Page 22 of Great Falls Protector
“What the bloody hell?” Tye says thickly, his hands rising to his ears before he shakes himself like a tiger trying to dislodge a bur from his coat. “What did you say?”
“I said, I’m a hair’s breadth away from telling the whole Academy you two are fae,” Zake snaps, his patience clearly at an end. “How difficult is it—wait.” Zake’s voice changes. “Doyouknow you are fae?”
Despite the knife at my ear and the pounding fear rushing through my blood, my body coils, my elbow striking back to land a blind thud into Zake’s ribs. A distant burning sensation envelops the side of my head, something hot snaking down my neck as Zake stumbles backward. Twisting around, I lock my gaze on Tye’s, his face tight with pain beneath the amulet’s assault. He raises his hands to his ears as if to block some terrible sound.
“Tye, go,” I yell. Plead.
Zake grabs for the front of my ripped tunic, the cloth coming loose in his hand and leaving me bare to the waist. As I gasp, the man shoves me back into the wall, my hurt back striking the stone. My heart pounds against my ribs, letting in all the ghosts of our pasts. My breaths come so fast that the closet swims in front of me.
With a growl too primal to be human, Tye lunges for Zake’s throat.
“Down, fae dog!” Zake’s words drop the male to his knees with a shout of pain, a streak of blood now snaking from Tye’s ear. Zake barks a laugh. “I know what this is. It’s the stars’ own repayment for when you came to my stable. You remember that? Remember shoving me down in my own home? The corrupt magic inside you knows I’m right, doesn’t it? Recoils from the truth. Call a fallen fae a fae and—”
Tye’s pained whimper sounds like a kitten, lighting every nerve in my body.
Before my mind can protest, I close my hand into a fist and strike Zake’s mouth with every ounce of strength in my immortal body. It’s no contest. Teeth and flesh give way beneath my unforgiving knuckles.
Zake stumbles back with a cry, blood flowing from his broken mouth. His eyes widen, the self-confident rage in them changing to confusion. Fear. His nostrils flare, his balance wavering as he recovers himself.
Then he blinks, wiping the back of his hand against his injured mouth as his dark eyes settle on me. Furious. Vengeful. Sadistic enough to make a new wave of paralysis slam through me. “You dare strike me?” The man’s voice is thick with blood, shaking with rage. “You owe me your life, you piece of filth. Without me, you’d have died on the street or worse, sold your maidenhead for a piece of moldy bread and then—”
“And then you’d have found some other poor soul to whip instead.” The words spill from me in a torrent of truth as I watch Tye whimper and rock on the floor, clutching his head. Suddenly, it’s not just my pain at stake, but Tye’s and that—that—springs open the shackles of fear Zake has held me in my whole damn life. My gaze flashes up at him, my anger growing like a storm, spilling across my face.
I am immortal. I am a warrior. And the bastard before me is about to learn what that means.
“You think you did me a favor?” I say, my voice steel. I step forward, Zake retreating on bewildered instinct. Something shifts in his eyes. A predator who suddenly realizes he’s become the prey. The once-threatening scar across his face is now just a sign of human weakness, just like the blood still pouring from his mouth. Blood I put there. “You kept me in a prison of fear.”
“I was building your character. Work ethic. No one wanted you!” Zake’s palms and shoulders come up to protect his head, though I’ve not raised a hand again. Not yet. He gasps. “I took you in. That has to count for something, Lera.”
“Oh, it does.” I take another step toward him. Darkness swirls inside me, the pain and fear of my paralyzing nightmares gathering into an energy that dims the world. My eyes burn as magic pushes against its shackles, testing and probing and—
The candles stowed on the shelves flare up at once, the closet alight with hundreds of tiny lights and racing shadows.
Zake screams, and drops to his knees, the stench of urine suddenly filling the space. “Lera, please. I did my best with you. I waited for you. I would have given you everything. My estate. My name. I raised you the best I knew how—”
“Shut your mouth.” Standing over him, I wrap my hand around his fragile throat, his whimpering so at odds with the insurmountable male who’s haunted my nightmares that I have to blink several times to assure myself of reality. “You want to know the price of immortality, Zake? It was death. And I’m going to help you pay it right now.”
“Right now wouldn’t be convenient.” Coal’s low voice sounds from the open door, and I whirl, bringing Zake staggering with me. From the warrior’s relaxed stance, leaning on the doorframe, I’ve a feeling he’s been standing there for some time. Then I see the sparking purple gleam in his eyes, and I know he has.
Behind him, Rabbit—Gavriel must have sent him to find Coal after I sprinted through the library—stands panting, his hands still on his thighs.
My gaze meets Coal’s, and he nods once, just for me, as if reading all the conclusions my mind is racing to. Then, with the warrior’s signature casualness, the male juts his chin toward Zake, who still writhes in my steel grip. “Can this filth’s death wait until he tells us what the hell he is doing here, and who else he brought along to his party?”
20
Lera
With Coal and Zake gone, Rabbit trailing after them, I turn toward Tye, almost afraid of what I might find. The male kneels on the floor, shoulders heaving under his sweat-soaked golden shirt, head hanging low as if in prayer. Blood has dried in dark reddish-brown trails down his jaw and neck, the sight making my own blood freeze in my veins.
“Tye?”
He doesn’t respond, and I notice for the first time a fine tremor shaking his whole body.
I go to him and kneel by his side—hardly caring that I’m naked from the waist up, that the last time we spoke, it was to spit vitriol at each other. All I care about is if he’s okay, if it’s still Tye’s soul in there. Taking his rough cheeks in my hands, I pull his head up—and gasp. His emerald eyes hook mine so deeply, I couldn’t look away if I wanted to. They’re bloodshot, fiercely lucid, and swimming with tears.
“Forgive me,” he rasps.
“Why—?”
