sucked. I was so happy to get Ruya back, but I hadn’t had five minutes to talk with her alone, and suddenly for some reason she didn’t trust any of us. I wanted to beat the shit out of Odell for that. Whatever bullshit he’d fed her while she was with him, it was ruining everything. I just wanted to hold her and tell her I’d take care of her and never let her down again. Yeah, I might look like a jacked-up demon magic practitioner, but I was a beta at heart, and my fellow court members never let me forget it. Even now, Martina was eyeing me like she had something to say.
“What?” I grumbled as I rooted around in the closet just off the armory room. Ruya had come back without the gloves I made for her, but I might be able to cobble something together until she’d let one of us start working with her on control again.
Martina hiked a hip against the door frame and crossed her arms while I dug around in a bin of spare crap we could just never bring ourselves to throw out. “You’re gonna have to give her time and space,” she said dryly.
I snorted. “I think she’s had enough time and space away from us with the fae. We need to make her see that she can trust us.”
It was her turn to scoff. “Really? But can she? Trust us, I mean? Sanka, the woman needs a minute to catch her breath and think. You’re just going to annoy her if you do your puppy dog beta act. Sorcerer up, dude. Pretend to be at least a tenth as tough as you look.”
I came up with a small coil of thread-like wire that was specially made to be charged with charms. “Fuck off, goat sucker.”
She flipped me off, but at least she left me alone. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She sauntered off to go play with knives or whatever the hell she had been doing when I came in. I think she needed to feed—she was usually very secretive about the whole thing, and I had no idea if she’d had a chance to slink off and get a sip somewhere in the last week. But you could tell by the way her eye color changed, gradually fading from her human gray to chupacabra green.
I rolled my eyes. That woman. Hard as steel, I tell ya. She was skinny, short, and quiet. But that was all a ruse to hide the fact that she was a tank. And not only physically. She’d been through some shit, and only came out stronger for it. If she needed to top up, she’d handle it. She didn’t need me butting in.
I should probably listen to her wise old crone spiel about Ruya, too. But I knew she was full of bullshit there. She was dying to be with Ruya too. And from some of her comments earlier and the way her and Robin were acting…well, Ruya was going to need someone to help ground her through her heat soon.
Not that I was trying to suck up just to get laid, but…I was beta enough to admit that I was more than a little in love with our witch, and I wanted it to be me she trusted to hold her and keep her safe. Yeah, okay, my chest puffed up a little at the thought. I am a big, manly demon-blood after all. I hurried off to the workbench in my own room so I could give Ruya back some of her choice and control.
It took a couple hours for me to finish the bracelets. They weren’t as good as the lace gloves I’d given Ruya before, but they should help dampen the automatic magic activation and drain that came with the casual touch of her hands. She could at least touch someone’s arm or pat their hand without leeching magic from her body, if she chose. There was something that made my heart soar whenever we were able to give her just a little more autonomy than she’d ever had before. I wanted to see the wonder and the soft smiles, the little slips of honest happiness that made it past the mask of blandness that The Order had trained into her.
I whistled to myself as I made my way to Ruya’s room, the thin, braided wire bracelets clutched in my hand. I needed to give these to her. I needed her to like them. I needed to do something for her, since I’d been so useless when she was taken away from us.
I took a deep breath and tapped on her door. “Ru? You in there?”
She was slow to reply, and it hurt my heart to think she might be thinking about how to avoid me. “I’m here, Sanka. What do you need?”
I pushed the door open and went inside. Ruya was sitting in a chair by her little breakfast table, her cellphone in front of her and a charger cord in her hand. I hurried over and set the bracelets aside, reaching out to take the cord. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think to plug that in while you were gone. I’ll get it for you, sweetheart.”
I paused when she clutched the cord tighter and refused to let me have it. “What?” I asked, confused. “You wanted to use your phone, right?”
She took a breath and let out a slow sigh, as if she was trying really hard not to leap up and strangle me. “Do I look injured to you, Sanka?” she asked softly.
I glanced over her body in surprise. “No. You look fine. Why? Did they hurt you? Do you need a healer? Some pain killers? I have a first aid kit in my—”
“Sanka!” she snapped, halting my yammering. “Do I look like I’m missing a limb or bleeding out? Do you think I’ve suffered head trauma? Is there anything about me right now that would explain why everyone suddenly seems to think I can’t do anything on my own?!”
I held up my hands as I backed off. Then I laughed. “Um. So you know, I’m holding up my hands. In the ‘don’t shoot me’ posture.”
