Love.
Their voices twined together in my mind in a way that was oddly familiar, but couldn’t be.
Love.
Chapter 27
“At what fucking point was someone going to tell me that there was avatar kryptonite?” I spat as I ran down the hall. I could feel the shove of that knife as an ache in my sternum, my fingers rubbing at the skin there.
“Kira…”
They followed me, my consorts, my potential executioners. A hand went to my arm, one I shook off before moving forward again. I strode down the hallway, getting faster and faster, until he emerged out of the shadows. Billy wrapped his arms around my waist, swinging me to a stop, his lips to my ear when I went to struggle.
“You don’t run. Not anymore. You’re fucking better than that, than all of them. You face shit down now, right?”
A challenge rasped out, hoarse and desperate. My eyes slid over my shoulder to where his eyes burned. He knew me so fucking well. My gaze returned to all of them, my consorts, Mark, Luc. They all did. I’d opened myself to them, let them create little mental maps of all of my bullshit.
All the better to eat you with, my dear.
I scanned the lot of them, hissing when they tried to get closer, only able to let go of a little of the tension in my body when they stopped still.
“That wasn’t us. It won’t be us,” Aen said.
“And where were you when it happened, Aen? If you’re so many thousands of years old?”
I watched his frown, his confused expression before it was quickly smoothed away.
“Kira, I know you’re scared. We all are. That was…” Marlow said, but all I saw was Kandake’s light user superimposed over his gentler form, the knife being raised.
“You’re scared we’re gonna kill you?” Liam said with a snort. Johnno stepped forward, shoving his brother with his shoulder, but the lead singer of The Changelings didn’t look repentant. Never repentant. “That’s what a connection means, Kira. When they talk about making yourself vulnerable, people usually mean letting another person have a chance to hurt your feelings, but it means more than that. Of all the women killed in the world, about sixty percent are by someone they loved. Around the world, over one hundred women are killed by their partners every day.”
“Liam, this isn’t fucking helping,” Johnno hissed.
“Fuck off. You lot do the soft soap, but I don’t. I can’t. That’s what you’re scared of, isn’t it? That one of us will take a leaf out of those dudes’ book?”
I stared at him, and it wasn’t hard to imagine him standing over me, red stone in one hand, knife in the other. “Yess…” Billy whispered as my hair began to shift. My fingers transformed into claws, razor sharp and ready to slash through flesh.
“No,” we replied, Lilith’s deeper voice colouring mine. “The stone weakens the avatar.” Our smile widened too far. “Not me.”
Liam nodded, satisfied, and it took me a minute to realise why. Billy had stopped me running, but Liam had stopped me wanting to. I watched his brother eye him with some surprise as he made the same realisation.
“Little prince…” we purred, having closed the gap between Liam and I in the blink of an eye. He held himself completely still when the back of a claw brushed his cheek, but as we watched his pulse jump madly under his skin, heard the ragged rasp of his breath, we knew there was more.
“Look, this whole demon queen thing gets me just as hard as the others, but as much as I’d like you to either fuck my brains out or pop my eyeball out with them claws, you’ve got a bigger problem.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Don’t gut me, but I’m reaching for my pocket, OK?” He moved with exaggerated slowness, drawing out a familiar looking baggie.
“Fuck! Where did that come from?” Johnno asked.
“One of the boys. Told me it was this new gear, that it was good, real good, but not habit forming. He gave it to me the night of the bonfire. Figured I might need it.”
“We brought this into Aragide?” Johnno looked horrified as he inspected the red powder inside. “We need to hold a full sitting of court, get everyone in the same room and—”
“They’ll just squirrel it away,” Liam said with a dismissive shake of his head. “Something that gets a fae male up and coming for fucking hours straight? They’re not gonna hand it over on our say so. Nah, we’ve got something better.” When he looked over to an unhappy Luc, we all did the same. “We got our own little drug sniffing dog, don’t we?”
“You can sense the powder?”
“I wondered what the fuck that was,” he said, coming closer, fingers going for the bag before he pulled them away. His jaw flexed for a moment, then he looked up. “I thought it was just him, pushing harder for Kira.” He shook his head. “We need to make fucking clear the rules for staying here. That shit…” He frowned, taking a step back. “Let’s go. Hartley needs to clean its house. Billy?”
A kiss brushed the top of my ear, and when he went to pull away, my hand snapped out, not wanting him to leave. He leaned in, brushing his lips against mine, blocking the rest of his band from my sight.
“I’ll be back. We’ll all be back, love. Go to the room, snuggle down with your other loves, and we’ll take care of this.”
I went to reply, but he kissed me again, shutting me up before slipping away.
“Mm… you made her all muzzy. Love drunk Kira is the best Kira,” Jake said, appearing in the space Billy vacated, then kissing me through a smile. “Keep the home fires burning, baby.” Then he sucked my bottom lip between his and was gone too.
“Are you sure you can trust them with this?” Mark asked.
“I can’t trust any of you, not really.” My head swam, feeling light and spacey. “They’ve screwed me over before, you rejected me and are just as likely to be a sentinel plant to take me down, Aen says he’s millennia old but he can’t seem to remember the last avatar who tried the trials. The only one I can really trust is…”
I looked at Marlow, but that double vision of Kandake’s light wielder and mine returned.
“Is me.”
That probably sounded mopey and emo. I didn’t mean it that way, I thought as I trailed back to the room, crawling up onto the bed and under the covers as soon as I was inside, my head throbbing. A body landed beside me, moving slowly and surely until they were lying curled against my back, another doing the same at my front. I wanted to be self-sufficient and shit, but why did I feel so much better when someone started stroking my forehead?
“Being brave isn’t armouring yourself against pain,” Aen said in a low hum of a voice. “Being brave is knowing that pain will come at some point in relationships with so many people, and being willing to walk into and through it without letting it change who you are.”
“And what am I?” I whispered.
“A loving heart, most of all.”
I didn’t reply, my eyes closing, needing to shut the world out for a moment, and when I did, I felt his lips against my forehead. Some kind of benediction.