The Sharpest Blade (7 page)

“If it weren’t for that . . .” He swallows. “If it weren’t for that, I’d never leave your side.”

I give a short, sharp laugh as my stomach does a somersault. “If you think I’ll let you go after saying
that
, then the In-Between must have screwed with your head.”

“I—” He snaps his mouth shut, shakes his head at himself. “Then I didn’t mean it.”

There’s a slight smile on his lips, and
finally
, his eyes are lighter, less serious. I want to kiss him again. I want our arms wrapped around each other, our bodies pressed close, but when I take a step toward him, he takes a step back.

“McKenzie.” He retreats another step. This time, an infuriated squeak cuts through the air.

Aren nearly falls onto the couch in his attempt to get off of Sosch’s tail. The
kimki
squeaks again, then he darts out from underfoot, leaping straight from the floor to my chest.

“Sosch!” I yell, staggering under the weight of the fifteen-pound furball. “Sosch. Down!”

He moves to drape himself across my shoulders, his tiny claws pricking my skin.

“Sosch.” Aren’s mouth splits into a grin as he regains his balance. My balance is still off, though. I steady myself on the edge of my secondhand breakfast table, then bend down to Sosch’s bowl of Goldfish.

“Here.” I hold one up to his mouth. He devours it and the next two I give him. “Now down. Perch.”

Sosch jumps off my shoulders, stops at my feet, then raises his front legs off the ground. Balanced on his hind legs, he stretches up just past my knees.

“Perch?” Aren asks, staring as the
kimki
eats two more crackers.

I nod. “It’s different from ‘sit.’ I thought about using ‘stand,’ but ‘perch’ is cuter.”

“Cuter?”

I frown at Aren, not getting the tone in his voice. He’s not quite annoyed. It’s more like he’s . . . offended?

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

“You taught him . . . tricks?”

“To perch and sit and roll over, yeah.”

He shakes his head. “You can’t teach a
kimki
tricks.”

“Obviously, you can.”

“No, you . . . you just don’t. They’re
kimkis
, McKenzie. They’re not”—he waves his hand as he searches for the right word—“pets.” He almost chokes on that last word.

“It’s not a big deal, and you do it all the time when you tell him to jump on your shoulders.” I grab another Goldfish, then order, “Up.”

Sosch leaps to my outstretched arm, then back to my shoulders.

“That’s different. I wanted him to come with me, not to perform. This is . . . It’s . . . It’s . . .”

I’ve never seen Aren like this, so flabbergasted. It’s funny, and I’m tempted to see if Sosch will start swinging his head back and forth when I say “dance,” but he’s still working on that trick, and so far, he’s only done it when I play Matchbox Twenty.

But I
don’t
tell Sosch to dance. Instead, I help Aren out. “It’s sacrilege?”

“Yes!” Aren says, grabbing onto the word. “Sacrilege.
Kimkis
are endangered and wild. They do what they want, and sometimes their desires line up with yours, but . . .”

He fades off when Sosch nuzzles his furry head under my chin. Aren’s eyes are still wide, still astounded, and I think maybe even a little . . .

I grin. “You’re jealous.”

Aren’s gaze locks on my mouth. He’s confessed to loving my smiles. He’s told me he thinks they’re rare, like a magic that went extinct during the
Duin Bregga
, but they were only scarce because we were enemies, and we were fighting a war.

“Jealous of a
kimki
?” The corner of his mouth tilts up. “Never.”

“Of me,” I say, stepping toward him. “I’ve stolen your pet.”

“I told you”—he reaches up and glides his hand down Sosch’s long back—“they’re not pets,
nalkin-shom
.”

Nalkin-shom.
Shadow-witch. The title should infuriate me, but it doesn’t, not when it comes from his lips, and especially not when his voice is deep and gently teasing.

“If I knew all it would take to get you here was Sosch,” I say, “I would have sent a ransom note weeks ago.”

His smile makes chaos lusters ricochet through my stomach. He’s standing close, so he can pet Sosch, and his cedar-and-cinnamon scent makes warmth flood through me.

“I’ve missed you,” I say.

His silver eyes meet mine. “You make me lose my focus.”

