Page 8

Chapter 8

Fantasia

P iers’s mouth hits mine, and all the pain I’ve just gone through might just as well have been worth it.

His lips are hot and soft, and they work mine open with ease. His tongue sweeps through my mouth, wiping away the taste of my fear and claiming it for his own. His hands cup my face, his fingertips brushing against the tender skin of my bruises, but I don’t care.

I’m warmer than I’ve ever been before, cradled in Piers’s gentle hands.

When he pulls away, it’s all I can do not to lean up after him. But of course as soon as I try to move, my side burns like the devil.

Piers’s dark eyes search my face. His pupils are enormous, his breathing ragged. I almost think he’ll kiss me again, but instead… he sits up and begins collecting the scattered pieces of the first aid kit.

I temper my disappointment, because as the glow fades, I grimly decide that I shouldn’t have let him kiss me in the first place.

There’s still a great deal of pain in my side, but the tingling in my lips is starting to act like a general anesthetic. The metallic reek of my own blood, the sting of isopropyl alcohol, and the musk of the wet rags littered across the floor are all filling my nose, but now I can taste Piers’s tongue, the salt of his sweat and the sweetness of his lip balm.

I’m feeling… much better. But I refuse to credit it to being firmly kissed by a man who shouldn’t be in the same country as me, much less the same house. I’ve just begun to recover from the high and low of my adrenaline, and accepted that the men who tried to hurt me can’t do it ever again.

I bend my arms slowly, hiking them up so I can prop myself up on my elbows.

It hurts. Quite a bit. But I’m well on my way to being upright, so I push up with my palms- and freeze in pain.

“What the hell are you doing?” Piers demands- removing all the goodwill he just earned with that kiss.

“I’m trying to stand,” I say. “Shouldn’t that be obvious?”

“You should give yourself a few minutes.”

“I’d like to spend those minutes on my feet,” I counter.

“If you don’t lay still for at least five minutes-”

“You’re going to hold me down?” I cut him off. It’s a low blow, which I realize as soon as his eyes lower to my battered neck.

Piers’s jaw works, the warmth dwindling from his eyes. “At least let me help you up. Bending at the waist like this will only fuck up your stitches.”

I want to tell him not to bother, but he bound my wound so neatly. And I can’t say I enjoy bleeding all over myself even under the most normal circumstances. After a reluctant moment, I nod for him to continue.

Piers tucks his hands beneath my knees and back and picks me up with ease. It hurts , but not nearly as much as it would have if I’d levered myself up alone. He leans me up against the counter, and even after releasing me he keeps a hand on the uninjured side of my waist. The heat of his palm goes straight through my gauze, drawing my attention almost entirely away from remaining upright.

“Can I leave you for a second?” he asks. “You aren’t feeling faint? Dizzy?”

“I feel fine,” I say hoarsely.

Piers snorts. “Fine. You’ve just got blood soaking through your clothes. And bruises all around your neck and face. And a gash in your side that I just stitched up-”

“Yes, all right ,” I say, already tired of this fight. “You can leave. I feel fairly steady.”

Piers’s eyes narrow on me, but he nods and retreats from the bathroom. I lean back against the edge of the counter, testing where exactly I can place my weight to feel the least amount of pain. Once I’ve got that sorted, I fuck up my equilibrium completely by turning myself around so I can face the mirror.

I look… awful.

My hair, which had been put up in a bun during the flight, is completely loose around my face, bedraggled and half plastered with my own blood. There’s a horrible blotchy bruise spreading over my jaw and cheekbone from when Barnes punched me. I’m shocked now that I didn’t lose a tooth.

But the worst thing, aside from the gash in my side of course, is the ring of awful marks around my throat. It hurts to speak. It hurts to swallow. It even hurts to tilt my head from side to side. Again, I’m lucky he didn’t crush my windpipe, but aside from this awful ache and all the bruises, I don’t think Barnes did any permanent damage.

I’m alive. I survived.

Why does that almost feel anticlimactic?

I see Piers return through the reflection in the mirror with a glass of water in his hand. He places it in front of me, then begins soaking yet another washcloth under the faucet. It feels astronomically difficult to lift the glass to my lips- and swallowing the water is absolute agony- but it also makes me feel slightly more conscious.

