Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
Every misstep has witnesses.
ALISTAIR
Sunlight reflects off the ice, and I squint at the view.
Since moving to the Vegas Fringes, I’ve often missed Britain’s seasons. But after two weeks in this frozen wasteland, I’m desperate for the desert heat.
Ciprian’s black eyes are sharp. His playfulness is gone, and he’s focused on everything but me. My fingers curl, stiff in the cold.
Riven skirts the edge of the forest slowly, pretending neither of us exist. When he stops abruptly, I strain my ears to catch whatever caught his attention.
Something growls in the distance, then I hear arguing.
“They’re closer than I thought,” Riven says. “I want to get a count.”
“Is there a good vantage point nearby?” Ciprian asks. “Somewhere far enough away that they won’t smell us?”
Riven nods and points at a craggy overlook in the distance. It’s about half a mile away, but it looks steep. I keep my reservations to myself and follow the veydra, listening for any sounds besides our crunching footsteps and heavy breathing.
By the time we reach the rock face, it’s clear we’ll have to climb to reach the top.
“This is the quickest way up,” Riven says. “We could go around, but it’s a three-mile walk. We’d be caught by the midday eclipse.”
Ciprian sighs. “Up it is.”
He grips a handhold and begins to climb. My heart races as I track his progress, moving back and forth below him as he searches for the best places to grab on. It’s easily forty feet to the top. If he falls, he could break his spine or worse.
I sigh with relief when he reaches the top, my breath fogging around my face.
“Everything okay?” Riven asks. His strange lips curl as he glances up at Ciprian. “You seem tense.”
My nerves turn to anger in a flash. I pin him to the rock wall and wrap my fingers around his throat. “Listen to me, veydra. If you hurt what’s mine, I’ll find out if you bleed red like the rest of us, and I won’t stop until I spill every drop.”
Riven doesn’t react to the threat. His damn smirk doesn’t even slip. “Just so we’re clear,” he drawls. “Are you claiming them all or only the angel and demon?”
“Touch any of them and find out.” I shove him against the cliff one last time and back away.
“Bravo.” He claps silently. “Very intense. I give it a seven out of ten on the intimidation scale.”
“I despise you,” I seethe.
“I’m not your biggest fan either.” He raises one eyebrow. “You better climb the rock now, Alistair. Your boyfriend is getting worried.”
I glance up. Ciprian’s hair blends in with the snow, but he’s tugging on it, one foot dangling over the edge of the cliff like he’s about to climb down to get me.
I hold my hand up to stop him, then climb, using my vampire speed to reach the top before Riven can consider whether he wants to sabotage my ascent.
“What the fuck was that?” Ciprian demands. “It looked like you two were about to throw down.”
“Nothing; he’s a prick.”
“What did he say?”
I rub my chin and wince at the scratch of stubble. “It wasn’t really what he said . . .”
“Gods, Alistair, spit it out,” Ciprian snaps. “What was the problem?”
“I didn’t like how he looked at you, okay?”
My angry declaration is met with complete silence, because of course Ciprian only lets me have the last word when I don’t want it. He stares at me without blinking, only glancing away when Riven reaches the top of the cliff and hoists himself over the lip.
I resist the urge to shove him off. It would be satisfying, but it would create a host of other problems. Problems we aren’t equipped to deal with. Gods, I miss the Fringes.
Riven rubs his hands together briskly. “I’m going to watch from that corner. You two monitor the valley and stay out of sight. We’ll leave in one hour.”
“You’re going to take the witch rock with you?” I scoff. “I don’t think so. Hand it over.”
“You think I’ll leave you here to freeze.”
I nod and tug the pocket of my sweatshirt open. “Then tell Celine we were ambushed and there was nothing you could do.”
Riven shakes his head. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re paranoid?”
“Daily,” Ciprian mutters. “But I agree with him this time. Give us a sign of good faith.”
Riven pulls a cloth from his pocket and places it carefully in mine. “Don’t let it touch your skin by accident.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not an idiot.”
He snorts, then strides away, his long legs making quick work of the icy ledge. By the time he reaches his chosen vantage point, he’s nothing more than a mottled gray dot on the craggy cliff.
“What do you think?” Ciprian asks. “Change of heart or nefarious plot?”
“I can’t tell.” I sound as frustrated as I feel.
Ciprian shakes his head. “It’s not on you to figure him out, Alistair. We’re a team.”
“I know,” I snap, using my boots to brush ice pellets away from the rock. The accumulation is patchier up here, unable to stick for long because of the nonstop wind. Once I’ve cleared the ground in front of us, I drop to my belly and focus on the valley below.
Ciprian settles beside me, quiet for once. The silence isn’t comfortable. Not anymore. It hasn’t been comfortable since I learned his last name.
“Are you warm enough?” I ask, then kick myself for voicing the worry.
Ciprian laughs. “I’m freezing my nuts off, actually. How about you?”
“Same,” I mutter.
“Why do you ask?” His voice is dripping with sarcasm. “Do you want to cuddle?” Without even looking, I can tell he’s rolling his eyes.
