“She’ll come back, even if it’s just for supplies, and that’s all the opening we need,” Riall states appreciatively, and I can see plans already forming in his mind for how to convince her to stay.
Once again, I pull at the roots of my hair, the slight sting helping to dissipate some of the tension tightening my shoulders. “But what if trouble finds her before she finds her good sense?”
The subdued deep rumble of distant thunder moves through the kitchen as though it’s reaching to answer my question. Riall laughs again and moves over to the table where he happily starts chopping vegetables. The eager, slightly unhinged gleam I know all too well is back in his eyes. A game is afoot, and for him, there’s nothing that he likes more. All the panic and concern that was just thickening the air is chased out of the window and replaced by the scent of an impending vicious storm.
It smells like victory.
Tarek grasps my shoulder and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “She’s ours,” he affirms. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”
His words wash through me, and I try to let them purge me of my apprehension.
“She will,” I proclaim, and he nods his agreement as he moves to perch against the counter.
It’s not lost on me that his eyes are trained on the window etched into the kitchen door. I fold my arms over my chest and take up a similar stance. I try not to count time as I wait, but it’s impossible not to feel as though it’s purposefully slowing just to fuck with us. A few raindrops patter against the glass, the sound a whisper of warning that the storm is ready to unleash its wrath.
I usually love when the sky gets angry like this. The ocean always answers its fervor, and for a spell of time, the world mimics what too often rages inside of me. But today…today I feel as though a sliver of my soul is out wandering in this danger, and it’s entirely too fragile to risk.
“I thought she would listen,” I offer when the sounds of Riall making breakfast become too much to bear in the otherwise quiet kitchen. We’re all in our heads as we stand here impotently waiting, and that can be a dangerous place to spend too much time. “I figured it would be a shock, learning of our involvement, but I didn’t think she’d do this,” I continue, pointing at the door I need her to walk back through any moment now.
“I’ll admit, I expected a touch more gratitude,” Tarek agrees, and Riall gives a derisive snort.
“You both are clearly forgetting how we were when we first got here,” he points out, pouring things from one bowl into another before hardily stirring everything together.
I smile as I think back to the early days. The fights, the challenges, the time it took until I saw these two as a part of who I am. Tarek looks as though he’s taking the same trip down memory lane.
“Maybe,” I concede, but I can’t help but feel uneasy about everything that just happened or the fact that we’re having to wait for her to come back to us, and only then because she doesn’t have a better option.
We shouldn’t have to try to convince her to stay in the first place. She should feel the same pull that we do. Tilleo has been running the ludere like it’s his own. We had no idea about some of the horrendous things he and his masters were doing behind our back. We probably still wouldn’t if Auset hadn’t caught our eye and then snatched each one of our souls as though they always belonged to her. We all agreed to let her deal with the master and his people when she was ready, but if Tilleo fucked her up so badly that she can’t recognize her mates, I’ll spend the rest of my days making him pay for it.
“She’ll come around,” Tarek assures. “She doesn’t know what we do about the realms. All she’s ever experienced is that ludere. She’s probably spent most of her time there dreaming about what it would be like to leave. Reality will replace that fantasy soon enough,” he asserts, and I nod.
“And when we find out where she’s from and how she ended up there?” Riall questions, wiping his hand down his beard, and I narrow my eyes at the nervous gesture.
We all go silent.
“She’s ours,” I reaffirm, the declaration pushing her even deeper beneath my skin.
If my brothers weren’t feeling the exact same way, I’d question the overwhelming need to tether Auset to us in every way possible. I’ve never felt something like this before, and it’s concerningly all-consuming. But I can’t get the image out of my head, of her bleeding on the table, pallid and on the cusp of death. I can’t push away the overwhelming drive I felt to save her or the way I knew without a shadow of doubt that she was a part of us the way we are a part of each other. I never hoped to find anything like this, and now that it’s punched us all in the face, there’s no letting go.
It’ll take time to know her, to show her who we are and what she could be to us, but she needs to give us a chance first. While Riall is the worst of us when it comes to patience, Tarek and I aren’t much better. We’ve worked too hard and been through too much to be denied. We’re the Order of Scorpions, and Auset needs to learn quickly that we’re hers as much as she’s ours.
I glance over at Tarek and silently communicate that I’m already growing tired of waiting. He sighs but says nothing. I attempt to redirect my focus from my impatient frustration to the plan. I can’t deny that it makes sense despite how much I hate just sitting here. I do understand the importance of Auset working this out andchoosingus, but my patience can only be stretched so far. If she forces me to bring her back, I’ll do it happily. Tarek will just have to sort out some other way to convince her to stay, if it comes to that. And if it happens to involve locking her in my room and teasing her until she begs for more and promises to never leave us, so be it.
ChapterTwenty-Three
AUSET
An endless horizon of trees is all I can see as I pick my way through bushes and the lush greenery creeping across of the forest floor. The moist air is thick all around me, but it’s not hard to breathe, and my skin seems to appreciate it more and more with every second I spend tracking through the rich atmosphere. I’ve pushed myself for a while now. At first because I was worried that, despite what Tarek said, someone would track me and force me back, but surprisingly, that hasn’t happened, and the rush to get as far away as quickly as I can is starting to recede.
When I first stepped out of the kitchen and into the strange world of green, blue, and gray, I gave myself a moment. I took in the foreign sites, hoping I might recognize something, but nothing came. I’ve long since given up trying to understand how I can sometimes recall random things like the way a particular food might smell even though I can’t think of its name. Or the title of a person, place, or object when I possess no other memory about it. It’s as helpful as it is frustrating. When I study the black rocks and the ground that’s almost the same color, nothing about this land registers any kind of familiarity.
I don’t know what the lines of trees all around me are. I don’t recognize the clusters of needle-like leaves, and nothing is triggered when I smell their sweet woody scent. The cliff the gray castle is built on is as foreign and strange as everything else around here. The roiling ocean doesn’t call to me in any way, nor does the smell of salt, lush vegetation, smoke, and an undercurrent of something floral on the wind. None if it strikes me as anything I might have experienced before.
So instead, I walk. I stomp into a world I don’t know and don’t recognize, trying to put as much distance as I can between me and the Order of Scorpions. I don’t know how far I’ve managed to get; I can still hear the ocean crashing against rock and the whistle of wind as it ruffles the trees and the bushes all around me. The sky is growing darker with each step I take, and I’m starting to accept that I have no idea what I’m doing.
I wince as I step on a sharp rock. Hissing in pain, I pick up my foot so I can rub the sting from the pad of it. I curse myself for letting my mulishness lead the way as I walked out of that kitchen. If I had been thinking, I would have packed some supplies, demanded a sack full of aurems, stocked up on weapons, and then put boots on before I stormed out. The burning sands of the Corozean desert have hardened the soles of my feet a fair amount, but the sticks and rocks of this unfamiliar terrain are already taking their toll.
I brush a few pebbles from my feet and stare at the soot-dark stain the soil has stamped there. I brush the pad of a finger over the inky darkness, and I can’t help but think of the skeleton glamour I was growing so used to seeing every day. So much has changed in such a small stretch of time, and I feel like my head and heart are playing catch up.
