Page 13 of Snag
All is not okay between us, but now isn’t the time to go over any of that. I understand Rought’s reaction to my return a little better, but not Rath’s. Not at all.
Presh and I watch the dragon shifter cross through the misty rain toward the barn.
“We can argue after breakfast,” Presh says resolutely.
“You and me?”
She scoffs, pulling away just enough to thread one of her blanket-wrapped arms through mine and pull me toward the house. “No! Them. My three asshole brothers!”
I let her tug me into the house, welcoming the warmth as it closes around us. I narrow my eyes. “When have they been assholes to you? Recently?”
“To you, Zaya!” Presh declares with another huff. “I’m not stupid! They all know you, right? That’s what you mean by photographs ‘of us.’ ”
I blink at her for a moment. “You’re right. They are all assholes!”
She cackles, delighted by my vehement agreement. “But first, breakfast?”
“Yes. First, breakfast.”
Just beyond the front entranceway,where I pause to remove my boots and jacket, DeVille is sprawled across the lower stairs leading up to the second floor, as if he slipped on the dark wood and broke his neck on the way down. Otherwise naked and barefoot, the medium-brown-skinned, unmanifested shifter is wearing light-gray sweatpants that bunch above the splint still encasing his lower left leg. He has a light-blue T-shirt clutched in one hand, as if he expended all his energy just to get down the stairs, then decided to take an impromptu nap before pulling the shirt on.
Presh huffs, hands instantly falling to her blanket-swathed hips as she widens her stance to glower down at DeVille. “Doc Z told you to stay in bed!”
DeVille jolts awake — confirming that he’s just sleeping, not moments away from slipping into the After — then instantly glowers at the young awry. His dark-gray hair falls around his face, longer than it was even a day before and shadowing his green eyes. It’s that same shade even at the roots, making it likely that it isn’t dyed.
The hair growth is presumably due to whatever healing potions Doc Z has been pumping into his system. Either that or he’s only weeks away— maybe even days away— from taking the form of his beast for the first time. He’s the perfect age for it, late teens.
DeVille tilts his head back, eyeing Presh as he runs a hand down his bare torso, then pats his stomach. “I’m hungry.”
“I could have brought you up something.”
“Would you have?”
Presh just snorts at him, then dismissively saunters up the main hall toward the kitchen at the back of the house without replying.
DeVille’s face instantly falls, gaze now cast around my feet. “I think maybe Precious blames me. For Kris.”
“You did everything you could,” I say, my tone harsher than my sentiment. Because when the cu-sith showed up, I was the one who defied the universe urging me to protect Precious, DeVille, and Kris. I don’t usually question a push by the universe, because doing so always comes with consequences. But I placed the lives of the dozens of shifters fighting in the streets first.
I made a choice. And Kris is dead.
She had likely been hovering on the moment of her death hours before, but none of us knew it.
DeVille hunkers forward, elbows on his bent knees now, head bowed. “You said the beach. You said straight to the beach …” His voice cracks. “I let … I knew something was wrong. Kris’s scent shifted. Then she darted away from me …”
“Kris wasn’t Kris anymore.” Movement draws my gaze down the hall. Both Precious and a jeans-clad Doc Z — Zephyr, the medic for the Outcast MC— hover in the doorway to the kitchen area, listening to our conversation. Precious might have been in love with Kris. Doc Z was her sister. The golden-red-haired pegasus shifter brought Kris to me in the midst of the battle last night, trusting her to my protection.
“Exactly.” DeVille shakes his head. “I knew … I knew. I should have grabbed Precious and run. But she really never would have forgiven me.”
He looks up at me, eyes glassy with unspent tears.
I step forward to touch his shoulder. He shudders under that touch, under the press of all the power I hold. Uneasily. And Iknow… I know he’s looking for absolution.
Unfortunately, no matter the sects that worship the Conduit as such, I’m not that sort of divine being.
I can, however, offer him retribution.
“I will track down the dire mage,” I say, resolute and firm. Unwavering. “I will get you definitive answers. But I’m already certain there was nothing you could have done in the moment. Kris was compromised the instant the dire mage decided to take her. Presumably hours before. Possession spells are … complicated. They aren’t set or triggered in the spur of the moment. And never without thoughtful — and malicious — foresight.”
