“I heard you loud and clear. You don’t get to make my choices for me, Kate. Last time I checked, I was still in charge of my life.”
Fuck me. I raised my hands. “I give up.”
“Good,” she said. “Does this mean we can go back to Hugh?”
I sighed. “Fine. Tie your own noose.”
“What do you know about him?” Andrea pulled Hugh’s file toward her.
I passed her the notebook. “Everything there is to know up until the last twenty years. He was found by Voron when he was six. Roland saw potential in him. Voron was a genius swordsman, one in a million, and he was a decent commander, but Roland wanted a true Warlord.”
I tapped a piece of paper. “My father put me through a variety of trials. I fought in gladiator rings, I survived in the wilderness, I received training in a dozen martial arts. He did the same thing with Hugh. In a way, Hugh was a practice run for me.”
I refilled my cup.
“Voron trained me to be a lone wolf. I’m a self-reliant killer. I’m designed to cut through the ranks and kill my target. Hugh was groomed to lead armies. He fought in dozens of regiments in hundreds of conflicts, all across the world. Roland’s magic keeps him young. It makes him stronger than an ordinary human and harder to kill. Hugh is the ultimate warrior-general. He’s patient, cunning, and ruthless.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working,” Andrea said.
“I’m trying to explain to you the kind of enemy Hugh is. Hugh won’t permit himself to be embarrassed. He’ll gather as much information as he can, so when he presents my existence to Roland, he’ll have a wall of facts to back it up. He won’t move until he has absolute proof of my ancestry. I’m guessing that right now he’s making circles around me, piecing my life together. He has patience and time. He can’t be bought off, intimidated, or convinced to let me alone. And I’m not sure I’m strong enough to kill him.”
Andrea’s face turned sour. “You don’t want to kill him. If you do that, Roland will flood the area with his people trying to figure out who nuked his Warlord.”
“Exactly.” I drank my now lukewarm tea. “My only option is to lay low and try not to draw any attention to myself. Voron has been dead for over a decade. Not that many people remember him. My track record is mediocre—I worked very hard to keep it that way. I shouldn’t be viewed as anything out of the ordinary.”
“That’s nice, but there is the matter of the sword,” Andrea said.
“Yeah.” There was the shattered sword. No matter what I told myself, I couldn’t dodge that bullet. There was a price for everything. The price for keeping my friends alive was being found and I paid it. At the time, I was sure I would die and risking discovery didn’t seem like a big deal.
“If the shit hits the fan, I can always disappear,” I said.
“What about Curran?” Andrea asked.
“What about him?”
“Fifteen hundred shapeshifters in a freaking castle will make anyone think twice about breaking in. Could you go to Curran? You guys are—”
“There is no me and Curran.” Saying it hurt. No bag to punch to relieve it. I smiled instead and poured us another cup of tea.
Andrea stirred hers with a spoon. “Did something happen?”
I told her everything, including what happened in the Guild. The more I talked, the more pained her face became.
“That was very asshole of him,” she said when I was done.
“No argument there.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. When he brought you back from the rakshasas, he almost killed Doolittle because he couldn’t fix you fast enough. I think he might actually be in love with you. Maybe he did come to your house looking for you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You guys should talk.”
“I’m done talking.”
“Kate, don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t been yourself since you came back from leave. You’re . . .”
I gave her my look of doom. It bounced right off her.
“. . . grim. Really grim. It’s almost painful. You don’t joke, you don’t laugh, and you keep taking chances.” Andrea rubbed the rim of her teacup. “Did you have friends when you were growing up?”
“Ouch.” I rubbed my neck. “That’s a sharp change in the direction of this conversation. I think I got whiplash.”
Andrea leaned forward. “Friends, Kate. Did you have any?”
“Friends make you weak,” I told her.
“So I’m your first real friendship?”
“You could say that.” Jim was a friend too, but it wasn’t the same.
“And Curran’s your first real love?”
I rolled my eyes.
“You don’t know how to cope,” Andrea said softly.
“I’ve been doing well so far. It’s bound to go away eventually.”
Andrea chewed on her lip. “You know that I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, and I don’t need a man to fight my wars for me. And if I wasn’t with Raphael, I would still be totally fine, and good at my job, and happy at times.” She took a deep breath. “With that in mind . . . A real broken heart never goes away. You can pull yourself together and you can function, but it’s not the same.”
I couldn’t drag this hurt around me for the rest of my life. I’d implode. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“I’m not finished. The thing is, people have a remarkable potential to injure you, but they also have a great power to help you heal. I didn’t understand this for the longest time.”
She leaned forward. “Raphael is hot and loaded and the sex is great, but that’s not why I’m with him. I mean, those things don’t hurt, but that’s not what keeps me there.”
If I had to guess, it would be respect for Raphael’s perseverance. Raphael, a werehyena, or bouda as they preferred to be called, loved Andrea beyond all reason. He courted her for months—unheard of for a bouda—and refused to give up until she finally let him into her life. The fact that he was the son of Aunt B, the bouda alpha, made things complicated but neither Raphael nor Andrea seemed to care.
Andrea smiled. “When I’m with him, I can feel myself getting better. It’s like he’s picking up broken pieces of me and putting me back together, and I don’t even know how he’s doing it. We never talk about it. We don’t go to therapy. He just loves me and that’s enough.”
“I’m happy for you,” I told her and meant it.
“Thank you. I know you’ll tell me to fuck off, but I think Curran loves you. Truly loves you. And I think you love him, Kate. That’s rare. Think about it—if he really stood you up, why would he be pissed off about the whole thing? You both can be assholes of the first order, so don’t let the two of you throw it away. If you’re going to walk away from it, at least walk away knowing the whole picture.”
“You’re right. Fuck off. I don’t need him,” I told her.
Andrea sighed quietly. “Of course you don’t.”
“More tea?”
She nodded. I poured her another cup and we drank in my quiet kitchen.
Later she left.
I took a small dish from the counter, pricked my arm with the point of my throwing knife, and let a few red drops fall into the dish. My blood brimmed with magic. It coursed just beyond the surface.
I pushed it.
The blood streamed, obeying my call, growing into inch-long needles, then crumbling into dust. The needles had lasted half a second? Maybe less.
At the end of the Midnight Games, when I lay dying in a golden cage, my blood felt like an extension of me. I could twist and shape it, bending it to my will, solidifying it again and again. I’d been struggling to replicate it for weeks and had been getting nowhere. I’d lost the power.
Blood was Roland’s greatest weapon. I didn’t cherish the prospect of facing Hugh d’Ambray without it.
The attack poodle stared expectantly at me. I washed the blood down the drain, sat on the floor so he could lay next to me, and petted his shaved back. If I closed my eyes, I could recall Curran’s scent. In my head, he grabbed me and spun around, shielding me as his body shook under the impact of the glass shards.
I felt terribly alone. The poodle must’ve sensed it because he put his head on my leg and licked me once. It didn’t help but I was grateful all the same.