Embrace, Entice, Emblaze (98 page)

We faced up again. Spence was feeling good about getting

the first blow in, but I had a renewed determination. I ran him around the same way as before, but this time it was my strike that counted. My leg went up and out, kicking him with the sole of my foot right between his shoulder blades. Before he’d even reacted, my other foot had followed, taking a swing out wide and smashing into his stomach.

He went down.

Griffin cleared his throat. “You all right?” he asked, not quite as calm this time.

Spence was on his knees, sucking in a few deep breaths, winded.

“Fantastic,” he said, standing up to face me for round two.

“Barely tickled.”

We went six more rounds, each playing out fairly similarly,

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Spence getting increasingly irritated that I had his measure. When I put my hand out to pull him up, he swatted it away.

“I’m not beat yet, Eden. I could go all night.” He waggled his

eyebrows.

“No doubt, Spence,” Griffin said from the sideline. He pulled

off his sweater, revealing a white, long- sleeved T- shirt.

Shock, horror, a deviation from his standard button- down!

Griffin is a conundrum. He looks like someone in his mid-

twenties, acts like someone in his late forties, and is really in his eighties. But no matter how old he gets, he’s always a little stuck in his time. That isn’t to say he can’t kick ass, though, which was clearly in the cards.

“How about we swap places for a bit?” he suggested.

Spence got up and tried his best not to hobble to the sideline.

“At least you can heal me,” he grumbled as he passed me. “Even if it does hurt worse than the damn kicks.”

Healing other Grigori, bar Lincoln, tends to be quite painful

and makes me a bit of an anomaly.

One
more
thing
.

But I wasn’t worried about that at the moment. I had my eye on

the prize and I gave my full attention to my new opponent. I didn’t often get a chance to spar with Griffin.

He kept a distance from me. Stalking me. “You’re getting stronger.” I just nodded and pushed aside my fear that it wasn’t true,

reminding myself he meant physically.

“And braver,” he said, which I took as a warning. Griffin is

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deceptively fierce and fights with his head. I couldn’t outmaneuver him so easily.

“One round,” Griffin said, still moving, backing up toward

the tree.

“Why?” I teased, as if he couldn’t handle it.

“Because you don’t get practice rounds with exiles. Either beat me now, or don’t bother.”

Nerves tingled in my gut. But this was a challenge I wasn’t about to shy away from. “Fine,” I said, ignoring my dry mouth. I was up to it. I was sure I was fitter than Griffin; he didn’t put nearly the hours I did into training. “I’ve got somewhere to be anyway. Any rules?”

“First with their back on the ground is out.”

No
way
I’m going down on my back again today.

“Works for me,” I said. But I didn’t like the smile playing on

his lips.

I moved in. I knew what he was doing, backing up the way

he was, luring me in, but I couldn’t show fear. I kept my footing, watching his feet and hands. He was almost beneath the tree as I closed in. Then, fast as lightning, his hand went out— a fist right across my face that felt like a metal bar. I stumbled but was quick to right myself. He’d have to do better than that to get me down.

He took another step back and that was his mistake. He’d

cleared room for a kick and I was in the perfect position. I didn’t hesitate. My leg went out and I put force behind it too. But instead of swerving, he moved into me, grabbed my leg, and used my own

momentum to throw me. Straight up. Into the tree.

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The wind was knocked out of me as my back and shoulder

slammed into the thick, overhanging branches and then I fell down fast, my right arm snapping a large branch and several smaller ones as I ricocheted off them on my way down. But one crack wasn’t

from the tree. I hit the ground, hard. On my back.

“Whoa!” I heard Spence cry out. He was half freaking out,

half laughing.

I opened my eyes and brushed away the dirt and bark from

my face.

Griffin was standing above me. “Stronger and braver, yes,

but years of experience count for something. I just spent the last hour sizing you up, picking your routine. You change it up, but everyone is predictable in the end. If you see the chance for a kick, you take it.”

He put his hand out and I moved my right arm to grab it, but

winced in pain as I did, working hard to hold back a cry. My head went back to the ground again.

“Broken?” Griffin asked casually.

I turned my face to the side, angry with myself. “I think so.”

That was the other crack I’d heard.
Damn
it.

“Perfect,” Griffin said, as if it were all part of the plan. “This will help.”

I glared at him. If he thought I was going to ask Lincoln to heal me tonight, he had another think coming.

“Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait. I have dinner tonight with Dad,” I snarled, pushing myself up with my good arm. Spence

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was behind me and helped me to stand. My head was spinning

out of control.

“Easy, girl,” he said, as if he was talking to a racehorse. I pulled my good arm out of his hold to stand on my own. Then desperately wished I hadn’t.

While my stomach churned and I fought the urge to throw up,

I took a few calming breaths and tried to center myself and control the pain.

That was when I felt it.

The invisible tendril that linked us sizzled. I could feel his heart beating, steadily at first, and then, as if recognizing me, it picked up.

He
knows
I’ve been hurt. What the…?

Then the connection snapped. I didn’t know if it was him or me.

Him, I think, because I hadn’t thought to try. I could taste something in the back of my throat.

Honey. Since when could he sense me like that?