She snorted a half-hearted laugh. It was nice, but it wasn’t as good as a real smile. “Sanka.”
I sighed and sank down in the chair opposite her. “I know, babe, okay? I just….” I laced my fingers together and cracked my knuckles, feeling restless. “I was so worried about you, Ru. I wanted to tear the world apart and burn whoever took you alive. But we didn’t know exactly who had you. I couldn’t do anything, and the others kept telling me to stop being an asshole, but I just couldn’t help it.” Giving up on the distance thing, I slipped off my chair and knelt in front of her knees, touching her leg lightly to let her know where I was. “I missed you so damned much, Ru. And I feel helpless and useless. They wouldn’t even let me come with them to try to get you back because my demon blood makes me unstable when I get emotional. I had to let Yukio go on your rescue mission and take all the cool points for sacrificing himself. Yukio. How pathetic is that?”
She laughed again, this time almost a real laugh. “Well, no one would worry about him getting too emotional over me, now would they?”
I patted her knee again. “Right. He just spent half of Robin’s carefully hoarded money on stress baking and all his spare time telling me to shut up. He wasn’t worried at all.” The fae was the worst liar ever when it came to his feelings, maybe even worse than Robin, and that was saying something. “Tell me you’re okay, Ru? Please? Tell me what I can do to help? It kills me that you feel so distant. I’d pull you into my arms right now and kiss you senseless if I didn’t think you’d kill me.”
The statement reminded me of the first time I’d ever kissed the pretty witch. When I’d said I was tempted, and she had all but dared me to do it. There was no dare now. She sighed and her shoulders slumped. “I really don’t know, Sanka. I’m just so confused. I need…time, I think. I need to figure out how I feel about everything. And…Robin told me everything.” She plucked at her sweatpants, fidgeting. “She’s…goddess, Sanka, Robin’s so lost in the darkness, and I never even realized it until today.”
I sank back on my heels, watching her closely. “Robin…told you everything? Are you sure?” It never hurt to clarify just what “everything” meant with Robin. Though if it put that look on Ruya’s face, then hell, the dragon probably had spilled her guts.
Ruya rolled her eyes, clearly understanding that I was checking to make sure just what she’d been told so I didn’t accidentally tell her something Robin hadn’t shared. I hated that. But some things just weren’t mine to share. “She told me what she was,” Ruya said slowly. “She told me about what happened to her clan. Her vendetta against the emperor and the syndicate. Her magic and the way she needs that artifact to access her full power when she comes of age.” She pressed her lips together for a moment, then blew out a breath before continuing. “She told me how she plans to murder everyone involved without any care for whether they are good or bad.”
Ah, so that was what upset Ruya the most. I closed my eyes and silently cursed our fearless leader. Of fucking course she told Ruya everything, now that Ruya already doubted us and thought we were evil. As if she needed more reason to hate us right now.
“I’ve tried to talk her down,” I said softly. “So many times. Especially when we were younger. But, Ru, she saw her family tortured and killed. Did she tell you that? How she was forced to watch from a thief’s hole under the floor? How her mother’s blood leaked in through the cracks and into her hair? How the emperor’s thugs did unspeakable things to the bodies—alive and dead—right above her? PTSD is a thing, even for us paranormals. And a long-lived, traumatized dragon in hiding can’t really run out and see a therapist. Not that she ever wanted to. Her secrets are too precious to her.”
I swallowed hard, knowing I was probably digging my own grave here. “I know she sounds crazy. I know to an outsider, it seems terrible. But…I decided long ago. I love her, Ru. She’s the only one who ever made me feel like I had control over who got to use my powers and when. We grew up together, two lost kids fending for themselves on the streets, dodging bigoted humans and dangerous paranorms, doing whatever we had to do to survive. She’s my world. I won’t just abandon her, no matter how awful her plans are. I promised her I’d always be loyal.” I reached out to squeeze Ruya’s knee, a plea for her to understand. “It’s the one promise I can’t break. Because Robin doesn’t trust easily. She saw first-hand what happens when you trust the wrong people, and it left a scar. I won’t put her through that sort of betrayal again. She needs me.” Some days I was certain that our little court was the only thing keeping Robin alive.
I sighed, then went ahead and put myself in that grave I just dug and pulled the dirt over myself. “We all have our secrets and our darkness, Ru. Every single person in this court. Even me. I’ve done awful things. Anything it took to keep my freedom. I told you the day I took you from that tower in the pocket world—there’s no such thing as all good or all evil. And I meant it. I just hope you can see that there’s two sides to every coin. I’m not just my darkness, Ru. Neither is our princess.”
