She slipped into her clothes and went to her suite. Ten minutes became twenty as she gathered up a pair of sunglasses, water, and a tote. Twenty minutes became thirty as she changed into a sundress and sandals. By the time she was ready, Zephyr was in her doorway with food.
“You already . . .”
He laughed. “I know you, Kam.”
“I reserve the right to be surly about your lack of faith later.” She held out the tote for him to fill and carry.
“I have complete faith,” he corrected. “Always. I knew you’d be here and you’d be beautiful.”
Alkamy’s gaze dropped to the sword hanging at Zephyr’s side. Around campus, he’d started carrying it openly more and more often. Lily and Violet had too. No one said outright that they were expecting not to be here much longer. They didn’t need to say it. Once Lily was announced as the heir to the Hidden Throne, they would all likely be openly identified as fae-blood.
They would be outlaws because of their birth.
It was ridiculous that things outside a person’s control could make others hate you. The nature of your blood wasn’t a choice, but humanity had a long history of killing, imprisoning, or fearing others for their race or religion. Hating fae-blood was just the latest manifestation of it.
“Do you really need to bring that?” she asked lightly.
“Maybe I’ll practice when you nap in the sunshine.” Zephyr shrugged like it was no big deal, like the constant reminder of war and violence wasn’t upsetting. It was though.
But Alkamy knew a lost cause when she heard it. Safety was his obsession. He’d been willing to sacrifice them being together in some misguided attempt to protect her, so all things considered, this was mild.
“Maybe I ought to start practicing more,” she said in a concession of sorts.
His answering smile was enough to make her debate grabbing a sword that instant. She wasn’t exactly bad at swordplay, but she didn’t love it the way he did. No one other than Lily seemed to like it that much.
“This week,” Alkamy offered. “We could spend a little extra time practicing. Just us.”
Zephyr nodded, and then headed toward the passageway out of the building. The door fell closed behind them, and they started to walk. It was a walk they’d taken countless times, familiar enough that they could probably do so without light.
“Are you okay?”
She squeezed his hand. “I am. I just know you worry. I’m not as strong as them, and I don’t want to let you down, especially after the poisoning. . . .”
He leaned in and kissed her, silencing her litany of reasons. It wasn’t a reaction she objected to at all. In public, she was her father’s daughter—pretty, cold, and maybe a little icy. With the others, she was the one who made people relax. With him, she walked a line between supportive and . . . relaxed. Being with Zephyr was like what she’d heard people describe as being “home.”
Alkamy let herself fall into his embrace. She could get happily drunk on his kisses. Knowing that he was hers, truly and completely hers to touch and kiss and hold made everything in the years before this okay. When he pulled away, she told him as much. Both of them were breathing heavily.
“We could go back up to the suite,” she said lightly.
Zephyr laughed. “We could. Let’s get lunch first though.”
Alkamy couldn’t remember the last day they’d had that seemed so perfect. Later, there would undoubtedly be things she’d rather not address. Later, there would be talk of war and politics. Right now, though, there was only this: a picnic with Zephyr.
She was giggling when she stepped out into the gardens. She slid off her sandals and bent to pick up them up. When she stood, something hit her stomach.
She felt herself lose balance and fall backward. “Zeph?”
He caught her and was in front of her somehow in the next moment.
Alkamy put one hand to her stomach and the other to the wall behind her. She slid down so her hand could touch the soil. Earth would help. It always did.
Absently, she noticed that the hand she pulled away from her belly was wet. She was bleeding. As she lowered her hand to the soil, she realized that maybe stretching out was better than trying to sit.
There was no hilt jutting out from her injury. There was only a searing pain, as if she’d been burned. There was no scent of burning flesh though. Alkamy looked at her stomach.
The skin was torn as if she’d been stabbed.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the earth, asking stone for answers because her mind felt hazier with each passing exhalation.
Metal.
As soon as rock and soil answered her, she knew. She’d been shot. No affinity, no poison, no blade. None of the things that were her usual fears. This was a human cruelty, bullets tearing through flesh.
“Kam? Alkamy!”
Alkamy opened her eyes again and smiled at Zephyr as best she could.
There was a man with a sword, and Zephyr was fighting. The clang of metal connecting with metal had been a familiar sound for years, but the ferocity of it was different now. This wasn’t friends sparring. Zephyr was angry, aggressive, and somehow more alluring for it.
“Pretty,” she said, even though he couldn’t hear her.
He was though. Whether it was his Unseelie ancestry or what, Zephyr was glorious when in a rage. It was always strangely beautiful to watch him fight. When they were younger, watching him was the spark that made her realize that she wanted more than friendship. It might be silly, but it made her a little less embarrassed by her fae blood. The Hidden Lands were a mysterious place to her, a sort of world where time had stopped moving. For years, her fantasy had been that the war would end, and she and Zephyr could move there.
It had seemed so close this morning.
But as the shock of being shot faded, she realized she’d never live there.
“Kamy!” Zephyr was there again, but closer now. He was on the ground holding her, talking to someone, yelling for help.
“Shhh.” She reached up to touch his face, to make him look at her. “It’s okay.”
