trigger.
Raiden takes a step toward me. “What did you find, Vienne? What are you hiding?”
“Nothing,” I snap.
He grins like he doesn’t believe me for a moment. “You would never just quit. You love the Corps. So you did it for a reason, and I think it’s because you discovered something you don’t want to share.”
“Get out.” I flick the safety off my gun so he can hear it. “I’ve made my decision. Now I need you to leave.”
That nasty grin grows even wider. Before I can react, Raiden lunges at me. I shoot my gun reflexively, but it goes right over his shoulder and into the ceiling.
“You shot at me?!” He wraps his arms around mine, pinning them to my sides. I struggle, aiming a kick at his groin, but when my foot connects, he takes it with an angry grunt.
“I always knew you were a piece of shit,” I snarl back as I fight him. But Raiden is bigger and meaner, and certainly better trained.
“Didn’t stop you from fucking me.” He pins me against the wall on my side, then snares both my wrists in one of his hands. With his other hand, he grabs a rope off his belt and winds it around them. Then he kicks me in the back, and a howl of pain leaves my throat as I stumble to my knees.
Fuck. That hurt.
He leans down and speaks into my ear in a deadly voice.
“I raided your apartment while you were gone,” he says, his breath hitting my skin and making me cringe. “I found your little map. If you don’t want me to kill your mother, you’re going to go with me to that last location, and show me what you’ve found.”
“What the fuck do you think it is that it’s worth all this?” I try to get to my feet, but Raiden shoves me back down.
“Because I know you, Vienne. Whatever it is, it’s big enough that you were willing to give up your life’s work.” He tugs the rope around my wrists tighter as he crouches down in front of me. “And I want a piece of it.”
I glare at him. “It’s not treasure.”
Raiden shakes his head. “Of course not. You’ve never been interested in treasure. You like secrets.” He reaches out to tap my nose, and I jerk back, tempted to spit on him. “And I know you’re keeping a big one.”
He yanks me to my feet. It’s the middle of the night, so I could scream and perhaps one of my neighbors would come out, but Raiden’s dressed in a military uniform. No one would question him dragging a prisoner from their home all tied up.
“If I came back with some ancient discovery, the King would be most grateful, I’m sure,” Raiden says, smirking. “Might even get that nice house I’ve been after.”
Damned that old man. He would most certainly reward Raiden handsomely if he came back with magic.
“You fucking asshole,” I growl.
Raiden sighs. “The time for talking is over.” He grabs a ball of fabric out of his jacket and shoves it roughly into my mouth. “We’re headed west, and we leave right now.”
* * *
Graz
The disgust is evident on Gusak’s face when I finish telling him the sordid facts—though I left out as much detail as I could. It’s likely the exact same face I made when I found Lo’zar in my house, telling me he’d mated with a human.
“But it worked,” Gusak muses. “Twice now, it required one human and one trollkin to enter the ruin and access magic?”
I nod, unsure of where he’s going with this.
“Hmm.” He rises to his feet and paces across the room as he thinks. “This sickness you described. After she woke you, you said you were well again?”
“Took a while, but yes.” I squeeze the arm of the chair I’m sitting in, because this interrogation is making me increasingly uncomfortable.
“And it hasn’t returned?” Gusak presses.
I shake my head. “Fit as a fiddle.”
“Where are you keeping it?”
Gusak’s question confuses me. “Where am I keeping what?”
His expression is dangerous as he says, “The magic. I want to know where you’re hiding the rest of it.”
I pull out the pendant again. “Right here. It’s sealed inside.”
Gusak sighs impatiently. “Don’t try to lie to me again, Graz, or I’ll put you in the pit with Big Green.”
I shudder. That’s his prize fighter, who could probably tear my head right off my shoulders without much effort.
Closing my eyes, I resign myself to whatever Gusak’s going to do with it. I can only hope he’ll heed the warnings I’ve given him so far and not do anything too foolish. “It’s in my shop. In a bag, tucked behind some scrap.”
“In a bag ?” Gusak scowls deeply. “You stupid orc. Don’t you realize?” He paces over and whacks me, hard, right on the side of the head. I squint and curl my shoulders, hoping to prevent further injuries. “It’s poison, you idiot! It was poisoning you.”
“Poison?” I shake my head. “It’s not poison.”
“The sickness. You had magic with you, did you not?” Gusak looks ready to cuff me a second time.
