Chapter 39
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
RHYAN
“Rhyan, Rhyan!” Sean was crying, murmuring my name again and again.
“Sean!” I gasped. “I’m so glad to see you!”
He was rocking me side to side, hugging me so tight I could barely breathe, until Lyr coughed and placed her arms around us. Her hand pressed firmly into my back.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” she hissed. “But we’re starting to draw attention.”
I looked up, and sure enough, the bartender, black-eyed like the Bastardmaker, with thin blond hair, was eyeing us suspiciously. And another table had stopped eating, looking over.
Sean stiffened. “We need to get out of here and talk in private. Now,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
He glanced at the table, at the stacks of emptied plates.
“Are you done eating? Still hungry?” His eyes searched mine, clearly torn between getting us out of there, and making sure I had enough to eat.
“I can get more for you if you need it.’
I shook my head, remembering how Sean had done something just like this when he found me in exile.
When I was living in the caves, forsworn and depressed.
He’d taken me to Auriel’s Flame and had Cal and Marisol make everything they’d ever served.
It was my first real meal in months. It had been so fucking good.
Lyr must have known. Because she’d done the same thing.
Gods, I loved her. It made my chest ache all over again, being here with him and with Lyr.
Two of the people I loved most in this world.
My eyes met Sean’s, steady and forest-green. Home. “I’ve had plenty.”
“I ordered everything off the menu for him,” Lyr said.
Sean smiled, his eyes crinkling. “Good girl.” He opened his pouch, and pulled out several gold coins and laid them on our table. “That should more than cover it.”
“Oh we can—” Lyr started.
But Sean held up his hand. “I got it. And then some, so hopefully they take the money and shut up. Let’s go. I have a room nearby.”
He pulled up his hood, and led us up to the counter where half a dozen soturi stood watching us.
They wore Bamarian armor, but I knew their faces, recognizing them at once, their names slowly coming back to me.
They were Glemarian, and each one of them had accompanied me on many of the akadim hunts I’d been sent on when I first arrived and had to earn my keep.
In those first few months, when I was Lyr’s bodyguard, and apprentice, I was also an akadim hunter on the weekends.
The majority of those trips I’d been sent on had been with other Glemarians.
I’d speculated at the time that it was more to do with our experiences hunting the beasts. After all, until Garrett—lured by Aemon—had gone to Bamaria, there hadn’t been any akadim attacks in the South. Not for years.
At least, I felt sure that that was the reasoning Lyr’s father, Harren, had used when selecting us. But after a while, the missions—particularly when Imperator Kormac—Emperor Avery now—became involved, felt like they had more to do with putting us in danger. Us. And not his men.
I nodded, meeting their gazes. But they frowned as I approached, a quizzical look in their eyes.
They didn’t know. Like Sean, they probably believed me dead.
I knew from Auriel’s memories that I’d—he’d—spent time with Sean in Bamaria.
Filling him in on my fate. Sitting with him after he was lashed by Turion Kevel for hiding him and Lyr, and sitting with him as he grieved for me.
Unable to comfort him. Unable to explain that he was sitting with a part of me.
My chest panged.
I took a deep breath as I stepped outside, my hand locking with Lyr’s.
Sean emerged from the pub a minute later, and joined us.
Out in the open, Lyr’s shoulders tensed, her aura flaring with a kind of fiery alertness that was mirrored in her eyes. Scanning the small town. Looking for soturi, for signs of being watched.
And for signs of the akadim that seemed to have vanished overnight.
My stomach turned. Where the fuck had they gone?
We’d have to find them, and deal with them soon enough.
But I was eager to get off the waterway and main road.
I wanted to be in private, and I wanted to be with Sean.
In the distance, I could hear boots marching.
Only about two sets. Despite our very active presence here—there hadn’t been much in the way of soturi.
We were too far west, and I assumed that Kormac’s view of the border was similar to my father’s view of the Allurian Pass.
Besides, we’d done everything Morgana had asked to avoid earning any unwanted attention.
We’d hunted in the west. Hunted humans only.
I had a flash of one laying before me, ripping into her flesh, sucking her blood, and then her soul—turning her.
I closed my eyes, my feet felt like lead.
Almost as if sensing something was wrong, Lyr squeezed my hand, and stepped closer to me.
“We’re staying down the road,” Lyr told Sean, “at the inn at the end—just under the mountain.”
Sean frowned. “Follow me to mine. It’s a friend’s home. We managed to use it as a base. It’s more private there. Safer.”
“Okay,” Lyr said, her free hand rubbing my back.
