The Sharpest Blade (18 page)

Kyol stiffens. “He did what?”

I wince at the iciness in his voice. Most people describe anger as being hot, but it’s not. Not with Kyol, at least. His anger is so cold I shiver.

“It’s okay. Well, it’s not okay, but he didn’t give the
elari
my location willingly. He’s hurt.”

“He’s inside?”

“Yes, but he needs—”

Kyol slams open the door.

Damn it. I hurry after him, but catch up only when he suddenly stops at the entrance to the sunroom. He’s not staring at Lorn, though. He’s staring at Nick, who slowly, silently rises to his feet.

If it wasn’t for the life-bond, I’d have no idea how surprised Kyol is. His face is a mask of stoic calmness. There’s no sign he’s startled or confused.

“Nick,” is all he says.

The human clenches his jaw. “Taltrayn.”

“I see you two remember each other,” Lorn says. Finally, Kyol’s gaze swings to the injured fae.

“He needs a healer,” I finish what I tried to tell him on the porch.

“Please,” Lorn adds.

Kyol angles his body slightly to look at me. “I left you only a few hours ago, and you’ve managed to find Lorn and Nick Johnson.”

“He’s Kynlee’s dad,” I say, nodding toward Nick Johnson or Walker or whoever he is. “And I didn’t find Lorn. He found me.” All I wanted to do when I got home was curl up under the blankets and sleep.

Kyol’s expression softens. He releases his grip on his sword hilt and places his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently.

“It’s okay,
kaesha
,” he says. I stiffen, expecting to feel some wave of regret for calling me
kaesha
, but there isn’t any. Roughly, the word translates into
loved one
, only, it’s so much more than that. For the last decade, it’s been Kyol’s way of telling me that he loves me. He used it rarely since we weren’t supposed to be together, but that only made it more special. It’s still special now.

He senses my confusion, my unease, and drops his hand.

“You’re safe here?” he asks. In other words, the false-blood doesn’t know I’m here.

“Yeah,” I say. He takes another look at Lorn, then at Nick. He must trust the human because he tells me he’ll bring back help before he walks out the back door to open his fissure. Even though a pane of glass separates us, I get caught up in his shadows and the warm mix of emotions tumbling through my stomach. I can’t tell if they’re mine or his. Both, most likely.

A headache starts hammering behind my eyes. My personal life is one big fucking mess. The guy I wanted for a decade would finally and fully return that love now, but I’ve fallen for someone else, someone who wants nothing to do with me.

And I hate this. I hate hurting someone I care so much about.

I ignore the look I get from Nick as I pull a burgundy throw off a nearby chair and drape it over Lorn.

We wait. I watch Lorn breathe. He answers a few simple questions with grunts, but his sarcastic humor is gone. I’m worried about him. I don’t know how long it will take Kyol to bring back help. Most fae know basic first aid, quite a few are the equivalent of techless doctors, but a healer is the only thing that can save Lorn’s life now.

He falls into a restless sleep.

Sometime later, two fissures split through the night air. Kyol and Lena. They both look regal, standing next to each other in Nick’s backyard.

Backyard? Why not fissure directly into the house?

I look at Nick. “You have silver here?”

He nods stiffly. “In the insulation.”

Kyol opens the back door for Lena. She enters, her gaze locked on Nick as she walks to Lorn’s side.

“You’re alive,” she says as she kneels.

Nick doesn’t respond. He just rises and leaves the room.

“You know him?” I ask when he’s gone.

Lena removes the throw and the bloodied towel that’s been doing a poor job of staunching Lorn’s bleeding. She looks at his side wound, then places her hand over it.

“He gave the throne to Atroth,” she says.

I glance at Kyol.

“What do you mean?” I ask when she doesn’t go on and he doesn’t add anything. A human can’t just give a throne to someone.

“He slept with fae. Many and often until he had sex with the wrong woman, Casye, the daughter of the former high noble of Ristin Province.”

