“The boobs were just a perk,” he groans, sitting up and I run my clean hand through my hair to brush it out of my face.
“You don’t even need to consume energy to mirror someone; that’s going to be confusing as hell,” Atlas states, eyeing Cody like he expects him to turn on us at any second for killing his mother and unsure how he’d handle the situation if it came down to that.
Pulling his shirt back into place, I can’t bring myself to let go of him yet. “Don’t even have the eyes as a giveaway. He’s going to change into me to see if he can seduce you, you just wait,” I tease and Atlas goes stock still.
Lucien crouches beside me, one arm resting on his thigh and the other stealing my chin so he can inspect the damage to my throat. “You haven’t healed yourself yet.”
I scoff. “Excuse me, but I’ve been a little busy saving Dorian from bleeding out and my brother from exploding.”
He simply stares at me, waiting, and I sigh. Closing my eyes, I pull a bit of energy from the earth beneath me, humming softly to coax it along and feeling like an idiot that’s just singing and obliviously lost in her own world while bodies drop around her.
When I open my eyes again, Lucien’s are still hard. My confusion at his anger tapers off into understanding as he lifts my arm, inspecting it. A series of marks each about one inch long coat from fingertip to beneath the sleeve of my shirt, and a quick look reveals a similar situation on my other arm. Tiny brands burned into my skin, a series of twisting knots all interconnected into a web that wraps around the larger marks carved into the back of my hands, the scars still upraised compared to the new ones that sit flush with my skin.
“Fuck.”
But they feel different than the tethering marks that bind me to the guys, less...intrinsic to my being. They feel more like tattoos rather than anything constricting.
“Ria?” Cody tentatively asks, eyeing the men around me cautiously. It’s clear that I’m not freaking out, but seeing as two of them just tag team murdered his mother, I can understand his reservation.
He glances back at the castle, at the bodies littering the lawn between it and us. At the changelings and the guards that are starting to appear in the distance. He’ll be safe; the crown prince back at last to ascend to the throne that’s rightfully his. But the four of us have the blood of a freshly slain queen on our hands.
We were hunted for trying to assassinate the queen before, but there would be no arguing our innocence now.
“Yeah?”
“Stay?” Just a single word, and yet it means so much that I struggle to breathe. “Let me help you,” he pleads.
Looking around at the death and destruction, at the place that acted just as much as his prison as it was mine, a wave of exhaustion and relief settles into my bones so deeply that I doubt I’ll ever be rid of the feeling. I meet each of the guys’ faces, searching for their reactions, but they look just as weary as I am.
We might be able to survive on the run as we have been, but it’s none of our first choices for a life. If we run now...there’s no coming back from it, and I doubt even Cody would be able to convince people of the lie that we were innocent.
“I don’t want to run anymore.” Getting to my feet, I wipe my bloody palm on my thigh, looking at the guys once more for confirmation before meeting my brother’s relieved face. “Let’s go home.”
***
The following daysare hell. It doesn’t matter that the marks on my arms ensure I’m aware of the changelings, as we discovered when one decided to try and chew the arm off of a fae that stormed into the castle demanding answers. That small symbol heated until I couldn’t ignore it anymore, like a supernatural alert system.
It’s different than the one with my mates; those just give me a vague sense of their direction when we’re already near each other, making it easier to find them in a crowded room. These, on the other hand, I just curse that they aren’t buttons to remotely activate shock collars, because it would make my life a hell of a lot easier than having to track them down. Thankfully though, now that they aren’t being starved to death and the woman they despised with every fiber of their being is dead, they’re relatively easy going.
Every time Cody repeated his story to someone, it made my gut twist. But he sells it flawlessly, spinning things to blame the closest dead guard beside her body, that the man tried to capitalize on the chaos to enact his own revenge. Because though he doesn’t know who is who, he’s heard plenty over the years in his comatose state. The muttering dissent of guards and servants, the quiet resentment that thrived in the shadows.
Not a single guard protested the story, though I’m sure half of them must know better, were in the room when she grabbed me. But whether it’s from their mutual dislike of the woman, their relief at Cody taking the throne, or secretly wishing that they were the ones to do it, no one calls him out on the tale.
“How long before we head out?” Atlas asks, grunting as he helps haul some more rubble out of the hallway, chucking it onto the pile as reconstruction carries on around us.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead. “Another few days, I think. That way we aren’t immediately bolting and starting any rumors, but we need to get the changelings set up; they’re getting restless.”
As if on cue, Loki collides with another changeling a little ways down the hallway, their game of tag resulting in even more damage and making everyone around us groan in annoyance.
Grimacing, I backpedal. “On second thought, tomorrow sounds good.”
***
