Dark Dealings (13 page)

She grinned at him, knowing that the darkness at her core burned from her. Heyerdar didn’t look away. Instead, he matched her grin. The heavy pulse of the thief drove her thoughts, whispering how she could bite and lick and suck him. Devour him.

“What are you waiting for?”

Ava snarled and leapt.

* * *

Ava woke up hot and bound. She struggled against a heavy weight, fighting to breathe and not to panic. And what was that scent? Skin and...sex.
Fuck.
Sex. Sex with Heyerdar.
Amazing
sex with Heyerdar.

“It’s not yet morning.” He teased the length of her spine, laughing as it forced her to arch into him. “But I can feel the push of the sun. Time to replenish my strength.”

He rolled away from her and climbed from the bed. He stretched. Firelight licked around him, moving with the slow ripple of the muscles in his back. Her deep teeth marks lined his shoulders and bruised his upper arms. Yes, he needed fresh energy to heal. The taste of his skin, the hint of flesh and the sweet stickiness of his blood still lingered on her tongue.

Everything about him was delicious. It was fucking irritating.

Heyerdar laughed as he pulled up his trousers. “Don’t deny that you enjoyed every moment in my bed.” He tugged on his undershirt. “I’ve given you experience Reist will enjoy.”

Ava resisted the urge to tug the rumpled cover over her head to hide the burn in her cheeks. They’d been in his bed since the middle of the afternoon. His staff had delivered food, but she’d only nibbled. The thief in her was sated on a glut of blood and magic. Her duty, the deaths, the thieves in the city, not even Reist had been as important as staying naked with Heyerdar. Not once she had his skin, his flesh, hot in her mouth. She shivered, trying to push the vividness of his taste from her thoughts. The yawning emptiness of her soul was only a flicker, and magic glowed hot and thick under her skin. She wanted to keep it that way.

“You need to watch me, little thief.”

“I’ve seen you naked a lot.”

“And how did you feel...?” He grinned at her as her face burned.
Bastard.
“
Before
I fucked you.”

Ava frowned. How had she felt? Every morning she’d watched him with her tea and whatever Reist had brought to her. A ritual that spanned years. She blinked. A ritual that Reist had initially encouraged... What had he known? Old magic working with itself? “Your movements calmed me.”

He nodded and buckled on his sword belt. “I’ve always felt you watching me. What we were bound us, long before this.”

“He never said.
You
never said.”

Heyerdar shrugged, loose and disinterested, and she wanted to thump him again. “You’re a creature of the Right Hand.” His gaze slid down her body, but it wasn’t edged with lust. “Control your magic while you have it. I can take it from you just as easily as I gave it.”

Ava stared at her hands. They’d balled into fists and golden flames licked across her knuckles, the warm, earthy smell of its power sinking into her lungs. She pulled on her center, letting its darkness calm her and consume the angry fire in her veins. “So you’ll take it away with this strange power you have over me.” She climbed out of the bed, too aware that she was naked but refusing to rush for her clothes. Still, it was a relief to pull on the long undershirt. “Whatever that is.”

“Ava.”

Her head jerked up, her heart pounding. Her name. He’d said her name. The thief in her surged and she wanted, she wanted him. All of him. Right then. His gaze was molten, pure fire, and his beauty gripped her. She was his. Her body swayed and she ached for him to tell her what to do, to order her to spread herself on his bed so that he could fuck her any and every way—

“See?”

Ava staggered back, her spine hitting the wall. Pain ripped under her skin and she swore. “What did you do to me?”

“I took your virginity. You’re mine to do with as I please.” He tilted his head and the darkness in his gaze roused her thief again. Not from lust, but from fear. “I told you. You have to be careful what you offer an elemental. What you have to be prepared to lose.”

“So what now?” She dragged on her trousers, anger making her movements jerky. He was enjoying this, probably just as much as fucking her. “You say my name and watch me drool?”

Her heart stopped. Was it some sort of revenge against Reist? Had he planted the treatise beside her desk? Had
he
put into motion
her
idea to use him to bring Fallon back to him? She’d not picked up any depth of thought or feeling from him through his magic since the night in the Moon Chamber. She hated the quick twist in her gut. Had it all been about Fallon? She glanced back at the rumpled sheets, the memory of pleasure and...tenderness through the wildness souring. All of it?

Ava stamped her feet into her boots. “The sun’s waiting, Heyerdar.”

