“I don’t want you,” I stubbornly repeat. It’s weaker this time, but it still does its job.
Smith flings his arms down while the ley line cracks and sizzles like a whip in the space between us, reacting to his pain. Pain I caused. “Stop lying to me.”
“I can’t!”
The outburst surprises us both. My chest heaves and my body trembles as if the admission cost more than my voice.
That furious heat of the ley line vanishes, leaving nothing but the autumnal breeze.
At least Smith’s confidence is as shaken as mine. “What?”
“Fuck off, Smith,” I snap, desperate to escape him and this conversation.
“After that? Not a chance.” He closes the gap between us, all warm, willing flesh. The fear I tirelessly built between us isn’t there anymore. He’s sober, he’s eager, and all my paltry excuses have abandoned me.
He halts when I squeeze his forearm, begging wordlessly for him to stop. Slowly, he turns his arm in my grip until his hand is palm-up, offered to me one last time. I swallow, drawing all my glamour together, building it into an impenetrable wall, and finally look up at him. A mistake.
I’m tired of being all alone. I’m tired of being afraid all the time. I’m not like Finn, who faces death with unnerving grace.
He is so alive, even knowing the cost he’ll eventually pay.
And I am selfish and weak.
I step in toward him, and nothing in the world matters except the hiss of breath leaving him when he tenses, gaze fixed on my mouth, and the need crackling between us.
A shadow shifts in the light behind him. I swing him away and blast him with wind, sending him spilling back onto the lawn.
Cool, hammered grip of my rapier. Familiar weight a natural extension of my arm.
For the first time in my life, I welcome the arrival of a new enemy. At least this is a fight I can win.
Chapter Fourteen
Phineas
One second, I’m standing by the fountain, breath squeezed from my lungs by the hungry look on Roark’s face as he steps toward me, his hand clenching around my arm. The next, I tumble ass over teakettle across the lawn when a charmed gust of wind blasts into me like a small pickup. I get grass stains everywhere and the bruises from last night’s game complain at the added injury.
Clearly, I read that situation wrong.
I skid to a stop about twenty feet away and lie on my back for a moment, wishing the pain would stop. With a groan, I clamber to my feet, prepared to yell profane things at my roommate. The sight before me shifts my priorities and makes me wonder what I’ve done to deserve this kind of suffering.
Long tentacles, glistening shades of green and dark blue, rise from the fountain, growing like magickal bean stalks. Thick suckers the pale shade of fish bellies, inner circles ringed with a dark violet, squeeze and clench in the air. And it’s still coming, growing, exploding up out of the container that’s too small to hold it. In the center of its pulpy mass, a single orange eye blinks rapidly, as if it’s just as confused to be here as we are to see it.
Roark stands in front of it, using his body as a barrier between me and the...whatever it is. A kraken, maybe? His rapier shimmers as it darts this way and that, searching for a hole in the creature’s defenses. It’s so out of place with his grunge flannel look that I would laugh if fear and worry hadn’t already overwhelmed me. I run back toward him.
One of the tentacles falls toward Roark as it attempts to clamber out of the fountain. I pull on the ley line, but he’s already got it covered: A sharp archway of ice rears up over him. The tentacle connects, cracking the archway, but it bought Roark enough time to roll out of harm’s way. As the icicles pierce the monster’s thick, rubbery skin, it gargles and rears back.
If it hadn’t noticed us before, it sure as hell has now.
I swear it puffs up, gaining size, and whips its tentacles around in a frenzy.
>
“Down,” Roark orders.
I drop without a question. A breeze passes over my back and I push back up to my feet.
Roark dances around another one of the tentacles with his sword drawn. The blade flicks out wounds so fast it looks like he’s surrounded by a cloud of silvery wasps.