I nod hastily. “Yes.”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s all tied together. I’m surprised someone with your intellect hasn’t figured it out by now.”
Clearly he sees some pattern that I’ve missed. I think back to waking up with Vienne’s hand on my shoulder, her concerned blue eyes looking into mine.
The fog had cleared, and all I saw was her.
“Vienne.” Her name tumbles out of me. “You think it’s because of Vienne.”
“You were acting strange the first time you came to me,” Gusak says, a triumphant look on his face. “I thought it was odd. That’s why I tailed you. But you behaved strangely because you had magic on you, isn’t it? It was making you ill.”
Until Vienne.
“But she cured me.” I expel a long, deep breath as I realize the truth for myself. “Why? Why her?”
I don’t want to admit it, but I think I already know why.
Then Gusak gives the words life. “Because she’s your mate.”
Fuck. I know he’s right. The mate bond is clearly special to our ancient ancestors, if the vision that Vienne and I shared of the past is true.
Gusak prowls closer to me, no longer pacing. “You know, I have to ask.”
The tone of his voice makes me curl my shoulders tight. “Ask anything,” I say, even though I fully do not mean it.
“Did you help him?” Gusak is uncomfortably close now, and I sink deeper into my chair. “Were you the one who got that rat Lo’zar out of here on the boat?”
Fuck. I try not to give anything away, but someone like Gusak... he can probably tell the truth just by the expanding of my pupils. Still, he waits for me to answer, his big face and sharp tusks so close that he could gore me.
I have to think about Vienne. Maybe he’ll go easier on me—and won’t feed me to his pets—since I’m giving up the information willingly.
“...Yes,” I finally say. “But I had to.”
Gusak leans back, and his brows rise. “Had to? You just had to go under your boss’s nose and betray him?”
I cringe, but continue anyway. “It wasn’t about you,” I hurriedly explain. “I had to help my best friend get his mate out of here. Lo’zar saved my life many times over. I owed him.”
There. I’ve said it. I can’t take it back now.
But Gusak doesn’t summon his guards to take me away, as I expected. When I open my eyes, he’s studying me with his arms crossed.
“So this disease can spread. This human-fucking disease.” He cocks his head. “You are a clever orc, I’ll give you that. I never suspected you. I thought surely that guy is too smart to get involved with something so idiotic and risky.”
I have no defense. I knew helping Lo’zar and Rimi would land me into trouble someday, and that day has finally arrived. Maybe Gusak will beat me to a pulp himself. He usually prefers the violence down in his fighting pit, but I’ve heard he’s no stranger to dishing it out, either.
“Mates,” the boss hums, suddenly turning away from me. He’s not going to cuff me again? Or drag me down to meet the alligators? “So Lo’zar had one, too. In that stupid little human? I lost a lot of money on that deal.”
“It was clear they had a bond,” I say. I don’t know why I’m digging my hole even deeper, but I feel compelled to tell him my reasons. “I’ve known Lo’zar since I was a boy. I couldn’t abandon him.”
“Your loyalty is admirable,” Gusak says, reaching into his pocket. He withdraws a flip knife, and I realize my time has finally come. I thought I could protect Vienne from this, but I can’t.
He approaches me, opening the knife to reveal the silver blade. “But that loyalty should be to me, not him.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m already doomed, so I might as well tell him the truth. “I’ve never been loyal to you. I joined the clan because Lo’zar did. I mind my business, and do what you tell me, only so you don’t kill me.”
Unexpectedly, Gusak barks a loud laugh. He twirls the knife with expert precision.
“You’ve got balls on you, don’t you?” His lip quirks up. “Now that you’ve left your mate, you don’t care what becomes of you anymore.”
I shrug. Maybe so. It feels like I left an important part of myself behind in that forest, one that I’ll never get back. Perhaps it was my sense of caution and self-preservation.
Gusak gazes at one of the priceless paintings on his wall, as if he’s thinking long and hard about what to do with me. Then he turns, approaching me with the knife. I close my eyes and cringe—only to find him cutting free the ropes holding me down to the chair. “Well, you’re in luck. As it stands, I need you and your little human mate .”
I gawk at him. “What for?”
“To get me into the last ruin. So I can see it for myself and decide what must be done with it.” He grins, flipping the knife closed and tucking it back in his pocket.
The last ruin. I wonder if Vienne is headed there, too.
I hope not.