“Ooh bunk beds,” he shouts out from the room he just disappeared into. “You want the top or the bottom, Witch?”
I laugh and follow him further into the house. The smile I’m once again wearing tricks me into feeling soft for a moment, hopeful. Maybe this won’t be the cluster fuck that I’m worried it will be. Maybe Valen’s right, and with a little bit of time, it will all blow over. Then the faint sound of arguing permeates the walls of the house, and I release a deep exasperated breath. Who am I kidding? This is going to be a fucking bloodbath.
5
Iwake up cold, my cloudy breath in the air, my body just on the verge of a shiver. I crack open my eyelids. The light in the room is muted. It looks like either the sun hasn’t come up yet or just now dipped below the horizon. I’m disoriented and not quite sure if I’ve crashed for only a little while or if I’ve slept the day away. I’m alone, and I look around the room, taking in the piles of blankets strewn about the makeshift bed situation.
Apparently, king size beds are an American thing, because the biggest bed we could find in this house was a full. Not satisfied with that situation, Ryker and the others pulled all the mattresses they could find off the beds and Tetris-ed the shit out of them on the floor of the biggest bedroom in the house. So now this room is absent of all furniture and has been redecorated with a very minimalistic and modern mattress floor.
I sit up and stretch out my arms and my back. I feel run down as fuck, which really shouldn’t surprise me after everything that’s happened in the last few days. I wipe the sleep from my eyes and get up, bouncing from one mattress to another until I’m standing in the doorway that leads to the small attached bathroom. My bag has been left right next to the doorframe, and I silently thank whoever put it there as I dig out a clean set of clothes and my toiletries. I’m in and out of the—thankfully warm—shower in less than ten minutes, and then I’m brushed, magically dried, styled, and ready to go in under fifteen.
I step out of the room and head down the hall into the kitchen, where I find all of my Chosen leaning against the counters, whisper-growling back and forth.
“Don’t be a fucking numpty, Knox, this is Vinna and Vinna’s magic we’re talking about,” Sabin chastises.
“Oh that’s rich coming from you. You did everything you could to keep all of us apart in the beginning because you didn’t trust the situation either.”
“Yeah, but that was in the beginning. After she marked us, it was like I could feel her intention and the purity in what her magic had done. Don’t sit here and tell me that you didn’t. You’ve always gone on and on about how you knew she was for you, right from the beginning.”
“So it’s official, you don’t trust me now?” I ask, my calm voice like a cannon in the room amidst all the aggressive whispers.
Five heads snap in my direction. Torrez keeps his eyes on the floor as he shakes his head. He’s probably been aware of my movements and exactly where I was in the house from the minute I woke up. I wonder how annoying it would be to have sensitive hearing like that and not be able to turn it off like I can. Although, if this is how it’s going to be with my Chosen these days, maybe I should keep my extra hearing on all the time.
“It’s not you that’s the issue, it’s the situation I don’t trust. I don’t trust them,” Knox defends, his arm gesturing out the window in the direction of wherever Enoch and his coven are right now.
I throw my head back and release a frustrated yell. “Okay! I fucking get it. You’ve said it a million times! You don’t trust them, which is why you’re pissed at me and acting like an asshole! Can we move the fuck on already?” I ask as I scan the kitchen for food. I need something other than frustration and insecurity in my stomach if we’re going to try and tackle this shit again. Valen tosses me an apple, and I snatch it from the air and practically bite it in half as I continue to scan for more.
“Bruiser, we’re not pissed at you. We’re pissed about whatever the fuck they did to get those runes,” Bastien tells me.
“But what if they didn’t do anything? What if this is another case of my magic highjacking others just because it can?” I ask him. “I mean fuck, Bas, it’s not like we have any clue why half the shit that happens around me does, but I thought you all were cool with that.” I swallow down the rest of the apple as we all stare at each other in awkward silence. “You don’t trust them, fine, but if you trust me, then it’s time to Sentinel up and get to fucking work.”
Bastien shakes his head dismissively, and frustration burns through me.
“Okay, so you think somehow they stole my magic and marked themselves?”
“Yes,” Bastien agrees.
His words send a shiver of unease through me. I know he said something similar on the plane when everyone was fighting, but then that whole getting stabbed thing happened, and I never circled back to what he was accusing.Fuck, could they have forced this somehow?I picture Enoch, Kallan, Becket, and Nash, and try to process if I think they’d be capable of this kind of fucked up violation. But what if it wasn’t even them that did it?
I struggle to accept that Enoch and his coven could do something so wrong, but I sure as fuck can’t say the same about Elder Cleary or Elder Albrecht. They’d definitely have something to gain if their sons had my power. Then again, if Elder Albrecht knew how to force a marking, wouldn’t he have done it when he had me and Sabin at his mercy? It’s all just more questions I don’t have the answers to, and I shove away the worry and the frustration.
“Okay, fine,” I announce. “We put this shit aside for now and start to train. If we find out at some point that they somehow stole their markings, then you can kill them.”
Ryker snorts out a chuckle.
“We can kill them? Just like that?” Bastien mocks.
“Yeah, why not?” I shrug. “I don’t distrust them. I think I’ve seen sides to them that you haven’t, but if they forced me to mark them, then it’s a horrible violation. If somehow they’ve figured out how to do that, then it’s on us to make sure it never happens again. Which means weshouldkill them.”
“You’re hot when you’re ruthless,” Knox teases, a cheeky smile on his face, and its appearance almost makes me want to cry. Knox has always been supportive no matter what, so to have him distance himself from me the way he and Bastien have, fucking hurts.
“She’s hot all the time,” Torrez corrects, and the others chuckle and bob their heads in agreement.
The tension in the room lessens infinitesimally, and I let out a relieved breath. “Okay now that the Enoch issue is on hold until further evidence one way or another surfaces, let’s move on to the Torrez issue,” I announce, and Torrez’s eyebrows drop in confusion, and his body goes stiff.
“You going to off me too, Witch?” he asks, and even though he’s wearing a smile and has a glint in his eye, I sense the layer of seriousness beneath it all.
“Of course not, Wolf, I’m talking about whatever the glitch is that put all of our runes on you and none of your runes on us.”