“Good.” I smile.

His head lowers toward mine, and his
jaedric
cuirass moves as his chest rises and falls beneath it.

My skin tingles. I tilt my head slightly as I lean toward Aren, not figuring out that the sensation is a warning until after a fissure cuts through the room. Kyol steps out of the slash of light with Naito, and the warmth that filled me half a second ago instantly chills.

And just like that, I’ve lost Aren. He moves away, and I swear even Sosch lets out a sad sigh.

“D
ID EVERYTHING GO
okay?” Aren asks, turning his back on me. I focus on Naito, too, almost thankful for the distraction.
Almost.
I’d be more thankful if he and Kyol had waited at least a few more minutes before fissuring here.

“No losses,” Naito answers, but his face is dark when his gaze locks on Lee, who’s still asleep. Naito walks to the couch, then smacks his brother on the head. “Wake up.”

Lee’s body jerks, but he doesn’t open his eyes.

Naito grabs a fistful of his bloodstained shirt and yanks him off the cushions. Lee moves again, this time more alert than before, but I don’t think he realizes where he is or what’s going on until Naito slams him against the wall. I wince when I hear something metallic jiggle in my neighbor’s apartment.

“Is Caelar working with the false-blood?” Naito demands, inches from Lee’s face.

“What?” Lee grabs at Naito’s hands.

“Is Caelar working with the false-blood!”

“I don’t know,” Lee says, trying to shove his brother away. Naito has my complete attention now, too. If he’s implying what I think he is, this could be majorly bad news.

“Why was he in Bardur?” He slams Lee against the wall again.

“I don’t fucking know!” Lee yells. This time, he twists out of Naito’s grasp.

“Hey!” I step between them before this fight gets louder. “If one of my neighbors calls the cops, I’m screwed.” I nod toward Lee. “He says he hasn’t talked to the remnants.”

“And you suddenly believe everything he says?” Naito demands.

“Of course not,” I say, but Naito still looks like he’s about to kill his brother. I completely understand the sentiment, but I seriously do not need a dead body in here.

“What happened in Bardur?” Aren asks. He’s leaning against my breakfast table now, looking relaxed and unruffled. Someone could tell him an army just fissured behind him, and he’d shrug it off and come up with a crazy plan to counter the hiccup.

“Nimael was there,” Naito says, some of the tension finally draining from his muscles. “So was Caelar. They were meeting in a silver-protected warehouse in the middle of the city.”

“Who’s Nimael?” I ask.

“We think he’s the false-blood’s second-in-command,” Aren tells me. I meet his eyes, uneasiness churning in my stomach. A month ago, Lena was worried about Caelar finding a Descendant who could rival her bloodline. If he presented an alternative ruler to the high nobles, they might have considered that fae over her. But Caelar never found someone willing to rule, and he lost so many fae in his last-ditch effort to retake the palace that he and the remnants aren’t as much of a threat now as they were before.

But if he joins forces with a false-blood . . .

I glance at Kyol. He knows Caelar well. They were colleagues back when the king was alive, and Kyol respects him. He’s always said Caelar wouldn’t support a false-blood. Does he still believe that? Neither the life-bond nor Kyol’s expression gives any indication of how he feels.

I turn back to Aren. “You think Nimael is the second-in-command or you know he is?”

Sosch hops up onto the breakfast table.

“If he’s not his second,” Aren says, sliding his hand over the
kimki
’s back, “he’s close to it. He’ll be able to give us information on the false-blood.” He looks at Naito. “I take it you weren’t able to capture him?”

Naito shakes his head. “He double fissured. I didn’t pinpoint his location accurately enough.”

The last part is said with more than a hint of aggravation in his voice. It’s directed at himself, I think, but I can’t help feeling responsible on some level. If I’d been there, chances are, Lena’s fae would have caught Nimael before he was able to open a second fissure and escape. The maps I draw when I read the shadows are incredibly accurate. That’s why Aren risked abducting me from my college campus a few months ago—the rebels almost never escaped when I was there to track them. Fae who are physically fit can fissure over and over again as long as they don’t move more than twenty or thirty feet from their original location, but if they fissure farther away than that, it takes them almost a minute to recover enough to disappear into the In-Between again. That’s plenty of time for the fae who see my maps to fissure to their location and capture or kill them.

