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Authors: M.J. Scott

BOOK: Shadow Kin
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She bit her lip, hard enough I wondered that she didn’t draw blood. “I want to be left alone. I want to be free. Of everyone.”
Including me and that oh so inconvenient lust she felt. That was perfectly clear from her tone.
I spread his hands wide. “Letting someone help you isn’t an obligation. Nor is helping them.”
She shook her head. “Everything is an obligation.”
Time to withdraw. It seemed I was making things worse at this point. I let my hands fall, pretended to smooth my shirtsleeves. “I want you to think about it. What I asked. Regardless of anything that followed. If you help us, you can be free. You don’t owe me anything.”
“What?” she said scornfully. “You expect me to believe you don’t want to bed me?”
I looked straight at her. No pretending. “Oh no, I want that. I think that’s clear enough. But I don’t expect you to. I won’t force you to. I’ll still be on your side if you don’t.”
“Why?”
And we’d come full circle. “I don’t think you’d understand if I told you. But hopefully you will one day. Now I think I should let you be alone for a time. You have things to think about. You don’t have to decide straightaway. I’ll go talk to Bryony.”
She didn’t respond. Hopefully she was thinking about what I’d said. What I’d asked. What I’d done. Regardless, it was time to leave, as much as I wanted to stay and soothe her until she wasn’t so afraid.
But she was the only one who could set herself free. She had to choose. I schooled my face to casual and crossed the room, paused by the door. “Oh, and, Lily?”
“Yes?” Her eyes met mine and the confusion in their depths was hard to see. Being cruel to be kind wasn’t exactly my style. But I didn’t know what else to do.
“One more thing I know,” I said in my best know-it-all-just-like-a-Templar tone.
“What?”
“If you run, you’ll never be truly free.”
 