She looped her sword belt across her hips, ran her fingers through her tangled hair and left the bedroom. After she watched him—and she would watch him, because whatever existed between them
did
calm her—she’d head back to her room. A wash and clean underwear and concentrating hard to wrap herself up in her coldness had to follow. Heyerdar had used her. She’d been honest. He’d been a lying, conniving shit. And which of them was supposed to be the one no one trusted?

Chapter Twelve

Heyerdar moved past her without a word, his sword thumping against his thigh. He set a harsh pace and she had to scramble to follow. They stayed silent through the twists and turns that led to the arena. He didn’t even speak as he hung his sword belt on a worn hook and stripped. The first touch of grey dawn light offered her another glimpse of his body.

Ava stepped back into the shadows of the tunnel and let them hold her. She watched him walk out onto the cold sand, his face already turned to the curtain wall. Some of what she’d experienced with him had blasted back over Fallon. Would it make any difference to that woman?

Heyerdar moved, the intricate twists and turns working their strange magic over her. Her heart calmed. Everything since she’d woken up had been shitty. Fucked over. But watching him move, the slow and certain perfection of every muscle, and the gathering light on his healing skin eased her breath. Old magic working on her.

She blinked, a strange sensation pulling at her soothed nerves. Already the sun bathed Heyerdar in her brilliance, the final, familiar rhythms of his body flowing to a stop. How much time had she lost?

“Hello again, Ava.”

She squinted back into the shadows of the tunnel. Had someone said her name...? Someone tall stood there, something familiar in his shape, the scent of him in the air. Not a thief. Not a mage.

Magic burned and bristled at the tips of her fingers. A fierce, golden light, as bright as the noon sun, filled the tunnel and revealed the man. He hadn’t moved. He didn’t even squint. Simply stood silent, his leather armor thick with road dust and a heavy hand on the pommel of his long sword. He tilted his head.

Too
familiar.

“Who are you?” Ava flexed her fingers, the protection of shadows no longer hers. Magic coursed through her body. She had enough power to work any spell she could imagine.

The stranger’s gaze traveled over her. “You’ve grown, Ava.”

She jumped as Heyerdar’s meaty hand gripped her arm.

He pushed her behind him. “The question should be
what
are you?” Anger lined his voice and his own magic, thick and hot, burned under his skin.

The man gave a taut smile. “There was a sweetness to her. You explain it.”

“Explain what?” Heyerdar pulled his sword free of its sheath. The slow slide of polished metal against leather filled the silence. “I’m in no mood for more games.”

Heyerdar was naked, but the anger surging from him, the power of an elemental, made Ava shrink back against the wall. The stranger seemed...unconcerned. Did he not consider a naked man a threat? He had to be insane. Instead, the man stared around the tunnel mouth, still lit by Ava’s glowing hands.

“I like this place. Magic fills it, shrouds it.” His low voice, as dark as him, warmed through her. Why, she didn’t understand. “Perfect to hide all manner of things.”

Heyerdar pushed the tip of his sword under the man’s chin, forcing it up. “I am the Left Hand of the Emperor.” The words came out on a growl. “I can kill you here. Quite...officially.”

The man looked to Ava. “I brought her here. A wild thing, living on rats in the Uiane hinterland.” He flexed his arm. “She took a chunk out of me.” His smile twisted, but there was something in his dark gaze and Heyerdar pushed his sword tip hard against his jaw. Blood trickled. “I fed her.”

Heyerdar stilled. “You what?”

“I gave her enough of myself to wipe out her early years. How she’d lived.” He pushed a gloved hand against the sword’s edge and Heyerdar let it fall away. “I brought her here. With an elemental in her body, she found harmony. Balance.”

He
was the brackish taste in her mouth when she remembered elementals. The magic in her hands sputtered as her nerves ate up what power remained. Heyerdar had filled her...but her soul was always empty, had to consume everything he gave her. Light grew again, revealing the man, magic grown from Heyerdar.

Ava focused on the stranger. She felt the push of magic in him, subtly different from Heyerdar. He had the same sense of open spaces, but there was a coolness, a light freshness that washed over her. She frowned. She didn’t remember anything about him, only his taste, his blood and flesh in her mouth. She hadn’t fucked him—Heyerdar was evidence of that—but had she done something else?

Her life was growing stranger—and shittier—by the moment.

Heyerdar took another step towards the man. “Who are you?”

The stranger let out a slow breath. “I’ve been here before. Circumstance made it necessary I leave
you
here too.”