Griffin’s phone started to ring. He walked away to answer, but

I could hear him anyway. Grigori have better than normal senses too. We can’t hear through walls, but we can hear, see, and smell better than average.

“It’s fine…You knew?…Impressive…No…Training…No…

We’re exploring…I’ll call you after.” He sounded like he was trying to diffuse something and couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.

“Lincoln?” I asked, trying not to look like I cared but knowing he was probably on his way by now.

Griffin raised his eyebrows. “You felt the connection too?”

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I shrugged. I’d always been able to feel it, since just before I’d embraced and Lincoln had been hurt. It wasn’t something I’d felt the need to advertise. I hardly needed to add anything else to the

“special” list.

He watched me for a moment. Griffin saw all too easily through

my bullshit, but he wasn’t going to do anything about it now. He was good like that.

“He’s worried.”

I knew he was right— I even felt the little bit of truth he bled into the words for my benefit— but I just didn’t want to have to think about it. Mostly, I didn’t want to feel that intense desire to be near to him, to fill the emptiness in me that was always there when he wasn’t. It’s not like I couldn’t hear the concern in Griffin’s voice too. No one wanted Lincoln and me to be together. We weren’t the only ones to see what had happened to Nyla and Rudyard.

Spence handed me a bottle of water.

“Violet, I want you to try and heal yourself. I’ve been looking for an opportunity, but you’ve been doing well in training so one hasn’t come up till now.” Griffin slipped his sweater back on, perfectly timed to cover his smile. Even Griffin was guilty of competitiveness.

No wonder he sounded defensive with Lincoln.

“Lincoln’s not coming?” I asked, giving him a look that said I

saw the smile and there would be a rematch.

“Not unless we need him,” he said with a shrug, which also

responded to my look. We were holding two conversations at once.

That part of me that had started to anticipate Lincoln sank.

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“Okay,” I said, trying to ignore my disappointment.

“Let me tell you what we are going to try,” Griffin said before proceeding to talk through how he wanted me to heal myself.

At first, I thought he was mad. I’d only just mastered the ability to heal Lincoln. Sure, there had been some discussions that I might be able to do more, prompted by my sometimes being able to send the flow of power back into myself and heal injuries that would have otherwise been too great for Lincoln to do alone. And I’d

managed to heal other Grigori— well, only Spence so far. We hadn’t tried anyone else yet. But still…

Griffin suggested ways of tapping into my power, but they felt

wrong. Lincoln was my partner—
he
was supposed to heal me. But things were…the way they were. He was trying to stay away from

me, like I was supposed to be doing from him.

Standing in the dim light, rain still spitting, under a tree I’d just had a head- on collision with, I did as Griffin instructed and drew my power within, trying to coerce it to heal my arm.

To my delight…and horror, I received an answer.

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chapter
four

“No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
FrIeDrICH NIeTZsCHe

Th e full- length mirror inside my wardrobe shot back an image I barely recognized. I was wearing a little, black, A- line dress, and I’d opted for tights. I didn’t usually like them but they were good for hiding the evidence. Over my arms, I draped a silver shawl I’d borrowed from Steph ages ago to cloak the bruising. Luckily for me, most of the damage had already healed on my face, and a layer of foundation covered up what remained.

It could have been worse. I’d actually managed to tap into my

power earlier and manipulate the healing I usually sent to others. It hadn’t done a complete job, but enough to fi x the break in my arm and the cut on my head. It had also relieved some of the pain and bruising, even if my arm still hurt like I was plunging it into a vat of acid every time I used it. It would take a few more days to fully recover. Griffi n had suggested I try again, but for now, I wasn’t up to it.

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I assessed my ensemble again. At least Dad would be happy.

Fathers seemed to feel a sense of accomplishment when daughters dressed conservatively, hence my putting on the black knee- high boots Zoe had given me before she left. Along with a smudge of

eyeliner, they changed the overall look just enough.

Petty, yes, but right now Dad invoked that reaction in me. I

hadn’t told him about what I was or
who
had made me like this.

Most of the time, I felt terrible for him. And guilty. He’d had a wife who had deceived him the whole time they’d been together and

then died, leaving him completely broken. Now, he had a daughter who really wasn’t any better.

But he wasn’t blameless either.

I came home regularly with bruising or blood on my clothes. I

was always out— not that he wasn’t as well, but a father is supposed to pick up on these things. Not to mention I’d flown to Jordan

recently without him so much as noticing. The only thing he’d

questioned was the thousand dollars I’d withdrawn from his

account to pay off Onyx for much- needed information— about my

likely demise. Half a dozen fabricated household bills later, Dad had accepted there was no drama and gone back to his work.

So sue me. I wasn’t about to turn up to our quarterly, sometimes half- yearly, “family” dinner wearing an outfit that would make him relax into his seat and feel certain everything was as it should be.

I closed the wardrobe door and slipped on the silver bracelets I wore to hide my angelic markings and made a mental note to buy

some new ones. I was sick of wearing the same jewelry every day.

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Dad had arranged to meet me at The Orchard, our favorite Thai

restaurant. When I was younger, he used to take me there three or four times a week, whenever we were nanny- less. It was as close as we came to a home- cooked meal. He knew the staff and liked it