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Chapter twenty-four

Rae woke slowly. She was warm, Aidan’s firm body beneath her. Beneath her. Shit. She’d practically curled herself over his lap, his fingers splayed over her hip. He didn’t stir as she eased herself out of his hold and rolled back onto her heels to look at him.

A faint scar and a broken line in his tattoo were all that remained of his wound.

She allowed herself a moment to gaze over the rest of his ink: lines of that strange foreign text, rows and rows of it with finer, smaller symbols that before she’d mistaken for flourishes at the ends of letters.

The night before she’d realised, sitting in his lap under the harsh lights of the break room, that his tattoos covered scars all across his torso and arms. Some of them painfully similar to her own.

From his uncle, she would put money on it.

Aidan stirred but didn’t wake. She should have left him. Could have. But she’d woken up inside that car, her world upside down, the Vampire Lord trying to keep Daire away from her, and bringing her dagger to the test subject’s neck had been more instinct than a good business decision.

Goddess knew what she was thinking when she’d used her magic to pull the bullet out. Only it hadn’t drained her in the way using that amount of magic usually would. The opposite, in fact; she felt stronger for it. She hadn’t intended to pull from him, but Rae felt certain he knew.

Guilt twisted in her stomach for a heartbeat before she made her way for the door, needing to at least have a wall between them for a few minutes.

To not think about the way he’d looked at her the night before, the way he’d held her to him, how all she’d wanted was to feel those hands over every inch of her.

Rutoks chittered and huffed beyond the wall to her right as she entered a corridor, knowing she’d eventually find an access door if she looked long enough.

Some said the rutoks had magic once. Human children were still often gifted them as pets as a symbol of protection, but all they did was eat, shit, sleep, and breed until the new legislation had come in and the kennels had been built all across the city.

Some clever human had come up with the idea of turning their shit into biofuel, and the captured rutoks were permitted to live, magic or not. Rae didn’t know what she believed; she just loved the idea of an army of adorable creatures charging down from the mountains at dawn.

With every step she took further away from Aidan, she half expected to feel him press against her mind, but he must have still been sleeping.

Her thoughts drifted to the way he’d rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip after she’d risen from his lap, and all she’d been able to think about then was how it would feel over hers.

Watching him drink her blood, the effect it had on him, knowing that some part of her did that to him.

It was a rush she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

Even now, heat flushed her cheeks, her chest, her belly, lower.

Rae swallowed, shaking away the thought.

A green door with a warning sign longer than her arm at the end of the next corridor was the one she was looking for. She mumbled her spell, the lock clicking and the door swinging open, not knowing what to expect. If an army of feral rutoks chased her back to Aidan, at least he’d have breakfast.

She hadn’t expected cages, wall to floor, and again she had to shake away the awful sight of lifeless bodies in the cells back at the facility.

In her mind, the rutoks had been running about these facilities freely, deposited by some hole in the wall.

They were clean creatures and only messed in their litter trays, which would have been emptied mechanically, Rae presumed, the same way everything else seemed to in the building.

Each cage held a rutok, some hissing, some sleeping, some running back and forth across the tiny stretch of hatched wires.

Water bottles and food dispensers connected to pipes ran along the ceiling, all fresh, all full.

But no space. No direct sunlight; the windows were too high and too narrow for that.

If it wouldn’t attract so much attention, she’d set them all free there and then, but Rae couldn’t.

She made her way further into the kennel, eyes drifting over sleeping rutoks, some old, some young, until she stopped at a cage holding two.

A mother lying on her side, and an entirely white cub, curled up in the space under the mother’s chin as it whimpered quietly.

Rae took a step closer, and her heart stuttered. The mother was dead. She sucked in a breath and the little rutok’s eyes shot open wide, huge ears darting up in alarm before slamming over his eyes as if he could make himself disappear.

“It’s okay,” Rae murmured softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

She opened the cage and let the door swing open.

The cub lifted an ear, a round black eye looking up at her, then the other.

“It’s okay,” she said again. She rested a hand at the edge of the cage but didn’t reach out for it.

This young, they looked like cute little fox cubs, but they had a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, and Rae wasn’t looking to lose any fingers.

The sound of metal on metal pulled her attention, and she glanced over her shoulder to see some of the litter trays emptying in the cages opposite as a wet nose pressed against her thumb.

She turned back to the rutok, barely bigger than her hand, its five tails spiralling around each other almost larger than the rest of its body. It rolled onto its back, paws in the air, and made a small sound, then turned back, gently nudging its lifeless mother and whimpering.

“I know,” Rae told it. “I’m sorry she’s gone.

” She had nothing to offer it other than Aidan’s manor, which was a great deal better than a cage, if only a larger one.

“Want to get out of here?” she asked, taking a step back, but the rutok merely settled in against its mother once more, black eyes never leaving Rae.

Light glinted off the corner of the cage, and again Rae looked over a shoulder, taking in the way the sun shone through the high windows.

Sunlight. Aidan. She made to leave, but the rutok huffed at her, not quite a bark, but something close.

“I’ve got to go. Last chance,” she told it.

And with that, the rutok bounded over, scrambled up her arm, and settled into the crook of her neck.

Rae huffed a laugh as she reached for it, racing back out into the corridor and bursting into the break room only to find Aidan in the same position she’d left him, a slice of sunlight on his cheek and across his perfectly sculpted chest, causing him no harm whatsoever. “What the fuck?”

“Hello, Witch,” Aidan murmured, eyes fluttering open, unperturbed.

“Imagine my panic,” Rae said, her heart a heavy drum in her chest, the rutok’s five tails winding through her fingers where she cradled it in her hands, “when I realised the sun had rounded the building as it sets. Only to find you sunbathing like you’ve done it every fucking day of your life.”