I felt her walk forward, my arm lifting, our hands still connected, but my feet weren’t moving.
“Rhyan?” she looked back, her hazel eyes filled with concern.
“I—” I could taste the blood in my mouth. I thought the food this morning would undo it. Remove the memory. The taste, the sensation. I didn’t crave it. It disgusted me. But I remembered the taste, and the way I’d desired it. It was all still there in my mind. Fresh and visceral.
“Rhyan, what’s wrong?” Lyr asked, her voice low.
My chest tightened. I could still feel the way my jaw moved, lapping up the blood, the way my tongue had brushed against the girl’s neck. The way I’d done the same thing to Lyr.
“I can’t—I—” The words wouldn’t come. My mouth moved, the words wanted to be said, but my brain and mouth weren’t connecting. I couldn’t, couldn’t ...
“He’s having a panic attack,” Sean said.
Suddenly, both him and Lyr had wrapped their arms around me, and were moving me forward, supporting my weight as my feet moved helplessly across the waterway. I couldn’t even see where we were going.
I could barely hear anything over the ringing in my ears. No. Not ringing. The slurping sounds I’d made as an akadim, the sounds I made as I swallowed blood—Lyr’s blood.
“It hasn’t even been a full day,” Lyr said. “He’s still getting used to everything again.”
“Was that his first meal?” Sean asked.
“It was.” Lyr’s voice trembled with worry. “He only changed late last night, but I should’ve—”
“No. No. It’s okay. He’ll be all right,” Sean said, soothing her. Then in my ear, “Rhyan, we’re going to step up a few stairs. Okay? And I’ll get you some water.” He paused, and his hand lowered on my back, then down to my thigh directing me to the step. “Up you go now.”
I stepped up, my new boot hitting the stair, and then the next, and the next, and then there was darkness as we walked inside. I lost track of everything. My surroundings. Where I was.
“I can’t breathe,” I gasped.
I felt myself being sat in a chair, and warm arms wrapping around me. Lyr. She crawled into my lap, her hands on my face, palms to my cheeks. Forehead pressed to mine.
“Rhyan,” she said. “Breathe. Breathe. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re alive. You’re safe.”
I opened my eyes, staring into hers. Hazel. Brown, and green, and with flecks of gold. I shook my head, my chest heaving. “I hurt you,” I said, my voice weak.
“No,” she said firmly. “You didn’t. It’s the memory. It wasn’t you.”
“I tasted your blood.”
A door opened and closed. “Here,” she said. “Sean brought you water. Can you drink some for me?”
I opened my mouth and felt glass against my lip then cold water sliding over my tongue. I swallowed. Water. Water. Not blood. Not blood.
My armor loosened, and was removed, sliding over my head, and then I felt Lyr’s hand snaking inside my tunic, pressing against my bare skin, right over my heart.
“Deep breath,” she said. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.” She kissed my cheek. “It’s okay.”
My eyes filled with tears, sharp painful breaths contracting in my chest.
Lyr shook her head. “I’m okay.” She pulled her hair off her shoulder, and showed me her neck, the very place where my akadim fangs had sunk in. “See? There’s barely even a mark. It’s healing.”
But I still felt like I was out of my body, my chest too tight. She looked past me suddenly, and frowned, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.
Then I heard footsteps and the door opened and closed again.
“Rhyan,” Lyr said, shifting closer on my lap, “it’s just you and me. We’re going to replace the memory, okay?”
“What? What do you mean?”
She leaned forward, her chest against mine, and pulled on my neck, dragging my lips to her skin. To the bite marks. I shook my head.
“Put your mouth on me,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Put your mouth on my neck.”
I tried to shift away. “No. No!”
But she was so strong, I had no choice but to comply. Her flesh was soft against my lips, my face, and she smelled—she smelled sweet. Her usual scent, something like vanilla and lemons, was there against the musk that was just, her. I breathed in deeply.
“Bite me,” she said.
“Lyr.”
“Bite me,” she commanded.
I was shaking. But I did, biting into her flesh. She wiggled a little against me, but didn’t make any sort of sound of discomfort or pain.
“Use your tongue,” she said.
“No.”
“Rhyan,” she hissed. “Do it.”
I lapped at her skin, at her whole skin, not broken, not pierced by fangs. No blood. Not even a drop of sweat. And the taste, the familiar taste of her, started to bring me back.
There was no blood. No violence. Just Lyr. Me and Lyr.
“You’re alive,” she said. “You’re Rhyan. Rakame.”
My chest expanded, breath coming easily again, like the spell had been broken. I kissed her, sucking on her neck, pressing tiny kisses up toward her ear.