He’s such a brat. The attitude. The prickly bullshit. If Celine isn’t around, he makes zero effort to get along with me. It pisses me off enough that I stop caring what he thinks and toss my arm around his shoulders.
“Yeah, I do,” I say cheerily. “Thanks for offering.”
He’s rigid against my side—obviously annoyed. I bask in satisfaction for a minute, maybe two, then the frustration returns. How can I fix things if he won’t let me?
“Will you ever forgive me, or am I wasting my time?” Pathetic. I put my pride in a headlock while I wait for him to respond. As the silence stretches, my skin crawls. I want . . . Gods, I don’t know. To take it back or roll myself off the cliff. Anything to break the tension.
“It depends,” Ciprian says. “Are you going to come clean and tell me who your source was?” I stiffen, and he shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“I can’t reveal my source,” I hiss. “It would put my business at risk. This is hypocritical, Ciprian, and you know it. You don’t run around spilling enclave secrets.”
A gust of wind blows over the cliff, cutting through our clothes and stealing my oxygen. Of all the things he could ask for, why this?
“Give me a break,” Ciprian says. “What’s hypocritical is you hating me for hiding my last name, then going on a revenge bender and threatening my best friend.”
This argument is familiar. Like stepping into a worn pair of shoes that always leave your heels blistered. It’s less angry and rawer than the last time we had it, but the core problem is the same: we’re at an impasse.
“I-I care for you,” I tell him. “And I’m sorry. Why can’t that be enough?”
Ciprian shifts against me. “What you did after.” He sighs. “Inviting me over, asking me to help with your project, pretending to let me fix things. It hurt, okay? And until I can look at you and it doesn’t, there’s nothing for us. You’re holding back, Alistair, and we both know it.”
My arm tightens around him. He sounds as exhausted by this as I am.
And I can’t stand it anymore. The distance, his suspicion. Ciprian trusts me to watch his back in a fight, but that’s it. We aren’t friends anymore; he’s made that clear. And dammit, why is that a loss I can’t endure?
“It was a mazzikin,” I say in a rush. I scrub a hand over my face, then force myself to keep going. “They came to my apartment. Said they had information for me. Asked me to call you because they were fading.”
I swallow. “So I did. I called you. And you came, and you were friendly—so bloody excited.” My mouth twists. “And I felt like shit, but I let them whisper in my ear, anyway. Let them tell me how dangerous Sheena was for the Fringes.”
I shake my head once. “I wouldn’t have hurt her. Never. But then the fight outside Celine’s apartment happened, and everything spiraled out of control. My thirst. The constant terror that I’d find her dead or gone—killed by her father or dragged away by yours.”
My arm, still wrapped around his shoulders, twitches. “I lashed out, and I’m sorry for it, Ciprian, but I can’t take it back.”
He makes an odd choking sound. “A mazzikin, Alistair? Are you fucking kidding—”
A roar reverberates through the valley, and I tug Ciprian tighter to my side. “Don’t move,” he whispers.
I don’t. I’m not positive I’m still breathing.
Since Ciprian and I first combined our magic, I’ve been able to sense when he’s weaving a nightmare. It’s less feeling and more a taste in the air, dark and smoky.
It hovers around me now as the first figures appear in the distance.
Veydran. Their cloaks billow in the wind, black-and-white camouflage fluttering among the sturdy trees at the edge of the forest. From this distance, they’re ant-sized, nearly harmless on their own, but in these numbers . . . I do a mental tally, then grit my teeth.
There are dozens. And behind them, the monstrous reptilian tracker thunders through the conifers. His breath fogs the air as he scents the wind.
“We’re too close,” I whisper. “He’ll smell us.”
Slowly, I twist my neck to find Riven. Crouched low to the ground, he’s heading this way as fast as he can without being seen. A chill runs down my spine. “Time to go.”
Ciprian’s eyes are unfocused pools of ink. His cheekbones are sharp, the hollows beneath them deeper and more pronounced than usual. He hears me, but he’s mostly focused on the senses his magic provides.
“Forty-seven,” he whispers. “There are forty-seven of them.”
The urge to touch his face is hard to resist. “Good work,” I tell him. “Can you hide us while we move?”
When the monster roars again, I don’t wait for his answer.
Scooting away from the ledge, I crawl backward, then grab Ciprian’s ankles and pull him with me.
A screech bounces off the rocks. It’s deafening, and the hair on my arms stands on end. Shit. That sounded like some kind of bird, one the size of a tank. I shudder. No part of me wants to tangle with something big enough to make that sound.
“Drop the nightmare.” I tug Ciprian to his feet and cup his cheeks. “We’ve got to go.”
He blinks, then bats my hands away and nods as his eyes focus.
We sprint toward Riven, and I slow my pace to match Ciprian’s.
Another squawk. Louder. Closer. It’s practically on top of us.
We meet in the middle, nearly colliding, and Riven grabs our wrists.
I stuff my hand in my pocket, toss the scrap of fabric to the side, and wrap my fingers around the polished stone.
Everything condenses. The tug behind my navel is harsh, squeezing my body through the eye of a needle.
The last things I see are thick, leathery wings—spanning thirty-feet across—rising above the cliff’s edge.
Then we’re whisked away.