“No, Alkamy. No! NO!”
“I can’t stay awake, Zeph.” She blinked. Telling him why seemed mean, but she knew. As she looked at his face, she was sure he did too.
“I need help!” he yelled. “Where is everyone?”
“Zeph?”
“You can’t.” Zephyr pulled her closer. It didn’t hurt as much, even though he was taking her away from the soil. He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t know too. Somewhere inside, he knew.
And that made everything easier.
“I love you,” she said.
Then she closed her eyes.
twenty-five
VIOLET
“Whoa!” Violet exclaimed as her door slammed open. She was on her feet with a knife in hand within a moment.
“And to think that people say you’re high-strung,” her suitemate Hailey murmured.
Without looking away from the unexpected trio in front of her, Violet flipped a rude gesture toward Hailey. She wasn’t exactly high strung. She simply wasn’t prepared to have Creed, LilyDark, and Erik come tromping into her suite.
Neither, obviously, was her roommate. Hailey was shy, studious, and aside from the discomforting tendency to wake up smiling, she was a perfect roommate. They weren’t friends in the sense that she was with the diamonds, but she liked Hailey well enough to have lived with her for several years now.
Part of why that worked was that they had rules. The biggest rule was that they didn’t let their social schedules in Violet’s case or study schedules in Hailey’s case inconvenience the other person. Creed hadn’t ever endeared himself to Hailey, and Lily’s criminal connections made Hailey—a future attorney—decidedly ill at ease.
“Whatever happened, don’t say anything in front of me,” Hailey announced. “Trials take forever, and I have too much work to do.”
Erik grinned. Creed pantomimed sealing his lips. The
diamonds were used to pretending to be far less serious than the situation required, so he slipped into lightheartedness easily most days. The only of the Black Diamonds who didn’t was Lily, but Violet was fairly sure that was by choice.
It didn’t take much to see that Lily needed her, though, and that outweighed peace with her roommate. It wasn’t even about the fact that Violet had given LilyDark a vow. Lily was her friend. That mattered, vow or no vow.
“You had the light on until dawn studying last week,” Violet said, spinning abruptly to look at Hailey.
Hailey crossed her arms and began to negotiate. “You weren’t even here. That doesn’t count. I’m not the one who’s upended the schedule, Vi.”
Violet sighed. Typically, she loved this. Hailey’s tenacity was a treat, and the fact that she was undaunted by Violet’s temper or her fame was awesome. Today, though, there wasn’t time to bicker.
“Fine. You can have your next study session here, even if it’s morning.”
“Done.” Hailey stood and shoved a few things into her bag.
Violet tossed a pen at her. “You were already headed to the library, weren’t you?”
Hailey grinned and sauntered toward the door. “You tried to use my studying when you weren’t here to bargain, too. Weak tactic, Vi. Weak.”
“When I get arrested one of these days, I better get a discount on your legal fees.” Violet caught the pen Hailey tossed back at her as she walked out. She might be quiet and studious, but she didn’t lack in bravery or attitude.
Once Hailey left, Violet turned to her friends—and the interloper—and asked, “What happened?”
Between Lily and Creed, there was a quick debrief about the police station, the set-up against Lily’s father, and the fact that he was fae-blood in hiding. Violet sat down with a lot less grace than normal. Then, she foolishly glanced at Erik to see if he’d noticed . . . not that she wanted him to, of course.
He had his back to her and was staring out the common room window. She didn’t mean to, but she sent a surge of heat his way in her irritation. He glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled, but wisely said nothing.
“And Erik tells me that Will asked him to gather information on the attacks,” Lily added.
“What?” Violet returned her attention to her friends. That explained why he’d been acting peculiarly. She shook her head. “Do we know who asked him to get it?”
“We will,” Creed muttered.
Violet’s attention snapped to him as she reminded him, “We’ve all had to do things we weren’t allowed to share.”
Violet sighed. “It never gets less complicated, does it?”
“It will,” Erik interjected. “Lily has both of you, and me, and her father. This will get resolved.”
Creed glanced at him with a curiously friendly expression, but said nothing.
“We will keep you safe, Lily,” Erik added in a tone that sounded a lot like a vow.
“I’m not worried about me,” she pointed out.
Erik laughed. “Excellent. We’ll handle worrying about you. You figure out what you need to do to get through all of this chaos.”
“Stop the attacks. Declare peace . . . not get arrested.” Lily rested her head on Creed’s shoulder and met Violet’s gaze. “Easy, right?”
“Not easy, but not impossible,” Violet assured her.
Unfortunately, that didn’t mean that Violet knew how to help with any of those things. She could kill the attacker once they found him. That was in her skill set, but the rest wasn’t. The diamonds weren’t exactly familiar with the legal system or gifted in politics. International travel? Currency conversion and fashion? All were easily managed. Poisoning, fires, and intrigue? Those were normal work.
Lily suddenly asked, “Can Erik stay here while I go talk to Zephyr?”
“What?”
“Can Erik stay with you?” Lily clarified.