“Nimael knows we’re after him now.” Kyol’s level voice cuts into my thoughts.

“He’ll go underground,” Aren agrees. “Fortunately, that means we still have a chance.” He hops off my table. “I’ll find him again.”

I’ll read his shadows for you.
I press my lips together to hold the words back. I’m not available to help. I have a job, and I’m supposed to
like
the normal life I’m building for myself. I don’t need to screw it up further by shadow-reading again.

But then, I’ve never been able to turn my back on the people I care about either.

“It will probably take me a few days to learn anything,” Aren says to Naito. “You should get some rest.”

Naito nods, then turns to me, and asks, “Where’s Glazunov?”

Glazunov. Right. One catastrophe at a time.

“My bedroom,” I say, giving Lee one last pissed-off glare before I walk to the door and open it for Naito. He strides past me, straight to the bed, then draws a dagger from its sheath on his right hip. Glazunov is still awake and furious, but Naito doesn’t waste a second. He grips his dagger high up on the hilt then slams the pommel into Glazunov’s temple. The vigilante head whips to the left, then he lies there, completely still.

I
really
need to learn the trick to knocking someone out like that.

“You have a car I can borrow?” Naito asks, using the dagger to cut through the duct tape binding the vigilante’s wrists and ankles to my bed.

My jaw clenches. Naito needs to drive Glazunov to a gate so that the vigilante can survive fissuring to the Realm, but I don’t want him in my car. If he wakes up and catches someone’s attention, the license plate will lead back to me. Again, the last thing I need is cops knocking on my door.

“We can take my car,” Lee offers from just behind me.

Naito slices through the last of the duct tape, then looks up. His nostrils flare slightly, and the grip he has on his dagger’s hilt makes his knuckles turn white. The gate is only fifteen minutes from my apartment, but I’m not sure Naito and Lee can make it that far without someone ending up dead.

Naito shoves his dagger back into its sheath.

“Help me get him out of here,” he says.

I let out a breath, then move out of Lee’s way. When I do, a familiar, tingling sensation moves across my skin. I step back into the living room, but the fissure has already closed. It was Aren’s fissure.

I bite the inside of my cheek while the shadows his fissure left behind twist through my vision. My hands itch to draw them out. If I had a pen and paper, I could pinpoint where he’s gone. Without it, all I know is that he’s in the Realm. I don’t know whether to be hurt or pissed off. I know he has things to do back in Corrist, responsibilities that he can’t put off, but he needs to . . . He needs to get over the life-bond and talk to me.

I wrench my gaze away from the shadows when Naito and Lee drag Glazunov out of my bedroom. The vigilante is slung between them, one of his arms thrown over each of their shoulders and his head lolling with each step they take. To me, he looks half-dead. To my neighbors, I hope he looks passed-out drunk.

I open the door, then follow them out. From the second-floor landing, I watch as they make their way down the stairs, gripping the rusty rails for balance. They manage to avoid the beer bottles and trash my lovely neighbors have left on the steps. I scan the parking lot, looking for anyone who might see them. It’s dark and empty right now—the landlord seriously needs to fix the lights—but that doesn’t mean someone isn’t watching from a window. If they are, hopefully they’ll believe Naito and Lee are just helping out a friend.

Of course, most drunk guys’ friends don’t stuff them into trunks.

“I don’t like this place,” Kyol says from behind me. He has his emotions locked down tight, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel him. There’s a steady pull, a constant awareness, of where he is.

“It’s affordable,” I say, watching as Lee pulls out of the parking spot. Truthfully, I don’t like this place that much either. At least once a week, the police show up to settle some argument or domestic dispute, but this is the first home I’ve ever paid for on my own. Before Atroth was killed—and before I realized how violent he’d become and how much he had misled me—he paid for my college tuition and my apartment in Houston. That never sat well with me because the money wasn’t exactly obtained legitimately, but I couldn’t have survived without it. I can now, and if I keep my job and watch my finances, this apartment will be temporary.

