The Ophelia Prophecy (32 page)

And why would she want that? There was no question of chemistry, or sexual compatibility. He had sensed the potential for the passion that had erupted the night before. But offering herself to him in that way … it was no indication of anything other than a need for release that matched his own.

“I hope they’re all right there,” she said softly. “It feels so far away.”

The drifting quality of her voice worried him, and wrung his heart. She was feeling alone.

“When all this is over I’ll take you back. If you want to go back.”

Her form stiffened. “No. I haven’t changed my mind about that.”

He knew she was thinking of her mother’s betrayals. “Maybe you’d like them to know you’re safe. Maybe there are people you’d like to see, even if just to say good-bye.”

“Yes. Maybe.” She raised a hand and brushed her cheek.

*   *   *

In the street below, Asha spotted a creature with brightly colored wings, like Cleo’s. Brighter even—gold and pink with a brilliant green dot in the center.

Another tear slipped down her cheek, and she swiped at it. The ongoing strain of the last few days was getting to her, but it was more than that—finally her heart was breaking over her mother. Beyond the first ten years of Asha’s life they hadn’t been close, but Miriam had loved her fiercely. Her overprotectiveness had grated when Asha hit adolescence, and she had grown closer to her father. He understood her—gave her room to make her own decisions. Her own mistakes.

But it was finally sinking in that she might never see her mother again.

How had she ended up here, caught up in events so much bigger than herself and her small, broken family? And yet even for Pax it was the same—his own family drama driving events that had the potential to cause such dramatic changes to their world.

She
wasn’t
small, and she wouldn’t let the amir make her feel like she was. She might not be the amir’s daughter, but her mother was arguably the highest-ranking human left on the planet. Her father had formed an alliance with a powerful opposition group. She herself had taken huge risks to find him, and to undermine their enemy. She’d brokered a deal to save the amir’s son.

In some ways she was still behaving like Pax’s prisoner, and however she might feel about him, that had to stop.

Suddenly his arms came around her waist. “How is your back?” he asked, embracing her gently.

Closing her eyes, she melted against him.
This is not helping
.

“Much better,” she whispered.

“I’m glad. I wish we weren’t in the middle of all this. I wish I could take you into the city. There are so many things I’d like you to see.”

“You must hate being trapped here like this.”

He gave a breathy laugh. His lips grazed her ear and she shivered. “I’d happily spend a month shut up in here with you, if I believed everyone would leave us alone.”

The warmth in her chest spread out to the rest of her body. She turned to face him. “But they won’t.”

He bent, brushing his lips against hers. She pressed close to him, and he murmured, “No, they won’t.”

He tried to kiss her again, fingers sliding up her ribs to her breasts. But she pulled back, hands splaying against his chest.

“What happens if Micah and the others get what they want? If DAB-lab stops controlling reproduction, what will that mean for the Manti and the humans in confinement?”

His brow wrinked as he considered. “I think eventually there’d be no distinction between us. There’d be no more camps. No more required genetic testing.”

“So they’d mix in with you here in Granada?”

“Yes.”

“What if they wanted to leave? Would your father let them? And what happens to the people in Sanctuary?”

His frown lines deepened. “You’re asking questions I can’t answer with any certainty.”

“I’m asking questions you need to think about before you meet with your father.”

His gaze moved to the windows as he considered what she’d said. “You’re right. I had no time to prepare for this. We’ll have to figure it out as we go. I can’t make you any promises right now. I wish I could.”

He raised his hands, fingers brushing her cheeks, and she pulled him close, drawing a sigh from him. She realized she was still slave to a fractured personality, straining for her independence one moment, holding on to him the next. Was it possible for her to have it all? To accomplish her original objectives in coming here,
and
hold on to Pax?

He was no better off. Instinct drawing him to her, while his enemies and his father, even his own sense of loyalty, threatened to pull them apart.

