Chapter 29 Rae
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
RAE
“If you stab me every time we need to talk, I’ll end up dead.” He’s clutching at his bleeding forearm and shadows are already rushing to staunch the wound.
“Tell me of another way then!”
“Cut a fine line. Slap me. Punch me.”
“Like this?” I throw a punch at his face but he grabs my fist and stops it, giving me a savage grin.
“I’m here now. And keep your thumb tucked under when you punch or you’ll break it.”
I snatch my hand back. “Maybe I should kick you in the nuts.”
“So much violence. Not in the cock?”
“You’re right, why not? That would be harder to miss. I feel kind of sorry for you, in fact.”
One brow goes up. “You do? Why?”
“With that thing hanging between your legs, walking must be really uncomfortable.”
“You worry about me?”
“You? No. I’m worried about your cock. Wouldn’t want Big Fellow to get hurt as you walk about.”
“Are you saying I have a very big cock?”
“Am I wrong?”
His grin widens. “You like my very big cock.”
“I’m fond of it, yeah. But that’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it?”
I grab the front of his shirt, shake him. I want to laugh but I also want to cry some more, and I won’t. I won’t do either. “Jai… Are you okay?”
He cups my face. “Are you?”
I nod.
“Gods, the thought of losing you… I can’t ask you to be with me. I shouldn’t be around you. I’m bad news.”
“Don’t do that.” I shake him some more. “You can’t push me away now. You can’t break me, Jai.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I am.”
“The future isn’t bright for me. Remember the prophecy—”
“Screw the prophecy.” A breath shudders out of me. “I know who you are. I know. You should have told me right away.”
“Makhair… My love.” His eyes glitter. His mouth trembles. “I wasn’t sure. When you told me you’re finnfolk, I doubted my instinct. You’ve changed.”
“So you said. Something—”
“—beautiful. You were a pretty girl, now you’re the most beautiful woman.”
“Stop. Tell me. Tell me everything.”
Convince me. Convince me it’s you, that the news is good after all, that I may have been misled by the king but I wasn’t wrong that Mars is alive.
He has to be able read my face, the tangled emotions I need to sort out, because if this is Mars, my Mars… I need him to confirm this, to tell me everything. I want to pound my fists against his chest because this joy, this relief is so sharp it feels like pain.
He bows over me. “I want—”
“Athdara!” Guards are approaching, carrying their wounded companions. “We are going to report to the king. Your presence is requested.”
“No. You go.” He turns to scowl at them, but he pales, his face going an unhealthy gray, and now I see what he has already seen. “Arkin! Is that Arkin you’re carrying?”
“Yes, my lord Athdara, he was injured.”
“Fuck.” Jai spears his fingers through his messy hair. “I’m coming with you.”
“You should rest,” I protest, jumping to my feet, too. “And your arm…”
He gives a rueful grin, poking with his fingers the still bleeding wound I caused. The shadows scatter, then return, wrapping around his forearm. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“How can I not?” I look at him and he looks at me, and so much passes between us, unspoken.
“Are you injured, Athdara?” one of the guards asks.
“No,” Jai says.
“Yes,” I say at the same time.
Jai gives me a faint smile. “I’m going with Arkin to the infirmary.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” I start after him and find my legs shaking. All that tension, the running, didn’t help.
“No. You’re exhausted.” He seems torn between following them and staying with me. “Fuck…”
“Don’t worry, Athdara. I will accompany her to her room,” a familiar voice says, and I find Tru standing there. “I’ll make sure she has a bath drawn and food to eat so she can rest.”
Jai’s brows jump, but he nods. “I appreciate that.” He turns to me, lifts a rough hand to cup my face. “Please, go with him and be safe. I will come find you as soon as I can.”
A tremor is starting in my bones, working its way up. “But I—”
“Keep yourself safe. I can’t think when you’re in danger. Remember, makhair. You are the other half of me. The better half.”
The tremor reaches my face, my mouth. I feel bared, vulnerable, open wide for him. “Am I?”
“I loved a girl once,” he says, “with a mouth like a rose, hair like ebony, and eyes like the night. I thought she was dead and gone.”
My mouth trembles. “Jai.”
But he shoots me one last, faint smile and limps after the others.
Leaving me with Tru.
“Come with me, my lady,” Tru says, pressing a hand to my back, between my shoulder blades, and gently herding me toward the palace. “You need to rest.”
I let him guide me through the half-familiar passages, the maze of the palace, a haze over my thoughts.
“I loved a girl once with a mouth like a rose…”
Mars… Jai doesn’t look like Mars or maybe he does, but the coloring threw me off. He was a boy when I knew him. That delicate face has changed into the chiseled planes of the man he is now. He matured but it’s been a hundred years… He doesn’t age, or ages slowly because he’s not human.
Like me.
But why didn’t he say so right away? Why wait until now?
Jai. Even his name sounds like the Jackal, the nickname he used to have back when I knew him. Why didn’t he say…?
