shaede assassin 05 - shadows at midnight (17 page)

Ty was a lot of things, but selfish wasn’t one of them. “I’m not in love with Xander,” I replied softly. “When you and I were apart…” Just the memory of that time caused a lump to rise in my throat. “…I’d never felt so empty and alone. So lost. I wanted to curl up and die. Xander forced me to get my ass out of bed and get my shit together. He helped to get me through something that I know I couldn’t have survived on my own. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. I love him, Ty, just like I love Raif and Asher.” And maybe even Anya in some weird, twisted way. “But Xander isn’t the one I can’t live without. He’s not the one who makes me feel whole. Tyler, I’ll never love anyone more than I love you. My wanting to help Xander has nothing to do with what happened between us. He’s my friend and I care about him. And if it’s in my power to help him now, I have to at least try.”

Tyler grabbed my hand and pulled me close. He cupped my face and locked his gaze with mine. I lost myself completely to the hazel depths. Ty could get to me with a look. Command my attention until everything else in the world melted away. God, I loved him so much there weren’t even words that could describe this all-consuming emotion. I couldn’t even adequately convey it to him. How could something so powerful be described with simple words?

He put his lips to mine and in our kiss I felt every ounce of his love for me. We didn’t need words. We never had.

“You’re not without power, Darian,” Tyler said against my mouth. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to help him.”

A ripple of cold burst from my ring. “Thank you,” I whispered back.

“For what?”

I raked my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “For
everything
.”

The silver of my ring brushed the back of Ty’s neck and he shivered. His love for me was absolute. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. And there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him, including keeping any and all of his secrets.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I headed to Xander’s the next morning with a plan set firmly in my mind. Ty hadn’t offered outright to help Xander regain his sanity but he’d given me a tool—and the words to use it. It probably wasn’t a good idea to go around muttering Jinn incantations that I had no idea what they meant. For all I knew, I was opening a portal into a parallel dimension or some shit. Then again, I’d never been one to consider the consequences of my actions before I acted. Xander needed my help. And I was going to do whatever it took to help him.

“How is he?”

“Ordering anyone who’ll listen to go fetch you,” Asher said instead of giving me a straight answer. “Since last night. He hasn’t slept.”

“Demanding with a one track mind. Definitely a good sign.”

Ash shrugged. “Raif doesn’t seem to think so. They’ve kept the king sequestered. He’s had moments of lucidity but they’re not as frequent as Raif would like. Seconds in comparison to the hours he’s spent disoriented and rambling. The entire house has been cleared of any non-essential personnel and no one but me, Anya, Myles, Liam, and Raif are allowed past the first story.”

Raif was definitely playing it close to the hip. Not a bad idea. “I talked to Tyler last night. He said there was nothing he could do to outright mend Xander’s mind, but I think he’s given me a way to do it without directly using his magic.”

Ash’s eyes lit with curiosity. “Wanna fill me in?”

“Nope.”

He didn’t do anything to hide his disappointment and pouted like a like a kid who’d found his Happy Meal without a toy. “You’re no fun, you know that?”

“I do and I’m totally okay with it.”

“Sadistic,” Ash said with a sad shake of his head. “Well, inadvertently or not, if whatever you manage to do helps Xander, Ty will definitely be off the hook for any affronts to the crown.”

I snorted. “Perceived affronts.”

As we started up the stairs the sound of angry shouts drifted down from Xander’s suite of rooms. The door opened wide and his voice boomed before the door slammed closed again, muffling the sound. Anya came waddling down the stairs in a gentle stir of flowing fabric. Her eyes lit on me and her full lips thinned with annoyance. “Good, you’re here,” she said as though she really wished I was buried deep in a hole somewhere. “He continues to believe that we’re all illusions sent to trick him into believing that you’re actually alive. Maybe if he sees you with his own eyes, his mind will clear and he’ll move on to obsessions that are worthy of his attention.” Without missing a beat, she passed me on the staircase and continued her descent.

“So, yeah. That about covers it,” Asher said with a laugh. “The last thing he remembers is Padma killing you. Or…you killing Padma who looked like you.”

