“Cuter?”
I frown at Aren, not getting the tone in his voice. He’s not quite annoyed. It’s more like he’s . . . offended?
“Is something wrong?” I ask.
“You taught him . . . tricks?”
“To perch and sit and roll over, yeah.”
He shakes his head. “You can’t teach a kimki tricks.”
“Obviously, you can.”
“No, you . . . you just don’t. They’re kimkis, McKenzie. They’re not”—he waves his hand as he searches for the right word—“pets.” He almost chokes on that last word.
“It’s not a big deal, and you do it all the time when you tell him to jump on your shoulders.” I grab another Goldfish, then order, “Up.”
Sosch leaps to my outstretched arm, then back to my shoulders.
“That’s different. I wanted him to come with me, not to perform. This is . . . It’s . . . It’s . . .”
I’ve never seen Aren like this, so flabbergasted. It’s funny, and I’m tempted to see if Sosch will start swinging his head back and forth when I say “dance,” but he’s still working on that trick, and so far, he’s only done it when I play Matchbox Twenty.
But I don’t tell Sosch to dance. Instead, I help Aren out. “It’s sacrilege?”
“Yes!” Aren says, grabbing onto the word. “Sacrilege. Kimkis are endangered and wild. They do what they want, and sometimes their desires line up with yours, but . . .”
He fades off when Sosch nuzzles his furry head under my chin. Aren’s eyes are still wide, still astounded, and I think maybe even a little . . .
I grin. “You’re jealous.”
Aren’s gaze locks on my mouth. He’s confessed to loving my smiles. He’s told me he thinks they’re rare, like a magic that went extinct during the Duin Bregga, but they were only scarce because we were enemies, and we were fighting a war.
“Jealous of a kimki?” The corner of his mouth tilts up. “Never.”
“Of me,” I say, stepping toward him. “I’ve stolen your pet.”
“I told you”—he reaches up and glides his hand down Sosch’s long back—“they’re not pets, nalkin-shom.”
Nalkin-shom. Shadow-witch. The title should infuriate me, but it doesn’t, not when it comes from his lips, and especially not when his voice is deep and gently teasing.
“If I knew all it would take to get you here was Sosch,” I say, “I would have sent a ransom note weeks ago.”
His smile makes chaos lusters ricochet through my stomach. He’s standing close, so he can pet Sosch, and his cedar-and-cinnamon scent makes warmth flood through me.
“I’ve missed you,” I say.
His silver eyes meet mine. “You make me lose my focus.”
“Good.” I smile.
His head lowers toward mine, and his jaedric cuirass moves as his chest rises and falls beneath it.
My skin tingles. I tilt my head slightly as I lean toward Aren, not figuring out that the sensation is a warning until after a fissure cuts through the room. Kyol steps out of the slash of light with Naito, and the warmth that filled me half a second ago instantly chills.
And just like that, I’ve lost Aren. He moves away, and I swear even Sosch lets out a sad sigh.
SEVEN
“DID EVERYTHING GO okay?” Aren asks, turning his back on me. I focus on Naito, too, almost thankful for the distraction. Almost. I’d be more thankful if he and Kyol had waited at least a few more minutes before fissuring here.
“No losses,” Naito answers, but his face is dark when his gaze locks on Lee, who’s still asleep. Naito walks to the couch, then smacks his brother on the head. “Wake up.”
Lee’s body jerks, but he doesn’t open his eyes.
Naito grabs a fistful of his bloodstained shirt and yanks him off the cushions. Lee moves again, this time more alert than before, but I don’t think he realizes where he is or what’s going on until Naito slams him against the wall. I wince when I hear something metallic jiggle in my neighbor’s apartment.
“Is Caelar working with the false-blood?” Naito demands, inches from Lee’s face.
“What?” Lee grabs at Naito’s hands.
“Is Caelar working with the false-blood!”
“I don’t know,” Lee says, trying to shove his brother away. Naito has my complete attention now, too. If he’s implying what I think he is, this could be majorly bad news.
“Why was he in Bardur?” He slams Lee against the wall again.
“I don’t fucking know!” Lee yells. This time, he twists out of Naito’s grasp.
“Hey!” I step between them before this fight gets louder. “If one of my neighbors calls the cops, I’m screwed.” I nod toward Lee. “He says he hasn’t talked to the remnants.”
“And you suddenly believe everything he says?” Naito demands.
“Of course not,” I say, but Naito still looks like he’s about to kill his brother. I completely understand the sentiment, but I seriously do not need a dead body in here.
“What happened in Bardur?” Aren asks. He’s leaning against my breakfast table now, looking relaxed and unruffled. Someone could tell him an army just fissured behind him, and he’d shrug it off and come up with a crazy plan to counter the hiccup.
“Nimael was there,” Naito says, some of the tension finally draining from his muscles. “So was Caelar. They were meeting in a silver-protected warehouse in the middle of the city.”
“Who’s Nimael?” I ask.
“We think he’s the false-blood’s second-in-command,” Aren tells me. I meet his eyes, uneasiness churning in my stomach. A month ago, Lena was worried about Caelar finding a Descendant who could rival her bloodline. If he presented an alternative ruler to the high nobles, they might have considered that fae over her. But Caelar never found someone willing to rule, and he lost so many fae in his last-ditch effort to retake the palace that he and the remnants aren’t as much of a threat now as they were before.
But if he joins forces with a false-blood . . .
I glance at Kyol. He knows Caelar well. They were colleagues back when the king was alive, and Kyol respects him. He’s always said Caelar wouldn’t support a false-blood. Does he still believe that? Neither the life-bond nor Kyol’s expression gives any indication of how he feels.
I turn back to Aren. “You think Nimael is the second-in-command or you know he is?”
Sosch hops up onto the breakfast table.
“If he’s not his second,” Aren says, sliding his hand over the kimki’s back, “he’s close to it. He’ll be able to give us information on the false-blood.” He looks at Naito. “I take it you weren’t able to capture him?”
Naito shakes his head. “He double fissured. I didn’t pinpoint his location accurately enough.”
The last part is said with more than a hint of aggravation in his voice. It’s directed at himself, I think, but I can’t help feeling responsible on some level. If I’d been there, chances are, Lena’s fae would have caught Nimael before he was able to open a second fissure and escape. The maps I draw when I read the shadows are incredibly accurate. That’s why Aren risked abducting me from my college campus a few months ago—the rebels almost never escaped when I was there to track them. Fae who are physically fit can fissure over and over again as long as they don’t move more than twenty or thirty feet from their original location, but if they fissure farther away than that, it takes them almost a minute to recover enough to disappear into the In-Between again. That’s plenty of time for the fae who see my maps to fissure to their location and capture or kill them.