Ristin is one of the four provinces Lena reinstated. Tholm is on its western border. A small line marks the division between it and Corrand Province, just above the Imyth Sea, on the old maps of the Realm.

“Her father slaughtered all the
tor’um
in Ristin because of that,” Nick says from the threshold of the sunroom. “Because of me. Killing and banning humans from his province didn’t satisfy him.”

He takes a sip of the drink he’s poured himself, and it’s like he’s downing a shot of regret.

Kynlee. Nick must have saved her from the slaughter. But who is she? She can’t be the result of his affair with Casye—or any other fae for that matter. Fae and human can’t reproduce. Plus, fae aren’t born
tor’um
because of something the parents did or didn’t do. It’s a completely random occurrence.

“Atroth stopped it,” Kyol says.

Nick looks at him. “What?”

“Atroth stopped the cleansing. A few
tor’um
were killed, but not all of them. Not most of them. Atroth had Lord Kelyon arrested and executed for what he did.”

“And he dissolved Ristin Province instead of allowing another fae to rise to the position of high noble,” Lena adds bitterly. “That laid the groundwork for him to dissolve the other provinces. Without that precedent, he wouldn’t have been able to remap the Realm and strengthen his position as king.”

The others included Adaris, her home province.

No wonder Nick hasn’t been back to the Realm. Anyone in those dissolved provinces along with anyone else who opposed Atroth would blame him for what happened, and in a world as violent as the Realm, they’d kill him.

“Kynlee’s from Ristin Province then?” I ask.

Nick’s jaw tightens. He takes another sip of his drink and doesn’t answer.

Lena shifts her weight. A bead of sweat breaks out on her brow, but for the first time in half an hour, Lorn opens his eyes.

“Lena,”
he murmurs.
“Lena, you came.”
He’s regressed to Fae again.

“Quiet, Lorn,”
she says. Surprisingly, her tone is gentle, not impatient or scolding. Lorn’s so out of it, he just murmurs nonsense before he turns his head to the side and goes silent.

I sit beside Kyol on the wicker sofa. Nick leans in the doorway, finishing his drink. Five minutes pass. Ten. Lena’s still healing Lorn.

Kyol stands.

“I’ll return soon,” he says. Then he walks outside to fissure out. I’m staring at his shadows, itching to draw them, when I see Nick’s hand twitch in my peripheral vision. He’s staring at the shadows, too, and I’d bet a million dollars he’s not just a Sighted human. He’s a shadow-reader, too.

I hug my legs to my chest, then rest my chin on my knee.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Kynlee asks, breaking the silence. I’m not sure when she returned. She was supposed to be in bed.

“I imagine he miscalculated,” Lena answers, finally removing her hands from Lorn. She’s sweating profusely now, and her
edarratae
are agitated. It’s not easy healing someone on the brink of death.

“Kynlee,” Nick says. “It’s almost six. Get ready for school.”

“School? But—”

“Now.” His tone leaves no room for argument. Grumbling, she does as he asks.

When she’s gone, Lena says, “Taltrayn mentioned the false-blood had something to do with this.”

“I don’t know details,” I answer, “but Lorn said the false-blood interrogated him. He ended up giving him my location.”

“That’s all he gave?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “We didn’t exactly have time for a lengthy chat. Nimael and two other
elari
showed up as I was driving out of the parking lot. If Lorn had gotten there a minute later”—or if he hadn’t shown up at all—“I’d be dead.”

I look at Lorn. Why did he warn me? Since it’s looking more and more like I falsely accused him, I owe him, not the other way around.

Lena wipes the back of her hand across her brow. “I’ll talk to him in the morning. He needs to rest for now.” She looks at Nick. “Do you want him to remain on your floor?”

Nick clenches his teeth. The one-hour limit he gave me when he let us in has passed. He has every right to kick us out. Hell, he had every right not to let us in in the first place.

“There’s a guest bedroom down the hall,” he finally says. “He can stay until he wakes up.” A pause. “Are you all staying?”

