SAWYER
Angel’s and my return to the Shadow Sanctum has been … unexpected.
After waiting out the storm beneath that small cliff, Angel and I followed the river for two days before the fence appeared, and we came face-to-face with a Keeper on the other side.
As I called out to him, I braced myself for a dirty look or a grumble, maybe even a dreg rolling off Manny’s vicious tongue. Surely, a man who greedily sliced open my back and spit in the wound would be disappointed to see me, of all people, alive.
No.
There was a gasp and a squint and a trace of a smile. He pulled a small flute-like instrument from his pocket and blew a pitch that made me cringe.
I covered my ears while he rattled off notes that summoned two more Keepers, both sprinting to the fenceline with such intensity that Angel’s fists raced.
I stiffened. But all they brought was palpable excitement they seemed unable to put into words—not a word was spoken while they ushered us inside the compound.
The horn blared. I held my breath in anticipation for whatever ceremony we were walking into. I didn’t even realize it was ours.
A crowd had already formed when we emerged from the forest. World Cup-winning cheers followed a stabbed finger in our direction, and if confusion hadn’t dulled my senses, I would’ve cupped my ears.
Angel and I exchanged a look.
The sun was just setting as they ushered us to the ceremonial stage.
There, people tossed flower petals while chanting our names.
Keepers removed the collars in a delicate fashion, and when they were finished, they tossed them behind the stage and set off the explosives like fireworks, earning an all-new eruption of glee from the crowd.
Glee.
Angel grabbed my arm as the explosion rocked the stage. If he believed Luna was one to bluff, he was thoroughly corrected. We both were.
As Aurelius was giving us his speech, ‘joyously welcoming two brothers into the collective,’ my eyes sought Luna in the crowd. I found Thorne, but she was nowhere in sight.
Not in the crowd.
Not at the celebratory—breadless—feast Aurelius arranged, though her sisters were present.
It took painful restraint not to ask if Luna was sick. She was never mentioned, nor was there any trace of illness in the compound.
Freshly showered, I flip off the light and fall back onto the surprisingly comfortable bed assigned to me in my private room at the Grove. Most cultivators bunk together, but apparently, Angel and I passed a test no initiate before us has completed… Which apparently makes us special.
That, and the millions of dollars we’ve promised to shuffle over. Either way, it’s nice to be promised privacy.
I close my eyes while rolling my ankles, forcing blood to flow through my tired feet. The room is warm, and the shower I took steamed the entire bathroom, but my toes spent too much time numb. I’m lucky to have them.
Four soft knocks on my door pull a groan from deep within my chest. It’s a hesitant rhythm, the anthem of the guilty.
Angel.
With commentary on the creepy welcoming we had this evening.
With a strategy briefing we’ll pretend isn’t a lecture.
With more plans to murder the woman I… can’t fucking stand.
Five minutes.
Three seconds pass before the hallway light bathes the room and a ghostly figure appears in the doorway.
If the knocks were conniving, the black hood shadowing the person’s face lays a blanket of ill intent.
A scarf covers from the nose down and sways over the person’s shoulders—narrow shoulders.
Delicate, like the subtle curve of cloth along the feminine waist I didn’t realize how intimately I knew.
Recognized in a darkened room on a night I least expected her to show.
The door closes and the overhead light flips on.
My head drops to the pillow with a sigh. “Now you come see me.”
Luna throws her hood off and unwraps the scarf from her neck. She locks the door—extremely presumptuous—and steps hesitantly toward the bed. A mouse approaching a snake. Or a timid John approaching a whore.
I could kill her.
“I needed to make sure it was safe. I um… Some things have changed since you left.”
Since I left?
I snort and lay my arm over my eyes. Any minute she’ll be giving me that look, that godforsaken pout of her lower lip that can draw a blind man’s eyes—and empty their wallet in the same breath. She could take anything with that look.
She must know it because instead of reading the room, she unzips her jacket. The next several seconds are filled by rustling fabric and a dip at the edge of the bed.
If she gives me a command… Calls me "slave" once…
“What do you want, Luna?”
My arm slips from my face. Luna sits half perched on the edge of the bed, but at my glare, she stands.
Dainty hands brush her sweater in three obsessive strokes, eyes pointed at her breasts. For the life of me, I can’t help but follow.
“I… I was…” Deep breath. Dramatically deep, one notch too far, as if she wants me to think she’s hanging by her fingertips. Like she believes I’m a big enough sucker to catch her again.
I’m not.
But I find my gaze sweeping her face for … clues. Red eyes, swollen lips, a mouth-shaped bruise stamped on her neck. I find a pale face and nervous fumbling lips—no red, no purple.
Pressure in my lungs yanks my attention a half second before a held breath rushes out.
“I wanted to congratulate you on a successful initiation. And I wanted to…” Luna’s hand twirls as she sorts through fresh bullshit. “Express my gratitude for your safe return.”
“Wow.” I sit up. Place my hand over my heart. “Thank you, Your Grace. That really means a lot coming from you.”
Her hands clasp over her stomach.
Nausea?
“Fuck, I mean…” I blink a few more times than necessary and raise my shoulders. “With the explosive collar you put around my neck and the sneaky bullshit you pulled to disorient me, for a moment there, I thought you wanted to get rid of me.”
Those hands on her stomach squeeze.
