Kinked (6 page)

He paused to study Aryal’s bone white face and Quentin’s rigid posture.

“You have continued to put extra strain on everybody else, right when they could have used a break,” he said. “So
if you make it back successfully and you manage to hold on to your jobs, you are going to work double time until all the other sentinels have had a vacation. That’s how you’re going to make this up to them. For today, you’re going to pack light. Get your affairs in order. Tend to your wounds. Return here at five o’clock for your assignment. Maybe by then I’ll be able to tolerate the sound of your voices. Now, get out of here.”

Seething with reaction, Quentin managed to keep his clenched face turned away as he limped toward the door and Aryal followed.

Not less than two weeks. Not more than a month.

Banished.

With the hellion.
Maybe he should just hang himself and be done with it, except he would not give the bitch that kind of satisfaction.

I’ll win this game, he thought. Just like I’ve won every other game I’ve played in my life. Besides, with any luck, the assignment will be dangerous; she’ll get herself killed and save everybody a world of hurt.

Then his eyebrows rose.

He cocked his head.

Of course if that happened, it would have to be obvious to everybody that either her death was accidental, or somebody else had killed her.

There might be some merit to pursuing this train of thought.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Dragos said.

They jerked to a pause and swiveled to stare at him.

In a blast of heat and Power that knocked them back against the wall, the dragon roared, “
DO NOT FIGHT AGAIN TODAY OR YOU BOTH LOSE YOUR SENTINEL POSITIONS.”

Y
ou know, some days things went wrong in all the right ways.

As soon as she and Caeravorn hit the hall, they shot apart in two different directions. Neither one of them could get away from the other fast enough.

Banishment, with Caeravorn. On some sort of assignment.

With any luck, it would be a really nasty, dangerous assignment.

How horrible. How peeeerrrrfect.

She couldn’t wait to find out what terrible fate Dragos had in store for them, because when would she ever get a chance like this again? Caeravorn was going to be a tough bastard to kill, but she was really good at improvising.

She just had to be absolutely sure his death occurred in some way that allowed her to say with perfect honesty that she didn’t do it, because when she returned to New York either with his (preferably mangled) corpse or alone, those with truthsense were going to be all over her asking questions.

Ugh, her body ached all over. Dragos had purposely stomped down hard when he planted his boot in the middle of her back, and it hurt to breathe. The side of her face was so swollen she could see her cheek out of the corner of her eye. It wouldn’t do to go on assignment already injured, so as soon as she could, she needed to find a healer.

But first, she had something else she needed to do. She went to find Graydon.

He was in the cafeteria, eating breakfast with Sebastian Ortiz, the Wyr wolf who had managed the Games. Ortiz was retired army but still active in civilian work, and he managed security for the parking garage underneath the Tower.

The cafeteria had grown crowded with the breakfast rush. One of the many perks of being a sentinel was an automatic pass to the head of any line, since sentinel business was often urgent and their mealtimes cut short.

Even though she was starving, this time Aryal bypassed the food lines to grab a cup of coffee. When she approached Graydon and Ortiz’s table, Ortiz gave her a civil nod, said a quick good-bye to Graydon and rose from the table. Aryal slid into the seat he had vacated.

Graydon sat back in his seat and shoved his half-full plate of food away. He looked at her bruised cheek, the expression on his craggy face cool and shuttered.

She bit her lip then said, “I’m sorry.”

He crossed his arms and remained silent. Her stomach clenched and her shoulders sagged. He never used to look at her like that.

“Okay, I’m really sorry,” she said softly. She turned her coffee cup in circles. “Did Grym tell you what happened?”

“He told me what he saw,” said Graydon, his voice flat. “You guys had met on the roof, and you were going to get some breakfast when Quentin appeared and went after you like the wrath of God. No talking, no escalation. Boom. So you and I both know that’s not everything that happened. You did something to set him off. Of course you did.”

She didn’t bother to dispute it. She didn’t actually know what had set Caeravorn off, but she didn’t doubt that she had done something. Much as she hated him, she had to concede, he didn’t randomly attack people he disliked.

“I am sorry for the extra strain this has been on everybody, and I will fix it. I swear it, Gray. There’s going to be a rotation of vacation time, and all the sentinels are going to get a break.” She braced herself. “But first Dragos is going to send Caeravorn and me on assignment, and we can’t come back to New York until we work shit out between us.”

At least one way or another.

Inwardly wincing, she waited for an explosion of swearing or at least some kind of expression of disgust. Nothing happened. Graydon didn’t even look surprised.

Her eyebrows rose. “You knew already?”

“I was the one who suggested it,” Graydon said. “Dragos called me to talk over ideas when he put the baby down. His ideas involved more broken bones and bloodshed. At least this way, the conflict is going to get resolved one way or another—you will both work it out, or you’ll be out. We can’t have the sentinels at war with each other, Aryal.”

She blew out a gusty sigh. He echoed her thoughts from earlier almost perfectly. “No,” she said. “I know.”

Finally his cool demeanor warmed. He sat forward and crossed his arms on the table.
I’m glad you told me,
he said telepathically.
Did Dragos just get finished with you
?

She dragged her hands through her hair.
Yeah.

Graydon smiled at her.
And you came straightaway to find me.

She lifted a shoulder and nodded.