“I give you my word that whatever happens you’ll have a choice,” he continued. “I won’t let the lab have you. If I go back to the Alhambra, I won’t ask you to go with me. If you need to disappear out of the city, I’ll help you. I need you to trust me for now. Trust that I’m not going to forget about you, or try to force you into a position that will make you unhappy. I respect you too much for that. Do you believe me?”

Her heart lodged too high in her throat to form words. She nodded.

Respect, not love,
a cruel voice inside her observed. But she needed his respect more than his love if she and her father were to survive. Love could not be trusted. If she doubted
that
, she could ask her father and mother.

He sighed and released her, sliding his hands up to knead his shoulders. She knew they wouldn’t be able to take much of this waiting, especially with the constant strain of watching for treachery from Cleo.

As if he’d read her thoughts, he turned from the windows and started for the door. “I want to check the stairs. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said. Unsure as she was about her position, one thing she did know was she was no wounded bird, and she didn’t want him viewing her that way. There was no reason for him to bear the whole burden of watching out for them.

And she didn’t want him going that far away from her.

He stopped at the sitting area, bending over the remains of their breakfast, and picked up a fruit knife with a carved bone handle. He slipped it into his pocket.

As he was turning again for the doorway, she reached for his arm.

“I hope that you trust
me
. When I chose to come here as a sleeper, I didn’t understand how it would affect me. I thought I’d wake up and be the same. That it would all come back to me and I’d feel no different than before. It was naïve.”

He raised his eyebrows. “It was
brave
. Not many people would make the same choice. Your father is lucky to have you. I have nothing but admiration for what you did.”

Warming from the praise, she continued, “My point is I want you to believe me when I say I’m a different person now. I respect you too, and I feel safe by your side. I’ll never betray you again.”

“Asha,” he breathed, “come here.” She flowed into his arms. “I trust you. With all my heart.”

*   *   *

The stairs were quiet, and no sounds drifted up to them from below, except for the occasional swish of the lift going up and down. It passed their floor once on the way to the roof, but otherwise kept to the lower floors. They stood near the shaft for several minutes, listening, and she wondered if he was hearing sounds she couldn’t.

“All quiet?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s been the same every time I’ve checked. It almost scares me. I’ll be glad when we can work out something more secure.”

“You think we’ll be here a long time?”

“That depends on my father. If I don’t hear from him by this evening I’ll call him again. But I don’t intend to leave before he’s met with Rebelión. It could be weeks. Or months.”

“That’s a long time to stay shut up in this temple.”

“Indeed.” Pax turned, his gaze raking over her body, lighting fires in its wake. “We’ll have to think of a way to fill the time.”

Smiling, she reached for the sash of her tunic, pulling the bow loose. The front fell open, and his lips parted. She watched the rise and fall of his chest.

“Go to our chamber,” he ordered.

She let the tunic slip off her shoulders and onto the floor. Then she pushed her pants past her hips and let them fall as well.

“Why should I?”

He stepped closer, his expression darkening in a way that was almost believable. “Because I told you to, and I’m not used to being disregarded.”

“Hmm,” she murmured, trailing her fingers up her abdomen to her breast, rubbing lightly over one nipple. “Maybe it’s time to
get
you used to it.”

She squealed as he suddenly lifted and slung her over his shoulder.

“Fuck that,” he said, snatching up her sash from the floor before carrying her back to their room.

Lowering her to the floor, he spun her and raised her arms over her head, using the sash to bind her wrists to the bedpost. Her heart pumped, breaths coming hard and ragged.

“Now then,” he whispered into her ear, hands moving over her breasts, “spread your legs.”

The rough way he spoke to her as his hands moved gently over her body triggered a frenzy of desire.

“Did you hear me?” he demanded, suddenly pinching one nipple.

She yelped and widened her stance.

“That’s better.” He grasped her hips between his hands.

It was too much for her. It was too much for them both. He pulled her hips up and back, sinking inside her as they both sighed from the smooth, satisfying sensation of him locking into position.

