Sacred Betrayal: Immortal Brotherhood (Edge Book 3)

  Reveca laughed again. “No, it will fucking suck for a while. I’m just not going anywhere. He won’t either.”

  “Did you ask him why? Seriously. Of all the skanks.”

  Reveca took another long drink, stared at the river for a minute. “No. He kinda fucked up, though.”

  “Kinda?”

  After a lazy grin Reveca spoke. “I mean because it was a skank, because it was her, that tells me it meant nothing…it would hurt worse if it were someone else, someone I knew he cared about. I doubt this house would be standing still if that were the case.” Reveca sighed. “It would mean he had been doing it for a while, building it, playing me, betraying me. That would be un-fucking forgivable.”

  “Like this is?”

  “Just different,” Reveca said, siding down in her chair, hugging her grimoire to her chest as she nursed her bottle of wine and listened to the night around them.

  Star was a fairly good distraction, had a way of talking about everything but not filling the space with stupid chatter, and she could make Reveca laugh. They had finished all the bottles of wine, and Reveca was staring off in the distance, thinking.

  The omen, what Evanthe had said about claiming what was yours or you’d lose it all, kept haunting Reveca right alongside what Windsome asked her to do, told her to do.

  Over and over, she heard those words in her head and thought of Amber. Her gut told her that girl was not an omen, but her circumstance told her differently. Which led Reveca to muse over the path of her first love, what she knew of his path. Like always when she understood one thing, it opened up a new mystery, one that would not be solved until life was lived.

  Until fate had its say.

  Star had drifted to sleep in the chair an hour or so before; dawn wasn’t long off.

  Reveca heard a whistle and looked down. Taurus was down there. He had a big brother look on his face as he glanced over her, clearly trying to see what shape she was in. He lifted his hands, a silent gesture asking where the hell his woman was.

  Reveca lifted a finger, then turned to Star. She didn’t want to wake her, and doubted the girl could make it down the stairs, so Reveca’s energy lifted her, and carefully lowered her down to Taurus. He held his large arms out, not batting an eye about Reveca’s power.

  Though Reveca hadn’t managed to get Star to talk about immortality, Talon had spoken to Taurus about it. He was a prospect for the immortal life which meant he was aware that there are some things that you can’t explain, that you may not want to question.

  It also made him a good face for the MC. He knew enough to cover up any oddities the others might have seen.

  When Star was in his arms, he looked down at her, at the empty bottle she was clutching and shook his head.

  He nodded once to Reveca. She blew him a kiss, then watched as he carried her through the darkness to their house that was close to the river.

  She bowed her head, then gathered her things. She cleaned up their mess, then a long hot shower and cleaned up herself up. She dressed again, looked over those cards in her chest, and the guns. She mused over all she had to do that day, and the next few, how critical it was that she nailed this barter with Crass.

  She thought of what it would mean if she did—King would be gone. His memory shifted back into a dark part of her heart that she never let anyone completely see.

  She stepped out on her porch, pulled herself up and stood on the rail, and climbed, fluently, without struggle, to the next level.

  Careful not to call attention to herself, she crept slowly around the porch, all the way around to the other side of the house. She hesitated when she turned the corner and saw the doors open, but swallowed her nerve and pushed forward.

  King was laying in his bed, in jeans and no shirt. He’d watched the sunrise hours ago and still couldn’t find the will or drive to go down and fuck with his car or the bike he had almost built.

  He was too deep in his head, rehashing it all, from beginning to end. Knowing that through his existence he had not been one man but several.

  There were times when he was colder, fiercer, times when he shut a part of himself off. And there were times when he wasn’t. Each led him here. Back to the only place that ever felt right.

  But it was wrong now.

