Granny Lu’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t take her hand off the rifle. “That’s a real pretty story, sugar. Elysians are full of pretty stories. Don’t mean I believe a word of it.”
“Granny Lu—” Lilac tried again.
“You hush. I’m talkin’ to the Berserker who apparently lost his damn mind somewhere between here and the Neutral Zone.” Her gaze swung back to Riot. “You know better than to bring corporate problems to my doorstep. What the hell were you thinkin’?”
Riot opened his mouth to respond, but Cass could feel his own body reaching some kind of breaking point. He was going to vomit. Or lose control of his bladder. Or just die.
No. No, not now, not in front of everyone—
“Riot,” he managed, his voice thin and desperate. “I don’t... I can’t...”
I made a mistake. I should have stayed. I should have just done what I was supposed to do. Gone back to Springfield Gardens. Pretended to love Honey the way they wanted me to. At least there I knew how to fail properly.
“Please, I’m sorry,” Cass began, pulling away from Riot. He tried to take a step forward, to tell the woman he’d leave. “It just hurts—”
But then he was falling, darkness rushing up to meet him as his body finally gave out. His last coherent thought, before consciousness slipped away entirely, was of the wildflowers.
They grow wherever they want. No one tells them where to belong.
I wish I could be like that.
Chapter eighteen
Sacred Clay
Cass
Paincamefirst.Thenheat. Then the slow, horrible awareness that he was somewhere unfamiliar and his body was doing things he couldn’t control.
Cass tried to open his eyes, but the light stabbed through his skull like shards of glass. Everything hurt—his head, his stomach, the deep cramping ache that radiated from somewhere low in his abdomen and pulsed outward in waves. And there waswetness…so much wetness, soaking through his robes, pooling beneath him on whatever surface he was lying on.
Don’t think about it. Don’t let them see.
He didn’t know who “them” was. He didn’t know where he was.
Fragments of memory swam up through the fog: Lilac’s Jeep. The wildflowers. Granny Lu’s sharp voice. Riot’s arms catching him.
“He’s waking up.” The voice was unfamiliar. Male. Gentle.
Something cold pressed against his lips.
The shock of it made him gasp, jerking him fully into his body with brutal clarity. Ice. Water. The chill was so startling, for a moment he couldn’t process what he was supposed to do with it.
“Small sips,” the voice said. “Don’t try to drink too fast.”
Cass forced his eyes open, blinking against the light until the blur resolved into a face.
Oh.
The person holding the glass was... beautiful wasn’t the right word. Beautiful was what Brother Matthias called the sacred geometries of Elysian architecture. This was something else entirely. Dark hair that caught the light like polished wood. Warm amber eyes that seemed to glow with their own inner fire. Features that managed to be both delicate and strong at the same time.
Something tugged at his memory. Something about a marketplace. Tired eyes and fresh bruises and—
He stared too long. He knew he was staring too long. But his thoughts were moving slow and thick, and by the time he realized he should probably say something, the beautiful stranger was already smiling.
“There you are,” the stranger said. “Can you drink a little more?”
Cass managed a sip. The cold water traced a path down his throat, and he hadn’t realized how raw it was until the relief hit him. He made a small, grateful sound and tried to reach for the glass himself.
