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“Agreed,” Wicked said, “and I hope he’s not in league with his master, because wounded we are not a match for him.”
“I never thought I’d hear the two of you admit to any weakness,” Nicky said.
“That is how high we hold him in esteem,” Truth said.
“You mean that he’s scary good,” I said.
“Scary good,” Truth said, “yes, Kaazim is scary good and I am down a hand.”
“I have both my hands, but the pain is enough that I will not be at my best,” Wicked said.
“And we all need to be at our best if we’re going to fight Kaazim,” Ethan said.
“Before you tamed me and gave me a conscience I’d have just shot him as soon as I saw him, no muss, no fuss,” Nicky said.
“You mean you’d just kill him?”
Nicky nodded.
“What if we found out afterward that he wasn’t a traitor?”
“Oops.”
I stared at him. “I thought you liked Kaazim.”
“I do.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t try. Nicky could feel what I was feeling; that was comment enough.
“Because I can feel how unhappy you are with what I just said,and that causes me real pain that I have to say something I would never have said out loud.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to force you…”
He put his hand over my mouth, gently. “It’s not force like you think of it. If you had not made me your Bride I would have been one of those men who don’t communicate enough to have a good relationship with a woman. She would never have understood me like you do.”
He took his hand away from my mouth. “Say it.”
“You have my thoughts and feelings in your head; of course we understand each other better than an ordinary couple.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, Anita.”
“Okay, what do you mean?”
“I mean that I like Kaazim, and up to this point he’d have been on my short list to take into a fight, but I don’t like anyone as much as I love you. I would destroy anyone and anything that endangered you, not because I’m your Bride and you force me to care for your safety, but because I am in love with you and you’re in love with me. You’re in love with all of me. You don’t like all of the things I’ve done in my life, but as long as I don’t go back to doing them, you accept my past. You love that I’m ruthless in a fight. You love that I’m violent when it’s needed. You even let me take some of that violence into the bedroom with you and you enjoy it with me. You love all of me, because you have your own ruthlessness, your own violence. You taught me the only true gentleness I’ve ever known. You taught me that kindness isn’t weakness. I’ve learned that I’m just as manly helping Nathaniel cook dinner as I am taking him to the shooting range. You tore my life apart, then showed me I could rebuild it into something better for myself. You wanted me to be happy, even if that made you uncomfortable or unhappy yourself. If you asked me to change, you were willing to change with me and find a better way of being together; for all that and more I would put a bullet throughanyone’s head. I would burn the world down if it would keep you safe and meant that we could go on loving each other one more day.”
What do you say to a declaration like that? “God, I love you so much.” And then I wrapped myself around him and kissed him like I meant it. We even tried a little heavy petting to see if theardeurwould rise, but there was no hint of it. I wanted and loved Nicky, but the sex magic that might let me heal the Wicked Truth eluded me. So we focused on business. We had other disasters besides theardeurbeing gone.
30
I texted our suspicionsabout Kaazim to Fortune since Echo had started ignoring my texts since we broke up, but to tell one was to tell both. Kaazim opened the door after Echo told him to, but Nicky blocked the way into the hospital room. “What has happened?” Kaazim asked.
Echo shoved a gun into his back, with Fortune being tall enough to block the view from the hallway. Kaazim didn’t protest or act surprised, which could have meant he wasn’t surprised and he was a traitor, or he didn’t know what the hell was going on and was trying to be neutral and not provoke anyone.
I said, “Queenie has fucked up.”
“What has she done now?” he asked; again there was no surprise, only a sort of weariness.
Fortune took Kaazim’s bag of clothes and weapons from his unresisting hand. Echo was patting him down from the back, even though the scrubs made it almost impossible to hide anything. I answered his question, telling him what Queenie had done from across the room where I’d been told to stand. Kaazim said, “I will allow Nicky to search and take any weapons he finds from the front.”
