Salvaged Soul (The Ignited Series Book 3) (18 page)

Chapter 18

{Kris}

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“It will work.” Nathan sounded like a broken record, but only because I kept asking the same question over and over again.

I didn’t share his confidence that this concoction, or whatever it was, would work. I was surprised when he told me that it had worked on Lillian. Though her memory remained fuzzy, she was no longer a Skotadi.

But just because it worked for Lillian didn’t mean it would work for Alec and me. The fact that our circumstances were very different kept me from getting too excited.

Even Alec was more optimistic than me. “Yeah, come on Kris,” he said. “You’re kind of taking the wind out of my sails right now.”

I shot him a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I’ve just gotten so used to . . .” What? What prevented me from getting excited about this?

“No hope?” Alec ventured.

I nodded. That was exactly how I felt. Completely hopeless, and sure that
nothing
would work. Ever. I had gotten so used to knowing I was doomed that I had come to sort of accept it. I had a hard time thinking or feeling differently.

On some level, I knew it was the Skotadi in me that had those feelings. Not me. Not really. I hoped she was scared, and knew that she would be getting her eviction notice soon.

We slowed as we approached the entrance to the boys’ dormitory, and Alec turned to put a hand on my shoulder, as if trying to instill some of his hope in me.

“It will work,” he said. He waited for me to nod, before turning to face Nathan. “Three days, right?”

“Yeah,” Nathan said to Alec, then turned to address Bruce. “You have any questions?”

Bruce threw his hands up. “I’m good.”

Nathan had spoken to him earlier to make sure he had no problem with what we were attempting. As I suspected, Bruce was cool with it, and had promised to not report anything that he saw to upper level management—as long as Alec behaved. Considering he would be unconscious, I doubted Alec could cause too much trouble. Then again, he was notorious for surprising me, and especially good at being bad.

“Just don’t let me die, alright?” Alec pleaded, looking back and forth between Nathan and Bruce. He didn’t wait for an answer before he turned toward the entrance, with Bruce on his heels.

“I’ll be by to check on you later!” Nathan called after him.

Alec’s hand lifted over his head in a dismissive wave, the only indication he gave that he heard Nathan. He didn’t seem thrilled about his plans for the evening, and I wondered if Alec had the same doubts and concerns I had—that this potion might not cause the results Nathan and Jared expected it to.

My thoughts preoccupied me as Nathan and I continued to the girls’ dormitory. Not until we were back in my room, and I looked up to find Nathan staring at me, did I realize I hadn’t said a word in nearly ten minutes.

Nathan sighed. “Alright, what is it?”

I smiled as I kicked off my shoes. I thought about blowing my concerns off as nothing. Then I remembered who I would be attempting to fool, and knew that wouldn’t work. With a shrug that I hoped downplayed my concern, I said, “It’s Alec.”

Nathan looked surprised as I glided up next to him, seeking his reassuring presence. His arms automatically encircled me, pulling me inside their protective barrier. “He’ll be okay.”

“It’s just . . .” I mumbled into his shirt. “Was it just me, or did he seem a little reluctant?”

I felt Nathan shrug. “Who wants to go to sleep for three days? He doesn’t know what to expect, but the end result will be worth it. He knows that.”

I pulled back far enough to see his eyes. “How are you so sure?” It wasn’t so much a question as a statement of awe.

Because he wasn’t just optimistic. He was positive that we had found the answer. He had a confidence about the whole thing that I lacked.

His fingers brushed through the hair framing my face, pushing the strands behind my ears. “Because Circe gave me that hope.”

I thought about that. Having a goddess behind the whole thing was reassuring . . . “But what if—”

“Stop.” He softened the order with a chuckle. “You’re too worried about this.”

I took a deep breath, then expressed my fear in a rush. “I’m just afraid that my true potential is for evil, not good, and I’ll wake up the monster I am trying to avoid becoming.”

His eyes softened with understanding. “You know why I’m
not
worried about that?” He paused long enough for me to shake my head before he continued. “Because of how much you
are
worried about that.”

My teeth caught my lip. I rolled his words around in my head a few times, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make sense of them. “I don’t get it.”

“You’re
good
, Kris,” Nathan said. He gripped my shoulders and gave me a little shake for emphasis. “You’re good to your core. If you weren’t—if evil drove you—you wouldn’t be this worried about becoming evil. You would welcome it. Instead, you fear it so much that I know you—the true you—is good.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he stopped me with a look. “You’ve got your mother’s blood in you, giving you that goodness, and that is what this potion is going to find. It’s going to strengthen that part of you so much that the evil hiding in there somewhere won’t stand a chance.”

Well, when he put it that way . . .

It sounded alright. And it came from the gods. It wasn’t some cockamamie attempt at a spell that I had stumbled upon in a book. We knew it was legit because it had already worked—on Lillian.

She was back to her normal self. Other than getting rid of the occasional extra voice in my head telling me to think bad thoughts and do bad things, I wouldn’t really change. Same with Alec. We would just . . . be prevented from changing for the worse later. I hoped that was all that would happen to us. But how could we know for sure?

“Do you think we’ll be the same people we are now?” I pondered out loud. “Or do you think this will change us? Not just in the good and evil kind of way, but change who we are?”

Nathan considered my question, and the thought occurred to me that I had brought up something he hadn’t thought of. But maybe Alec had? Maybe that was the cause of Alec’s reluctance? Maybe it wasn’t just a fear of unknowingly sealing his fate with evil? Maybe he didn’t want to wake up a completely different person?

“I don’t think the change will be that big.” Nathan pushed me back, far enough to look down at me. “In your case, it’s preventing you from completing a transition into something. I don’t think it will actually change who you already are. Or Alec.”

