Hunted Warrior (30 page)

She backed away from him, leaving Mal colder than he'd ever been. A void he hadn't known possible opened in his soul. It was deeper and blacker than the place where he'd stored that shameful crime. Avyi was gone. He'd been a fool to think otherwise, just as he should've known that Bakkhos was unnatural—a paradise no sensible person could believe real.

“And after?” Her words were thin and soft, like tissue.

“I was hailed a hero,” he said with a deranged laugh. “Finally! Someone strong enough to expose the horrors of the secret Tigony practice of human sacrifice. I'd torn the system down. I'd ended the shame. Even the Leadership hailed me a conquering visionary. Dragon damn, I hated myself, but I hated them worse. I was a murderer. Each of us was, yet they'd colluded all that time, having taken human lives. Then they sent their Tigony children up the mountain and down into Bakkhos, expecting the same results. That hypocrisy . . .”

He coughed into his fist. “It scarred me. Ancient ways. Power and influence. What did it matter, when so much death and deception rested at the heart of leadership?” He cracked his knuckles, hoping Avyi might touch him. He was shivering with cold and a resurgence of anger that sparked off his fingertips. “In honor of the service I'd done for our people, I was named head of the clan to take my grandfather's place. A half-grown kid who'd just committed mass murder.
I
was the best of the Tigony? The wrongness makes me ill, even now.”

“And then to be chosen Giva . . .”

Mal kept his movements as calm as possible, but he felt as if his skin were stretching away from her. From the stark quality of her simple sentence. It was the condemnation he'd always heaped on himself for twenty years. “Yes. And then Giva.”

“I think I'd known it,” she whispered. “Forget prophecy. You resent everything about our heritage, from Bakkhos until now. Simple logic is enough to see why you've lost faith in the Dragon . . . and in yourself. Malnefoley, there is no shame in what you did.”

But there was shame.

He whipped out of bed and whirled on her. She would leave him now, if he didn't protect himself first. If she had a tiny fraction of his loathing, she would see that their entire journey was an exercise in hopeless fumbling. She was the Pet. That he had trusted her with his deepest hurts and fledgling optimism was nauseating, while she looked at him with a calm expression that Mal interpreted as nothing better than smug. He would not be tricked again. His path was his to determine, for good or for life-altering ill, and was not subject to the wide-eyed whispers of a false prophet.

He was furious with himself and all he couldn't control or change or accept. He was furious with Avyi for peeling back his defenses until he was a trembling young man with the scent of a burning village in his nostrils. He needed to be free of a woman who believed in him so strongly, with or without her gift. He would never be himself again.

That meant severing the connection between them—no matter what it was or what it could've been.

“Is this how you get off? Playing hide-and-seek with information and sanity?” He vented his anger even as her brows lifted in obvious confusion. “Your real gift is having become the most practiced manipulator I've ever met. Not even Pollakioh held me in her spell as well as you. Was that one of the skills the doctor taught you?”

Avyi jumped from the bed and slapped him full across the cheek. She kicked his shin, and used momentum to push him back. Stance wide and loose, she was ready to fight.
Really
fight. “You piece of shit,” she snarled.

“Tell me otherwise.”

“I saw first words and midnight feedings and, yes, hide-and-seek. Each baby had a future I envied, even the ones I knew would die early. They were
precious
. They would be adored no matter the course of their lives. I learned what that could feel like from the souls of unborn children.” She glared at him, heart throbbing in her chest, and blinked back a sheen of tears. “You tell me, Giva—who taught you what that sort of pure, unblemished love feels like? I don't think you learned it. Ever.”

“You shouldn't exist.”

“And neither should you,
Giva
.”

*  *  *

One year away from Dr. Aster's influence, and she'd done it again. She'd chosen the wrong side.

She'd held on to her respect for Mal as long as she could. However, his betrayal of her trust—simple words that could never be taken back—ripped that respect to shreds. She could understand killing his grandfather and the woman who'd seduced him. She didn't blame him for those acts of violence. After all, in Avyi's heart, she'd already killed Dr. Aster.

“You said you believed me.” Her throat was choked with raw pain and the hot flush of disappointment. “You held me as I cried and thanked you because I'd finally found someone who actually
believed me
.”

“I was mistaken.”

“How could you stoop so low as to compare me to Dr. Aster? I've revealed only pieces of what he did to me. Would you like to know about how, when the mood struck him, he fed me by a tube through the bars of my cage? Or the fact that every day,
every
day, he was the one to zip me into that latex suit? I could go on and on, because I have twenty-five years' worth of memories I'll never bear. You have
one
.”

Mal stared her down. “You used Pollakioh's name to string me along.”

“She was just that! A name. A feeling. You wouldn't have taken me seriously anyway, no matter what I saw.”

“What else are you keeping from me?”

That you're breaking my heart.