She doesn’t eat bread.
“I knew you could find your way back.”
“Mmm.” I nod slowly.
“I’m more curious about why you brought the Spaniard back with you,” she says with just a thin veil of accusation.
I let out a laugh that sounds remarkably like a bark. “Did that fuck up your plans?”
Her shoulders cave. Maybe a shrug. “I have no plans for the Spaniard, I just… I thought I made it clear to you where your best interests lay.”
“Yeah.” My cheeks puff with a dramatic exhale. “I don’t know. I think sometime between when you ran back to your puppy dog after using me like I’m your actual fucking slave and when you left me in a rainstorm with a bomb around my… Are you all right?”
A beat of silence.
“What?”
I gesture with a sweep of my hand toward her abdomen. “You’re hugging your stomach… And you’re pale. Are you feeling sick?”
Her hands fall to her sides as she shifts her weight. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not nauseous? You look—”
“I just said I’m fine, didn’t I?” Her eyes constrict only to soften a moment later. “We’re not enemies anymore, Sawyer. When I told you to kill the Spaniard, I had your best interests in mind.”
“I kind of think you had your best interests in mind.”
Her mouth opens to protest, but I go on.
“And it turns out that nearly freezing to death and going without food for forty-eight hours can really bring two people together. The Spaniard and I are buds now.”
Twenty years of prior friendship didn’t hurt either.
“Oh,” she says with a wrinkle in her nose. “Well, I’m … happy for you. I’m glad you had company out there.”
“You look it.”
Her face smooths in an instant. “Do you believe I’d wish otherwise? How could I… What are you doing?”
Luna shifts backward as I approach, but she steadies herself; cranes her neck to peer up at me. When her arms go to cross, I clutch her hands and bring them to my chest.
She gasps like an innocent virgin—so young, so fragile, so full of shit.
And it robs my temper anyway. There’s a moment where I think about letting her go, asking her to leave, and going to bed.
But her big blue eyes twinkle with wanting, and her body molds to mine.
Her tipped chin no longer holds caution but anticipation, eyelids dipping low, lips parting with an invitation I could burn.
She deserves all the mercy of a spider beneath a boot.
“You would know all about loneliness, wouldn’t you, Your Grace?
” I swipe the tip of her nose with my own and follow the cushioned flesh until it turns to bone.
It’s nothing. Hardly even a tease. Yet she teeters, hips pressing against mine—because she wants me to feel in control. That’s how she controls me.
“What did you really come here for?” I ask, mouth to her ear. I trace the lipped curve with my tongue while giving her hands a squeeze.
“I miss you,” she whispers.
“You do?”
She nods. Because she can’t see my jaw tense. She misinterprets my tightening grip.
“You love to miss me at night, don’t you?” As my tongue dips inside her ear, she sighs. “I might not be as pathetic as Thorne, but I’m really fun to have sex with, aren’t I?”
The air stills as she tenses. Tries to pull away.
“You get to call me slave. Hit me. Fuck my mouth. Sob on my shirt like I’m your goddamn therapist. Sounds like a pretty good deal for you.”
When she tries to pull away a second time, I yank her hands against my chest and hold her close.
“Sawyer—”
“Don’t. If you’re going to call me Dreg in the morning, you don’t get to say my name now.”
“You’re no longer a Dreg. You’re a valued brother of—”
I rear back with a laugh so swift, it shifts a lock of her hair, and in an instant I wish I’d stayed where I was. Because I wouldn’t have to look into her eyes.
Two icicles woven around black dots growing smaller by the moment.
As if she knows what the blue of her eyes does to me; as if she conjures the gloss to spread, the softness to settle in the tender flesh surrounding each orb.
Angel has always said I have a gift for reading the competition, and it’s true: there’s something about a person’s eyes that tells all, even if their hands do not. I’ve made millions off this gift.
Today, it’s a curse.
I yank my eyes to a space just past her right shoulder as I let go of her hands and give a slight shove that makes her stumble backward.
But I’m weak. Already, I feel my anger cooling.
Leave.
Please.
“Take your fucking daddy issues out of my room. And don’t come back.”
I don’t dare look into her eyes, but I hear her gasp… and then nothing. There’s never an exhale. No retort.
But from the corner of my eye, I watch her hand draw to her mouth. The other presses over her stomach, as though she’s nauseous after all.
Her coat and scarf lie abandoned on my bed as she hurries out the door.
Slam.
The air seems thinner than before, and the rattle of the wood reverberates in my head. Luna would never sob in public—I know that—but I hear it anyway, a relic from the other night.
Too harsh.
Yet effective. Too late to take it back now…
I count to thirty before my attention tugs toward the coat. It’s freezing outside—not unlike the temps she forced me to trek through the last few days.
With a scoff, I fling the coat to the floor and lie down on the bed.
She doesn’t care about me.
She doesn’t even care about Thorne.
I am not like him, lapping at the witch’s feet for attention, whimpering when she swats me away. Pathetic. Pining. For a woman who will never love him, who will never love…
My eyes squeeze shut before the thought can finish.
A laugh follows, short but thick, with every bit of humor the ridiculous idea deserves. But my smile falls when I can’t hold my lips up.
I stare at the ceiling while a long minute passes, heart hammering in my ears.
“Goddamn it.”