The Shadow Reader (18 page)

Read The Shadow Reader Online

Authors: Sandy Williams

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Contemporary

BOOK: The Shadow Reader
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I realize where I’m staring, tear my gaze away.
Aren looks back at me. “You ready?”
It would be such an easy betrayal to melt into his warmth. It’s tempting. Aren, the son of Jorreb, the Butcher of Brykeld, could be my rebound guy. He could kiss me and touch me and do all the things I’ve wanted Kyol to do. He could fill the hole in my heart.
Until I give him the
Sidhe Tol
. What happens after he gets what he wants from me?
“McKenzie?”
This is ridiculous. I don’t trust him, and even if—
if!
—Kyol agreed to a life-bond with Jacia, Atroth is still the rightful king of the Realm. The Court fae have saved my life dozens of times. They take care of me. I will
not
let Aren make me forget that.
Without warning and with all the strength I have, I yank back on my hand. Aren’s grip slips, but his other hand is quick. He grabs me by the nape of the neck and pulls me against his chest.
“No.” The growl rumbles against my cheek. His heartbeat thumps in my ear. “You don’t want to go, McKenzie. You’re running from me out of habit.”
“I’m not.”
“If you’d bend your will just a little.”
“No!” That’s how it starts, a little give here, a little give there, until I’ve given everything to him. I push away. He lets me take a step back but takes a tight hold on my wrists.
He sighs. “This fissure . . . it might not be comfortable.”
“They never are,” I retort.
“I’ve lost a lot of blood. My magic isn’t strong. I’ll take on as much of the drain as I can, but it’ll be hard on you. Hold tight to the stone and to me. It’ll be over quickly.”
He holds both my wrists in one hand and then holds out his arm. “Sosch.
Up
,” he says in Fae. The
kimki
leaps to his forearm, then to his shoulders. As soon as Sosch is settled, Aren pulls me into the ice.
No, not ice. Fire. My body convulses when we step into the In-Between. I nearly lose my grip on him. Everything is wrong at once. I’m outside my skin, not floating but falling. Falling fast. Fissures are supposed to be filled with piercing white light, but this one isn’t. Everything here is black. All black.
TWELVE
 
M
Y DOORBELL RINGS. They’re early. Great.
I run a brush through my hair, wondering yet again why I let Paige talk me into a double date. I should be studying or sleeping or doing any number of things other than going to dinner and some dance club with a guy I don’t know. Besides, I’m not feeling quite . . . right.
I try to shake the fog from my mind as I toss my brush on the couch and walk to the door.
“Hey!” Paige says when I open the door. She bounces on her toes, causing her beach-blond hair to swing just above her shoulders. It’s shorter than usual because she’s twisted small tendrils into thin braids, braids that are pulled and twisted in a dozen different directions. On me, the style would look like one gigantic rat’s nest. On Paige, it’s some kind of organized chaos—edgy and sublime.
“Hey,” I return, just as an electric thrum tingles across my skin. It takes everything in me not to turn around to see who’s fissuring into my living room. My guess is it’s Kyol. Fabulous timing.
“This is Ben,” Paige says, nodding to one of the two guys on my porch. “And you know John.”
I don’t know John. The boyfriend I met last month was called Mark or Matt or something like that.
“I’m McKenzie.” I shake Ben’s hand. He has a strong grip, a nice tan, and, as promised, a killer smile.
“I told you he’s hot,” Paige says at the same time a voice behind me says, “I’ll come back later.”
I give a little shake of my head to answer Kyol. The world moves more than it should. Weird. It takes a few seconds for it to settle. That’s when I notice Ben’s raised eyebrow and Paige’s frown.
“I mean, yeah. I was just . . . remembering I forgot something.”
“No problem, psycho,” Paige says, dragging her date inside. “I forgot to call ahead to the restaurant.”
“Um.” I look over my shoulder, see Kyol standing at the far end of my couch. His
edarratae
flicker a little more than usual—nothing too serious—but it’s hard not to reach out and turn off the living room lights.
“I’ll come back later,” he says again.
I motion Ben inside. “I need to run to the restroom.”
“Hurry,” Paige says as she picks up my phone.
Kyol’s gaze lingers on Ben before he follows me to the bathroom. When I close the door behind us, it’s dark. Too dark. I rub my eyes until my vision clears. I almost wish it didn’t. A jagged bolt of lightning flashes across an expressionless face. He’s never this closed off when we’re alone.
“I just met him,” I say. “Paige talked me into a double date and . . .”
His eyes soften. “No, it’s okay. You should see your own kind.”
“That doesn’t mean I
want
to.”
“Neither do I,” he says quietly.
“But you should, too?” It’s a stupid question. Of course he should. We both know this can’t go on forever. The king will find out. Some other fae will be assigned to escort me when I read the shadows. Kyol assured me the worst that will happen to him is that he’ll lose his position as Atroth’s sword-master, but I think there’s more to it than that, more he doesn’t want me to know about.
“There are reasons I should,” he says. “And a reason I shouldn’t.”
The way he’s looking at me makes my stomach flip. I wonder if there’s any way I can get out of this date. I can tell Paige I’m sick. It wouldn’t be a complete lie—I do feel disoriented.
“I’ll tell Radath you’re busy,” Kyol says.
I sigh. Never mind. Kyol won’t let me out of it. “Radath won’t like that.”
“No,” he agrees.
The lord general expects me to be at his beck and call, go where he wants, when he wants, no matter how dangerous it might be. Sometimes I wonder how much hell Kyol gets when he makes excuses for me.
He opens a fissure. The bright light makes me squint, and a sharp lance of pain strikes behind my eyes. I rub my forehead until it goes away.
“Hey,” I say to stop Kyol before he disappears.
He turns away from his fissure.
“I’m not interested in that guy.”
He smiles down at me. “You just met him,
kaesha
.”
The smile and the
kaesha
undo me. I throw my arms around his neck. He wraps his around my waist. Some days we’re better at staying away from each other than others. This isn’t one of those days.
His kiss burns through me. I run my fingers through his dark hair, then let them linger on the sensitive spot just below his left ear. I want my lips there, but I’m too absorbed by what he’s doing with his tongue. His chaos lusters rush into my hands, into my mouth, into every place we touch.
I must forget to breathe. I’m light-headed, but I don’t want to stop. I press my body into Kyol’s, pull his bottom lip gently between my teeth, and do everything I can to break his self-control. It’s become a game, teasing and testing him. It’s one I always lose, but one I never grow tired of playing.
He grips my shoulders and smiles against my mouth.
“Try to have a good time,” he says, ending this game
way
too soon.
I rest my head against his chest. I don’t want to have a good time. I want to stay right here in his arms, sleep forever in them.
“No. Don’t sleep, McKenzie.”
“I’m not.” I close my eyes. He’s warm. Hot, really.
“You need to wake up.”
“Mmm,” I murmur against his heartbeat.
“McKenzie. Please.”
He sounds worried. That’s strange. He hardly ever worries. Always so in control. More in control than I want him to be. But that’s okay. It’s comfortable here. Quiet. Peaceful and . . .
 
