Dangerous Lovers (37 page)

“Stop,” said the king, causing both Kayden and me to freeze in our tracks. “Do Warriors not fight with swords?” he asked.

Two of the King’s men retrieved swords from bins near the side of the Arena and tossed them at our feet. Kayden retrieved his first, and I took an involuntary step back. This could not be happening.

When he started to advance, I felt a cool sensation run up my back and reached back and retrieved my Gladius from underneath my shirt. I tightened my grip on it, and the blade shot out, the silver gleaming in the bright lights of the Arena. Kayden met my eyes then, and I could see the remorse behind his. He didn’t want to fight me, but he was going to. It took me a second, but I resigned myself to this fact and, finally, let my body do what it did best: fight.

Our swords sang every time metal hit metal, and it became obvious that Kayden was far more skilled with his weapon than I was with mine. Soon I was on the defensive, blocking more strikes than delivering. I had just blocked a slash of his sword, our weapons locked in a test of greater strength, when he swung around a delivered a blow I still can’t remember clearly.

Kayden’s elbow connected with my face and sent me straight to the ground. I lost consciousness for what only could be a few seconds, because when I opened my eyes again, my face throbbing and covered with blood, Kayden was standing over me, his blade pressed firmly against my throat.

I only had time to tilt my head to the side and see the smirk on the king’s face before I passed out.

Chapter Sixty-Four

The last time I had blacked out, I’d woken up in Kayden’s arms. This time, I woke up in the infirmary. For a moment, I couldn’t remember how I had gotten there, but then, it all came rushing back to me. The king’s taunting grin, the coldness of Kayden’s sword as he’d held it snuggly to my throat. A whole range of emotions ran through me, ones I was completely unfamiliar with.

For one thing, I had
lost
. And fights were one thing that I wasn’t used to being bested in, at least, not when it really counted. This was the second time Kayden had beaten me, and as petty as it may have been, it made me feel ashamed.

But mostly, I was just so hurt. I was hurt by the fact that he’d been so willing to fight me when I was going to refuse and accept whatever consequences came to me. He’d attacked me, giving me no choice but to defend myself. I can’t say that anyone had ever hurt me so badly in my life. And I don’t mean physical pain—though I felt plenty of that too—I mean emotional pain. The ache I felt over his betrayal was much worse than the throbbing in my head.

I reached up and touched my face. My right eye was almost swollen shut. Actually, the whole right side of my face was swollen. The skin pulsed with heat under my fingertips, and I dropped my hand. Soft hands caught it before it hit the bed. I flinched with surprise.

I knew the touch, though. Nelly.

I couldn’t really see her, but I could hear the tears in her voice.

“Oh, thank God,” she said with a sniffle. “Alexa, I’m here. I’m here.” She just kept repeating that as she brushed the hair out of my face, causing me to wince.

I turned my head and felt a sharp pain shoot across my neck, but Nelly was visible now. “Why are you crying?” I asked, in a much weaker voice than I would have liked.

Nelly smiled a little, swiping tears off her cheeks. “That’s a stupid question, Alexa.”

I tried to smile back, but the effort caused me more pain. “Come on,” I said. “It would take a little more than an elbow to the face to finish me off.”

Her hazel eyes lit up with anger. “Is that what happened to you?”

That gave me pause. I don’t know why, but I guess I had expected her to know how I’d gotten here. Then, it occurred to me that no one would have told her. I asked anyway. “No one told you?”

She shook her head sharply, and I realized then that it was so rare to see Nelly as mad as she was right now. The look she had in her eyes reminded me of, well, me. It was like I could see the monster waiting behind them, the monster that so desperately wanted its revenge, its blood. It scared me to see Nelly like that, more than my own darkness had ever scared me.

“No,” she said. “No one told me. I just got a knock on my door with someone telling me that you were in the infirmary, so I rushed here. When I got here, you were unconscious on the bed with your face all swollen up, and no one would tell me what had happened.”

I tried to act like it was no big deal. “Well, it was an elbow to the face.”

She didn’t even crack a smile, her eyes were still so filled with that anger. “Whose elbow?” she asked.

When I didn’t answer, I felt a flash of ice charge through my arm where she held my hand. Before I could realize what she was doing, she released me and her hand flew up to her mouth. She gasped. “No, he wouldn’t.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That was fast. You’re amazing.” She knew I was trying to change the subject, but it really
was
amazing that she’d just Searched me and pulled out a single piece of information in the blink of an eye.

When she just stared at me, I sighed. “Apparently, he would.”

She looked like she just couldn’t believe it. “Why?”

I told her. I told her about the king and his insistence on a “demonstration.” I told her about how I had drunk blood from Kayden the night before. I told her everything, everything except for Soraya and the village, of course.

When I finished, she sat back and stayed silent for a long time. Finally, she took my hand and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Lex. That’s horrible.”

I laughed a little, because it was either that or crying, and I was
not
going to cry right now. It would probably hurt my face. “Yeah,” I said “It kinda sucks.”

Her mouth quirked up, but the anger still lurked behind her eyes. “Super sucks,” she corrected.

I pulled up just the left side of my mouth, the unbroken side, in a half smile. It probably looked more like a grimace. I opened my mouth as if to retort, then shut it. I didn’t trust my words to come out steadily. I didn’t trust the unbidden wetness in my eyes not to flow over. I knew speaking would demolish those dams. Instead, I released a shuddering breath and dropped my head between my shoulders, shaking it back and forth. It hurt, but no other position felt appropriate. Grief had set cinder blocks on my shoulders. Nelly immediately recognized my despair.