Empty, Simon’s office was a calm oasis. The plants and sunshine looked peaceful. Were peaceful. Unlike me. I leaned my head against the bookshelf and sucked in the cool green scented air, willing it to calm the turmoil in my head and body.
But I’d only taken a few breaths before the door swung open again, startling me. Bryony appeared in the doorway. I wondered how she’d avoided Simon. Hidden herself with a glamour, I imagined.
She stalked toward me. The Fae generally glide, not stalk. I felt a petty surge of satisfaction. Here was someone perfectly suited to exercising my temper on. I would be happy to fight if she tried her grand Fae attitude on me again. Fighting was easier by far than thinking about everything that had just passed between Simon and me.
Better yet, if I made her angry enough she might leave me alone again.
“You’re still here,” she said without any preamble.
“Did you think I’d leave?”
“No,” she said. “I thought you’d do whatever suited you, no matter the price to others.”
“I don’t see why it’s any concern of yours what I do.”
Bryony’s blue eyes turned thunderous blue like the depths of a cloud brewing lightning. “You—”
“Yes, I know,” I said impatiently. “I’m shadow kin.” Her lips thinned at the interruption. Good. She was mad. I made myself smile at her and perched on the edge of the desk, letting my legs swing.
She already thought I was worse than garbage. I doubted there was anything I could do to change that despite Simon’s urgings. So I might as well be myself. “
In’sai’hal a’tan
. Soulless. Abomination, whatever you wish to call me,” I continued. “You despise me. I’m perfectly clear on that. The feeling is somewhat mutual. But I’m not leaving.” Maybe everyone else here thought the sun shone out of her oh so perfect arse, but I’d grown up with a lot scarier things than a Fae healer.
“Every patient in this hospital is at risk while you’re here.”
She meant the Beasts. I chose to misunderstand her, in no mood to make anything easier for the Fae. The Fae who prided themselves on being so controlled and calm. So powerful. The Fae that Simon wanted me to convince to intervene for the better of the City.
As far as I could tell, the Fae should do it because it was the right thing to do. They could curb Lucius. The Veiled Queen could turn him to ash on the spot if she willed it. The fact that they chose to remain aloof—using the treaty as an excuse to avoid acting—only demonstrated how little they cared for anyone other than their own kind. “You think I’m going to hurt people? What exactly do you think I can do right now surrounded by sunlight?”
Sunlight. Simon. My feeling of having regained control slipped as suddenly as if the desk had collapsed beneath me. My mouth still burned where he’d kissed me. I could taste him. Feel him. Feel the fires he’d left behind, glowing and rich like liquid sunlight flowing through my veins.
As dangerous as sunlight to me.
And definitely something I didn’t want Bryony knowing about. Simon had said he’d felt me wanting him when he’d healed me. I was taking no such risk that Bryony could somehow sense it too. She already seemed to hate me without knowing one of her precious healers wanted to—
Help me.
That’s what he’d said. Yes, he’d also said he wanted to bed me, but that seemed the least of what he wanted. He wanted me to trust him. Trust him with my life.
Wanted me to help bring down Lucius.
Wanted to use me as a weapon, just as Lucius did.
He’d offered me Haven, told me he could change my life. And even though I’ve always known that everyone has their own agenda, finding out that Simon did too left a bitter taste in my mouth.
He asked too much.
More than I could give.
Bryony didn’t answer my question.
“Well? What do you think will happen?” I repeated.
“I think Lucius will want you back. I think we’ll pay the price of that desire.”
Her tone cracked like the lightning in her eyes. Good. Her anger roused mine again. Giving me back my focus. “I didn’t ask to be taken from my world. Simon and Guy did that. Don’t blame me.”
She pointed at the door. “Go, then. Go back where you belong.”
“Like a good pet should? Return to my master? To the one your people sold me to like a dog?”
“You stayed with him before now. What’s changed?”
That one hit home. I sank down into the chair. A plant brushed my cheek and I pushed it away gently. What had changed?
Nothing.
Everything.
Nothing I wanted to explain to Bryony, even if I could.
But it
was
different now. Lucius had crossed a line when he’d fed from me.
And Simon had just drawn another line. Asking me to choose a side. To take a stand.
Did I want to cross it? Did I dare? Both of them wanted to use me. But for the first time I had a choice. I could choose a side. Or I could run. My head ached, thinking about it.
“Tchah.”
Bryony’s delicate nose wrinkled. “You can’t even answer. Yet you bring danger to my hospital, to my people. Why should I trust you?”
“
Your
people?” I said. “I wasn’t aware St. Giles was under Fae control. Is that what worries you about me? That I might upset
your
pets?”
She recoiled from me as I’d drawn a gun. The chain round her neck jangled, its rainbow sheen dulling. “My—”
“It makes sense,” I said, taking far too much satisfaction in the discomfort in her face. I’d never had an actual conversation with a Fae before. Apparently I had some things to say. “That you see them that way, I mean. After all, that’s how the Fae deal with things. Assume they’re in charge. Sell their problems off to be dealt with by others. That takes a certain superior point of view.”
“Would you rather have been strangled at birth?”
“I’d rather have been treated as a person. Then again, given that would have meant growing up amongst your kind, perhaps I got off lightly. At least I do not see myself as superior.”
“You see nothing,” Bryony said. “You kill people.”
“Are you telling me the Fae have never killed anyone? What about all those wars?”
“You are not a soldier.”
I shrugged at her. “That depends on how you define war, I suppose.”
Her lips thinned and she shook her head. The sun made her dark hair gleam, crowning her with light. But she was Fae and they were creatures of illusions and darkness as much as beauty and light. She was no better than me.
She pointed at me with the hand that bore the heavy Family ring. It gleamed too, heavy with blue and purple gems. I didn’t know which Family they represented and didn’t particularly care.
“Then you’re worse, a soldier who would switch sides. A traitor. Untrustworthy.”
“You can’t have it both ways. I can’t be terrible for working for Lucius and terrible for not wanting to work for Lucius.”
The accusing finger jabbed at the air again. “For all we know, you’re still working for him. This could all be a ploy.”
“A ploy to do what? What is that you all suspect Lucius is up to?”
She shook her head. “We don’t know.” She pursed her lips, considering me. “Perhaps you do. Perhaps I should find out?”
My hand strayed down toward my dagger. “Oh yes? How exactly? Your enchantments don’t work on me. Were you planning to torture me?”
Her silence was telling.
I suddenly felt vaguely sickened. Simon kept making me believe that maybe the world was different from how I thought it was. Bryony was disproving his optimism quite neatly. I hadn’t expected that such a thing would upset me. “You know, I suddenly find the idea of the Brother House quite attractive. Guy gave me his word. I think I can rely on the word of a Templar at least. Unlike the Fae.”
“The Fae do not lie!”
“The Fae don’t do a lot of things.” I turned. “The humans are willing to give me a choice. For the first time ever. Which I think probably makes them better than either you or me.” I closed my eyes, picturing Simon for a moment. Something clean in all this mess. “So don’t worry. Once Simon returns I’ll be gone from your precious hospital. Maybe the Templars might loan me a dictionary. It turns out, Haven doesn’t exactly mean what I thought it did.”
Chapter Eleven
 
 
A sunmage to one side of me and a Templar to the other. If you’d asked me a few days earlier what my worst nightmare might be, I would have described something exactly like this. Not to mention the fact that we were in a tunnel heading to the Brother House and a second armed-to-the-teeth Templar walked
behind
me.
Add in the fact that they wanted me to help them bring down Lucius and it should truly have felt like a nightmare.
Right now, though, despite the fact that I’d refused to betray him to Simon, my worst nightmare would have fangs, iron and ruby rings, and a precarious grip on reality. It was the fear Lucius invoked that had driven my refusal. I had told Simon the truth. Betraying Lucius would be suicide. He would get his revenge. There was no way they could protect me unless I agreed to spend the rest of my life in the Templar Brother House.

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