“Got it.” Reconciling with reality wasn’t easy after a major mind fuck. I owed it to Xander to do whatever I could to help get him back to one hundred percent. But I couldn’t let myself get sucked back into this world.
His
world. Like Ty pointed out to me last night, I’d become too enmeshed with Xander and I had to be careful not to get sucked back into a destructive pattern that would only confuse us both. I’d told him I was moving on and I meant it.

As we reached the second floor landing, Raif exited the suite to more of the same angry shouts. He paused outside the door and cradled his forehead in his palm, massaging his temple with the pads of his thumb and fingers. He let out an exhausted sigh before bringing his gaze up to meet mine. “Good. You’re here.”

“Uh-huh.” Looked like Raif and Anya shared a mutual frustration. Aside from the power in my ring and the magic words that seemed to awaken it, I wasn’t exactly sure how much help I’d be in leveling him out. If our history was any indication, my presence here would make matters worse before it made them any better.

Raif gave Asher a stern look and he gave a shallow nod of his head. “Catch ya later,” he said before heading back down the stairs. It always filled me with a sense of awe that Raif could bend others to his will with nothing more than a withering stare. Where Xander was a regal king, I had no doubt that Raif would have made a ruthless one.

“What happened in that dungeon?” Raif hissed close to my ear. “And don’t tell me it’s none of my business because I’m holding onto his kingdom by the barest of threads. He seems lucid now, Darian, but I have no idea how long that will last. He believes that you were with him every minute of his time there.”

I opened my mouth to tell Raif that it truly was
none
of his business, but he gave me that same stern look and I shut my mouth. “Padma,” I said through clenched teeth, “tortured Xander while making him believe that she was me. I don’t know everything that passed between them, but from my own experience with her, I can only assume that she used him, humiliated him, tortured him, and then made him beg for more.”

 Raif’s sapphire blue gaze narrowed into dangerous slits. He jerked his head toward the closed door. “You’d better get in there. Aside from seeing you with his own eyes, not much else will placate him.”

I took a steadying breath. Myles and Liam stood sentinel, like they had the day before. We exchanged a glance as I walked through the door.
Here goes…
With any luck, he wouldn’t try to kiss me or choke me to death.

“I told you not to show your face to me again until you found her!”

Xander stood with his back to me. Dressed in the black tee and workout pants I’d chosen out of his closet yesterday, he stared through the window at the grounds below. He braced an arm on the molding that framed the panes of glass, his shoulders slumped. His question baffled me. Was he so disoriented that he thought I was still missing?

“Xander. I’m here.”

His body tensed. Silence stretched between us and he didn’t move for several beats. His broad back expanded with his breath and he turned slowly to face me. “Are you real?”

My heart broke for him. I knew the confusion he felt, the doubt. That he’d endured his torture to secure my freedom tore at me even more. “As real as you are.”

He gave me a wan smile. “Then we are nothing more than shadows of ourselves.”

There was a harsh truth to his words that caused my stomach to clench. “When you’re forced into the dark, you’ll do anything to get out. We both went willingly and we both paid the price, didn’t we?” That darkness had followed us from the moment we’d set out to kill Azriel. That act cast the darkest of shadows on our souls.

“We are shadows at midnight.” Xander’s eyes glazed over and he lost focus for a moment. He gripped his forehead in his palm and gave a violent shake of his head. I noted the barest tremor of his fingers and a quaver in the release of his breath. He turned away, almost violently, and faced the window once again. “I’m finding that I can’t reconcile the promises I made with my own memories.”

He didn’t make an ounce of sense. I walked slowly toward him and he tensed as though afraid. God. What had Padma done to him as she’d worn my face? If I had to guess, she’d beaten and abused him. Cut and bled him. Feasted on his flesh as though it were a delicacy and when he was too broken to meet her gaze, she’d used his feelings for me to seduce him and use his body. I could only imagine the damage it had done to his psyche. Had she used similar tactics on me, I would have broken long before Tyler brought me home.