  He was thinking so deeply about her that he was sure he was in a living, waking dream. All at once she appeared framed in his doorway. The sun was behind her, highlighting her long, strawberry blonde hair, which was full of waves and reached down to her waist. Her black top barely met her cut off jean shorts. He could see her navel, the taunting piece of flesh just above her belt, and the buckle that belonged to her Club; her life that he had landed in and destroyed. Then there were those long legs that went on for days…

  When she moved forward he focused his eyes and realized she was really there, a hair’s breath away, looking like an angel.

  She made her way to his bed and sat on the edge.

  “Hi,” she breathed.

  “Hi.” His voice was deep, rugged.

  They sat there in silence for a long while just breathing in the presence of one another, the deep hum that eased all the pain, that made them feel connected to something bigger than them. A sensation of coming home, back to the beginning, when hope was all you could have because everything was magical in some way.

  “I don’t want to fight,” she said finally. She waited a moment then spoke again. “I want to hear it from you. I want to know why.” She looked to her side at him, met his ice blue eyes which were surrounded in the thickest, darkest lashes she had ever seen. “Why? Why did you stand up to him, break away? After all that time. After surrendering.”

  King wanted to look away, divert the topic, because he knew it would stain the weakness she had branded on him. It would pull her closer.

  All night his gut was telling him Talon was right, that all of them were. Him and Reveca were already half destroyed without having each other in their lives. If they were any further apart, reason said there should be no hope for survival.

  Even without this risk, them being bound and him doomed for death, he didn’t want her to come to him hurt, as a rebound—as revenge.

  He knew he was right about one thing—this surge of power that belonged to them had to be pure. It didn’t matter that she was cut from his soul, only truly his. She was grieving from a pain that was only hours old, a pain Talon delivered, but ultimately King caused.

  He held her stare as he spoke. “Revelin made what I adored a sin.” King bit his lip before he spoke again. “Out of the seven dark emotions exaltation is the only one that souls want to feel. It’s the closest to the light. And he made it a sin.” He paused for a second. “At first Revelin only did it with dreams. He’d birth desire all around the soul. He couldn’t merge souls together, but he could give the illusion, raw erotic sex. They’d endure a near lucid dream, birth the emotion, feed us all…but then they’d wake up, want it so bad that they would chase it in real life.” King narrowed his eyes slightly. “That was the beginning. Then we began to lurk in the mortal world, taunting the vices—gamblers, risk takers, anything and everything. We birthed darkness.” He drew in a breath. “We set the standard that if you got what you wanted you were sinning, and the wicked mortals, those souls, they didn’t care how they got what they wanted. Not one damn bit. They asked for more and more. ”

  His hand reached for hers on the bed, his fingertips brushed the back of her hand. “I just keep thinking about how it was, how I felt about the rush in the beginning. The innocent rush, the gratitude. I decided I couldn’t deal with it anymore…so I left. Tried to figure out how to feed and not destroy.” His gaze trickled over her. “It took me getting here, seeing Gwinn, a fresh soul, one that you were teaching magic to, to finally understand. The emotion can thrive in sinners, but it exalts in purity.”

  Reveca didn’t say a word.

  “You had gratitude,” King said. “You may have been this idea, this thought I had buried, t
hat Revelin had tainted, but I remembered the gratitude. I remembered you wanted to give and not consume. I remembered that is how it was suppose to be. The idea of you, in some way, birthed the Helco faction. I couldn’t figure it out, though, not then, how to fight the curse of the sinners and fight Revelin simultaneously. Our addiction, hunger, it was rich.”

  Reveca furrowed her brow in question. Not really believing the idea of her, no matter how deep it was buried in his soul, had caused him to rise up and ultimately landed him at her doorstep once again.

  “Revelin never gave the prize, what the souls were after, just a small taste. I had to feed my people so my grand plan was to give them what they wanted. I assumed that way there was balance. They got what they wanted, we did, too.”

  “This the curse?”

  “Dagen told you about it?”

  She hung her head. “Somewhat. You should have known better, King. The true emotion is not found with superficial accomplishments.”