“Just McKenzie,” Lena says.

Nick is silent for a moment. Then he says, “We have a media room upstairs. You can sleep on the couch.”

A
FTER MY SECOND
shower of the night, I pull on a pair of cotton shorts and a T-shirt Kynlee loaned me, then find the stairs. They lead directly into the media room, the only room on the small second floor. With the electricity still off, it’s nearly pitch-black up here. The walls are painted a dark blue and are bare save for a large screen at the front of the room and a window with heavy drapes on the opposite wall. I pull those aside to let in some of the early-morning light.

Yawning, I turn around. Several large speakers and what I’m guessing is a subwoofer are set up in the corners of the room. A single leather couch is near the back wall. I head for it before I notice the closed laptop sitting on top of a side table. A thick cord leads into the wall. I’m guessing it connects to the projector in the ceiling. I’m about to ignore it and crash on the couch, but a flickering blue light catches my attention. The laptop’s battery is powering it. On a whim, I open the computer.

It’s not password protected. The home screen blinks on, and within a couple of clicks, I’m able to connect to the Internet. That surprises me considering Nick hasn’t turned the breakers back on, but I take advantage of the convenience and access my e-mail. Nothing from Paige. Nothing from Lee or Shane. There is, however, a notice from my employer saying that I’m being terminated. Despite the fact that I knew this was coming—my actions made it inevitable—it hurts a little. I’m a failure. I can’t even keep a simple, minimum-wage job. I’m going to lose my apartment, my car, and my chance at . . .

No. Shut up, McKenzie. You chose a different life.

I click out of my e-mail, annoyed at myself. I should collapse on the couch now, get what little sleep I can, but there’s something else I want to do. I’ve wanted to do it since I left Tholm.

I open a new web browser, then Google “Sight serum.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve entered this search phrase. I’ve done it at least four times before and have always received pure junk in return. I get the same list of makeup miracles and other random, unrelated hits, but this time, there’s one important difference: the top hit is a link to a Web site with a sales page.

Crap.

It’s a simple Web site, not much more than an information and contact page, but it claims that a single injection of their serum will give people the ability to see fae.

“This can’t be legal,” I mutter. People can’t be falling for this. The price tag is outrageous—$12,500 plus a required, in-person interview—and why would any sane person believe that the serum would work? Why would any sane person believe that fae exist? I denied it for a long time, believing I was seeing things that weren’t really there. Surely, the vigilantes haven’t actually sold anything.

But they might have.

I rub at the headache pounding behind my eyes. It’s there despite the fact that Kyol has fissured back to the Realm. I need to sleep it off, but before I lie down on the couch, I do one more thing. I set up a new e-mail account, then send a quick message to the seller telling him I’m interested in his product.

 • • • 

SOMETIME
after noon, I stagger down the stairs, feeling only slightly more rested than I did when I fell asleep. Dreams take their toll, and even though mine were, for once, pleasant, they were stressful. Aren and Kyol filled them—thank God, not at the same time—and I woke bathed in the memories of their kisses more than once. The dreams with Aren were intense—cosmic, even—but they were tinged with fear. If I don’t find a way to get through to him in the next two days, I’ll lose him.

Kyol’s dreams . . . Each kiss we shared made me miss him, and each kiss made my heart break a little. It wasn’t real, but it felt like I was cheating on Aren. I shouldn’t have two men on my mind. It’s not right, and it’s not fair to them. It’s especially not fair to Kyol, who’s able to feel what I’m feeling. He knows I’m in love with Aren, but he knows my stomach still flips when I think of him.

Guilt-ridden and feeling a little sick, I make my way through the living room, following the scent of coffee toward the kitchen. Kyol’s back. He’s sitting on one of three barstools that are lined up in front of the island. His back is to me. So is Nick’s. The human is standing by the coffeepot, waiting for it to finish brewing, I presume. He must have turned the breakers on. The air-conditioning is running now, too.