When the taillights of Lee’s car disappear around the corner, I head back inside. Kyol follows, closing the door behind him.

“I want you to move in with Naito,” he says.

“What?” I ask, not bothering to hide my surprise as I turn to face him. “Naito’s house is in Colorado.”

“It would be safer for you,” Kyol says.

“This place is safe.” Safe-ish.

The protectiveness Kyol feels toward me leaks through his mental wall. He plugs the holes quickly, but that doesn’t stop a warm, yearning feeling from swirling through my stomach. I draw in a slow breath, doing my best to quiet my emotions.

“Look, I’m okay here, Kyol,” I tell him gently. “You’ll fissure Glazunov to the Realm, and the other vigilantes don’t know where I live. Neither do the remnants.”

“Or Lorn,” Kyol says. “Or the false-blood. Many people want you dead, McKenzie.”

“You’re worried about Lorn?” I ask, trying to divert the conversation.

“He might not be entirely responsible for the war,” Kyol says, “but he’s not a good man, and he knows you had something to do with his imprisonment. He’ll sell information on you to the false-blood if he has the opportunity.”

I shake my head. “I have a job here.” At least, I did this morning. “I can’t move in with Naito.”

He doesn’t respond to that, he just stands there as grim-faced as usual. Or maybe, more grim-faced than usual. He’s always been a solemn man, one with a million responsibilities on his shoulders, but the weight he carries seems heavier now.

“Then . . . be careful,” he finally says. “Please.”

I give him a little smile. “I promise I won’t go fissuring around with a
tor’um
again.”

Amusement leaks through the bond. It doesn’t alter his expression, though. He’s too much the perfect soldier. Always has been.

He says a silent good-bye with his nod, then steps away from me to open a fissure. When he does, Sosch
chirp-squeaks
from somewhere behind me. I turn, but the damn
kimki
scurries between my legs. I reach for the arm of the couch to catch my balance, and my hand knocks against the hilt of the unsheathed sword I leaned against it earlier. It starts to fall, and the image of a bleeding
kimki
flashes in my mind.

It’s a ridiculous image—the worst Sosch might get is a nick—but I’m already moving. I catch the end of the blade on the top of my sneaker, flip it up. It arcs end over end in the air. Me around flying swords? Not a good combination. But my right hand darts out and wraps around the hilt as if I’ve done the move a thousand times before.

I stare wide-eyed at the blade as Sosch disappears into the fissure. Kyol’s still standing here. His jaw clenches as he meets my gaze, and I know he’s thinking exactly the same thing I am: three weeks ago, there’s no way I would have caught the sword.

 • • • 

I
don’t sleep in my bed. I don’t sleep much at all. After I shower, I toss my dirty and bloodstained sheets into a laundry basket then curl up on the floor with a pillow that, fortunately, wasn’t used by the vigilante. Not surprisingly, my dreams are unpleasant. My recurring nightmares about Thrain, the false-blood who dragged me into the Realm a decade ago, aren’t the worst this time. The worst are the ones where my friends are dead. Lena’s been made
tor’um
, I find Naito skinned alive and hanging from the rafters in the palace, and the head of Shane, the Sighted human I haven’t seen since I lost him in London, is delivered to me in a box.

As for Kyol? I watch an executioner stab a sword through Kyol’s chest over and over and over again, feeling every wound as if it’s piercing my own heart. The high nobles are looking on, satisfied grins on all their faces because they’re killing the fae who killed their king.

I can’t wake from any of those visions. It’s only my last nightmare that wrenches my soul so hard I lurch upright, sweat-soaked, wheezing, and with Aren’s agonized scream echoing in my ears. He’s locked in silver-plated shackles and forced to watch as I’m thrown onto a bed in a
tjandel
. We’re both fighting, him trying to get to me and me trying to get away from the sick bastards who want to rape and skin me. The dream only ends when one of those assholes draws a dagger across my throat.

Wide-eyed, I stare at the foot of my bed from my pile of blankets on the floor, attempting to calm down my racing heartbeat. How much of my fear and horror Kyol felt, I don’t know. He isn’t in my world, but his wall is down. He’s worried.