“How could you do this to yourself, Lucidia?” he asked.
She stared ahead, with the same stony mask that she always had, cursing Darian Xander with a silent rage.
Reykon
They drove through the northern part of Texas slowly, taking back roads and sticking to smaller towns, driving under the cover of night. Robin didn’t seem to be tired, and when he needed a powernap, they pulled over on a gravel road.
Strongbloods only needed two hours of sleep in a night, and if truly necessary, they could go two days before really needing a lie down. But if Reykon went two days, he turned into a bear of a grouch. Generally, he tried to get his minutes in every night.
He got about a half-hour of sleep between four and five a.m, and then it was back on the (not so beaten) paths of rural Texas. They passed countless oil rigs and cattle ranches, set amidst yellow grass plains that stretched as far as either of them could see.
Now it was about six a.m, and they were just rolling through a suburb of a suburb of Lubbock; the first sign of civilization they’d seen since a waffle house in New Mexico.
Even still, it wasn’t necessarily what you’d call ‘a town’.
But much to his relief, it was big enough to have a Starbucks. Reykon saw green and white mermaid and pulled in the lot.
Robin flashed him a curious smile. “I didn’t know coffee was on the ‘racing from death’ agenda.”
“Coffee’s at the top of the racing from death agenda,” Reykon said with a grin.
He’d always been a more cheerful strongblood than his brothers and sisters in combat, but never a truly happy person. He took pride in the work that he did, and when he was off work, he enjoyed his time until the next mission arrived.
But around Robin, his smiles seemed easier.
He’d been trying to ignore it, trying to blame these feelings on confirmation bias from Lucidia’s comments, but closing your eyes to something and lying to yourself are two dramatically different things. He closed his eyes to a lot of what the vampires did. But he never lied to himself.
Which is why he knew that he’d developed the same feeling that Lucidia had described.
He’d suspected it before, but now he was certain. He didn’t want to die. He liked life more than the next guy, and cared a great deal to keep breathing, but the real reason he was gung ho to charge into the death plateau that lay ahead of them was because he didn’t trust a single other soul on the planet to deliver Robin to safety.
To him, Reykon thought, his shoulders tensing up.
Magnus: the one that could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, because he owned everything and everybody. Reykon had closed his eyes to a lot of what Magnus had done.
His easy smile faded as the particulars of their situation returned to his mind. In just two short days, he’d have to present Robin in front of the court, present her to Magnus, and let him smell her and touch her and look at her with those burning red eyes, and…
Reykon’s face had set into a deep scowl, and he was pulled out of it by Robin’s hand, soft on his arm. She looked at him with her bright blue eyes. “Is everything okay?”
When had she started touching him? He thought back, four days ago, to when she’d glared at him with a nearly comical rage. What had he done to deserve her trust, her casual, gentle touch? Why did he deserve her comfort? He was going to betray her. For the entire time he’d known her, he’d known what was in store for Robin. She thought she knew what they were heading into, but she had no idea.
Giving her over to Magnus would break his heart; he was sure of it.
It sounded like a wildly stupid thing for him, a supernatural assassin warrior, to say, but he’d never been one to be emotionally insecure. Call a spade a spade.
He said none of these concerns to her. Instead, he memorized the way the sun hit her face at a brilliant angle, and smiled back, savoring this momentary contact.
“Yeah,” he said, putting his hand on top of her own and squeezing it softly.
Lucidia
They’d been driving for a few hours now, not that she could tell where they were or what time it was; the inside of the van was entirely full of black mesh and tensile foam, lit up by blue-white LED bars. Lucidia sat with her back against the driver’s partition, her hands and feet restrained to the bench.
They’d taken every precaution for her.
She had no clue which route they were taking, or which satellite house they planned to bring her to. They could be doing donuts in a parking lot somewhere for all that she knew.
To her left sat Adonis, back rigid against seats on the side of the van. To her right sat Mikkel, with his forever-tensed jaw and biceps that looked comically like the Michelin man. Behind them, various strongbloods sat silently, like good little soldiers.
How had things changed so drastically, so quickly? Not a month prior, she would have been on the other side of this mission, sitting among the ranks, stony-faced and still as a board. She would have glared at the prisoner with a satisfied, arrogant look, and then turned her back and forgotten about them entirely after they’d been delivered.
Because that was the law, and if they were stupid enough to disobey the law, then they deserved the consequences.
Boy, that was a steaming slice of humble pie.
But she didn’t really have time to be humbled. Now, she had to be the best, most bad-ass strategist that House Xander had ever seen.
And it all started with Adonis.
She looked at him, studying his face. His eyes flicked over to her.