Nick grabs a couple of mugs out of the cabinet. “I thought . . .” His shoulders rise as he draws in a breath. “I thought the cleansing would spill across the borders. Atroth always catered to the conservative fae, and they saw the
tor’um
as a corruption, the result of too much human influence.”

“You didn’t have to run,” Kyol tells him. “We would have protected you despite your transgressions.”

I stop at the edge of the carpet, not stepping onto the earth-toned tile in the kitchen. The guilt I felt a minute ago disappears. Kyol thinks sleeping with a human is a “transgression.” That’s it. That’s why I chose to walk away from him. One of the reasons, at least. He’ll always see his love for me as a weakness.

“I didn’t know that,” Nick says, pouring coffee into the mugs. “Atroth was secretive. You all were. But if I’d known
you’d
eventually transgress, maybe I would have stayed.”

Kyol stiffens. I clear my throat, letting Nick know that I’m here. He glances over his shoulder, sees me, and looks only slightly chagrined by his words.

“Coffee?” he asks.

“Please,” I say, stepping onto the tile, then taking a seat on the barstool to Kyol’s right. When Nick sets a coffee mug in front of each of us, he says to Kyol, “I didn’t steal Kynlee. Her brother came to me. He begged me to take her out of Ristin, and I agreed. I took her as far away as possible and changed my last name so no one could find us.”

“Her brother will want to see her,” Kyol says. “He’s Ristin’s high noble now.”

Nick thumps down a third coffee mug a little too hard. “She’s not going back to the Realm.”

“He could visit her here.”

“No.” He thumps the mug down again. “She’s safe here. She won’t have a chance in the Realm. She’ll be shunned. She won’t be able to find work. No one will want to touch her, let alone marry her. She’s staying with me.”

I’m surprised he mentions the touching and marrying. He hits me as the type of dad who would sit on the front porch cleaning that shotgun of his anytime a boy showed up to take Kynlee out.

“She should know where she’s from,” Kyol tells him.

“She’s from here, now.”

“Kyol,” I interject gently, my tone saying to drop the subject. He does, but he seems agitated. I don’t think that’s just because he thinks Nick is wrong. Something’s on his mind.

“Lorn’s still asleep?” I ask.

He nods. “For a few more hours, at least.”

I look at Nick to see if he’s going to protest our staying here longer. He’s already been more accommodating than I expected, especially considering the fact that he’s worried someone might try to take Kynlee away from him.

Stone-faced, he tosses his empty mug into the sink.

“I have to go to work for a while,” he says. “I’ll be back before Kynlee gets home from school. Make sure you’re gone by then.”

He grabs his keys off a hook by a door on the other side of the kitchen. After he disappears through it, I hear the grinding rumble of a garage door opening.

I take a sip of my coffee as silence descends between Kyol and me. I want to tell him about Paige’s message and the Web site I found, but he feels so . . . I’m not sure how to describe him. Exhausted, yes, but it’s more than that. Soul-weary maybe. I don’t want to burden him with more bad news.

On the other hand, we already suspected the vigilantes were selling the Sight serum. This just confirms Glazunov’s words. And as for Paige’s message . . . It’s still possible Caelar isn’t working with the false-blood.

“Tell me,” Kyol says, staring down at the granite countertop.

I grimace. Of course he’d feel my turmoil. Proximity makes it difficult to hide our emotions from each other. That’s why I’m aware of his mood even though his wall is in place.

“You first,” I say.

His silver eyes meet mine, and it takes everything in me to not react to his familiar, stormy gaze. It feels like a cord is pulling on my heart.

Kyol draws in a slow breath as he looks away.

“It’s nothing,” he says.

“Nothing?” I ask, that heart-cord snapping in annoyance. “Well, then. Nothing is on my mind either.”

“McKenzie—”

“Are you trying to protect me from something?”

“No.”

“Because I can handle it, Kyol. I’ve always been able to handle it.”

He swivels on his barstool, facing me fully.

