Page 176 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Eight

Riva

I rest my fingers lightly on the doorknob and give it the gentlest turn. My supernatural strength, which could wrench an ordinary knob right out of its socket, also allows me minute control.

My testing gets me nowhere, though. After less than half an inch of give, the knob jars against its lock.

Thanks to my care, no sound comes with the resistance. If Balthazar has guards posted in the western wing as a second line of defense against intrusion, they should have no idea what I attempted.

I sit back on my heels in the dark hallway. I can barely see the door in front of me, even with my eyes adjusted to the night.

Other doors around me are shut, and the hall has no windows of its own. Only the faintest hint of diluted light seeps from under one or another room to keep this part of the villa from being cloaked in pitch blackness.

In what’s become my usual late-night rounds of the villa, I’ve already checked the other two doors that have stayed locked to us.

After the last lights inside the building have been off for an hour, I slink through the lofty halls, hoping we might gain a little more ground off some staff person’s mistake.

What would I actually find if one night I do get through? Maybe just more grand rooms full of elegant furniture.

But possibly some evidence of Balthazar’s plans that he doesn’t want us to see because we could use it against him. Maybe I’d even stumble on the man himself.

My fingers flex at the thought with a prick of my claws in my fingertips.

I’ve never seen our captor in person except in my brief moment of consciousness when he loomed over me on the roadside by the bashed truck, but I can imagine gouging open his throat like I did to Clancy with perfect clarity.

Everything here revolves around his whims. Anytime Toni or Matteo speaks to us, it’s because “Mr. Balthazar says” or “Mr. Balthazar wants.”

Get rid of him, and I think we’d be free even faster than it would have worked with Clancy. Balthazar doesn’t have the rest of the Guardianship waiting in the wings to take over. He’s gone rogue.

Do the guardians—however they’re organized now, whoever’s leading them—have the slightest idea where we are or who has us?

I know they have some kind of a “board” with its own authority, one that already was vying to take over from Clancy, but their representative assumed Balthazar was totally out of the picture.

Imagining them sweeping in to battle him for us gives me a whiff of relief that makes me queasy in turn.

The guardians aren’t our saviors, not by a long shot.

But it might be easier to escape them again than to challenge Balthazar. They never asked us to kill random people without explanation.

They never killed us at random, just to perform a demonstration.

Balthazar knows his former colleagues a lot better than I do, though. It’s hard to imagine he hasn’t taken every precaution to ensure that they never realize what he’s up to.

I slink back to the stretch of hall that holds our bedrooms, my feet moving silently over the tiled floor, my skin itching with frustration.

Just yesterday, Balthazar sent Jacob and Zian out on another mission, to steal a safe that could contain anything.

A couple of days before that, he had Andreas join Booker and Ajax in mingling with a bunch of lobbyists at some political luncheon, recording their moods and stray thoughts and memories associated with a few figures he showed Drey photos of.

Obviously he has some kind of political interest, but nothing that adds up to an escape route so far.

We don’t know even one of his political goals. I couldn’t say whether he had me kill the man at the gala because he’s against the guy’s support of fossil fuels or because he saw him as competition for a role Balthazar wanted to fill.

As I head to my room, my uncertainties gnaw at me. But despite the tension twisting inside me, I catch a sharp intake of breath even though it’s muted by the closed door between me and its source.

I freeze, my ears pricking. Covers rustle with the abrupt jerk of limbs; a thin whimper trickles out.

That’s Griffin’s bedroom.

My heart lurches. I leap for the door, my mind blanking under a wave of panic.

When I push inside, my feet stall for a moment. A faint spill of moonlight illuminates a scene I’m not sure I should barge into.

Griffin is sprawled in the middle of his bed, tangled in the sheets, his eyes closed. Furrows mark his forehead beneath the slant of his blond hair, but he’s lying still now.

I don’t want to disturb his sleep if what I heard was just a brief blip of distress.

As I waver in my uncertainty, Griffin stirs again. His hand clenches around a fold of blanket while another pained sound slips from his lips.

I hurry to the bed and clamber onto it to touch his shoulder. “Griffin. Griffin, wake up.”

I speak softly, but my touch and my voice are enough to snap him out of the nightmare. His body twitches, and then his eyes pop open.

