I swore beneath my breath. “Navan… I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
He said nothing, while my eyes spanned the length of his long wings, until I spotted the shifter gash that had impaired his flight before. But it was pretty high up for me to reach while he was standing.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Could you sit on the bed?”
“Oh. Yeah.” He moved to the bed, and I climbed onto the mattress behind him. I perched on my knees, placing one hand gently on the nape of his neck, while I used the other to begin dabbing the vial’s applicator against the leathery surface of his wing. I felt his neck muscles tense, and I worked as gently as I could until the whole wound was moist with the stuff.
His skin was cold, in spite of the moderate temperature in this room. It occurred to me that his “chameleon” potion—the potion that allowed him to absorb the sun’s rays during the day and become human-like, as well as adjust to the temperature around him—was starting to wear off. He had lost his own stash of vials, so he had no way to keep up that treatment. Not that he exactly needed to now.
I moved to leave the bed and set the vial down on the tray with the others, but before I could place any distance between us, his arm reached around and he caught my hand.
“Riley,” he said, his voice low as he pulled me in front of him. His gaze met mine, and my other hand forgot it was holding a vial. The sealed bottle dropped onto the mattress. My heart skipped a beat at the longing I saw in his eyes, etched across his lips.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “We haven’t talked about…”
My hand reached up, my finger pressing against his lips, and before I really knew what I was doing, I was placing his hands on my waist, coaxing him to pull me flush against his chest, while my mouth found his.
“Rask, Riley.” It was half moan, half whisper.
“Shh,” I said.
“You’re right,” he breathed. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
His firm lips closed around mine, enveloping them and caressing them softly, slowly, as if he were relishing every second of their contact. I closed my eyes, pressing myself harder against him, even though I knew I probably shouldn’t with his wounds. His hands dropped to the small of my back, then made their way up along the curve of my waist until his thumbs settled just beneath the cup of my bra.
I kissed him harder, wanting to absorb his pain, drown it out, if only for a few minutes. I knew his embrace was overwhelming whatever pain I had been feeling, and I desperately wanted to do the same for him.
My drowning attempts seemed to be working—perhaps a little too well—because he fell back on the bed, withdrawing his wings and pulling me on top of him. I trailed a line of kisses from his forehead, down his nose, before meeting his lips again, while his hands were beginning to tug at my clothes and move places that felt dangerously close to setting me on fire.
“Navan,” I whispered, as I realized that my own hands had started moving toward his waistline.
He didn’t respond, just kept kissing me, until we both realized we were beginning to near a point of no return.
He groaned against my lips, before removing his hands from my pants’ waistband. My heart was still galloping in my chest, and my blood felt like it had been replaced with liquid heat, but I didn’t protest when he rolled me off of him and onto the mattress by his side.
This was moving too fast. As much as I was overjoyed to see him, too much had happened—and at the same time, not enough had happened. We’d only just shared our first kiss, and, here in this coldblood bunker… it seriously wasn’t the time.
Our heads rested against the pillow as we stared at each other. His lips were slightly swollen, his grayish cheeks flushed. I could only imagine how much I was blushing.
“You okay?” he said.
I nodded, still trying to catch my breath. Then a small smile crept onto my lips. “Who the hell is Rask?”
My smile spread to his lips, causing his beautiful eyes to sparkle with amusement. It felt like it had been an eternity since I’d seen Navan smile, and the sight made my heart expand, everything around me falling away.
“I’ll tell you another time,” he murmured through his grin, moving in to press another kiss to my lips.
“Huh? Why?”
Before he could respond, there was a sharp rap at the door. Our safe little bubble shattered, and Navan and I were so startled we almost bashed heads as we leapt out of bed.
My hands moved down my clothes, smoothing them out, while Navan tugged his shirt back on.
“Come in,” he growled, irritation lacing his baritone voice.
