Chapter 14 #2
I throw his arm off and shoot him another glare that only makes his mouth curve in amusement.
What we’re doing is serious. I don’t like Death Bonds.
I don’t make a habit of asking people to pledge their lives for me.
Unless it’s for their safety, which in this instance it is.
I know Case. He’ll look after Ember whether I ask him to or not, and when they catch him doing it — at least with a Death Bond on his arm, he can say his life was at stake if he didn’t.
“Put your arm on the table then,” Seracia says.
Case pushes up a sleeve, presenting her the underside of his forearm. She probes his skin with delicate fingers, while Case makes faces like it’s hurting him. When her hand lifts, there’s a darkly shaded rose on his skin.
That done, now we’re at the part where he can’t be here, so I pretend to hear something on the other side of the black curtain.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Your imagination?”
“Go patrol the corridor, Case.”
He listens, for once. I wait for the sound of his footsteps and idle whistling to fade before beginning.
“I need to know what this is.” I place Arissa’s gold coin under the candlelight for Seracia to inspect.
The land dragon inscribed on one side of it resembles the ones at the Allwitch temple.
On the other side, there’s an image of a tree from the Circle of Seven.
“I can’t tell you,” she says, after turning it over for a long minute, weighing it.
Can’t tell me and not I don’t know — the only way she can answer without lying about it.
“You’ll have to ask an Allwitch.” She dusts the coin on the tablecloth as my trip wires ping, mentally transmitting that Case is crossing back.
“Take the ferry out of Gnarlton. The one with the blind captain. The passage will take you to Alchemia. If you survive it.”
She returns the coin, and I slip it in my backpack just in time for Case to flick aside the curtain.
“Yeahhh. You’ll be doing that without me.”
“Case,” I sigh.
I trust him, as much as Ash or Rayne, but if the coin means what I think it does, he’s safer not knowing. He leaves, but not without kicking my wires so my brain chimes multiple times on his way. It won’t be long before he gets bored and returns.
“Where did you come across it?” Seracia asks. There’s another ask coming. There always is.
“Prison.”
“Interesting.” She raises her brows, her voice a sweet venom. “I want you to get me into the Creation Academy. As a student. I asked Charley, but — different priorities.”
“You’re a Dark Witch. Wards are one thing, but passing as a Creation student — ”
“I’ll pass.”
I pause at the curtain as I’m on my way out. Getting Seracia into the Creation Academy won’t be easy, but I need her to keep working with me. I check the zip on the pocket the coin’s in before leaving and say, “I’ll see.”
* * *
Not until we reach my apartment in Creatus does it become clear. Case does smell. But we both do. Smoke and sweat’s all over us, staining our clothes and steeped into our skin.
He beelines for the washroom. I down a glass of whiskey before joining him in the shower, stripping off my shirt but leaving on my sweatpants.
Standing under the rain of the center showerhead, my sweatpants quickly soak through.
The gray cotton is heavy with water and clings to my skin.
I pretend not to notice the way Case frowns down at them.
“Interesting choice.” He puts a hand on my waist, more focused on the bulge in my pants than what I recently said to him.
We should be friends.
And then, because he’d replied, That’s what we’ve always been, I had to make it clearer for him. Friends who don’t have sex.
He backs me against the tile, and his fingers hook into the elastic around my hips, lightly tugging the sweatpants down an inch. He’s not an ass; he waits to see where I want to go with this.
I lift a brow, taking in his face and the warm water running down it in rivulets. “Thought we decided we’re better off not doing this?”
“You decided that. I cast twenty spells tonight. Then you followed me into the shower.”
“I know. But I can’t. Not when . . .” The glass steams, and I close my eyes for a second. I listen to the water softly patting the base of the shower.
For Elementals, sex drive is power, and after a long night of casting spells, Case needs to release it.
I know he’ll think it’s Vyra, or maybe even Ember, but it isn’t.
It’s my legs — what the sweatpants are hiding — and the fact that if I cast one more spell tonight I’ll deplete and end up sleeping.
“I’ll go to the brothel,” he says, not upset about it.
I pump a few drops of soap in my hand and lather my chest while he goes to stand under another showerhead. For all of five seconds.
He comes back, drags his hand down the soap suds on my abs, slowly clearing them.
Then his finger traces the shape of the scar I know he blames himself for, but he shouldn’t.
He touches the scar where it starts below my navel, then trails down to where it ends at my thighs, his hand staying over the fabric of my pants.
My hips shift forward, wanting more. But I can’t.
I flatten my palm over his hand. A Stop. An I meant it when I said we needed to let go of this.
He pulls his hand away. “Is it Vyra?”
I shake my head.
“Ember?” he tries again.
I tip my head up so the spray hits me directly in the face. Water gets in my eyes, stinging.
“So you haven’t told her yet?”
“Told her what?” I ask, but I know. Lately, it’s all Case and I talk about. He hates how I’m handling things with her. I can’t see another solution.
“Your Death Bond?” he says. “That you’re dead if she doesn’t figure her shit out?”
“Don’t want her to know,” I say.
He says something else, but all I hear is Ember now. Her name echoes off the glass and lingers. Ember. Ember. Ember. My pulse syncs to it, my blood itching. I crave moonale. Moonale, coffee, lavender, and vanilla. I breathe it in —
“Lee?”
Beads of water roll off my lashes as I’m blinking rapidly, fighting to snap out of it.
“Tell her you’ll die if she doesn’t go to Selection. Tell her to suck it up and be a Dark Witch. Tell her — ” He sprays me down with the gentle setting on the handheld showerhead. “I don’t want to lose my best friend.”
I take a deep breath like I might say something different, but — “No.”
Case shuts the water off and gets out, leaving me standing there, trying not to send the wrong message by staring too much at him.
He doesn’t want me to die, and I don’t want to leave him.
But Jaxan’s left me with no other choice.
If Ember doesn’t make it to Selection, and no part of me thinks she will, I’m dead.
* * *
My transmitter buzzes on the coffee table, and Case, hanging around hoping I’ll change my mind about going to the brothel with him, braces his arms on the back of my chair. He leans in to read the message from Ember as if it’s for him.
We like the same things — people, not their genders.
And if the six messages he sent me after hauling her away from the Allwitch temple are any indication, he doesn’t dislike Ember.
Regardless of how frustrated he is because of my Death Bonds.
He knows it’s not her fault. She doesn’t know about them.
Ember Blackburn: You don’t need to Refresh my things anymore. Thank you for the gold.
Leland Stray: Hi, Ember.
Case blows out a judgmental breath. “A comma?”
I glare at him to back up, but it doesn’t matter because she’s turned her transmitter off, which I know because my reply is stuck in the status of Waiting To Be Delivered.
I figure she’s still mad about the coin I stole from her and lied about.
It’s good, though. Ignoring the tightness in my chest and how I want to flip the coffee table, this is good. It’s what I want.
Leland Stray: Coin was yours.
Leland Stray: Glad you messaged though because I wanted to tell you something. Skye Ambrosia’s taking you shopping in the morning. She likes bacon, cats, and I’ve told her to put twice as much on my tab every time you refuse to spend my gold.
I type a third message, Sleep well, but I don’t hit send. My teeth grind, my blood itching again. It’s enough to make me relent and give Case the answer he wants.
We leave for the Silverstone brothel, spending the night with company in complete and total darkness, my blood pounding the entire time to remind me I’m not with her. My Counterpart.