Page 10 of Risen (Love and Revenge #6)

Josh

A cacia’s voice threaded through my mind before I fully woke. Up, pet. Time to be useful.

I lay still in the nest of cushions and stared at the green seam of ward-light where the stone ceiling met the wall.

Sanka had layered runes into the walls of my new room of our suite in the naga enclave, until the whole room hummed like a hive of bees.

If I pretended hard enough, I could mistake that hum for safety.

Up , she said again—soft, patient, the way you’d coax a skittish animal.

There was no way that gentle tone meant anything good.

I resisted it as long as I could—longer than usual, thanks to all the magic on me and the distance between us.

But eventually, I moved, my mind supplying me with all sorts of nasty images to remind me what happened when I didn’t do what she wanted.

Sadavir letting me drain him. Poor, sweet Cicely bleeding out on the floor. Yukio’s blue pixie blood on my hands.

Maybe this time I’ll have you bleed that blind bitch—everyone seems so attached to her. She’s a healer, isn’t she? Can she heal herself? Put her throat back together if you tear it out?

Goddess. Not Ruya. I couldn’t bear it. I wasn’t sure how much she could truly control me here, but I wasn’t willing to risk hurting someone I cared about again.

I rolled onto my side and sat up. The rooms in the suite the enclave had given us were comfortable, but my situation was still reminiscent of my prison in the guest room at The Fox, despite the change in location. Warded and under close watch.

I had grown up with the naga, lived with them all my life until Acacia came and ruined everything.

This place should feel like home to me, with the naga and their customs all around me—and sometimes, in brief flashes of memory and fondness, it did.

But I also felt like an outsider. And though this place bore similarities, it wasn’t the same as the home I had shared with Sadavir back before the naga went into hiding.

There were no windows. We were cut off from the outside.

I felt… caged here, just as I had at The Fox.

At least at the old theater, there was a chance of freedom lingering right outside the door, just a quick sprint and an elevator ride away.

Here, my senses constantly reminded me that we were buried deeper than I’d ever been before.

The underground air held the damp mineral bite of the lake that flowed through the enclave, even here in our rooms. And my annoyingly sharp new vampire nose picked up a hint of the not-unpleasant, but tangible, earthy musk that layered over everything from all the passing naga, something I’d never been able to sense when I lived among the naga before, back when I was still human.

Even if I somehow got past the rebel court, there were enough naga here to put down a lone vampire with ease.

Sadavir’s people moved like water flowing through these underground environs, at home and at ease.

They seemed content here, and I envied them.

Much as I didn’t want to get up and move about at Acacia’s command at this moment…

I had the urge to run, to escape. This didn’t feel like home or sanctuary to me.

Staying wasn’t safe, not with Acacia lurking in my mind. But running would accomplish nothing.

I pushed my hand under the pillow until my fingers found my talisman, the first broken charm Sanak had given me, which had become my worry stone.

The inert metal charm was cool in my hand, still threaded on the same cord that had carried it for weeks now.

Its surface was smooth from me running my thumb over it so often.

It wasn’t magically charged, the way the curse breaker’s amulet at my chest was.

But touching Sanka’s charm still gave me hope, for some reason—a reminder, maybe, that there were still people who cared enough about me that they were willing to fight for me, to try to help me.

It was a gasp of life-giving air, before Acacia’s suffocating grip closed on me again.

“Not tonight,” I whispered. It was late. My voice seemed overly loud in the quiet room. “Please. I’ll tell them in the morning.” Let us all rest for one more night.

The maker’s bond tugged, like a master tugging at a dog’s leash.

The curse breaker’s amulet that lay against my chest flared with heat, keeping her from fully controlling my body.

For now. But that searing heat said she had just tried.

And I had no doubt that if she kept trying, she’d find a way to take control away from me again.

Up, you useless thing. You have work to do, messages to deliver, little errand boy.

Be useful for once in your pathetic life.

