Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Izzy
At breakfast, Van comes in late. He drops his sword in the corner and heads for the table. “I need coffee.”
“Where have you been?” I ask.
He leans over my shoulder to plant a kiss on my lips instead of answering. I kiss him back, slowly, deepening this kiss. My hand slides up his powerful shoulder, up his neck--and catch his chiseled jaw between my fingers when he starts to pull away.
“I know when you’re up to something,” I chide him.
“I’m always up to something,” he says with a wink, which is probably the truest thing Van could say.
I’m grinning when I turn back to the table and see the look on Thea’s face--a mix of contempt and hatred and desire that all translates to one emotion: jealousy.
“I thought maybe you two could spend the day getting to know each other,” Mr. Time says.
“Oh?” Thea gives him a look I can’t read as she stirs her coffee lazily. “I’m surprised you’d want the two of us to do that.”
“You are sisters,” Mr. Time says. “You should get to know each other.”
“We should’ve grown up together,” Thea says, and there’s a fierce edge in her voice.
“Yes, we should have,” I agree, but I don’t want to imagine us growing up twisted in Viggo’s care. I want to imagine us together despite foster care. What would it have been like, moving from home to home but bringing my own family with me?
Or what if our mother had been able to keep us, to protect us?
Mr. Time ignores that. “I need a package picked up. Can you two attend to that for me?”
Thea gets that stunned look across her face--as if she can’t believe Mr. Time is going to send the two of us off together, as if we’re all Too Stupid to Live.
Mr. Time wants me to get her out of the house while they try to find the piece we need to alter the Taka cage. Most of all, I think he wants me to spend more time feeling her out.
And yes, she could betray me.
But if I’m careful, I don’t think she can best me. Neither does Mr. Time.
The conversation goes on around us as the guys tuck into breakfast. Thea seems to be picking at her eggs, pushing them around her plate.
“Not a big breakfast person?” I ask.
“Ha, no,” she says. “Viggo used to force us to eat, and I used to throw up breakfast during my training. Doesn’t really leave one with a lifelong love of the most important meal of the day.”
I stare at her, horrified, and she pulls a face. “I wonder what it would be like if we’d been together,” she says, echoing my thoughts earlier. “I wonder if you’d still be so perfect if your life hadn’t been so easy.”
I don't even know what to say to that. I don’t want to make anyone feel sorry for me, but I don't think my life has been easy by any stretch.
“Excuse me?” Wilder demands before I can figure out what to say. He stares at Thea. “Izzy’s life hasn’t exactly been easy. She grew up in foster care.”
“Comparatively, sounds like cake,” she says, raising her glass of orange juice, only to set it down untouched.
“Maybe comparatively it was,” I agree, because I have no idea what she’s been through. All the stories sound so awful.
But Wilder’s not having it. “When I first met Izzy, she always wore sweatshirts, even in the summer. And I was just a kid, so I didn’t get why she did. But she was taken out of that home because they were abusive.” He glances at me. “I was so scared I’d never see you again.”
“Me too,” I say.
“Worst of all for Izzy,” Van drawls, leaning back in his chair, “we were the closest thing she knew she had to family, and we’re a bunch of assholes.”
Reid smiles faintly. “Are you going to grovel forever about how we mishandled that night?”
I grin at that. I don’t mind if they do grovel, to be honest. They’re cute when they grovel.
“No one rescued me,” Thea snaps back. “And there were a lot more than bruises.”
“I’m sorry no one ever rescued you,” Wilder says. “I wish we could’ve helped somehow. I wish Mr. Time had found you...”
Mr. Time looks sad, but Thea asks, “Were you even looking?”
Her tone is barbed, and he hesitates before he admits, “No. I figured if I watched over you, it might reveal where you both were. I tried to hide the mark, and then your mother hid you away. That was all I could do.”
Thea scoffs, obviously not believing him. “Yeah, that was all you could do.” She stands abruptly from the table. “Ready, Izzy? Gods as bike messengers, picking up packages?”
“Ready,” I say, because I feel some strange sense of loyalty to my sister, so I leave my coffee unfinished and drop my napkin on the chair. She’s obviously in a rush to be out of here, away from all my men and from Mr. Time.
The two of us hop into a car, and I drive us to Mr. Time’s destination where we pick up a package from a mysterious woman.
“Do you like being the good girl?” Thea asks me. “Mr. Time seems to like you.”
There’s a stiffness in her jaw, and I wonder why that irritates her. After all, she doesn’t know that Mr. Time is our grandfather, does she? I want to tell her, but Mr. Time thinks she’s rotten at her core and, well, I worry what that will do to her.
I don’t think she’s rotten. Broken, maybe. But who wouldn’t be?
Do people really break so badly that they can’t heal, if they want to, if they’re loved?
I don’t know.
I have to laugh at her words, though. “I don’t know if I like being the good girl. I’ve been the villain in a whole lot of people’s stories up until now. No one wanted the gods to come back.”
She looks as if she’s about to say something snarky, and then suddenly she shoves me. “Look out!” she shouts, her eyes widening.
I whirl to see a monster loping across the ground toward us. It’s the size of a bear, but the ugly face is something from another world. Drool streams constantly from its mouthful of jagged teeth.
“This is Viggo’s doing,” she says. She suddenly has blades in both her hands. She looks at me with worry across her face. “Do you have a weapon?”
“I have Loki,” I promise her.
We’re supposed to keep our powers as much a secret as we can, but there’s no hiding what I can do now. The two of us close up on the monster. My heart pounds in my chest, not just because it’s terrifying, but because I’m trying to trust my sister to watch my back.
When Thea nods, I dive in and I knock its legs out from underneath it. She pounces on it with her blades. It throws her off and whirls on me.
I transform into a snake and slither underneath it, striking out with poisoned fangs. The monster screams and I slip out the other side of its legs, behind it, transforming already.
“Nice work,” Thea says approvingly, and a warm glow lights my chest at her words.
“We make a pretty good team,” I admit.
The monster falls, but it lashes out at me one last time. Huge claws fly my way.
But they don’t land, because Thea is there, protecting me.
She slams into the ground, deep wounds gouged into her chest. The monster falls to the ground and disintegrates into a hundred pieces, as if it were never there.
But my sister’s bloodied body tells another story. I kneel over her, horrified, my breath strangled in my chest. Then I gather up her body and teleport home.