Aidan raised a hand until it caught the light from the window opposite, turned his palm as if it was a surprise, and clicked his tongue. Then his eyes narrowed. “Is that ball of fluff supposed to be a rutok?”

“Don’t deflect, Vale. I want an answer.” There would be riots if this was made public, yet something told Rae he wouldn’t have let her see this, know this, by mistake.

Aidan merely shrugged. “I’m a half-breed.”

A choked laugh escaped Rae, the rutok clambering up her arm to the crook of her neck again as she rested against the counter, folding her arms across her chest. The Vampire Lord, a half-breed.

Impurities in Vampire lines were not tolerated.

Half-breeds were unheard of. But a Vampire that could walk in daylight.

.. impossible. Not to mention the power he was giving her by handing over this information.

“Witch?” she asked, because it was the only question she could think of.

“Fae.” She hadn’t expected an answer, let alone an honest one.

He was watching her closely, but he wasn’t trying to get into her thoughts. Rae knew she was giving enough away—her surprise, her confusion; he must have been able to taste her shock in the air. “Who else knows? Baelin?”

“No one knows.”

Rae had to look away at that. Suddenly his gaze felt too heavy, too close. “Why are you telling me this?”

He stretched, muscles pulling taught before he uncurled to his feet, mirroring her stance on the wall opposite and fastening his hair into a knot.

“To earn your trust. I’ve been trying to control the Vampires because I want to bring control to Demesia.

Not because I want to control it .” It’s as if everyone has forgotten that there’s life outside of fighting, he’d said that first night in his manor.

“Something better,” Rae murmured.

He nodded.

“And because you want your magic back.”

Another nod. She’d get him back his magic. If she could time it right, she’d afford him one last night with it before she collapsed Demesia’s ley lines and nullified magic across the city. She owed him that much.

“Who did that to you?” Aidan asked, jerking his chin at the scars along her arm where the rutok played, tails spiralling around her wrist.

A male, she realised as he rolled and twisted, happy little noises escaping him now and then. “You first.” She held Aidan’s stare and made sure he saw the challenge in them. It would take more than one secret to earn her trust.

Aidan didn’t seem concerned. “I was too difficult a secret to conceal. My father was killed by the Fae for what he’d done, and my mother was forced to give me to my uncle for protection.”

There was so much wrong with that simple statement. “And instead he did that,” Rae said, jerking her chin as he had.

Aidan nodded. “Lessons, he called them,” taking in the scars along one arm. “Some took longer to learn than others, but as I got older, I understood he did it because he was afraid.”

“That you would be more powerful than him?”

“That I already was. He thought if he ruined me, I’d never realise my potential.

” He dragged a hand through his hair, though it did little to tame it.

“His poor judgement worked in my favour.” The thin beam of sunlight had slowly moved across his chest since their conversation began, and Rae realised he probably didn’t get much opportunity to enjoy it.

She had never told anyone about her scars.

Partly because she’d never cared to remember the painful details of how she’d received each of them, but partly because she knew she’d never have the opportunity of telling anyone whose face might light up with understanding rather than pity.

“My mother ruined me and called it love,” she said after a moment of silence where they both watched the rutok play.

“My father chose to ignore what my mother did, and he called that love too.”

“She did this?” The air stirred with his words, the last of the sunlight gone as it dipped too low in the city beyond, a shadow falling across the breakroom, across Aidan.

An empty cup sat on the counter, a teaspoon resting inside it, and Rae picked it up and inspected it, watching as the rutok snatched it away and wound it up between his tails like treasure.

“Once, I stole a pudding, but the only thing I could find to eat it with in my haste was a teaspoon. I’d barely even finished the first mouthful before my mother found me.

She pressed that spoon over my eye so hard I had burst blood vessels for weeks.

It’s when I first learnt to change my eye colour.

” The rutok dropped the spoon, the metal rattling against the counter and the creature flinched at the sound.

Rae stroked its head in quiet reassurance.

“Her punishments were varied. Sometimes just an iron from the fire. Sometimes a backhand so forceful it would send me to the floor.”

Rae could feel the ghost of each strike, the burn of each press of the iron as she spoke.

“Her favourite thing to do was grab a fistful of my hair and hold me face down in the fountain at the front of our home until I saw stars.” It was why Rae had learnt to change her hair, why she’d learnt to hold her breath for so long, but she didn’t need to explain that to Aidan for him to fill in the gaps.

“Was her death painful?”

Rae hummed a laugh. Trust him to remember her mother was dead. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” Dangerous territory. She’d already shared far too much of herself, too many pieces for him to use. He’d been honest with her, but not without motive. She couldn’t lose sight of that.

Even without telling him more, she knew she was giving too much away—her racing heart, her sweaty palms, the emotions tearing through her, hot and sharp.

Anger, mostly. So much anger she could light the world on fire with it.

Had tried to on more than one occasion. The beatings after that had always been the worst.

“Orion is outside,” he said quietly. Too quietly, and Rae refused to see the pity in his eyes, her attention fixed on the rutok. She focused on the soft fur, the way its little paws sparred with her thumb.

“Let’s go.” She scooped the creature off the counter, let him run up her arm and settle against her neck, claws digging into the fabric of her top.

“You are not bringing that ball of fluff into the manor,” Aidan said as he held the door open, waiting.

Rae was undeterred. “Why not? At least I know none of you are going to kill him.” Aidan couldn’t argue with that after admitting they were as good as junk food. “You still owe me, Vampire,” she reminded him as they made their way out of the kennels.

Darkness greeted them. Darkness and Orion, waiting beside a vehicle that Aidan would no doubt be driving.

Don’t I know it , the Vampire Lord’s voice rumbled in her thoughts.