Page 54

FORTY-THREE

K el barely caught herself before tripping to the ground.

She landed on her injured hip and hissed in pain. Knotted clumps of hair fell over her face as another set of hands clutched her arms.

“Get off me!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you, you—”

“Kel?”

She froze. Her gaze lifted from the still-spinning floor. This had to be a dream. That couldn’t be the voice she thought it was. He couldn’t be trapped, too.

She almost didn’t want to lift her gaze. But the hands grasping her arms softened.

She met a pair of blazing amber eyes.

Dread skittered through her stomach.

“What are you doing here?” she asked Coup.

He wore gloves and unzipped riding leathers over a gray shirt, as if they’d been thrown on in haste. His dark hair was a tangled nest and his eyes were puffy.

Coup’s hands roamed her arms. “You’re not hurt?”

Kel shook her head, ignoring the aches shooting through her. “No—what happened?”

Coup rubbed his neck. “I couldn’t sleep, so I threw on my gear to check on Savita.

But she wasn’t in her aviary. I was worried they’d done something to her—then I came to check on you , but the fucking hospital receptionist wouldn’t let me inside.

Even in the middle of the night, he’d never stopped me from visiting before.

I knew something was wrong. So, I shoved past him and saw your empty bed.

The receptionist called security, and I ran. ”

Coup wrung his hands and glanced behind Kel to the white door. “I was on my way to wake up the rest of the team when two of Cristo’s goons grabbed me and threw me in here.”

“Did they hurt you?” Kel demanded.

She was caught in a flurry—thoughts scattered, taking one step forward for every two back. If they hurt Coup…

Coup reached forward and tucked a strand of matted hair behind her ear. “I’m all right, tamer. Are you?” He gestured around the pearly, windowless cell. “Why the hell are we locked in here?”

Kel looked back at the door; there was no sound from the other side.

She let out a shaky breath. “You might want to sit down.”

Huddled together in Cristo’s prison, Kel told Coup everything she’d discovered. About Cristo trying to induce Savita’s rebirth, about his failed—and successful—experiments, and what he was planning on doing to Savita…

Coup frowned. “What could he possibly want with a phoenix’s magic? Immortality, rebirths, fire—that kind of power doesn’t belong to us. What could be worth…”

Coup shook his head. Kel knew what he hadn’t been able to voice.

There was nothing worth killing phoenixes for. No one knew how Saltan creatures tended the land, but if the Alchemists’ teachings had made one thing clear, it was that the creatures and islands shared a skeleton. You couldn’t destroy one without destroying the other.

Kel wanted to move, to break things, to blaze. She couldn’t lose Savita. She couldn’t .

Coup huffed. “How long are they going to keep us here?”

Kel wrapped her arms around her knees. “Cristo made it clear that he didn’t want to risk me interfering with Savita’s rebirth. He won’t let us out until she’s…”

Coup removed his gloves and placed a hand on Kel’s jittering knee. “We need a distraction,” he said, because he couldn’t offer any reassurances.

She needed to think of something—anything—but Savita. “Like what?”

Coup shifted to trace the valleys of her knuckles, the scars across her hands. Identical to his own. “How do I convince Bekn to leave this damn island?”

Kel’s brows rose. “That’s your distraction? You want to trade one unsolvable task for another?”

Coup slid his other arm around Kel, and she leaned into his warmth. “Well, I doubt that guessing about the weather will provide much of a distraction.”

His hand traced circles on her knee. It did little to soothe the vibrating in her bones, begging to move . She tried to focus on the heat building beneath his touch. “Why do you want Bekn to leave?”

Coup gave her a pointed look. “You know as well as I do that Bekn isn’t built for Cendor.

He could thrive somewhere like Ascira. I know he still wants to leave, too.

Buy him three shots of blood gin at The Ferret and it’s all he talks about.

It’s the reason none of his relationships ever last longer than a few months. But he’s too stubborn.”

Kel placed her shaking hand over his. “He’s not going anywhere, Coup. Whether he’s on Cendor, or the furthest reaches of Salta—he’s going to be okay.”

She couldn’t tell him that he was overreacting—not when AB had stolen his mother away.

Nobody was safe from AB—not Coup, or Bekn, or any of the Howlers.

Loss didn’t follow any maps; it wove through joy and pain and years as easily as lightning through a storm.

No one knew where it was going to strike—only that it would.

“If—when—Bekn leaves,” Kel continued, “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

Coup twined their fingers together. “That’s a funny coincidence, because you’re stuck with me, too.”

Despite everything, despite Savita , Kel’s lips hitched up. “Even if we’re trapped in here for the next fifty years?”

Coup huffed a short laugh. “In here, in Vohre, in your dusty little cottage in Fieror. Anywhere.”

Warmth unfurled through Kel, dulling the pain in her hip. She imagined Sav in her old aviary, or chasing rabbits through a paddock. “The aviary’s construction is only a month away from completion. I think the Howlers are due a trip back home.”

If Savita survives that long.

The unbidden thought made Kel choke back a sob. She tried to force her attention on Coup—on anything but her phoenix.