There wasn’t any fair reason to object. Violet simply didn’t want him there. She didn’t like the way he ignored her usually effectual distancing tactics. She certainly didn’t like that she’d found him vaguely charming or thought about him more than she should already.
She shrugged. “Whatever you need, Lily.”
Lily gave her a strained smile. “Thanks.”
But then Creed turned to leave too. Violet should’ve known that he wasn’t staying without Lily. He rarely separated from her if it was possible to be at her side.
“You’re going?” she asked blandly. There was no practical reason to ask Creed to stay. Erik was no threat to her, and even if he had been, Violet was far from defenseless. She’d faced down armed fae with her affinities as her sole defense. There was nothing Erik could do that threatened Violet physically, but she still wanted to object.
“I’m going to go see Will,” Creed said, vaguely gesturing to his left, in the general direction of the boys’ suite.
“I could do that if—”
“Running again, Miss Lamb?” Erik interrupted.
“Violet doesn’t run from harmless people,” Creed answered before she could.
And there was nothing Violet could say to that. She motioned for him to go without saying another word.
Only a few moments later, her suite felt too small. It was illogical that fewer people would make a space seem to close in, but she felt like the space was too confining the moment that they were gone. It made her restless, which wasn’t atypical. The need to constantly move was something that Violet suspected came with the affinity to fire. She felt better when she was flowing from room to room, space to space, without tether. They all had their quirks, of course. Those with air affinity needed open space; those with water or earth needed their element. For Creed, enclosed spaces were difficult because he was away from the vastness of air. Walls were difficult. For Alkamy, being too long with her feet not touching soil was unsettling. Her vat of soil was how she coped. For Roan, the lift and lilt of waves was essential. He coped with a lot of showers.
Violet had no recourse. There was nowhere she could go that made her feel quiet the way open space, bare soil, or flowing seas would soothe her friends. She could call flames to her skin when the pressure was too much, but the only way she’d found to truly keep the worst of her agitation at bay was to be constantly active.
She moved around the suite, absently reorganizing books on the shelves, folding a blanket she’d left on the sofa, straightening a picture that was tilted, and looking for something else to tidy. The suite wasn’t ever messy though. Between Hailey’s focus on study and Violet’s need for motion, their room was as orderly as could be. Sometimes that need to move meant that she went to Will’s room and re-folded everything if her own space was beyond immaculate. Putting things in place made her feel centered. It channeled her need to move, and at the end she could see results.
“Do I make you that nervous?” Erik asked in an almost regretful tone.
She paused and looked over her shoulder at him. As much as she’d like to blame her entire mood on him, she wasn’t going to try to lie. He wasn’t a bad person, no more so than the rest of her friends. It wasn’t his underworld connections or even his humanity that bothered her. It was the way he looked at her as if every illusion she could erect wouldn’t stop him from seeing her. That terrified her in a way that few things could, despite what she’d done in service to the Queen of Blood and Rage already.
Slowly, Violet turned to face him. Sparks threatened to fall from her hands as she struggled with the impulse to run. He already knew what she was, though, and if he was in possession of one more detail about her secret it was no more or less damning than what he already knew. Without saying a word, she let the fire come. The first release of the flames felt like a much-needed deep breath after a long run. There was something infinitely satisfying about that moment; the flicker of fire burned up some sort of tension. Until the fire escaped her skin, she never realized how much she’d been choking her stress back. Since she’d harnessed her own affini
ty and borrowed her newly found father’s fire in the Hidden Lands, the pressure to let flames free was a constant thing, pulsing at her like small birds were caught under the edges of her skin. When next she met her father, she might just have to ask if that insistence would ease in time.
Erik looked at the flames that were shivering across her skin and then at her eyes. “Anger?”
“Stress,” she admitted.
“I can lie for you if it helps. Tell you it’s definitely all going to be fine. Tell you that it’s going to be easy.” He didn’t come any closer to her, but the way he watched her was the same as a touch. She’d had fans look at her that way, as if she were the only person in the world, but it was different. They were looking at award-winning actress Violet Lamb, not fae-blood Vi.
Having someone stare at her so intently made her fire sway toward him, not dangerously enough that she would accidentally hurt him. Quickly, she called it back into her body, feeling warmer for inviting fresh fire into flesh.
It reminded her, though, that he was human. Erik had no affinity, no way to smother her flames with earth, no gift of water to quench it, no skill with air to block it. He was vulnerable to her, to all of them. He was choosing this, and as one warrior to another, she owed him respect for that.
Carefully, she told him, “I don’t need lies right now, but the offer is kind all the same.” She walked over to a heavy box that held various blades she’d forged. “I like that you offered.”
“I’d offer more if it makes you smile,” he said lightly.
Violet didn’t smile, but she gestured toward the box. It was an odd peace offering or maybe an unusual way of flirting, but it was real for her. This was the person she truly was, not the figment that she was on screens or in glossy magazines.
Erik walked over and stood at her side. When he glanced down, his lips parted on an appreciative sigh at the weapons stored there. “Yours?”
“I made them.”
That same admiring gaze shifted to her. “With . . . your affinity?” He glanced at her hands briefly.