I pressed my inert talisman to my sternum below the amulet, and waited for a miracle. It was a silly impulse. Nothing happened, of course. I was just dragging this out. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, only that I was losing the will to care.

I should call for help. Shout for one of the others before Acacia could make me do something awful.

And yet… who was to say she wouldn’t do something awful because I called for help.

Whoever came to check on me was likely to end up with their throat torn out while I was forced to hover in the corner of my own mind in catatonic audience.

“Okay,” I said to the ceiling, to myself, to the thing inside me that wanted to claw its way out of this nightmare. And the equally alluring part of me that wanted to just lay here and die. “Okay. I’m going.”

It was cool in the room, even to my vampire body.

I sat up and shrugged into my coat, the one Ruya had mended for me earlier this evening, since it had suffered some wear and tear when I was crushed by a cult and chewed on by a dragon.

She had hummed something wordless under her breath as she worked, and despite her blindness, her stitches were so neat they were nearly invisible.

The thought of her quiet care settled me for exactly three heartbeats.

Then Acacia’s first image hit. A man’s profile, cigarette ember painting his cheekbone orange.

An alley beside a shuttered pawnshop. The tarnished-copper tang of old blood.

Flickers of a route that led through a back entrance to a historic building that was undoubtedly in the shifter area of old town—storm drain, broken grate, alley, stairs… inside corridor.

The shifter king is sloppy. He’s loyal to the Emperor in public.

But in private, he makes it clear he thinks he should be the ruler of the syndicate.

The fool. He can barely lead his pack of dirty animals.

How could he possibly lead a force as great as the syndicate?

She let me feel her smile—sweet, and bitter, and gleaming with fangs.

He’s too busy getting lost in whores and the bottle to put up much of a fight.

Make it hurt. And bring me one of his claws.

A vague thought skittered through my mind.

An impression, a hint of buried emotion, there and gone in a flash, but startling with its naked intensity.

There was more to this request. The shifter king had done something that made the blackness inside Acacia’s mad mind seethe.

The emperor used her for her body and her magic.

And I got the sickening impression that the shifter king had done something to make he feel violated.

Goddess, what must it be like to be the only female ruler among the syndicate’s goons.

Not that it mattered. I mentally shook myself.

I didn’t give a single fuck about the monster’s hurt feelings.

But still, clearly something had made her this way.

I refused to believe anyone could be born with such monstrosity inside them.

The lingering beta urges in me mourned for whatever goodness had once existed in the woman who was currently destroying my life.

She was right. I really was weak, if I was feeling sympathy for that monster.

“We are not your—” I stopped before I said pets out loud. As if using her word would make it true. At least she was just demanding that I deliver a message this time. I probably shouldn’t rile her any further.

I shoved the old charm into my pocket and stood.

When I opened the main door to the suite, something slid over my foot.

I looked down; a pale serpent lifted its head, tasting the air with a flick of its tongue, then slipped past in a whisper of smooth muscle and scale.

The enclave never truly slept. Not too far off, water murmured.

Above, rock and earth loomed. Between, people—and the snakes the naga sometimes kept as familiars—kept watch over the outsiders.

The naga might seem content here, but I knew they hadn’t forgotten the pain and upheaval of being attacked and driven from their previous home.

I stepped into the corridor. A shadow immediately detached itself from a carved pillar, my night-sharp eyes immediately identifying it as Sanka.

He loomed without trying to—impossibly broad shoulders covered in a knit sweater, hair damp from a recent rinse, scent like clean stone after rain.

He must have been doing some sort of training between shifts on watch, to have needed another shower.

I knew all that muscle didn’t come from nothing.

I licked my lips. He smelled delicious, all the other smells layered over the natural scent of heat and male, cinnamon and strong magic.

I tamped down the part of me that found the sorcerer more than a little attractive.

The last thing that anyone wanted was to be hit on by the depraved vampire baggage they were forced to drag around.

And the last thing I wanted was to become even more attached to anyone here.

It would only give Acacia more ideas for how to torment me.

If she sensed my emotions just now, she’d have me trying to maim him next.