Heyerdar growled and the sword was back at the man’s throat. “I want your name now!”

“Zarand Heyerdar.” His grin was taunting. “Hello, brother.”

“Brother?”

“I couldn’t look after you. A squalling toddler.” Zarand stepped back from the sword, his grin widening. “And I knew when she fed on me, that she wasn’t quite...right. Something for my little brother to chew on, perhaps?”

His gaze moved to her and the dark gleam, so different from Heyerdar’s molten gold, twisted her gut. Anger formed. She wasn’t a fucking plaything for these men.

She fought the need to bolt, to get away. Zarand presented a unique opportunity for her to find out about the hole that was her past. She willed herself to relax. “What do you know about me?”

Heyerdar stiffened. “He doesn’t know anything.”

Zarand pressed his lips together and his dark gaze was mocking. “Her family were mercenaries for a Uiane warlord, Ewald Iron-Hand.” The corner of his mouth ticked upwards and the action was too familiar. Her heart thudded. “Brilliant, ruthless...but in the end neither he nor your family was a match against the ambitions of a certain prince.”

“Balint.” Heyerdar almost spat the name.

Balint.
His Imperial Highness, Prince Morgant Balint Cadmus, the emperor’s first heir. Dead six years and unlamented. He’d terrorized the northern lands, too eager to show the power he would one day wield. Rumor had it his own men had turned on him. Another that his father had ordered his execution in some barbarian field. Her gaze flicked to Heyerdar’s tense shoulders. And yet another that the Left Hand had brought him back to the city in secret and buried him alive beneath the palace.

Whatever the truth was, Balint’s body had never been found. At that moment, she was pleased. Her anger against the man drove threads of darkness under her skin. She doubted she would’ve been able to leave his grave intact.

“I survived?”

“You said your mother told you to run, to escape. You were eleven.”

Ava blinked. Five years? She’d lived five years on her own, eating rats with the memory of being the only survivor of a massacre. She’d asked for ignorance and Zarand had given her it. She frowned and took a step forwards. “Why did you help me?”

“You’re staying right there.” Heyerdar pulled her back to him. His attention never moved from Zarand. “What do you want now? Got another stray for the city?”

“I heard the rumor of thieves.”

Ava stared at him. Was that why he’d helped her? Had she been a part of a deliberate hunt? “Is that what you do? Chase us down?”

“I don’t judge what you’ve done. Thieves are the other half of us, of elementals. It’s forgotten. Pushed back and hidden by the mages.” Zarand’s tongue wetted his lips. “To share yourself with a soul-stealer—”

Heyerdar blocked her from his sight. “Not her.”

“No, she’s not mine to have.”

Heyerdar gave a terse nod in reply.

Ava ignored their exchange. She wasn’t meat. “I don’t remember you.” He had the beauty of an elemental—or what she assumed came from their magic—a mirrored darkness to Heyerdar’s golden perfection. “What did we do?”

“You devoured me, Ava Kalle.” A gleam lit his dark eyes and Heyerdar tensed, his knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. “Took chunks out of my shoulder, arm, chest. I should’ve stopped you...” His grin gleamed. “But you yanked magic from me with every distorted bite, and fuck—”

Heyerdar growled. “I want you out of the city.”

“The power you took, you used it to forget. Forget the past, our journey to the city, what you’d done to...
with
me.”

Ava’s heart was a stone in her chest. “With you?”

Heyerdar turned his hand and the sword tip twisted in Zarand’s flesh. “Out.”

A muscle jumped in Zarand’s jaw. “Nahum...”

“I don’t know you.”

“We’re brothers.”

Heyerdar laughed, the sound hard and bitter. “So you say.”

Zarand took another step back and blood ran free down his neck to stain the collar of his tunic. “Going to run me off?” His gaze moved back to Ava, and the heat there made the embarrassment burn in her cheeks. What had she done with this man that made her want to cut it from her memory along with her past? “We could always share her...?”

Heyerdar swore. “We meet again? I kill you.”

“I will catch my thief, Nahum.” His gaze was flat, bleak. “I always do.” He took another step back and some of the tunnel shadows swallowed him. He wiped at the blood on his skin, a sliver of magic healing it. He rubbed his sticky fingers together. “You can’t deny me that.”

“I won’t stop them eating you. Good enough?”

A smile touched Zarand’s mouth. “Good enough.” He nodded to Ava. “A pleasure.” The shadows swallowed him and a swift surge of magic spun in the darkness. Zarand had taken himself away.