Coup pressed his lips to the side of her head.

The warmth made her shiver. “Say we get out of all of this. We free Sav. We stop Cristo. We could go back to your farm and finish rebuilding. We probably have enough money by now to take a break from racing, at least for a month or two. We could just…” Coup leaned closer to her. “Be this. Us. For a little while.”

Kel leaned her head against Coup’s shoulder. The parts of her body touching his burned feverishly hot.

“I should have told you how I felt when you were injured,” she whispered.

Coup chuckled. His thumb swept lightly over her thigh. “We’re both fools who spent far too long fighting instead of doing… other things.”

He said the words as if they’d caught him by surprise. Kel’s stomach tensed.

She focused on the growing heat in her blood, helping her forget why she was here. Where she was. Why it was a bad idea to want Coup to burn, too.

Coup’s gaze lowered, just below her eyes. His brow wrinkled. “ Ashes , Kel. The bags under your eyes look like bruises.”

Kel frowned. She wanted so many things from him—but none involved him pointing out how awful she looked. She needed him to distract her from sleepless nights and Savita’s future and the wrong kinds of fires.

Kel’s lips were pressed to Coup’s before she realized she’d moved. Words weren’t enough. She needed something stronger, headier, to block out the fear and the pain seizing her hip.

Coup met her kisses with his own swift hunger. In one breathless moment, they were a tangle of limbs on the floor. The fire in Kel cooled, overcome by a different kind of heat.

Coup hovered over Kel, one hand against her uninjured hip and the other propped against the ground.

She pressed his weight closer to her. With one hand bunched in his hair, trapping his mouth against hers, she let her other hand trail down his back.

His muscles rippled and tensed beneath her fingers, and Kel liked how she could make him shiver.

Could make his breath hitch with the lightest touch.

His lips moved down to her neck. A soft moan slipped past her lips. Coup’s grip tightened at the sound. She slipped a hand beneath his unzipped leathers, to the hem of his shirt and then under it. He mimicked her touch, forcing her to arch into his embrace.

Memories flashed through her mind. His warmth on the top of a hill as her aviary burned. His hands against her hips as they rode over Fieror on Savita. Her bones aching to protect him from the sight of the dead mother and child. The feel of him wrapped around her in the hospital bed.

Lightning burned through her—sweet and blessedly distracting—as she danced her fingers across his back, around to his stomach. She relished his groan against her neck as she splayed her palms against his muscles.

Her entire body tightened at the sound. She wanted more. She wanted him .

Kel moved her hand lower and wiggled her fingers across the waist of his trousers. Just an inch lower and she could feel—

“ Shit —Kel, we can’t,” Coup panted.

He jerked away and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. His breath came out in short, ragged breaths.

Kel propped herself up on her elbows, wincing as she was forced back into her body. “What’s wrong?”

Coup’s eyes darkened as they ran across her. His throat bobbed and he shook his head.

“This is not how I want to do this. Not here, of all places.”

Kel sighed. Sure—a fluorescently lit prison cell wasn’t where she’d imagined having sex with Coup for the first time. But she didn’t know what awaited them on the other side of that door. If this was her only chance to feel close to him in this way, she didn’t want to waste it.

When Kel opened her mouth to object, Coup pointed to the roof. She turned her head to follow his finger.

Oh, right. She’d forgotten about the damn cameras.

Coup chuckled. “You really want our first time to be watched by Cristo and his goons?”

Kel bit her lip. She didn’t particularly care. But she could see that Coup did.

She sat up and raised her hands in surrender, trying to swallow down the resurfacing aches in her muscles. Savita— burning, alone —flashed through her mind. She needed a diversion from the pain—from everything.

“Fine,” she relented. “But we need a new distraction.”

“Your mother,” Coup sputtered, still short of breath. “You write to each other, right? When did you last hear from her?”

Kel bit the inside of her cheek. Yes, her mother was just as good as an ice-cold shower. “I thought she’d be calling every day once she heard I was here, living with the Canen Cristo. But she hasn’t tried to contact me since we came to Vohre.”

Kel had thought for sure that Madilyn would call and ask for a place to sleep, money, perhaps an introduction to Cristo. Instead, there had been total silence.

Coup frowned. He pulled away slightly, turning to face Kel. “That’s not true.”

Kel mirrored his posture. “What do you mean?”

Coup’s brow deepened. “I’ve seen postcards from your mother on the kitchen table. I’ve seen you reading them. I heard you talking to Dira about whether or not you should reply.”

Kel scrunched her nose. “I think this cell is getting to you. I haven’t heard a single word from Madilyn Chambers since we left Fieror. I wouldn’t forget that.”

Coup’s frown knotted into something uncertain. A muddled silence filled the room, and Kel could see the tired cogs in his brain struggling to turn.

Finally, Coup opened his mouth and—

“I’m going to toss you into a cage with starved phoenixes!” a deep voice rang out. A moment later the door behind them slivered open.

Kel heard another throaty, familiar voice speak, “I’ll lock you in a cage with myself . Trust me, you’d fare better against the phoenixes—”

The cell door yawned wide open.