Page 34 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

When my vision clears, my predicament has not demonstrably improved. My battered skull rings with pain, throbbing with the dull monotony of a church bell tolling at midnight. I’m still wounded. Still parched. Still wedged into this miniscule alcove, trapped between three fallen pillars and a wall.

With my mortal enemy.

Barely lit by a dim spill of light slipping through the cracks, Zephyr’s sharp-featured Dark Fae face peers down at me.

The narrow slash of his eyepatch bisects his olive skin.

His moss-green hair, somehow still sleek under a film of silver dust, spills down on either side around the sharp tips of his ears.

I’m lying across his sinuous dragonscale-sheathed legs, with my aching head cradled in his lap. His ridiculous codpiece nudges my ear.

But a cloth, gloriously soaked with cool water, soothes my throbbing brow. Gradually, I realize this Dark Fae tyrant is… tending my wound.

With deceptive gentleness.

In fact, the trickle of water over my skin is what woke me.

“Back among the living, I behold.” Zephyr sighs. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost fancy that Fae sounds… relieved… that I didn’t expire in his arms. “This being the case, I suppose you’d better try to drink a little.”

By some miracle, he’s holding a water bottle to my lips. I grope to steady the bottle, my hand closing over his. Too parched to quibble with the intimacy or the indignity of my circumstances, I guzzle mouthfuls of the delicious liquid without complaint.

Ambrosia.

I can’t abide the grit of dust between my teeth.

“Slowly,” he cautions—easing the bottle away before I’ve drunk anything like my fill, the prick.

“Go to hell,” I mumble, trying to reclaim the bottle.

But I’m pathetically weak. Easily my rival eludes my clumsy grasp, even while otherwise occupied, bathing my aching forehead with an alarming semblance of care.

“Fucking sadist,” I grumble.

His single jade eye narrows in a frown. “I’m not being needlessly cruel, beautiful one. I’m no expert in human anatomy—far from it—but I am mated to a healer who enjoys talking about his trade. You appear to be suffering a possible concussion.”

“Tell me something… I don’t know.” With a sigh, I let my heavy eyes close.

Sounding carefully neutral, as though he wishes to betray nothing of his feelings, Zephyr clears his throat. “In your condition, ’tis likely you shouldn’t sleep.”

“’Tis likely you shouldn’t care.” Merciful fuck, I sound petty. But I feel far too wretched to give a shit.

After a moment, his cool fingers graze my cheek. Without bothering to open my eyes, I swat his hand away.

The prick leaves me in blessed peace for approximately five seconds. Then…

“I fear I may have slain your father,” Zephyr says casually. “I hope you don’t mind?”

Well. That wakes me in a hurry.

My violent twitch of reaction drives a white knife of pain through my skull. With a gasp, my eyes fly wide. My nemesis is still peering down on me from above, watching me alertly in the half-light.

I fumble about for something snide to say. Fumble to snatch up the saber for another vicious bout of our verbal fencing.

Alas, my addled wits fail me.

The blade of my spite droops like a wilted daisy.

“How?” I struggle to form the words. “My father… has built an entire career upon… his spectacularly bloody start in life as a trained assassin. He’s considered… rather difficult to kill.”

“Not for me.” Zephyr’s feral mouth curves in a secret smile. I swear, that sly smile curls my toes in my boots. “I kill as I please, with none to deny me. I am the Unseelie King.”

My tongue darts out to touch my upper lip. His gaze tracks my tongue like a snake tracks a bird.

“How?” I whisper.

Not only how did you kill him? But also how do I feel if it turns out to be true?

“I loosed Xhevith upon him.” Zephyr offers me the bottle. “More water?”

His dragon. Who breathes acid. If Zephyr used Xhev to kill my father, then surely… surely… my father must be dead.

I close my hand over the Fae’s and drink. This time, he lets me have the bottle while he dips into a backpack I recognize—it belongs to Maxim, who would have shed it before he shifted— and produces the rudimentary first aid kit Neo insisted we drag along.