Ava sagged and let go of the breath she’d been holding. What had she done with Heyerdar’s brother? And there
was
that connection, she could almost taste it in the echoes of magic that lingered in the air. She hadn’t fucked him, and pushing at her empty memory only gave the brackish hint of his blood and sour flesh. Elementals had started to dog her life.

“You don’t remember?” Heyerdar sheathed his sword and tugged on his undershirt. Anger lined his voice. He yanked the shirt down and his flat gaze held her. “Did you eat him in other ways?”

The thought scorched across her mind, but nothing fired memory within her. Ava gritted her teeth. And even if she had, if she’d sucked him hard and long and he exploded in her mouth—and she let
that
image linger—it had nothing to do with Heyerdar.

“I am going to my room to wash.”

“Ava...”

Fire pushed through her flesh, the heated rise of want chasing it. She closed her eyes and her hands fisted at her sides. She’d fight him. She wasn’t his bedtoy. A gasp broke from her as his large hand cupped her jaw. His thumb brushed her lips and she tasted earth and sunlight.

The ache to suck his thumb into her mouth, to mimic the image she’d tried to burn into his brain, gripped her. “I’m not yours to play with.”

“I’m just one in a long line of men that play you.”

“Bastard.” She bit down on his thumb, involuntarily drawing his magic into her mouth. Her heart hammered, and the swift and sudden rise of desire caught her.

“I could fuck you here. Now.” His breath burned against her ear, the tease of his lips making her chest tight. His fingers dug into her hip and pulled her against him. The need to wrap herself around him shamed her. “Pull you out into the arena. Bend you over. Take what’s mine.”

Her belly tightened, the need between her thighs flared, and the thief in her ached for it, for him, for everything he offered. The power of him thickened. But she couldn’t...

“Captain, sir.” A cough followed the young man’s voice and his boots scuffed the sandy stone floor. “You are requested to attend the Moon Chamber.”

Whatever hold Heyerdar had on her fell away, her thoughts clearing, and she tried to shove him from her. But his strength—even with her magically enhanced muscles—was too much for her.

“Have Thief Kalle’s breakfast delivered to the chamber, Tabor. We’ll be there directly.”

“Sir.” And he was gone.

Ava let out a slow breath. She wrapped coldness around her to deaden the embarrassment of having one of the guards seeing her pushed up against the wall. The wild insanity of wanting him had to stop. But it wouldn’t. He’d made her glory in what she was, the dual power of emptiness and the thief at the core. She hated and craved him for it.

Ava tamped down on those fierce emotions, pushed her need from her thoughts. They had thieves to find.

The Moon Chamber was a sacred place. In the ten years she’d been in the Institute, she’d never crossed farther then the threshold of the huge blackwood doors. To call Heyerdar there had to be serious. “Dorien will have complained.”

Heyerdar stamped his feet into his boots and strapped them up. “The mage scholars saw the power of an elemental. I’ve tied them in knots for years. To become a mage, they had to give up instinct.” He frowned. “Balance.” He pushed her into the shadows. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Think I’m off to fuck your brother now I’ve had a taste of you?”

Heyerdar laughed. “You’re saving yourself for Reist.” Sunlight burned in the air, lifting the gloom. “Maybe he wants to fuck you there, strip you and bend you over that sacred table of his.” The sliver of sunlight flared. “Or make me watch.” His brief smile was wicked. “Join in.”

Ava ignored the constriction in her chest. She swallowed and willed sarcasm into her voice. “You’d share?”

“A hole’s a hole.”

She loathed him in that moment. Ava bit the inside of her cheek, tasting herself and using it to fight down the need to hit him. He’d only say her name again. She had to pick her fights.

Her pace increased. She wanted to know what had the mages fired up enough to drag Heyerdar into their sanctum. Then she’d enjoy seeing him rebuked. That would be her revenge. See the flat gold in his gaze, the tightness of his jaw. Would he lash out? The mages in the chamber would restrain him, burn him with high magic...

“I’m the Left Hand.” He strode past her, leading the way up to the Moon Chamber. “They can’t.”

The antechamber bustled with mages. Ava frowned. Most Mages usually didn’t rise until well after sunup, and these men and women didn’t look like they’d just rolled out of their beds. They weren’t bleary eyed, rumpled. They looked too sharp. Magic swept over them, brittle and sour. Her instincts screamed at her to get the fuck out because something was very wrong.