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Steam billowed from her lips as she sighed, and the chill air burned her wet cheeks. She wiped away silent tears with her hand and sniffled quietly. For now, Arkimedes had given her some time alone and left with Devon to check for other points of entry into the building.
She dropped her gaze to her arm and probed the tender skin of the burn her attacker had left behind. The raised blisters had popped open during their flight to this part of town, and now an oozing wound remained behind, at risk of getting infected.
Biting the inside of her cheek, she rolled up the sleeves of her blouse, trying to keep the dirty fabric off it. Her attacker hadn’t called her by her name, but he’d known she was a Beekeeper.
Hours ago, when she fled through the portal and got stuck in the shadow world, her panic hadn’t allowed her to truly think about who or what he was. And seeing Arkimedes waiting for her on the other side had been too much. The similarities between them were uncanny. But surely the gods wouldn’t have made Arkimedes the Beekeepers’ protector, let alone her soulmate, if he meant to hurt her. She had felt nothing for the man in the shadows who looked like her mate, other than that he was her worst nightmare. No stomach fluttering, no heart racing. None of the sensations she felt when Ark was around.
She let her head drop and allowed the weight of her body to relax against the wall.
The lingering scent of magic clung to the fibers of her clothes, an insistent reminder of her run-in with the guards at the castle.
If she closed her eyes for long enough, she could still picture the way her power had come to her aid when the shadow man attacked her. How wooden branches crawled over his arm, subduing his power and buying her just enough time to escape.
It had been a first for her to grow a tree vine over someone’s body and a self-defense mechanism she hadn’t known she possessed. One more thing she had to learn to control.
After all that time in the castle, she wouldn’t stay locked inside the Society’s safe house like a prisoner. Demons still wreaked havoc in the forest, burning trees and extinguishing life, hunting her fellow Beekeeper, Aristaeus, across the land. She should be out there with him.
With everything that had happened in her life, Nava couldn’t brush off the connection between her and the shadow man, either. Why single her out when three of them had crossed the portal? It had to be part of a much bigger picture, right? She no longer believed in coincidence. That she was a Beekeeper seemed to be of importance to him.
Was it the Zorren?
“What are you thinking?”
Nava jumped, barely holding a scream. “You’re going to frighten me to death.”
“I’ve been sitting here for quite a while,” Arkimedes said, sitting in the opposite corner, his long legs bent, his arms resting upon his knees. His green eyes dropped to her forearm, where the burn was clearly visible after she’d rolled up her sleeves. “Are you ready to tell me how that happened?”
“No.” She swallowed the panic that rushed through her. It tasted sour on her tongue. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Nava…”
She needed time to sort through her feelings and thoughts before she told him. “It’s been a long night.”
Arkimedes was already teetering on the edge of self-loathing, of wanting to keep a distance—and secrets—from her. She didn’t want to feed into that by telling him that his doppelgänger had attacked her.
“You’re mad at me, I know that. I deserve it.”
She tugged her sleeve down, covering her mottled skin. Thankfully, there weren’t any tears left in her as she let out a shaky breath. “That’s an understatement. You locked me inside a room with Devon, knowing the guards were coming to kill us. Then you told me to leave you both behind.”
Arkimedes’s gaze skittered away from her, toward the cracked tiles that had once made a beautiful design on the floor. “They wouldn’t have killed Devon. A member of the Society of Crows cannot be killed by a kingdom’s army unless they violate the rules of the treaty.”
“Devon is a big boy. He can take care of himself,” she agreed. Although him being roped into this situation was partially her fault, since she’d called upon the life debt he owed Arkimedes. “I’m upset because you made that decision for me. I get to choose whether I stay and fight for you, with you.”
Arkimedes met her eyes. Even now, Nava wasn’t sure he felt any regret. He looked completely unapologetic. “I knew you could leave that room using your power, and I hoped you would get as far away from my father as possible.”
“And from you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You wanted me as far away from you as humanly possible.” If only the words didn’t hurt so much. But her heart still ached inside her chest at his rejection, at the memory of the massive fight that had driven a wedge between them only days ago.
He didn’t want her. He’d tried to get her away from him as soon as he’d learned what she was to him.
Arkimedes’s forehead wrinkled, and he reached for her—then seemed to think better of it and pulled his hand away. “Nava, I was angry that you kept our bond a secret, but mostly, I needed time to figure out a way to reveal to my father who you are to me while you were out of his reach.”
She swallowed the stone that had lodged in her throat. Gods, she was a mess.
His nervousness filtered through their soulmate bond, making her heart race. Was he afraid she wouldn’t forgive him? That she would leave him? If he remembered their past, then he would know how impossible that was.