He held still only a moment before he began pushing and pulling, so firm and insistent she felt her climax building faster than she’d expected. When his hand slid down from her breast to press between her legs, she went off with a sharp cry, ripples of pleasure caressing her inside and out, starting and finishing his response too, until they hung gasping together.

“You’ve done something to me, Ash,” he panted. “You scare the hell out of me, you know that?”

His use of the shortened version of her name made her feel something quite different than when Zee or her father used it.

“I scare
you
?” she laughed, glancing at him over her shoulder. He kissed her cheek as he reached up and untied her hands. “Do you know Cleo called me soft and small?”

Pax let out a bark of laughter. “She never was a very good judge of character.”

Asha jumped at the sound of tinkling bells, and Pax straightened, closing his pants. “That’s a message,” he said.

“Let’s go check.”

They walked to the sitting area and he picked up the tablet.

“God
damn
it.” He squeezed his eyes closed.

“What’s happened?”

He handed her the tablet, and she read the message on the screen:

I’m sorry, Son, but this is your doing. You’ve forced my hand. There’s still time for you to stop this. I’ll see you there.

“What does this mean?” asked Asha, going rigid with fear.

Before Pax could answer, some large insect buzzed through a window, drawing her gaze. A surveillance fly.

“Micah,” said Pax.

The fly stopped midflight in front of him, hovering more like a bee, wings moving too fast to see. Two tiny red beams scanned Pax’s face. He flinched at first, but then held still. When the scan finished, the lights blinked off. He slipped his hand under the fly, and it dropped lifeless into his palm.

He studied the little corpse—part animal, part mechanical—until he found a disk stuck to its armored underside. Prying it loose with a fingernail, he inserted it into a recess on the frame of the tablet. A window popped open.

The amir has ordered the Guard into Al Campo. The rumor in DAB-lab is he intends to terminate the camp.

It hit Asha like a blow to the diaphragm, stopping her heart and her breath at once. “
Terminate?
”

BONE TOWN

“I have to meet him,” said Pax, rising.

He should have seen this coming. His father was going to hold the humans hostage until Pax was back where he wanted him. Pax wasn’t sure if he was angrier with his father or with himself.

“Is he bluffing?” asked Asha.

He could see her rising panic. Knew she must be frantic about her father. But all he could think about was how grateful he was she was here and not there.

“My father doesn’t bluff.”

“I’m going with you.”

Like hell,
he thought. And then realized he was trapped. He couldn’t leave her alone in the temple.

“Don’t
think
,” she said. “You’re wasting time.”

She was right. “Let’s go.”

They took the lift down to street level, never pausing to think how they were going to get past the priestess—there wasn’t time.

As they pushed past the attendants outside her chamber, they found her inside with her mate. She rose from a pile of cushions to confront them, and the attendants inside raised their weapons.

“Breaking our agreement already?” accused Cleo.

Her mate took a few steps toward them, clenching his fists—one of Iris’s favorite tricks. Flexed muscles made the spikes lining his arms appear larger and more threatening.

“My father is retaliating against me by ordering his men into the camp,” replied Pax, pointedly ignoring the man. “He’ll kill everyone inside if I don’t meet him there.”

“And you thought I’d just let you walk out of here?”

“Have you forgotten you have people in there as well? What do you think will happen if he finds them there?”

The lilac eyes studied him closely. “We’ll go with you.”

This was not what he’d expected. But it was impossible, and she should know that. “If my father sees you it will make everything worse.”

She frowned. “We’ll go unarmed. We won’t threaten. I’ll help you talk to him. Maybe we can get the hothead out of there before he hurts anyone.”

The reasonableness of the proposal was almost suspicious. But it didn’t matter because it wouldn’t work.

“I don’t say this to offend you,” said Pax, keeping his tone as respectful as he could in his haste, “but my father won’t listen to you. Seeing us together will only make him angrier and put all of us at risk.”