Between blissful sips of H2O, I watch closely while Zephyr shakes out a couple of capsules. I’ll have to trust his judgment that they’re safe for concussion, but frankly I’ll take anything that might put a dent in this headache. I accept the meds meekly and swallow them down without protest.

I’m far less sanguine about the pinch of grassy, bittersweet-smelling dried herbs the Fae shakes out next, extracted from a tiny pouch at his belt. He sprinkles this weed delicately over my throbbing brow like a pinch of fairy dust, with the words of a whispered spell.

To my suspiciously raised eyebrow, he explains, “Seelie comfrey. ’Tis an herb with anti-inflammatory qualities. Ash never lets me ride into battle without it.”

“Hmmm.” I manage to convey my active skepticism of his primitive Fae medicine without even opening my mouth. Because it would never do to imply that I trust him.

Although his Ash is indeed a gifted healer. I’d be a fool to deny that much.

Admittedly, that sickening lightning bolt of pain—the agony that cleaves my brain in relentless nauseating tempo with my pulse— is easing.

“That herb should speed your recovery.” Zephyr gives my fretful face a grave nod. “But no vodka martinis for at least twenty-four hours, beautiful one.”

Dear fuck.

Is that a flicker of humor warming that seductive voice of his? Could this Unseelie tyrant actually be trying to make a joke ?

With difficulty, I recall my wandering wits to the subject at hand. “You were saying… about my father…”

A subtle chord of tension runs through his supple thighs beneath my head. “What of him? I left him for dead.”

Left him for dead doesn’t mean much, not when you’re talking about Nikolai Romanov. I let out a sigh and rub an absent hand over the burning ache in my chest.

Zephyr tilts his head and eyes me with a quizzical gaze, very much like the sparrow Ash calls him.

“If by some miracle you did manage to kill him, I will certainly not mourn him,” I say clearly.

Even though I’m not entirely certain that’s true. But I’m not some archaic pointy-eared Fae. I can and do lie with impunity.

For years, the combustible fuse of my feelings toward the detestable parent who rejected me has been a buried landmine I’m scrupulously careful never to trigger.

“I gathered as much,” Zephyr allows. In the ghostly twilight, his face turns cautious.

I turn my own face away, the better to hide my thoughts, and lean my cheek into the sleek dragonscale that sheathes his quads. “But why target him? I mean, him in particular?”

Zephyr’s silken voice hardens to steel. “I tracked your sire from the hyena-infested wood—where he was clearly behind the entire attack—and found him lurking just outside this chamber. Your father was setting Zara in his sights with a blowgun.”

“What?” Alarmed, I twist my neck to eye my rival.

Rival or no, this revelation carries the ring of truth. When it comes to assassination, poison is often my father’s preferred weapon.

Zephyr levels me with a grim look. “I overheard him telling his four-legged hyena minions it was stonefish venom.”

“Christ.” I recognize the substance (I’m not an assassin’s son for nothing) and struggle to sit. His firm hand eases me back. “That’s a hellish poison. It causes… excruciating pain. Convulsions. Paralysis. Its victims die in agony.”

“Just so.” Zephyr’s jaw knots and his mouth tightens to a ruthless line.

“Cleopatra’s courtier babbled about some sort of queen killer, dispatched by that accursed Messalina to eliminate Zara from the Dean’s Challenge.

Permanently. It appears to me your father may have been Messalina’s anointed one. Her chosen killer.”

My thoughts swirl and flounder like chum in a shark-filled sea.

“Well… Daddy Dearest is typically beyond bloodying his own hands these days. Although if the queen herself requested it, he might make an exception—but wait.” Desperately I struggle to think. Curse this wretched concussion. “When… when did you speak to Cleo’s courtier?”

“Oh, I may have tortured one or two.” The Unseelie menace lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

“You don’t say?” To my surprise, I find my lips curling in a grin. At times like this, I could almost bring myself to like the man—if he weren’t my mortal enemy. Hastily I rearrange my expression into some semblance of my customary sneer. “When was that, exactly?”