The door swung open. I was expecting it to be the female coldblood, but to my surprise, it was the male coldblood with hazel eyes and buzzcut hair that I’d met earlier. The one who’d been trying to convince me to talk before Navan got tortured.
What surprised me more was Navan’s reaction to the man. Hell, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.
His jaw slackened, his mouth dropping open as he stared.
“U-Uncle?!”
Chapter Ten
“What?” I blurted, while Navan stalked closer to the man and grabbed him by the shoulders. He blinked several times, as though he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Lazar averted his gaze to the floor.
“Uncle Lazar. Wh-What are you doing here?” Navan gasped.
Lazar swallowed, then stepped around Navan and into the room to create a little more distance between them both. “Yes, Navan. It’s me.”
Navan shook his head, stupefied. “What? How?”
Lazar sighed. “I’m a rebel, nephew. Have been for a long time.”
Navan staggered backward. “You’ve been playing both sides? All this time? Why?”
Lazar shuffled his feet, still looking slightly uncomfortable. “Because I believe in the cause, Navan. I believe that our great nation was never meant to be severed in two, and I believe that we are long overdue for a rehaul of the system. I believe in the power of the people.”
Navan went silent. Then his hands balled into fists. His breathing became sharper, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “And you believe in… this?” He gestured a hand around the room. “You believe in capturing and imprisoning innocent people? Stealing and slaughtering humans?” His voice rose. “Letting your own family members be tortured?!”
His chest was shaking now, and I realized, just as had happened to me barely an hour ago, his shock was transforming to rage. I had seen how Navan acted under the influence of rage before… and it had not been pretty. I half expected him to fly at Lazar and rip his head off like he had done to Jethro, but he held himself in place, for the moment.
Lazar held up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I don’t expect you to accept it’s a necessary evil, Navan, even though to me, it is. I don’t want to get into an argument with you. Really, I don’t. Neither did I want you here in the first place, for the record. But you ventured here of your own accord, and now, well… I’m not in charge. Orion is.”
“So I take it you haven’t come here to help us escape, then,” Navan scoffed, a part of him still appearing to be disbelieving.
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
The words sounded incredibly harsh coming from an uncle to his nephew, and yet, even as he spoke, his air of discomfort remained. It made me recall my earlier encounter with him, and I realized that perhaps his motives for getting me to talk were more virtuous than I’d initially thought. Maybe Lazar had been trying to prevent his nephew from getting hurt more.
But apparently his good intentions didn’t stretch much farther than that.
“Then why have you come here?” Navan spat.
“Orion feels he’s given you enough time to talk and wants to finalize the agreement. He… sent me to bring you to him.”
“Oh, excellent,” Navan said. “Thanks so much for that. Just what family is for.”
He turned his back on Lazar and faced me, his expression positively seething. It looked like
it was taking all he had to keep himself in check, so much so that I felt compelled to say to his uncle, “Can you just wait outside for a minute?”
Lazar nodded, not meeting my eyes, and moved swiftly out of the room.
As the door clicked, I moved to Navan and clutched his hands. “Are you okay?”
“I just…” He pulled a hand from my grasp and ran it through his hair in exasperation. “I can’t believe it.”
“How is your uncle even getting away with this?” I asked. “I thought your family was, like, really high ranked back on Vysanthe. How is he doing this unnoticed?”
Navan blew out. “Uncle Lazar is kind of the black sheep of the family—though not for reasons even remotely related to treason. He’s an alchemist, like my father, but he’s published some shoddy studies over the years that have discredited him as a scientist and lost him favor with the queen.”
“I guess that explains why Orion is interested in you over him? Otherwise, Lazar could have done whatever job Orion wants you to do.”
“True. My status back home is greater, and I have more influence and access to things in general.”
We fell silent, and for a long moment, the only sound in the room was that of the footsteps, drifting in from the corridor.
