“Since when?”
“Just after you returned from that demon shack.” Right after I’d spoken the first Angelical word.
I felt my throat closing. “It’s okay, Lex. I’m too busy right now to go sightseeing anyway.”
Too busy or kept busy so she wouldn’t be a problem? I was being unfair. The shifters had never been anything but supportive. But how long was that going to be the case?
I didn’t realise Nanna was calling my name until Sophie walked by and gently shook my shoulder. She pointed to the mirror before making her way to her bed.
“Alessia,” Nanna said. “Don’t go dark on me, big girl. I know it’s what we’ve always done, but I think it’s time to stop running.”
Sophie sat up like a shot. She gave me an alarmed look.
“Okay, Nan. I’ll talk to you later.”
I shut off the connection. “Run where?” Sophie asked me.
“It’s nothing, Soph,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
She spent the rest of the night eyeing me suspiciously while I pored over some of my textbooks. While I was supposed to be learning about ways to disarm a Fae glamour, all I kept thinking was exactly what Sophie had asked me. Run where? For the first time since I’d come here, I suddenly felt like I was rapidly losing options.
28
I knocked on Kai’s bedroom door at dawn on his birthday. Though I’d tried to be quiet, it was still enough noise to elicit a disapproving growl from his cellmate. “You better be dying, Alessia,” I heard Max say. Eep! He never called me by my full name.
“Why am I awake at this unspeakable hour?” Kai grated when he opened the door. My throat locked at the sight of him freshly rolled out of bed. He leaned against the doorjamb, rubbing at his eye with the ball of his hand. The motion caused his top to ride up, reveal just the barest hint of his stomach muscles. It was an intoxicating mix of sexy and grumpy at the same time. If there was danger, he would be alert in a second. I felt slightly guilty for ruining his sleep-in. I grinned at him in an effort to pretend it wasn’t going to be a day of pushing shit uphill.
“I’m stealing you before anyone else can,” I said.
He blinked at me. “I have a Council meeting at noon. And a shift at the Reserve.”
I shrugged. “Who cares?”
He looked at me like I was speaking another language. “I have duties. I can’t just –”
“Yes, you can. Let’s put up a sign. Gone fishing. Taking a personal day. Or just plain bugger off.”
“Blue.”
“Malachi. It’s your birthday. They don’t own you. Today of all days, you should get a break from being Captain Nephilim.”
His eye twitched. I winced. Bloody Andrei. Ever since he’d come up with that title my mind had latched on to it because it was kind of perfect. Those exact tendencies that made Kai the perfect Nephilim soldier were playing over his darkened features. I had to pull out the big guns.
“Alright,” I said. “I guess you’re going to have to ask yourself who you want to piss off more. Me or the Council.”
I turned around and walked down the hallway. He caught up to me a second later. “You’re messing with me, right?” he said. “You’ve rescheduled my duties, haven’t you?”
I snorted. “Does that sound like something I’d do?”
I had literally left a “playing hooky” note on Alex’s desk for Jacqueline. I had school but that didn’t seem very important right now. Durin would take care of any Council stuff, and I was sure Astrid or one of the other Nephilim would cover his shift. But for all intents and purposes, Kai and I would be M.I.A today. He appeared torn. I skipped down the dorm staircase.
“It’s not that easy,” he said from the top of the railing.
That was the crux of our entire relationship. He couldn’t run out of a sense of obligation, and I chose to run so I wouldn’t be trapped by mine.
“If it isn’t that easy then you should bond with Chanelle,” I reminded him.
“That’s completely different.”
“All cages are the same. This one just looks prettier.”
Maybe I had misjudged the whole thing. He seemed perfectly happy with his routine. “Forget about it,” I said. “It was a stupid thought anyway.”
I might as well start my chores in the Grove. He caught my elbow as I opened the dorm door. “Wait,” he said. “If you really want to do this –”
“It’s not about what I want. It’s your birthday. We should be doing what you want. But it’s okay if what you want to do is work.”
“What did you have planned?”
I showed him the shield amulet. “I thought we could get lost in the human world. Somewhere no one can find you and you don’t have to be Malachi Pendragon for a day.”
“I am Malachi Pendragon.”
I finally got that. It was inescapable. To my surprise, he took the amulet from me. “I’ll do this on one condition,” he said. “I want you to show me the human world you lived in.”
I stepped right into that one. He grinned at me and I knew he’d been waiting for an opportunity to raise it. “That’s not really what I had in mind,” I said.
“Too bad. It’s my birthday, remember? I want to see what it was like for you before all this.”
I could feel the cage closing in. Two could play that game. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. After we do my thing, I want to do something you used to do with your family. One small thing. It doesn’t matter what it is.”
We locked eyes. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I want to.”
He took a menacing step closer to me. I probably shouldn’t have said the unsafe family word. But if I was going to push today, then I might as well go over the edge.
“Why?” he asked again.
“You don’t get something for nothing in this world,” I said.