“Songbirds in cages are not for me. If you felt obliged to stay with me, I’d set you free.”
And I had told him I loved the king. I told him I believed the king’s accusations. Then he found out I was finnfolk and together with the changes in me…
“I knew it for sure when I kissed you. My fated mate. There’s only ever one in the world.”
This is it, the answer to the riddle. “There has only been one woman for me, and that’s fate. Fate can’t be undone.”
My heart…
I had convinced myself that the king was the boy I had once loved. I’d made my peace with that, that the boy I loved is a bloodthirsty, evil alien king. How can I change the angle now, see the picture differently? It’s breaking my mind.
How would the king know such intimate details of my past? Exact quotes of what Mars told me? How, if he’s not Mars?
“You seem pensive,” Tru says, leading me through the palace. “Is everything okay?”
“Can we ask the maids to run a bath for me?” I ask. “I’m dying for a bath.”
I mean it literally. I feel as if my skin is so dry it will crack and peel right off me. I’ve been out of the water for too long.
“Of course. Like I told Athdara, I will make sure you take a bath.”
“Thank you. You’re such a good friend to him.”
He gives me a strange look. “Jai and I, we trained together at the palace when he was brought in by the king. Arkin joined us two years later. The king had me look after him. He was afraid Jai might try to off himself.”
“Off himself? Why?”
“He had lost the woman he loved, remember?”
I nod.
“It didn’t help that he couldn’t recall where he had come from, or anything about his past life.
She had been his one anchor to this life, and she was gone.
Meanwhile, Phaethon had woken up. With the Eosphor riding his mind, demanding he call down the dragons and open the gates, he was barely alive, his mind shattered.
For a long time, he was like a wild animal, snarling and throwing himself at the walls, hitting himself and foaming at the mouth… unable to live and yet unable to die.”
I shudder. Gods, that’s horrible. Unfathomable that I thought my Jackal was dead when he was in such torment for so long and I was unaware of it, lost in my own pain.
“Now he’s doing well. With the decades that passed, he got over the pain of the past and with the king’s help, started controlling Phaethon’s howling in his head. Still… he needs our help. Our protection. Arkin and I have been guarding him with our lives for decades.”
“You are amazing friends,” I whisper.
“But you see, although he regained his sanity… he was never happy before you arrived.” He frowns. “Jai is falling for you.”
I smile because Tru doesn’t know not even half of it. “That’s good, right? That he’s happy?”
“I am not sure, Rae. Not sure at all.”
“What?” I stop in my tracks. “What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it true you work for the finnfolk?”
I flinch. “How…?”
“Don’t get me wrong. Arkin and I were so relieved when you saved Jai in the arena. The mermaids helped you, I suppose. Be honest with me.”
He doesn’t know I am finnfolk. Imagine if he did. This is already bad.
“I wouldn’t have let him drown, Tru,” I say, “no matter what. You know that.”
He doesn’t reply. The silence between us stretches, tense and vibrating. I follow him down another corridor, wondering what he’s thinking. If I convinced him or not.
After a while, I can’t take it anymore. We’re in a part of the palace I don’t know. “Where are you taking me?”
“You wanted a bath,” he says mildly.
“Yes, but…”
“This way.” He gestures and I walk ahead of him, casting him worried glances over my shoulder. “Have you been to the palace baths? They are marvelous.”
“No, I… Nobody told me about them.”
“You’ll love them. They are reserved for the aristocracy, you see, but I can get you in.”
“You don’t need to bother. A simple bath will do.”
“Nothing is too fancy for Jai’s lady.”
I shake my head. Something’s wrong. “Tru… just take me to my room.”
“As you wish.” His hand presses against my back again. He guides me through halls and rooms, up stairs and more stairs, and right about when I’m totally disoriented, he leads me out onto a large balcony over the ocean. The balustrade is broken in two places. I wonder what happened.
“What are we doing here?”
“I wanted to show you the view.”
“Tru—”
“Jai is my friend. And you are his enemy. I saw you talking to the mermaid on the terrace. The mermaid trying to haul Jai into the sea.”
“Shit.” I slink along the wall, inching away from him. “Tru, look. I wouldn’t let her take him.”
“You are betrothed to a sea prince. I heard what she said. You work for the sea queen, for the finnfolk, those bastards who took my sister from me.”
His sister? “About that—”
“Jai still isn’t completely sane. The creature in his mind is alien and has its own agenda. I may or may not agree with the king’s plan to open the gates, but…” Tru advances on me. I take a few steps back. “But Jai is a good man and I won’t let you kill him.”
“Kill him?” I shake my head. “No! I’m not planning on killing him, I don’t—”
He shoves me backward. I stumble back and suddenly there is no more ground underneath my feet.
He has pushed me off the balcony, the balustrade was broken, he just shoved me—
A scream tears out of me as I tumble through the air.
And into the sea.