“And the better options?” Razik inquired, but his stare was pinned on Luka. It took everything not to flip him his middle finger.
“For Akira, a person was always best,” Xan said carefully. “Tessa may be different… I am simply trying to help her find something, and Akira likes to see the sky.”
She wasn’t different. Luka knew that.
Stay where I can see you.
He glanced over his shoulder to find she had finished peeling the orange, but now she was picking at the pith of the fruit. He could see the juice dripping down her fingers, and her lips were moving as she murmured to herself. With a sigh, he closed the space between them, and as he neared, he could make out the mutterings.
“Xan is right, but he doesn’t want us. No one wants us. We did that. Me. You. We just lie and deceive, but they can’t see— No one can see…” she trailed off, a hand coming up. Luka caught her wrist before her sticky fingers went into her hair.
She startled, apparently not having realized how close he’d come. Slowly she lifted her gaze to his, the violet in her irises piercing through the swirling silvers and golds. They didn’t speak, but some words passed between them in that stare. More words than they’d spoken since they’d come here.
He watched her throat bob with a swallow, and he took the orange from her other hand as he felt her power reach for him and try to draw him closer still. The band of light around thewrist he held wound down around his fingers and up his arm instead of hers. The power in her eyes settled some, more of the violet shining through, but more than that, there was a glimmer of emotion. He couldn’t feel them down the bond, but he could see it in her eyes.
Desperation.
Determination.
Regret.
Resignation.
Failure.
Fury.
“Come with me, Tessa,” he said, wanting to take her away from the stares of everyone. Where he was going to take her, he didn’t know. There were plenty of rooms, and she had her own space, but they never left her alone for long.
The last time they’d done that, she’d plotted and carried out a plan to decimate the center of the realm.
She tugged on her wrist, trying to pull it from his grasp. “You can’t see,” she whispered.
“Can you show me?” he countered, fully aware of everyone watching them.
She held his stare as she slowly shook her head. “You don’t want to, and I understand.”
“Razik is angry with you,” he tried again.
Her head tilted, hair slipping over her shoulder. “I didn’t ask you to catch me this time, Luka. I understand I no longer have that right.”
He still held her, was still touching her, and this was the most coherent she’d been in two days. If he hadn’t already known his father was right, this was all the confirmation he needed. It wasn’t enough to pull her back completely, but it gave her a solid footing, if only for a brief reprieve from the lull of the magic.
Luka let her go, her power clinging to him long after he’d taken a step back. Picking up another orange, he began peeling it, keeping himself between her and Razik as the male stepped closer. Luka expected Razik to be the one to speak first, but it was Tessa.
“You have something to say to me?” she asked. And gods, Luka could swear the air in the room thickened with tension.
He turned back to Tessa to find she’d shifted so that she now sat on her knees on the counter. Her power had wound up her arms, a gold mist hovering as she studied Razik.
“You destroyed my way home,” Razik growled.
“I destroyed the way in for the Fates,” she countered.
“And my way home,” he reiterated.
“Surely you knew that was a risk when you chose to interfere here in the first place?”
Luka almost laughed because she wasn’t taunting him. It sounded like a genuine question.