“There is nothing specifically wrong,” he says. “I swear it.”

“Then what’s wrong generally?” I ask, not dropping the subject.

His jaw clenches. So does mine. I’m pissed at Aren for this same reason. Something is wrong with him, but he doesn’t trust me enough to tell me what. It’s ridiculous for me to have this problem with Kyol, too. There’s no reason to withhold information from me after everything we’ve been through.

I slide off my barstool, start to leave, but Kyol grabs my arm.

“I’m worried about you, McKenzie.”

I look down as lightning circles my elbow. I’m mad enough that the lick of heat doesn’t make me want to move closer to him.

“That’s it?” I ask, letting doubt slide into my voice.

He releases my arm, then reaches for something beside the counter. When he turns back to me, he’s holding two dull swords with familiar red handles.

I barely suppress a sigh. Maybe I am what’s bothering him. God knows I’m not as good at hiding my emotions as he is, and he’s never had a life-bond before either. This is as new to him as it is to me. I’m probably stressing him out with my chaotic mood swings.

“Please,” he says, holding one of the practice swords out for me to take.

Even though my anger is quickly disappearing, I cross my arms over my chest. “Are you going to be an ass when I get tired?”

After a brief pause, he says, “You learn more quickly when I’m an ass.”

I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face.

A few minutes later, we’re in Nick’s backyard. I insist Kyol be visible in case one of the neighbors gets nosy, so he takes off his
jaedric
armor. He wears it so often, always prepared for an attack, that I’m sure he feels naked holding a sword without it, but his black pants and shirt can pass as human made.

“And if someone sees the swords?” Kyol asks, raising his blade between us.

“We’ll tell them we’re with the SCA.”

He lifts an eyebrow.

“Society of Creative”—I fake a direct attack, swing down toward his left leg—“Anachronism.”

He blocks my wild move with ease and counters with an unnecessarily hard hit to my ribs. “Practice the forms. No wild swings.”

Wild swings are for the untrained. He told me that at least a dozen times between Tholm and Corrist. Wild swings rely on luck not expertise, but isn’t that the whole point of my training? I need to be good enough to be lucky because, God knows, if I end up in a sword fight with a fae, I’m going to need a huge dose of luck to survive it.

Besides, Aren gets away with wild, messy swings when he fights. It’s not that he isn’t trained, but sometimes, being unpredictable can create an advantage.

“Your focus is elsewhere.” Kyol hits my practice blade so hard, I nearly drop it.

I grit my teeth and tighten my grip on the red hilt. Right. Focus. I can do that.

Within minutes, my skin glistens with sweat. It’s frustrating considering Kyol isn’t even breathing hard.

“You need to leave Vegas,” Kyol says, swinging at my left thigh.

“Aren’t I supposed to be focusing?” I ask, blocking his attack. But I knew he’d bring this conversation up.

“You can’t return to your apartment.”

“I—” His blade arcs toward my head. I fall on my ass, avoiding a concussion. “Jesus, Kyol.”

He squats in front of me. “Good. Next time, roll away from your opponent. Roll to your feet.”

He offers me his hand. Is this his attempt to not be an ass? Or is it a trap?

My eyes narrow, and just in case, I get to my feet on my own.

“You’re doing well, McKenzie.”

I keep my guard up, still suspicious. “Are you patronizing me?”

“No,” he says, stabbing toward my stomach. I block his attack and turn sideways, making myself a smaller target.

“It takes fae years of training to develop muscle memory,” he continues, launching another attack, this time a low one aimed at my knees. “You’re developing it within hours. And you’re quick.” A jab toward my left shoulder. “Quicker than you used to be.”

I get what he’s saying, and even though this can be seen as a positive thing, the implication makes me uncomfortable. What else has the life-bond changed? And are all the changes for the better?

Kyol senses the dark path my thoughts are taking, so I give him a small smile, and say, “Good thing I’m bonded to the Realm’s best swordsman.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up ever so slightly.