He blinks a few times as if catching up with reality. His head tilts back so he can peer up at me. “Riva?”

I offer a crooked smile. “I think you were dreaming. About something not so great. You sounded upset—I didn’t want to leave you like that.”

He swallows audibly and reaches to take my hand in his. “Thank you. I’m sorry I worried you, Moonbeam.”

I always love hearing his old nickname for me in that fond tone, but I wrinkle my nose at the rest of his words. “You don’t have to apologize for that. If something’s bothering you, I’d always want to help.”

I pause, letting my mind linger on the stroke of his thumb over the back of my hand and the tingles lighting up in its wake before I venture farther. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Griffin grimaces. “There’s nothing to talk about. Sometimes my old ‘training’ comes back to me when I’m sleeping. I’m sure it’ll happen less as I get more used to feeling things again.”

Oh, God. He told us briefly what the guardians put him through to suppress his emotions, and even that pared-down account made me want to tear the assholes apart on his behalf.

And now he’s reliving their torture in his dreams?

I ease down on the bed next to him, tucking myself under the sheets as I do. I can’t chase away the horrors of his past, but I know that I can give him a little comfort.

An escape into feelings with no connection to the torment the guardians put him through.

Griffin welcomes me, nestling my head under his chin so my breath washes down his neck, sliding his arm around my back beneath my long-sleeved tee. Everywhere our bare skin touches, heat and longing sparks.

Griffin only just found his way back to us—to me. We haven’t solidified the bond between us, partly because of the uncertainties lingering between us until recently and partly because Clancy would have used the intimate act to gather data for his own purposes.

I haven’t let myself get all that physically close to any of my guys since we arrived in the villa. My frustration at our loss of freedom, my fear of our unhinged captor, and the constant feeling of being watched haven’t exactly put me in the mood.

But right now, with Griffin’s warmth wrapping around me, I’m not sure if it’s made sense to draw that boundary instead of taking every bit of comfort and pleasure I could from the men I love.

Balthazar hasn’t shown the slightest interest in the bonds we’ve formed. I’m not sure if he even knows we have formed them.

Clancy only figured it out because he heard Jacob and me talking about it after the first time we had sex. He might not have made any official report about it, waiting until he had more data to share.

And even if he did make an official report, would Balthazar have had access to it? The guardians seemed to believe he’d vanished years ago.

If the psychopath wants to perv on our hook-ups for some other reason, suddenly I’m finding it very hard to care. How would that be worse than anything he’s already subjecting us to?

At least we’d get something good out of it at the same time.

Those thoughts are condensing in my mind, my muscles loosening with acceptance where my body has aligned with Griffin’s, when the bedroom door clicks open again.

Jacob’s voice, drowsy but urgent, follows the squeak of the hinges. “Griff? I woke up with a bad feeling and?—”

As I twist to look at him, he’s already jerking to a halt on the threshold. He stares at us with a flex of his jaw that makes my stomach knot.

Jacob would do anything for his twin. He’s killed to protect him.

But I also know that he’s struggled since as long as he’s wanted me with the assumption that I’d want his brother more.

“Sorry,” he says, stepping backward. “I didn’t realize?—”

“Jake.” I hold out my hand from beneath the covers, beckoning him over. The soft squeeze of Griffin’s arm still slung around my waist tells me he approves of my invitation.

Jacob stops retreating, but he doesn’t move toward us either. I don’t know how to read his shadowed expression.

Griffin props himself up on an elbow to look past me to his brother. “I had a nightmare—Riva came in to snap me out of it. You’re not interrupting anything.”

He pauses, and I have the sense that he’s gauging both our emotions. Then he adds, “She wants you to stay. And so do I.”

Jacob’s mouth opens and closes again without any sound coming out. Then he strides in, kicking the door shut behind him, and stalks straight to the bed.

He stops at the edge, his eyes smoldering in the dimness. But the next thing he says is directed at Griffin. “Are you okay now?”

Griffin nods. “Sorry if you picked up on my bad dream. But… we’re all awake… and I think Riva has ideas other than going right back to sleep.”

I nudge him with a teasing jab of my elbow and motion to Jacob again. “Come here.”

He lets out a sigh, his muscular frame relaxing just a little in the tee and pajama bottoms he wore to bed. Then he eases onto the edge of the mattress.