“I was never that close to him,” Navan said finally. “If I were, then this would hurt a lot more. But I never could have imagined he would stoop to this.” He glanced sullenly toward the door, then back at me with a look of deep resignation in his eyes. “You ready to leave?”
I hesitated, not feeling ready to leave this little haven in the slightest, but then nodded. “If you are.”
He took my hand and led me toward the door. “I’m not sure I’ll make it halfway down the corridor before I decapitate him, but let’s see how this goes.”
Chapter Eleven
As we descended the staircase to Orion’s office, Navan walked in stony silence, refusing to say a word, even when his uncle spoke to him. His way of dealing with the situation seemed to involve pretending that his uncle didn’t exist. Which was fine by me.
He had let go of my hand after we left our little room, evidently not wanting to draw more attention to us than necessary. Still, I wished he hadn’t. There was comfort in the feel of his cool skin against mine, and right now, I needed something to hold onto, to ground myself in the moment. I still couldn’t believe I’d managed to get us into this situation—how could everything have crumbled so fast?
I kept my gaze on Lazar’s lean frame, trying to garner a hint of family resemblance somewhere in the older man’s face. Perhaps there was something in the glint of his eyes, though Lazar’s were hazel, where Navan’s were the color of a winter storm. Scrutinizing him closely, I couldn’t help but wonder what Navan’s father might look like—did he look more like Navan, or was he closer to this man, with aging features and only a hint of a likeness? How could the two brothers have ended up on such opposite sides of the spectrum? One, the queen’s trusted advisor. The other, a rebel against the crown.
Keeping close to Navan’s side, resisting the urge to take his hand in mine again, I walked with him the rest of the way toward the grimly familiar entrance of Orion’s office. Up until the very last moment, Lazar made attempts at enticing Navan into conversation, but Navan was having none of it. I didn’t blame him. His uncle’s moral compass was screwed up, and I could see the frustration Navan felt at Lazar ending up so far down the rebel rabbit hole. I had never believed in the idea of “necessary evils”, and I wasn’t about to start believing in them now. No, if a handful of people suffered for a cause, then that was a handful of people too many.
Besides, the “necessary evil” that Lazar was trying to pass off as acceptable was so far beyond the line of righteousness that I doubted he could even see the line anymore. Judging by the harrowing sight of the red smoke billowing from the strange metal silo, more than a handful of innocents had already suffered for this supposed cause. Lazar was either kidding himself, or he’d been conditioned by the rebels to believe that what he was doing was for all the right reasons. I didn’t know which was worse.
I’d seen it before. It was history, repeating itself, over and over again. I was just surprised that an apparently superior race was not immune to the same mistakes that felt so deeply human to my mind.
Even so, the sight of Lazar’s earnest eyes, practically pleading with Navan to turn and look at him, or to at least answer him, made me feel a slight twinge of pity. Not that I had any leg to stand on when it came to ignoring certain family members. I could understand the impulse to push them away, yet the soft plea in Lazar’s voice tugged at some sympathetic string in my heart. There wasn’t time to bridge the rift between them, to figure out the minutiae of what had led Lazar into this world, but I hoped there might be a moment later in which Navan might sit down with his uncle and hash out their differences. I didn’t know why; I just did.
Lazar gently rapped on the door of Orion’s office, a dull thud echoing into the room beyond.
“Come in,” called the baritone voice I now recognized so clearly. I could already picture the broad-shouldered, imposing figure of Orion awaiting us behind his desk, his dark eyes hungry for the information I had promised.
“It will be easier if you agree to his terms, Navan. And please, do not lie to him,” Lazar whispered, just as we were about to set foot in the room.
Navan shot him a dirty look. “I will do whatever I feel comfortable with, Uncle,” he spat, “but I will never be a turncoat. I will not agree to something I do not believe in.”
“You are still so young, Navan.” Lazar sighed remorsefully. “There is so much you do not understand.”