  “Yeah, I should have known,” he agreed. “It’s a fucked path but it led me here. I’d do it all over again,” he admitted.

  Reveca held her breath.

  “That’s a sin, too. I own it. I didn’t mean to fuck up your life. Seeing you though, it just woke me up, helped me figure out why I never really fit in the Escort life, at least not the way Revelin wanted me to.”

  Reveca broke away from his stare. “Now you know though. You know how to lead your people.”

  “And you told Dagen. He’s very efficient at taking action.”

  Reveca looked back to him, wondering how he knew she had. If he really lingered with her when she used this power between them.

  “I can sense them. Confidence. They own it now. You began a chain reaction.”

  “They need a leader.”

  “They have Dagen.”

  “He needs you.”

  “Reveca, this is where I want to be right now. I’ll stay out of your way. Let you handle the shit that blew up for no reason the other day.”

  “It had a reason.” Reveca wasn’t going to elaborate. “The mercy,” she said, changing the subject. “Who was that for? Whose birth did you feel? How were you so sure they were meant to kill you?”

  “You already know.”

  Reveca did know. All those books, those histories, the lessons that she had learned as a girl were fresh in her mind. She knew the new sovereigns were a balance of light and dark, two of one. Cashton was but half of the soul who would rule with him. She knew who Cashton was in love with, who he was fighting to be with. Jamison’s daughter.

  “You fell for a little witchling, from the Dominarum coven.” She glanced over him. “Odd how history repeats itself isn’t it?”

  Two girls. Amber and Jamison’s daughter, Raven. Two that certainly, from what Reveca knew, reflected the way she once was, a mirror. Two men, Talon and King…and one omen. That’s what sucks about omens, about seers. All they do is cloud your mind. And push you to fight with your gut.

  Evanthe had told her to claim what was hers when the omen appeared, or she’d lose it all. Losing it all had already commenced in some way.

  She knew what was hers, and she knew that she was strong enough to let go before, and would be again.

  “No history was repeated,” King said gruffly.

  A pissed smile spread across her lips, followed by a gasp that clearly called bullshit on his words. “No doubt she’s beautiful. The coven has never lacked in baring souls that are, or so I’m told.”

  “Bliss.”

  Reveca looked to her side at him.

  “Innocent bliss. She just wanted to be happy. That’s what Cashton’s girl is all about.”

  “I can remember wanting such things.”

  “It wasn’t the same, and being drawn to her had nothing to do with history or the fact that she was from your coven. I was drawn to her energy—I was protecting myself, my people.”

  Reveca didn’t want to hear this, at least not the details. She didn’t want to know it went on miles from where she was sitting and she had no fucking clue King was alive or even close.

  “What did you and Talon do? Have some kind of meeting, decide that you both needed to shred me at once? Did the pair of you think we had nothing better to do?”

  “You’re not understanding,” King said, sitting up. Now his chest was just barely brushing against her arm. “The pull to her had to do with her birth, her energy, her bloodline.”

  “Mine,” Reveca said, refusing to look at him. “I’m not mad about it, King. I’m not.” She knew she didn’t have a right to be and honestly at this point she was near numb. She was jealous, no doubt, but she wasn’t going to say so.

  “Not your bloodline. Jamison is not of your blood, neither was her mother. This had to do with the line of Exaltation—our survival, not witches—I swear it to you.”

  “You break her? Is this girl in pain because of you?” If he said yes and Cashton discovered this infraction, by law of the MC and apparently all fates, he’d have a right to slay King—at least challenge him. His carefree balance would have no hope. Cashton would become primal.

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I had mercy. I’m sure me leaving, following this to where I am, was not easy on her. But I assure you it was harder on Dagen, on those behind us.” He gripped her arm. “She’s not mine and I know that you—”

  “I what?”

  King stared. “You are,” he squinted his eyes. “But we’ve been fucked over. Revelin did that to us.” His stare became riveted with pain. “You’re mine. Revelin took me and Talon mended you—he’s being a hero now, Reveca. You understand his actions, right?”