The glass almost slips out of my hand when the washcloth swipes across my back. I jerk, but the pain that immediately explodes in my stitched up wound stops me. It’s only then that I realize that, of course, Piers tore my ruined shirt off of me, and now I’m left in my silk pants, also ruined… and my lacy purple bra.

“Sorry, I should’ve warned you,” Piers says, and to his credit he does look sheepish. “There’s blood all over you. I’ll be done in a minute.”

There’s a blush spreading under my bruises, but I ignore it. Piers sponges off my back, raising goosebumps in his wake. While he works on that, I start cupping water into my palms and running it through my bloody hair, careful not to let too much drip onto the counter. It isn’t perfect, but I’m fairly sure I can’t hop in the shower with a freshly stitched and bandaged wound.

Besides, finger combing my hair and watching the water slowly run clearer and clearer is… strangely therapeutic.

The reflection of Piers’s mouth begins to move while he carefully wipes clean any stray splashes of blood he finds on my back, on my arms, on my neck. All I can do is watch and remember how that mouth felt on mine. At least until his lips stop moving, and his eyes meet mine in the mirror.

“Are you feeling dizzy?” he asks me again.

I blink back to myself and frown at his reflection. “No. Why?”

“Because I don’t think you actually heard anything I just said.”

He comes around to stand beside me, and very carefully lifts my chin so the bathroom lights illuminate the size of my pupils. His mouth presses into a thin line, but after a moment, he shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re concussed.”

“Of course I’m not concussed,” I snap.

“Then tell me what I was saying a minute ago.”

I can’t, of course. After a moment of helpless silence, I just repeat, “I’m not concussed.”

Piers nods, sighing. “We need to leave. As soon as you’re feeling up to it, we need to grab a hotel room.”

“We?!” I demand. “Why should I go anywhere, much less with you?”

“Because if good old Harry Ashwood is trying to kill you, then I’m sure he’ll be waiting for an update from the two dead goons in the other room,” Piers says impatiently. “This is the second assassination attempt on your life today. We need to get you somewhere no one will expect to find you, and away from any tracking devices they might’ve put in your luggage.”

“There is no we ,” I remind him sharply. “None of this is any of your business.”

Piers’s eyes sharpen on me. “If I weren’t here, you wouldn’t be either. So how far do you think you’ll get without me now that you have fifteen stitches in your side?”

Not far, of course. But I still haven’t decided that my cousin is wrong for wanting me dead. In fact, I’m leaning into the idea that he’s well within his rights, and it probably would’ve been better to just let him kill me in London than send me all the way here.

Achilles thinks this is mercy, freedom even. But what if I’m just… tired?

Piers must see something of these thoughts in my face, because his gaze softens. “Fantasia, you can’t expect me to leave now. Not when I was gone for forty minutes and you were almost killed. Let’s get to a safer place and call Achilles, all right? Or at least get some real rest. Then we can… go from there.”

I don’t think he means for his words to be taken this way, but my mind immediately goes back to the way he kissed me only minutes ago. That was our first kiss ever, and it likely only happened because he was afraid for my safety, or my mental wellbeing, or whatever. I don’t need or want his pity, but even more than that, I don’t want him to throw himself in with my lot when he shouldn’t be here at all.

I open my mouth to tell him to leave and never come back, but I don’t get the chance. Downstairs, I hear the clear sound of footsteps.

Several sets of footsteps, in fact.

Piers and I exchange a tense look. It could be police, considering four shots were fired in this house maybe twenty minutes ago. Despite the large plot of land it sits on and the trees surrounding it, the houses on either side and across the street probably still would’ve heard them. I consider the story I’d have to tell- that my two chaperones attacked me and my… my friend managed to come to my rescue just in time- and I want to lie back down on the floor.

But Piers’s eyes are tight with worry. A moment later I realize what he’s thinking.

If they were police, wouldn’t they have announced themselves while entering the house? As it is, these steps are quiet and measured, like whatever sort of people have arrived are searching each room with the intent to sneak up on whoever’s inside.

Neither of us have to say a word, but I know what we’re both thinking.

More Ashwoods have arrived, and they’re hunting for us.