Angry fire burned in the depths of Navan’s slate eyes. A muscle twitched in his jaw, his shoulders squaring as if to strike. Stepping quickly beside Navan, pressing my palms gently to the firm rise of his chest, I looked up into his eyes and demanded that he look back. I would not be ignored, not now, not when there was so much we still needed to do. This was so much bigger than any family dispute. My blood was still whizzing its way toward Vysanthe, but we couldn’t even begin to think about chasing it down until we bartered our way out of this invisible compound.
Instantly, his features softened, the flames dying down in his glowering gaze. Feeling the rapid beat of his pulse begin to slow beneath my palms, I watched as he lifted his gaze away from mine and back to Lazar for the briefest of moments.
“No, Uncle, it is you who does not understand,” he said in a low voice. “There is never an excuse for this.”
With that, he placed his hand on the small of my back and ushered me into the office to greet the waiting stare of Orion. As I had imagined he would be, he was standing behind the desk, his stature just as imposing as it had been the last time we’d met.
I turned back to glance at Lazar. He was loitering at the threshold of the door, his hazel eyes peering toward Orion with an almost eager look in them.
“You may go, Lazar. Thank you for fetching your nephew for me,” Orion said calmly, folding his arms across his vast barrel chest.
Evidently having been hoping he would be allowed to stay, Lazar’s expression sank as Orion spoke. With an awkward nod, he retreated without another word, disappearing into the hallway beyond, his footsteps fading into the distance.
“You’ve had a chance to think about my offer,” Orion began, skipping straight to business. His eyes were trained on Navan. “I met your... friend’s requirements. I have upheld my end of the bargain, and now I ask that you do the same for yours.” There was a warning look in the chief’s dark eyes, and I could tell he was the kind of man who didn’t like to lose.
“To be honest, Orion, it’s all been pretty vague,” Navan said, his mouth set in a grim line. “I hear these words—‘offer’, ‘agreement’, ‘bargain’—being thrown around, but without terms, I can’t possibly agree to anything. Not that you’ve put me in a particularly accommodating mood,” he sniped, gesturing to the bruises
that had blossomed across his ashen skin. They were beginning to fade, thanks to the vials he’d taken, but they still dappled his strange flesh.
I reached out and rested my hand on Navan’s forearm, to calm him. Things wouldn’t end well if he lost his temper in front of Orion, not when our lives hung in the balance. I could tell Navan knew the power Orion held over us, but he’d been through so much—there was no telling how much more it would take for him to snap. I was determined for that not to happen, not if I could stop it. Besides, by the look of the thick-set, dark-eyed Vysanthean, I wasn’t confident Navan could even take him on. Navan was big and strong by any standard, but this guy looked like he could do some serious damage with just his little finger.
“I suppose that’s one way of seeing it,” said Orion, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Although, you’re not exactly in a position to argue, are you?” he baited, flashing his dark eyes at Navan. There was a clear taunt in the action, but my hand remained firm on Navan’s forearm.
“Don’t rise to it,” I breathed.
“You should take your friend’s advice.” Orion smirked. I cursed silently, forgetting that a breath no doubt sounded like a booming shout to the Vysantheans’ superior senses.
“What is it you want from me?” Navan asked, not falling for Orion’s taunt. “I might be more open to agreeing if you’d get on with it and tell me what I’m actually here for. I know you all have a bit of a thing for my dear old Pa, and think he’ll give you something in exchange for my safe return, but I don’t think he’d be up for paying the kind of price you guys might want. I wouldn’t be surprised if he left me to figure things out on my own, to be perfectly honest.” A flicker of something rippled across Navan’s eyes, but it wasn’t there long enough for me to scrutinize properly. It looked like a glimmer of hurt.
“It’s not your father I want, though his alchemy skills are far and above those of the meager alchemists I have working day and night here. His help might prove invaluable, but I know men like Jareth Idrax.” Orion sighed. “I think your judgment is likely correct. Jareth would never betray his position to save anyone, unless it was his own skin.”