He put a massive hand on her forearm and squeezed gently. He told her,
You’ve got to come to peace somehow with the fact that no matter how much you hate each other, you’re both sentinels and you have to work together. You have to, Aryal. Nobody wants to lose you.

She muttered,
That’s good to know.

They just need the vendetta to stop. Make peace with your dead-end investigation.
Graydon leaned forward farther to deepen eye contact with her. His eyes were a darker gray than hers, the color of aged pewter, and the expression in his gaze was hard, the set of his mouth ruthless.
Either that or confirm his guilt. I know what Dragos told you. He said to work it out somehow, and he genuinely doesn’t care how. He’s got enough on his plate trying to figure out how to be a new father. I’m the one who’s telling you—you have one more month. Bring home hard evidence and we’ll use it together as nails in Quentin’s coffin. But one way or another, you need to finish this.

I know,
she said.
I will.

After that, the rest of her day was almost anticlimactic. The next stop on her agenda was to see a healer who eased the pain in her chest and reduced the stiffness and swelling in her face. Then she went to her office to delegate cases, blast through the most urgent of her emails, and make a half-assed attempt at organizing her desk in case someone needed to find something while she was gone.

As soon as she had accomplished all of that, she went back to her apartment, showered and washed her hair and packed (a fifteen-minute task, as she shoved weapons, credit cards, a few changes of clothes and travel toiletries, several candy bars and her e-reader into a backpack).

Then she ate a sandwich and fell into bed to sleep away the afternoon. She was not about to head out on some kind of assignment to unknown places with Caeravorn when she was exhausted. While she was not averse to taking risks, that just seemed like the height of stupidity.

At 4:55
P.M.
, dressed in lace-up boots, jeans, a black turtleneck and a leather jacket, and carrying her backpack on one shoulder, she walked into Dragos’s offices, which were thrumming with activity. Cuelebre Enterprises never closed at five. She waved at Kristoff, Dragos’s senior assistant, who waved back from his cubicle.

Dragos’s door was shut. There was no sign of Caeravorn. She waited, not very well, tapping one foot. It was probably too much to hope that Caeravorn had seen the error of his ways and quit.

Unbidden, her mind flashed back to their fight from that morning. His body had been heavy and hard as he pinned her to the floor, his muscles like iron. He was strikingly good-looking even when his lips were pulled back in a snarl.

And when their hips had come into alignment, she had felt his cock stiffen. That beautiful penis of his, unmistakably hard and lying flush against her. She knew just what it looked like.

Her breath shortened, and hunger flashed through her body.

“You just say good-bye to your boyfriend?” Caeravorn said from behind her. His tone was as insolent as ever. “You should have probably taken a little more time with that. I don’t sense that you got any real … fulfillment.”

He could smell her arousal. Her mind whited out. Gods, she wanted to claw at him. She whirled to face him just as Dragos’s door opened.

Her gaze clashed with Caeravorn’s. His blue eyes were narrowed, catlike on her. He had dressed all in black. Black jeans, black T-shirt, and a worn, black leather bomber jacket; and like her, he carried a backpack.

“Come in,” said Dragos.

Somehow, Aryal made herself obey, maneuvering her own body around as though it were a marionette. Every nerve ending on her skin was aware of Caeravorn gliding bonelessly into the room behind her.

Once they were inside, Dragos shut the door.

He turned to face them and said, without preamble, “I’m going to send you to Numenlaur.”

FOUR

N
umenlaur.

The name resonated in Quentin’s marrow. His emotions roared as he heard Dragos say it, a single outcry of the soul.

Numenlaur was the first and oldest Elven land, the fabled birthing place from which all others had come. The Other land had been closed off from the rest of the world for millennia.

Once upon a time, he would have been filled with curiosity and wonder at the chance to see Numenlaur, and he would have given anything to go. Now he still felt the echoes of that same compulsion, only it was underscored with dread and grief, for Numenlaur had become a wasteland, emptied of the Elves who had once lived there.

As if from a distance, he heard Aryal ask, “Why do you want us to go?”

Dragos’s expression shuttered as he looked from the harpy to Quentin. He assessed them both, his golden gaze moody and calculating. He said, “Ever since the battle at Lirithriel Wood, Pia has been keeping in close contact with her friends in the Elven demesne. They remain completely overwhelmed with what happened.”

Quentin had no idea what his own expression might reveal. He turned abruptly, putting his back to the other two as he struggled to get in control of his feelings.

“Overwhelmed” was a massive understatement. Two months after the battle in Lirithriel Wood, the Elven demesne in South Carolina remained devastated. One of the ancient Guardians of Numenlaur, Amras Gaeleval, had apparently gone mad and enslaved all the Numenlaurians in a Powerful enthrallment, driving them to attack the Elven demesne just outside of Charleston.

Gaeleval had tricked his way into Lirithriel then tried to enthrall the Elves there as well. He did not manage to capture everybody, but he drove those Elves he did enthrall to attack their own people. Friends cut down friends, and families were decimated. Gaeleval had set fire to Lirithriel Wood, killing its spirit in an attempt to drive the High Lord Calondir and those Elves he had not managed to capture over the crossover passageway to their Other land, where they would have faced extinction at the hands of Gaeleval’s army had not Dragos, Pia and the Wyr become involved.