I reached out and Xander flinched. A lump formed in my throat and I cleared it away as I laid my left palm to his cheek. His eyes drifted shut and I murmured, “
Sia’i, rolqir al Nys’Asdar.
”A cold chill snaked from my thumb, twined around my fingers and settled in my palm. Xander shivered violently from the contact and his breath fogged the air between us. When he pulled away, his lids opened to reveal his beautiful molten caramel eyes. He looked at me with more clarity than he had since we’d found him and I let out a slow breath of relief. “You shouldn’t have come for me, Xander.” I was grateful for what he’d done to save me, but the price he’d paid for my freedom filled me a wracking guilt that churned in my gut like acid.

His chest rose and fell with a shuddering breath. “How could I not?” he asked, low.

I didn’t know what else to say. What to do. Thanks to the magic of
Nys’Asdar
, Xander was clearly more lucid than he’d been. Thank god.  

“It’s going to be okay, you know?” I didn’t know what to say to reassure him. “It’s over. She’s dead and we’ll get over this and move on.” I gave him a wan smile. “Because we’re tough like that. But in the meantime, you need to let Raif and Anya help you, Xander. Don’t give them a hard time, okay?”

“I have bargained away the only thing I’ve ever wanted,” he murmured.

“What do you mean?” I was starting to doubt even the small amount of lucidity my ring had given him. “Xander, you have to focus. Raif needs you back. The kingdom—”

“I have no kingdom!” Xander railed. I swore the panes of glass shook with his fury. His voice calmed to a breeze and he whispered, “I am shadow.”

Fear gripped my chest with razor sharp claws. He wasn’t any better at all. If anything, he’d slipped further into madness. My discomfort mounted. The high and mighty king, I could handle. Haughty and privileged, I recognized. His sense of entitlement was something I’d grown accustomed to. But this… A broken, disheveled,
shadow
of the man I knew. I didn’t have the skill set to deal with this.

“I think you need some time to adjust,” I replied gently. “It’s hard, but you’ll get there. And you need to sleep. You’re not doing yourself any favors by not resting, Xander. Take a shower. Go to bed. Try to not to let the past get its claws in you. I’ll swing by later to check on you, okay?”

I took Ty’s words to heart as I crept backward toward the door. I couldn’t allow myself to become more enmeshed in Xander’s life than I already was. Part of me was half afraid he’d lose his cool and attack me again. Instead, he turned and crossed the room slowly with that same predatory gait that had given me pause last night. I gripped the door handle, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble.

His gaze sharpened and I caught a glimpse of the shrewd king I knew. His body crowded mine and I sucked in a breath as he leaned over me and inhaled deeply. “I know what is real and what isn’t,” Xander said on an exhale. “Is it so wrong to want to choose the illusion?”

I didn’t answer him. Couldn’t. What we’d had was over and done with and I wouldn’t placate him by letting him think that our relationship was anything more than friendly. “You need to rest, Xander.”

He reached around me and closed his hand over mine to turn the knob. The door whispered open and he leaned close to my ear. “If you say so, Darian.”

Xander pushed the door only wide enough to allow me to slip out into the hallway. He closed the door behind me and the latch engaged with a quick click. Liam’s gaze slid to me and his mouth formed a grim line.

“Where’s Anya?” I asked.

“Her apartment.” He jerked his chin toward the third story where a narrow hallway led to her private suite of rooms above the massive garage.

“Thanks.”

“Want us to tell Raif anything if he drops by?” Myles asked.

“Yeah. Tell him not to go easy on his brother.”

#

I knocked on Anya’s door, praying I’d catch her in a slightly less murderous mood. She answered the door and her violet gaze narrowed as it landed on me. Her almost pleasant expression hardened. “What do you want?”

Despite our adversarial relationship, I admired Anya. I’d never met a stronger woman and I doubted there wasn’t an obstacle that she couldn’t overcome. She had that pregnancy glow that people always talked about. I liked her this way: soft with her hair long and flowing like the tunic and loose pants she wore.

“When are you due?” It’s not why I came to talk to her, but I was curious.

“Oh goodie,” she said, dry as a mouthful of crackers, “girl talk.”

I didn’t engage. She wanted me to hit back and give her an excuse to start a fight. I simply stared at her with the most pleasant expression I could muster affixed to my face. What felt like hours passed as we stood toe to toe, staring each other down. Anya broke first and let out a long suffering sigh.