I ignored Jake, white-knuckling the kitchen counter as a muscle spasm wrenched my back. It was the kind of pain no drug could touch—too random and evil—but it didn’t stop me longing for relief. From everything, not just the red-hot poker lancing my nerves.Permanentrelief, an emotion I was still lucky enough to fear. How easy it would be to take a final ride into town. To get lost in the nightlife for as long as it took to find what I needed. What I craved. I had felt close to death many times, but neveras peacefully as when Priest and his band of Crows had stabbed that needle into my arm.
My phone was still lit up with unanswered calls from Jake. Irrational rage gripped me and I itched to hurl it at the tiled floor. Only Lida’s presence stopped me, and it was shameful how close I was to disregarding her.
It hurt to breathe. I crouched to her level and sought refuge in her soulful gaze. Lida had been born a warrior. A protector. I wondered if she knew how often she saved me from myself.
The rage faded. I reached for my vibrating phone and swiped the incoming call. “What?”
“What do you think?” Jake spoke in rapid Russian, our native tongue a machine gun of attitude that didn’t fit his personality or mine. “You ask why I leave you home?”
“What are you talking about?” I moved to rise. Changed my mind and reclined against the cabinet, stretching my tight leg, cold sweat beading my brow, nerve pain and agitation combining until I could no longer tell them apart. “Unless it is that you trapped me here because you don’t trust me to kill our enemies.”
“My enemies.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “That is how it is now?”
“It’s how it has to be, brother.Yourworst enemy is yourself.”
An interesting take on reality when it had been mere hours since he’d last warned me that assassins and would-be kidnappers lurked in every shadow, whether we owned them or not. As if I did not know. As if I did not have the literal scars to prove it.
I murmured an expletive and ended the call, tipping my head back against the cabinet, lacking the energy to argue with Jake when I knew he was mostly right. I closed my eyes, trying to guess where he might’ve been, but it was fruitless. Jake was the reluctant king of the underworld. Thetemporaryking. Time would tell if he survived his planned abdication. And contemplating that he might not twisted my insides enough that I feared I might vomit.
Think of something else.
As if there was any answer but wild dark hair and obsidian eyes. As if there was any remedy buthim.
He does not know I learned his name.
For a year now, I’d clung to the memories of his touch, his kiss, hislaugh, like a life raft, knowing I’d die if I let them fade. I held onto this secret more than anything, that beautiful name a whisper in my despairing brain as my wretched phone kept beeping with more messages. More unconditional, fraternal love that I was too tired to return.
Jake:I know what you need. I can see it from where I stand
[ 4 ]
RANGER
Eight seconds.
It meant something. Whether it was how long I’d been asleep, or the time it took after waking up in the bunkhouse for me to be fucking annoyed, I couldn’t tell.
But still.
Eight seconds. A lot could happen in a shorter blink of an eye, and in the time it took for me to contemplate that, I’d been accosted.
By children.
For fuck’s sake.
I shut my eyes, hoping they’d go away.
Without setting an actual foot in the bunkhouse, Ivy Greene poked me with a stick. “My dad said we could wake you up for dinner, so youhaveto wake up now.”
Her dad. Had to be Folk. No way Decoy would let such an outrage occur. “Tell your dad he’s a?—”
“Uh-uh.” From the doorway, Liliana Romano-Carter wagged a finger at me. “Don’t swear.”
Jesus fucking Christ. “I’m allowed to swear. I’m not responsible for you.”
I sat up, taking stock of my surroundings, including the gremlin spy brigade. The bunkhouse was familiar to me—I’d slept here more times than I could remember—but it had been a while and some shit had changed around the compound. Murals painted on every wall. Plants everywhere. More families milling around than there’d ever been.