She sat down beside me, wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug. It hurt, but I just gritted my teeth and pretended that I couldn’t feel a thing. When she laid her head on my shoulder and started sobbing again, I ran my fingers through her hair in a weak attempt to soothe her.
This
I could handle. At least I knew that no matter what, Nelly loved me. Nelly would never try to hurt me or betray my trust.

Nelly was one person I could count on to bleed, every time I was cut.

Chapter Sixty-Five

“You sure you don’t want me to stay with you tonight?” Nelly asked as we climbed the steps to my dorm building.

“I’m fine, Nell, really. I can handle a little black eye. Hell, Mom gave me more of those than I can count.”

She smiled a little at the mention of our mother. “Yeah, but—”

When she didn’t continue, I looked up to see that she was staring straight behind me, her face a stone mask. Anger radiated from her eyes like solar flares. Spinning around, I felt the fluttery feeling in my chest a split second before I saw that Kayden was walking up to us.

I tilted my face to Nelly, who was now standing beside me with her arms crossed over her chest. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay, Nell?”

She shot me a look that said she would do no such thing, but when I asked her again with my eyes, she sighed and strolled up to stand right in front of Kayden. He was so much bigger than Nelly that she had to tilt her head all the way back to look him in the eyes. It was almost comedic, because Nelly is even shorter than I am, and I’m only 5’5”.

I couldn’t see her face, but Nelly’s voice was fierce when she spoke. “If you ever hurt her again,” she said, “I’ll kill you myself.”

Kayden just nodded solemnly. To deepen my shock, Nelly nudged him hard with her shoulder, causing
her
to move more than him, and stomped off in the direction of her dorm.

I smiled at her gesture and switched my eyes back to Kayden, who was staring down at his feet. I propped a hand on my hip. “Got something you want to say, buddy?”

He nodded slowly and finally looked up and met my eyes. The pain in his gold ones almost made me want to comfort him. Until I remembered that he was a traitor. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I laughed out loud because I couldn’t help it. “Oh, okay,” I replied. “No problem then.”

“Alexa, I did it to help you.”

I laughed again—he was unbelievable—and gestured to my mangled face. “Well, thank you very much.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I hope you know I would never hurt you.” When I started to laugh again, he said, “If the king saw you win, he would see you as an even bigger threat. I couldn’t let you be on his radar any more than you already are. Trust me, Alexa. I did what was best.”

Something in me snapped, and as irrational as it sounded, I wanted to throw myself into his arms for comfort. But that was
not
about to happen. People who beat the crap out of me didn’t get to be my friends.

“You keep saying that,” I said in a quiet voice. “But, you know what? I don’t think I can trust anyone, Kayden. Especially not you.”

With that, I turned and went inside the building. Kayden didn’t follow. When I opened my door, I gently, stiffly lowered myself across the bed and lay there in the dark. Slowly, tears started to fall down my face, but I swiped them away and took a deep breath. Those would be the last tears I would shed over that man. I’d just push the pain deep down inside me and ignore it. At least it would be in good company.

Chapter Sixty-Six

It was still dark when I awoke. My bangs were plastered to my forehead with sweat, and I was breathing heavily. A glance at the clock on my dresser said it was just past three. I didn’t remember having a dream, so what had woken me up?

That’s when I felt it, a pull so insistent it reached me in my sleep. I swung my legs off the bed and hopped to my feet. It felt like I had a tether wrapped around my soul, and I had no choice but to go wherever it pulled me. I did manage to snag my Gladius off my dresser on the way out. Its pull was a polar opposite to the one I felt drag me out of bed. My mind even felt a little muddled, but I stepped out into the dark hall of my dorm and made my way outside.

The whole time I kept asking myself what the hell I was doing, but my body seemed to be moving on its own accord. My feet seemed to walk without instruction. I was dressed at least, in the same clothes I had fallen asleep in, and that meant I had shoes on. I was grateful for this when I was tugged into a line of trees and was made to walk through the forest for what seemed like several minutes. I had no idea where I was going, I just went. It was kind of like being the passenger in a car, with no control over where my body took me.

When the trees ended, I stared up at the top of the very high, south end wall. My hands reached up and grabbed the rough stone, pulling me up so I was scaling it. It wasn’t easy, and the stone bit into my hands when I gripped the surface, but my body just kept insisting that I climb to the top of it.

When I made it to the top, I jumped down on the other side, sending pain shooting through my legs. I looked up to see that I stood on the bank of the large river.

I also stood across the river from a Lamia.

For a second, I thought I was dreaming, so I rubbed my eyes again and refocused. But no matter how many times I blinked, the beautiful monster was still in front of me. I knew her facade to be misleading; her mouth hid shark teeth, her soul black ink.

I was no longer being pulled by the force that had brought me from my bed, so I just stood there, staring at the vampire across the river.

When she started laughing, that hissing sound bringing back so many terrible memories, I knew this was no dream. I studied her for a moment and realized I recognized her. Since I had only ever encountered Lamia once in my life, I knew from where.

This was one of the monsters that had killed my mother. The thought made my own beast roar to life inside me, breathing fire through my veins. I could feel the heat of it all the way down to my toes, and if the river hadn’t been so wide, I might’ve tried to leap over.

I tightened my grip on the sword, and the blade shot out from the end of it. The Lamia hissed again, and her black eyes flashed with warning. “Eassssy, Warrior,” she sneered. “There’ssss no need for violencccce.”

I stood there completely dumbstruck. What in the hell was happening? “What do you want?” I spat, finally finding my voice.

She smiled, displaying a mouth full of razor sharp fangs. “Your ssssweet blood would be nicccce.” She inhaled deeply and licked her lips. “I can ssssmell it from here.”