She pushed down the urge to knock his face in, instead shoving her belongings into her backpack. “I was twelve, in the service of a madman. Those brainwashed human virgins—how could they have truly understood the sick world they'd been drawn into? Sometimes a choice isn't a choice at all. All the while, you've dwelled on your pain and anger so long that it's actually numbed you. It's easier to make decisions from on high than to consider how your actions affect individuals.”

She turned to face him, summoning all her courage to do so. But she couldn't stop her tears. “You compared me to . . .
him
. Now it's my turn. I never had any faith in Dr. Aster. I had faith in you.”

“Had.”

“You heard me.”

Their conversation ended abruptly, with Avyi's bitter pronouncement hanging in the air. There was nothing more to say.

She joined him in silent preparation. Any hope she'd maintained that they would make love again before entering the lion's den of the Grievance was burned to cinders. Could they even be allies now? With Mal behind her, she'd need to tie up one eye just to watch her own back. His goal was to find his would-be assassin. Hers had always been to find Cadmin, and more recently, to live out the extent of her destiny with Mal. Together. That was no longer possible. Now, there was Orla and Hark and the shadow of a dragon. What Mal intended to do as Giva, or as a man, was not her business—unless it interfered with hers.

She had family.

She had
family
.

They came first. The question of conception and the future of the Dragon Kings could wait these next few hours while she saved the first people in her life capable of returning the love she wanted to give.

Mal wasn't one of them. She choked back a sob. He wouldn't hear another whisper of weakness from her.

She strapped on her backpack. She felt stronger wearing her boots. Donning her brass knuckles. Stowing her switchblade. They were hard accessories for hard decisions and even harder fights. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, spiking it into the mad tease of strands she never should've been so concerned with taming. For him. To look pretty for him.

He stood by the door, wearing his casual clothes topped with a light overcoat that trailed down to his calves. His was a picture of power, only of a different sort than she'd wrapped around herself. When he battled the cartels, he would do so from the inside, using Tricksters' words and the language of men of influence.

Avyi walked to him until they were toe to toe. She needed to stretch her neck to meet his eyes, but she didn't feel diminished. No matter the mantle of authority he'd assumed through clothing, posture, and expression, he could not hide his eyes from her. Even shadowed and half hidden, with that vibrant blue obscured, she saw self-recrimination. She didn't have the time or energy to sort through how that affected her.

“You never took issue with the insult they leveled at you.
Usurper
. It never bothered you because it wasn't true. A usurper needs to want to control before he plots to take control. Tallis is known as the Heretic because of his past crimes. That name should've been reserved for you. You live a lie every day. Not because of what happened at Bakkhos, but because you make decisions with no trust, no faith, no love.” She eyed him up and down, ignoring the longing that pounded in her chest. “I feel sorry for you.”

The muscles along his jaw flexed into hard knots. “Where are you going?”

“Battersea.”

“You're not going without me.” Mal grabbed both of Avyi's arms. “I am still the Honorable Giva. We do this together.”

“Let me go before we tear this building down. I can provoke you to that and we know it.”

“I will not let Battersea and this Grievance become another of my failures,” he said. “You're right. I've stood in the shadows of my own hatred for too long.” He released one arm so as to stroke the underside of Avyi's chin. “You said I could stand with giants.”

Avyi's blood beat too quickly. “You really are a Trickster. Words are your true weapon.”

“I have my gift and a Dragon-forged sword. I will use both if our people are in danger.” He shook his head, which scattered a straight, golden shimmer of hair across his forehead. “And they are. They have been for as long as I've claimed the title of Giva, but for much longer than I've committed myself to protecting them.”

The tightness around his mouth eased in a way that made Avyi soften. She wanted more of that. A man with a calm, composed face was one ready to do battle with confidence in his soul. And perhaps with the righteousness they needed for such a tremendous undertaking.

He kissed her, swiftly and with a powerful echo of how they'd made love. That strength and vigor and daring. They'd never had the opportunity to explore each other with tenderness. Slowly. Deliberately. Feasting on one another. Instead, they'd gorged. His kiss was a reminder of that quick feast, while sparking to life the hopes Avyi wanted so much to banish.

But couldn't.

The hurt he'd caused her . . . How could she trust herself to a man who flung his own hurt with such cruel accuracy? How could any of their people?

She backed away from him, one step, then another. Although she was shattered, she'd known for some time that Malnefoley would be part of this final scene. The only question now was what part he would play.

CHAPTER

T
hey stepped outside the small hotel to find Orla waiting for them crouched and hidden among the foliage.

Avyi had no trouble locating her, homing in as if they were Indranan twins who'd managed to resist the clan's forceful, almost overwhelming imperative to kill one's sibling. All for the promise of greater power. Everything in Mal's experience was about power.

I feel sorry for you.

As if they'd always known the depth of their connection, the women embraced.

“What did you learn?” Avyi asked.

Orla frowned in the near-darkness. Only a light above the courtyard's wrought-iron gate illuminated the scene. She smoothed a finger along the deep line between Avyi's eyebrows, then flicked a censorious scowl toward Mal. “Seems I should ask you the same question.”