I’M dropped into a vat of scalding water. I lurch up, trying to evade the blistering heat, but my shoulders are held submerged beneath the surface.
“Easy, McKenzie. You need this.”
The room spins and blurs as I awaken.
Focus,
I order.
I need to focus.
Chaos lusters slither from a fae’s hands into my skin. “Kyol?”
After an eternal pause, the voice says, “Aren.”
“Aren?” I repeat, confused. I squeeze my eyes shut once, twice. Ah, yes. Aren, the Butcher of Brykeld, my captor. Of course it’s him. Kyol would never hurt me like this.
I struggle to get out of the vat—no, the
tub
—again. “It’s too hot.”
“It’s fine, McKenzie. You’re too cold. Stay still.”
His hands don’t unlock from my shoulders. My
bare
shoulders. His
edarratae
flow unhindered into me. I glance down as a bolt flashes from his fingers to my skin. It zigzags below the water’s surface, disappears briefly beneath my bra, then reappears before it skirts along my hip.
My attention snaps back to Aren. “I’m naked.”
“Not completely,” he says, and some of the tension leaves his face. His grip loosens. I try to sit up, to get out of as much of the water as I can, but he won’t let me. When the room spins again, I stop struggling. It feels like I’m waking up from a bad hangover. I swear to God, I’m never letting Aren take me through another gate.
I open my eyes and take a quick inventory of my surroundings. I’m sitting just high enough in a Jacuzzi to see the rest of the bathroom. There’s a separate, glass-encased shower on the other side of twin sinks. The white countertop is bare except for a magically lit mason jar. There are no bath mats, no towels that I can see. There’s a vent for central air and heating, though, which makes me hope we might be somewhere in the U.S. Maybe this is some kind of rebel safe house? I want to part the blinds of the window over my left shoulder and peek outside, but turning doesn’t seem like a good idea just yet. My equilibrium is still off.
“What happened?” I ask.
Aren’s focus drops to the water rippling above my bare stomach. “I . . . You took more of the drain than I intended. I couldn’t wake you.”
I hug my knees to my chest, partly to hide my body and partly because I’m suddenly numb. Cold, but sweating. I clench my hands into fists, trying to squeeze away the prickling sensation in my fingertips.
“The In-Between’s made you sick,” he says. He reaches down to his side of the tub, then brings up a bottle filled with some deep red liquid. “Drink this.”
“What is it?”
“It will make you feel better.” He raises the bottle to my lips.
As soon as I take the first sip, I try to spit it out. He grasps my chin and tilts my head back. “Swallow.”
His fingers dig into my jaw. The bitter drink floods my mouth and I can either choke or do as he says. The first gulp burns down my throat, sinks and sizzles in my belly. I grab his wrist, try to force him and the bottle away, but he doesn’t budge, not until he’s satisfied I’ve choked down enough of the liquid. When he finally lets me breathe again, I sit up in the tub, coughing and spluttering. I scoop a handful of water to my mouth and try to rinse the taste away.
“Are you finally trying to poison me?”
The faintest smile appears on Aren’s lips. My stomach burns with something hotter than the flames of the concoction he forced down my throat. Damn him for being so attractive. Damn him for keeping me with him, and damn him for gazing at me with that stupid, sardonic grin.
“We’ve already discussed this,” he says, setting the bottle aside. “Poisoning you would be inefficient, my
nalkin-shom
.”
“You shouldn’t have taken me through the gate.”
He shrugs. The motion draws my attention to his chest, to the scar beneath his collarbone. That’s where the bullet hole was. The stitches are gone now. There’s not even a scab anymore. The wound looks like it’s been healed for weeks.
Holy crap. “How long was I out?”
“Only a half hour or so,” he assures me. “Lena healed me.”
“Lena.” Her name puts a bad taste—one worse than that horrible drink—in my mouth. “She’s a healer, too?”
Aren nods. “She’s a stronger one than I am.”
And she locked me in a room with a broken arm when she could have fixed it. Bitch.
“So the rebellion has at least two healers,” I say. “I guess those endangered magics aren’t so endangered, are they?”
“Ah, you’ve bought the Court’s propaganda.” He rests his forearms on the edge of the tub. “Atroth wants the Realm to believe anything human-made is destroying our magic. He likes to pretend it spreads like a disease, following carts of human goods through the Realm. If fae are afraid, they don’t mind their king regulating the gates. They even think it’s necessary for their welfare, but it’s not.”

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