  “Him stepping aside?”

  A shallow nod.

  “He’s not a quitter, King. Never has been. He would not just drop me because…because you’re here now. If anything he should be territorial.” She glanced over him. “He won’t tell me why. He’s absolute in his silence.”

  And I can’t either. “Reveca, this curse of being an Escort, one way or another, it’s going to kill me. It destroys me to say this, but I need to know you have someone to keep you safe—to stand with you.”

  Reveca’s insides quivered. She couldn’t grieve for him twice—she knew she couldn’t. He may need to know she had someone, but she needed to know he was alive and fighting somewhere. The latter was the only possibility for centuries to come.

  “So you need to destroy Revelin. You need to rise up, fight.”

  “I stay here or I go off to battle. Mistakes are only made once, Reveca. I’m not going to hurt you again, at least not until I’m through being selfish.”

  “Selfish?”

  His eyes glided over her. “After all this time, even though death is promised, I just need this time to look at you when I want to. To feel your energy. To pretend it all went a different way.” He hesitated. “When the time is right, I’ll do what I must for my people. Right now, I’m selfish, and proud to be so. My people and you are safer with me here right now.”

  “And you think us here, in this life I have, me seeing you for however long you have left until Cashton rises is going to make it easier on me when the day comes?”

  His eyes searched hers. “I can’t explain this to you now, not with as hurt as you are, as fucked as we both are in our current state. But I promise you vengeance. I promise Revelin will regret ever ripping us apart.”

  Reveca’s gaze glided over him, seeing just how old their souls were, understanding how much time they’d lost. He was right. Mistakes are only made once.

  “I’ve distracted you before a battle, a bad omen. It didn’t fare well for us last time.” She hesitated. “You have something to lose now.”

  “Do I?”

  Reveca looked away.

  After a long, tense moment, King spoke. “We need this anger and pain to rest now. It’s staining our time,” King said. “What did I always tell you…what did I whisper to you.”

  Reveca’s l
ip trembled. Her eyes nearly watered, then she spoke it word for word like a creed. “Even if you only have a second to be happy each day, one second to feel a rush, you take it. It’s not promised to come again. That’s where the power is, love. It’s in exalting moments, no doubt there.”

  King let out a slow breath, one she felt shower over her neck, as he closed his eyes. “That’s what we’re doing now. We’re broken souls who need to heal. When we do, there will be an answer somewhere that I can’t see right now.”

  “Right,” Reveca said, pushing all her emotions deep inside.

  He reached up and pulled her head closer, kissed her hair, and breathed in.

  Reveca could have sworn she heard him whisper something and moved away to ask him what it was. But the shocked look on his face threw her off guard.

  He laid back on the bed. Kept staring at her with that same shocked look.

  “You all right?” He didn’t answer. “King?” Reveca said, waving her hand in front of his face.

  He caught her hand. “I’m good.”

  Reveca stared at him with a confused expression strapped across her face. “I will never get you.”

  “I could say the same,” he said with an odd awe in his eyes. Then he grinned, squeezed her hand like he wanted to make sure it was still there, then he laughed.

  “You’re not all right. My shampoo get you high or something?” Reveca asked, moving her hair over her shoulder.

  His amused, accomplished look, the one that was full of exaltation, stared back at her.

  “All right. Clearly you’re in a good mood now. I need a favor.”

  “Right now,” he teased.

  Reveca blushed but didn’t look away. “Now, listen. The boys are going to be protective, they’re going to cling closer than they should at times.” Reveca squeezed his hand. “I gotta see Crass tonight. I know when I go out to the boat they’re all going to be there. I need them here. I need them to handle shit here. I can’t let Crass see what I have to lose.”

  King’s stare, his joy, had all but dulled. He knew her fears to be true. Crass always looked for weakness.