Chapter 14
Before getting into bed, I contemplated pushing the dresser in front of the door for an added layer of protection before realising just how stupid that idea was.
It wouldn’t matter what I did, Hunter would always have the upper hand.
Healing me wasn’t out of kindness, it was because Archer had made a valid point.
You couldn’t sell a love story when your fiancée had a shiny bruise on her face.
How clumsy could Elysia believe me to be?
I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling. The oleander clearly wasn’t at Hunter’s home.
There were only a few other places that it might be.
Archer’s home or the gardens. The labs back on Earth were bound to have a supply, but I had less of a chance of getting there than wandering around Elysia.
The wheels were coming off this plan quickly.
If I couldn’t find the plant, I would need to find the key for my cuff, but Hunter wasn’t going to leave that lying around.
Forcing my eyes shut, I let the darkness consume me and steadied my breathing. Tomorrow would be a new day. I needed to tread more carefully. As my mind turned over all the possibilities of how to take the next day, it eventually tired until I could no longer make sense of the thoughts.
I stood in my bedroom, littered with papers and stacks of books.
The fairy lights around my bed were on and the lamp on the desk bathed the room in a soft yellow glow.
The bed was unmade, duvet hanging off the mattress and pillows askew.
A deep ache pulsed through me, knowing that this wasn’t my reality.
I circled the space slowly, fingers brushing over my belongings.
Headphones, some enamel pins. There was even a selection of old coffee mugs that I hadn’t taken down to the sink yet.
What I wouldn’t give to sleep in my bed and invite Cass and Sophie over for dinner.
“You should have told me he raised a hand to you.” Archer’s voice broke through my nostalgia.
I jumped, but didn’t bother to face him. My fingers kept pushing the papers on my desk. In the margins were my notes in looping cursive and dotted around those were Gray’s silly little sketches that he drew in a bid to make me smile.
“What difference would it have made?” I asked him eventually. “It only matters to you if he throws me down the stairs? I needed your help before that happened and you said no. What do you want now? You have all the blackmail material you need.”
His steps were heavy until they came to a stop behind me.
“Touch me,” I told him, my body stiffening at his proximity. “And I swear, I will—”
“I’m not going to touch you, but I would appreciate if we can have this conversation face to face.”
Gritting my teeth together, I turned around slowly. Archer had left a small space between us, which I was grateful for.
“What do you want?” I asked.
His gaze bore down on me as if he were searching for something. I squared my shoulders, ready for a fight. I was always prepared for the worst these days.
“I was wrong,” he said eventually. Even those three words seemed like a monumental effort for him.
I narrowed my eyes. “Is that an apology?”
“Clearly not. It is an admission.”
“And what am I meant to do with that?” The anger was starting to boil again.
“You were wrong. Of course you were! You believed a psychopath who has double crossed everyone. What did you think, Archer? That you were special. Are you that desperate to be loved again that you’ll take the smallest crumb of validation from Hunter? ”
A smirk tugged at his lips. “He really is mistaken in thinking you are meek.”
“Leave me alone.” I pushed past him. “You’re wasting my time, and I want nothing to do with you.”
Gray’s warnings were ringing in my ears. I should have listened to him and never entertained anything Archer had to say to me. He was only good at stirring the pot.
“Not even if I choose to help you?”
I stopped in my tracks, staring at the back of my bedroom door. “What do you expect in return?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.” I faced him again and Archer stood with his hands in his pockets, looking bored as usual. “Gods always want something. It’s how you survive. You exist because of the prayers mortals make. You literally need them to need you in order to be here, so don’t bullshit me.”
That was the part mortals didn’t know about.
If they did, I wondered how the scales would tip.
And that was with mortals. When it came to their own kind, they didn’t ask for prayers, but there were similarities to the exchanges.
There was always a deal. Always a catch.
I’d never be stupid enough again to believe that any of them did something out of kindness.
“Nothing,” he repeated. There was a flicker across his features before he sighed.
“Quentin, let me be frank with you, if you’ll allow me.
” He took my silence as his sign to continue.