Zephyr waves a hand in regal indifference. “Just now. In the wood. Ronin and I captured two of the wretches. We… repurposed the villa mantraps.”

Recalling the vicious steel teeth of those rusty traps, I give way to a vicious smile. Then a more urgent thought shoots to the surface of my addled mind. “Where is Ronin?”

Our gazes meet in a look that acknowledges this awkward truth.

We both love him.

Ronin.

We love the same man. And the same woman.

Once again, an unfathomable idea surfaces. I don’t always have to hate Zephyr.

Perhaps, just for the duration of the Dean’s Challenge, we can be…

Not friends.

Never friends.

But allies?

Rather like a marriage of convenience. Separate bedrooms, and all that.

“Ronin is safe, never fear,” Zephyr says softly, as though he too is loathe to puncture this fragile accord—delicate as a soap bubble—that swells between us. “I saw him aloft, like the dragonrider he was born to be, on your dragon shifter Maxim. A truly magnificent beast, that shifter of yours.”

I’m well aware of precisely how magnificent a beast Maxim’s dragon is. After all, my own dragon wouldn’t let just any flying lizard rail her through her heat. After the superheat we’ve just endured, Maxim Rasputin owns her genital slit.

Even if I’ll never admit it.

The worst of the agony in my skull is definitely receding. Carefully I gather my strength to sit. This time, His la-dee-dah Radiance actually deigns to assist.

Once upright, in these close quarters, I’m essentially sitting in his lap.

Just for the moment, I don’t bother to remedy the situation.

Just for the moment, he doesn’t push me away.

I drape an arm around his sleek dragonscale shoulders.

Solely to make myself more comfortable, you understand.

Definitely not because I want to hold him, or be held in turn by his muscled arm wrapping possessively around my waist. Not because I like his fingers hooking in the belt loop of my uniform trousers.

Especially not his thumb sneaking under my shirt to graze the skin of my bare back.

The silence beyond this cavity presses down on me.

It’s been some time since we’ve heard a peep from the outside world.

I choose to believe that’s a good thing.

My wits are far too addled by concussion for telepathy.

Still, if Lucius were… dead, I’d know it.

If Lucius were dead, Zara would raze this island to the ground.

If Lucius were dead, I’d burn the world down to avenge him.

Still, the silence raises many alarming questions.

Striving for my signature imperious tone, I demand like the diva I am, “Where is everyone?”

“We slaughtered as many enemies as we could catch in the wood.” Zephyr’s gaze slides away, as though he’s ashamed to have left any alive.

“Once I realized some of the creatures had slipped past us, into the domus where none can fly, I ordered the others in my contingent—your dragon shifter, Ronin, Ash, Xhevith—to the wing. They’ll keep Cleopatra and her allies distracted and busy—since presumably she can’t be certain which of us carries the Horn of Ceres.

We’ll reunite with our allies at the Academy Vault and attack there at full strength. ”

“All well and good, Your Transcendence,” I say pointedly, unwilling even now to acknowledge this Dark Fae tyrant did the best he could against overwhelming numbers. “Except for our latest little problem. Even if we were to assume Zara has managed to save Lucius…”

“I think we’d know if she hadn’t.” Zephyr’s sober gaze drifts over the contours of the stone prison that holds us, as though that keen eye of his can see through solid rock. “I think the entire witching world would know.”

I’ll never admit it, but it’s a relief to know his cool head agrees with my rather desperate logic.

To conceal my crushing fear for all my mates—the crippling fear that makes me so vulnerable—I salt my words liberally with sarcasm. “Out of curiosity, how do you imagine we’ll get out of this tomb and into the tunnel?”

Now Zephyr’s arrogant face turns wary. His thumb stops stroking my lower back (which, admittedly, I’ve rather enjoyed) and his voice becomes grudging.

“If your beautiful head is now clear enough, Vasili Romanov,” he says stiffly, “I’d advise you to summon your demon.”