“I hope so.”

I couldn’t imagine Alec not being . . . Alec. Or waking up feeling differently about Nathan. Oh, hell no. That potion better not change anything like that.

I wondered how the change had been for Lillian. If anything else about her had changed, or if she was back to her old self. Nathan hadn’t really said much about her condition since returning from the Infirmary. This was the first chance we really had to talk about Lillian’s transformation.

I pulled out of Nathan’s hold so that I could see him better. “How is Lillian adjusting?”

He looked a little taken aback by the change of subject, but shrugged with a carefree ease. “Time will tell. I think she’s just glad to be back to herself.”

“You said she didn’t remember much when she woke up?” That he had told me right away, and that had been a big blow to our campaign to help Callie.

“I doubt that was the potion,” he said quickly. “More likely a byproduct of whatever spell the Skotadi had her under.”

Yeah . . . I wasn’t worried so much about the potion anymore. That would change in three days, when it was my turn to drink it. For now, I was more curious about Lillian, and what exactly she remembered and didn’t remember. If she didn’t remember much from her time as a Skotadi, did she remember me? Did she remember anything she had done to me? To Nathan?

“So she doesn’t remember the things she has done?” I attempted to choose my words carefully, but the question still came out sounding a little harsh.

After all she put us through, it was hard not to hold some resentment. I doubted I would ever be able to look at her without feeling the sting of her hand on my cheek, or shake off the terror I felt watching her hold a gun to Nathan’s head. 

“No. She’s sort of stuck in the past,” Nathan answered. “Like her time as a Skotadi was just a nightmare, and she doesn’t remember much about it.”

Stuck in the past? I pulled a little farther away from Nathan. “Did she wake up thinking that the last seven years didn’t happen?”

Nathan started to nod, then he realized the direction my line of questions was leading, and stopped. His mouth started to open, but I cut him off.

“Does she think you two are still together?” I asked, and inwardly cringed at the shrill edge to my voice.

An emotion I didn’t recognize flashed in his eyes. Again, he started to say something before I beat him to it.

“If she woke up thinking the last seven years were only a bad dream, then she woke up still in love with you. That’s why she was asking for you,” I continued, piecing it all together.

This time, I gave him a chance to respond, but he didn’t. And that could only mean one thing . . .

“And you didn’t tell her,” I concluded.

“If you’re asking me if I set her straight within moments of her waking up and being told that she lost seven years of her life, that she had been living those years as a Skotadi, doing horrible things that she will have to come to terms with in her own time, then the answer is no,” Nathan said stiffly. “I didn’t tell her anything. She was a mess when I got there. She wasn’t ready to hear it.”

The sharp edge to his voice that let me know I had struck a nerve. The fears I had woken up with that morning—the fears that Nathan had squashed with the promise he had made to me in the rock cave—rushed back in a wave of panic.

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Kris,” Nathan said, his tone much softer now. “She just—she’s gone through a lot today. I couldn’t add to it.”

I nodded like I understood—and a small, rational piece of me did. I bit my lip on the emotions bubbling beneath my mask of self-control. It had been hard enough knowing that she was back to normal, back to the girl Nathan had once been in love with. But to hear that she was stuck in the past, still in love with him, and that he hadn’t told her the truth . . .

It was awkward for so many reasons, and it brought out an insane amount of jealousy that I didn’t know I possessed. Though I knew jealousy should have been the last thing on my mind, it was there. Nathan’s defensiveness when it came to Lillian certainly didn’t help.

“Kris?” he probed. When I didn’t respond, his hand cupped my chin and tipped my head back until I reluctantly met his eyes. “Don’t make it more than it is. If you had seen her, you’d understand why I couldn’t do it.”

“But you will, right?” I asked softly. “You will tell her?”

“Of course I’m going to tell her.” He paused long enough to make sure I registered the sincerity of his words.

Though my presumably irrational concerns about Lillian weren’t completely alleviated, I felt a little better hearing that. I believed him, and I knew he would tell her when he felt that she was ready for the truth. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Because surely postponing it would not only make it more uncomfortable for me, but it would also make it more painful for Lillian when she finally learned the truth.

It would be even worse if it didn’t come from Nathan. Only a few days had passed since Nathan and I shared that very public kiss on the beach, and while I hadn’t heard much talk about it yet, that didn’t mean people weren’t gossiping out of earshot. Lillian would eventually hear about it.

For now, I was okay with a delay, as long as it was for the right reason. Nathan had a good reason. I was glad he had the heart that he did. He may have odd ways of showing it at times, but he was a caring guy. He wasn’t the type to hurt someone without doing everything he could do to prevent it.

Whether I liked it or not, that included Lillian.

“You’re a good guy,” I told him as I wedged myself into his arms, back where I belonged.

He didn’t hesitate to wrap me up in a Nathan-cocoon. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to enjoy it long before there was a loud rap at the door. Nathan’s arms dropped with a sigh as my back straightened.

Micah.

For the longest time, he had claimed he could sense my exact location when I was within a certain distance from him. I never had the same ability . . . until recently. As annoying as it had been before, knowing that he could always find me, it was twice as bad now that my Micah-radar had kicked in.

Nathan saw it on my face, and an unhappy growl-like noise sounded from the back of his throat as he moved to the door. He swung it open, revealing the person I expected. Micah looked equally unhappy to see Nathan, and regarded him with visible distaste before swinging his attention to me.

“I just checked on Callie,” he told me.

Callie updates were the only things that I would allow him in my room for. His lips curled into a barely visible grin—the only indication I had that I hadn’t yet put up the wall around my thoughts.