“I have been around for centuries, and I am exhausted. All I have wanted for the last few decades is justice for my Elara. But she would never have wanted anyone else’s suffering as a result.
” Archer dropped his gaze to the floor, and I noticed the lines that were etched into his face. “Do you know what her gift was?”
“No,” I whispered, racking my brains to see if I could remember anyone mentioning it.
“Hope. She was responsible for hope.” A smile appeared and left so quickly I could have imagined it. “That was her gift.”
“It sounds like a beautiful one.”
“It was,” he agreed. “She’d be ashamed to have seen what happened to you and to know that I had a part in it.”
I stood silently, unsure of what to say. Archer had brought up Elara so sparingly, protective of the memory of his soulbound. Selfishly keeping her to himself, and I couldn’t blame him. Having never met her, I couldn’t add anything to the comments he had just made.
“So.” He rubbed a hand through his hair and the dark strands stood up in different directions. “It’s about time I did something to make her proud. You wanted help, and I’m here.”
How was I meant to trust him? One story that tugged at the heart and then I was meant to spill everything to him?
My delay caused him to look up. “You don’t trust me?”
“I have no reason to, Archer.”
He raised an eyebrow and let out another sigh. “Understandable. But you have trusted far worse than me. What exactly is my crime?”
“You knew exactly what Hunter was up to and you let him do it!” I hissed.
“I had no idea that he planned to marry you, which was a misstep on my part. I should have paid more attention to my conversations with him. I should have known there was something bigger at play. You’ll have to forgive my lapse in judgement. Tell me your plan and I’ll help you.”
“You already know what I want to do. You’ve seen it.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the words aloud even though the visions of me getting rid of Hunter grew more vivid and violent with each passing day.
“I have.” A twisted smile spread across his lips. “You’re a bloodthirsty little thing when backed into a corner.”
I ignored the way the comment made me uncomfortable in myself. Ambition had always driven me and there were decisions I’d made in my life that I wasn’t always proud of. But none of them compared to the choice that faced me now—kill or be killed.
“The oleander,” I said, choosing not to respond to his comment. “I need to know where it is. I couldn’t find a single sprig of it at Hunter’s place.”
“He wouldn’t keep it there. He wouldn’t risk anyone coming in and seeing it. There’s no excuse under the sun that would have anyone accept the fact that he has something lethal at his home. It was never meant to enter Elysia again.”
“But you have some,” I pointed out. “You were happy to grow it.”
“Keep it,” he corrected me. “I never grew it.”
“I’m not going to argue with you over semantics, Archer. You still have it, and I need it.”
Archer shook his head. “I don’t.”
“What do you mean, you don’t? I need it. This isn’t—”
“I don’t have it anymore. Tobias came to look at it. You remember, it wasn’t exactly healthy. He took it away to nurse it and I haven’t seen it since.”
That was a spanner in the works. When I’d come up empty-handed at Hunter’s home, I’d banked on Archer still having his supply.
“What are the chances that it would be at the greenhouse?”
“Highly unlikely. Hunter will not want it anywhere it could easily be found. Tobias would be the best person to ask.”
“There was some in the lab,” I reminded him. “You can go down and get it.”
“It might take a few days.”
“Why?” I asked, brows pulling together.
“Hunter isn’t allowing any of us down there right now.
And he’s been calling in on me more often than not.
If I disappear, he’ll want to know why. I have no business on Earth, none of us do anymore, so either I need to make some business or I need to find a window that would be wide enough for me to go down and take it.
” Sensing my unease, he added, “I will try and get an answer from Tobias. He will know something. Hunter has been keeping him close.”
“Thank you,” I said.
The uncomfortable feeling that had swirled inside my stomach remained there.
The relief I thought I would feel when I recruited help failed to materialise.
There were so many things that could go wrong.
Archer could go straight to Hunter and tell him everything.
He could keep the oleander to himself and get the justice he always wanted.
He could make sure that he cemented his place amongst the elite by doing Hunter’s bidding for the rest of his days.
Or he could be telling you the truth and giving you a way out, a tiny voice whispered.
Listening to that voice would either be my greatest triumph or my biggest failure.