Ruya didn’t say anything for a moment, letting silence stretch between us as she processed my stupid rambling. If I was looking for redemption, it seemed today just wasn’t my fucking day. “Why are you here?” she said flatly, not commenting on anything I’d just said.
I hurried to my feet. “I made you bracelets.”
She tilted her head, her nearly colorless blue eyes tracking my movements by sound or by the light and shadows as I moved to retrieve her gift from the table. “Bracelets? What, you thought getting me jewelry would soften me up?”
I chuckled. “Nah. I know you’re not that shallow. But I saw you don’t have your gloves anymore. Here.” I took her hand and slid one of the bangles onto her wrist. “See? They’re dampening, like the gloves. Not as good, but it’s something. I had to work with what I could find on short notice.”
I slipped the other bracelet on her opposite wrist, then took her hands in mine. “So? They work, right? I don’t feel much aside from your aura.”
She squeezed my fingers. “Very nice. Thank you.” But there was no smile.
I frowned. “Ru? You don’t like them? I just thought…you know, you should be able to decide when you want to use your magic. Like before. Consent and all that.”
“And then?” She tilted her head at me, as if she was studying me with those sightless eyes. “Will you stop training me, now that I have my magical accessories? It’s more convenient this way, isn’t it? That way I can’t stop you from using my healing. All you have to do is take my silly jewelry away.”
I gaped at her. “What?”
She sighed and took off the bracelets I had worked so hard on, casting them aside like they were insignificant. “I don’t want crutches that can be taken away, Sanka. I have some control over my power now. I was able to suppress most of it while I was with Odell, thanks to the bit of work you and Yukio did with me before I was taken. But I want to learn to turn it off completely. And the visions. I want to be able to stop those too. I won’t be someone’s docile little pet. And I won’t be dependent on your protection because that can be taken away too. She lifted her chin in that stubborn, haughty way of hers, the one that said she was an untouchable priestess, and I was just a pleading supplicant. “I won’t be helpless,” she said evenly. “Never again.”
I nodded, even as my heart clenched in my chest. “Okay. Yeah. I get it. But keep those for now, okay? Sweetheart, I’m really not trying to manipulate you or something. I just want to take care of you. You know that, right?” I reached for her hands again, just to feel the warmth of her magic flowing into my body, just to have some sort of connection to her. “Ru?”
She sighed. “I want to believe you,” she whispered. “But I’m struggling right now. I don’t know what is real and what is lies. I don’t even know who I am anymore, let alone where I belong. There’s just…so much to take in, and my brain feels all fuzzy.”
I ran a thumb over the back of her hand, noting how much warmer she felt than me. And I had a fire affinity, so I already ran a bit warmer than humans and most paranorms. “Ru? Please don’t hit me. I know this is the worst time to ask, but…are you okay? You feel warm.”
She groaned. “I’m fine. I’ll live.”
I lifted one of her hands and pressed a soft kiss to the back. “I’m here for you, just like always. You know that.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you actually suggesting that I sleep with you? Sanka, I just said I’m not even sure who I can trust anymore. And you think sex is a good idea?”
I laughed. “Ruya, my feelings aside, since you won’t believe me anyway, but…you do realize that people have sex with someone they don’t like all the time, right? Hate sex is a thing, believe me. And you’re an omega. I’ve seen how it bothers you, and how helpless you are against it. I also have a whole lot of making up to do for letting some asshole fae steal you away. So, if you want to use me like an expendable dildo, here I am.”
She snorted. “So self-sacrificing. And there would be absolutely nothing in it for you, I suppose.”
I squeezed her hands, then reluctantly let her go. But I couldn’t help touching her shiny silver hair one last time. “Babe, that’s a trap and we both know it. Don’t make me answer questions that will just get me in more trouble. It’s not fair.”
She quirked a half smile at me, but pulled away from my touch. “Fine. Thank you for the oh-so-generous offer, sorcerer. But I’m afraid I must decline. Some people might be fine with casual hate sex, but it doesn’t really sound like my thing.” She sighed and stood, gesturing toward the door. “And I get the impression you don’t actually do casual either, no matter what you might say. I’m sorry, Sanka. Thank you for the bracelets. But I’m really not sure where we stand. For now, I just need some space.”
My shoulders slumped and I stood. “Martina said you’d say that.”
At her arched eyebrow, I patted her on the shoulder and moved toward the door. “Do me a favor and don’t tell her about this conversation. The ‘I told you so’ bullshit will never stop.”
Her laugh this time was genuine. But it didn’t make me feel any better as she closed the door behind me.