Chapter 30
Eva
“What the hell are you doing, Acidi? Stop this shit at once,” I used my most commanding voice on her as I fought against her grip on me. “You’re fucking nuts. Kidnapping or even killing me won’t get you anything.” I was calm. I had to be in order to get out of this predicament alive.
“Shut up, human. Your words mean nothing to me.” Her long fingers dug into my arm as she dragged me out into the middle of the landing platform. I dug in my heels and leaned back, resisting as much as I could, but she was far stronger than I was.
“This is ridiculous.” I turned my head, realizing that saying anything to the crazy bitch was a waste of time. I would have to look for an opportunity to break free of her instead. “Delan and Ivy are okay, aren’t they? Aaroman?” I asked.
The small—for a Juhlian—man glanced nervously at me. He gulped, eyes shifting fearfully between his sister and me, as if he was too intimidated by her to do anything at all unless she ordered it. His brow furrowed, and he finally spoke up. “Acidi, why are we here? I can’t fly a skimmer. We’ve always had a servant to do that for us.” His voice was whiny and high-pitched. He held himself carefully out of Acidi’s reach. And from the long scratches down his cheek, I could guess why. How long has he lived in terror of his nutty sister? I felt a faint bit of sympathy for him.
“Raevu will come for his human. We’re waiting. He just needs to see the two of us together. And he’ll know then that I’m his queen.” Acidi’s voice scraped against my nerves. “Human, your mark is false. Mine is real, earned, deserved, and endured.”
Thinking back on the weeks of illness, testing, and complete lack of privacy I’d had to undergo because of the mark on my neck, I wanted to laugh in her face. But there was no arguing with crazy. And Acidi certainly looked the part of an insane asylum patient. Her eyes were wide and frantic. Her lips quivered as if she didn’t know whether to smile or cry. Holy fuck! Acidi had lost her shit. It seemed her failing to blackmail Raevu into taking her as his queen seemed to have pushed her into crazy land.
My eyes narrowed on her. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been all grace and poise, even very pregnant. Dressed to impress, she’d been the very picture of a beautiful Juhlian woman, and I’d felt remarkably inadequate next to her.
Now…I felt like the belle of the ball in comparison to her. Acidi looked like a hot mess. Her hair was bedraggled, as if someone had taken a random pair of scissors to it. Her clothes were disheveled and stained. There were tears and holes in odd places, and… What the fuck? Acidi had on only one shoe. She couldn’t seem to modulate her voice anymore either. She went from whisper to shriek almost mid-word, and her eyes kept flitting back and forth. I wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
Maybe she was drunk. It would explain her completely reckless theatrics.
I said evenly, “Aaromon, this insane bitch sister of yours is about to get the both of you killed for treason. I know the law. They’ll exile you from the planet without the benefit of a spacecraft. Is that what you want? The chance to burn up on reentry for someone whose crackpot plan was never going to work in the first place?”
And then I felt it…rage, determination, alpha power. We all seemed to sense it when Raevu stepped out onto the platform with us.
Aaromon moaned. Acidi stood up a bit straighter, and her eyes focused on Raevu. I tried jerking my arm out of her grip, but she just tightened her hold until my bones felt like they were grinding together.
“See this foreign whore, Raevu? She can’t be your queen. She isn’t Juhlian. You chose me. I am yours. I have the mark. It’s mine by right and by trial.” She reached up to where her dress rested on her shoulder and ripped at it. There, where her neck met her shoulder, was the royal sigil. Sort of. It looked like a child had drawn it there in crayon, but much redder and angrier. It even looked…wet in places. I gasped in horror when I realized what it was. The mark was cut into her skin, roughly and haphazardly.
Had she used a knife?
Acidi had completely lost her mind. She glanced over at me at the small sound I made, but then she just glared at Raevu and shook me hard.
“Hers is false. Did you find out how it got there? Who did she bribe to carve it on her to fool you? Or did her human masters do it for her?” Acidi used her free hand to slap me hard across the face, spitting out an unfamiliar curse.
All right, that’s it. Time to put into practice what I had learned.
Instead of pulling against her, I moved toward her, placing my hands on her ribs and shoving with all my might. She didn’t let me go; she dragged me down on top of her. Our impact with the platform jarred her hand loose from my arm, and I immediately rolled away from her. Acidi shrieked in outrage and turned into a whirling dervish of elbows and knees, not even bothering to stand up fully. I received two sharp jabs to my side and a hard blow to my thigh before I realized she was aiming for my belly.
My baby! She’s trying to harm my baby.
“Raevu!” I cried out.
“Eva! Stop moving!” Raevu snapped.
I froze where I was and curled into a ball to protect my belly. Acidi had followed me for the first couple of rolls, but then I felt her lifted away from me.
Cautiously, I uncurled to see where I was. I was less than a foot away from the edge of the platform. She had been trying to force me over it, baby and all. Remembering Baelon’s description of it being over a hundred Earth stories high, I began inching myself away from the side.
I heard Acidi screaming curses at Raevu, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from that precarious rim. When I felt I was far enough away, I slowly sat up and then dragged myself to my feet. My ribs and leg hurt, but I had felt a lot worse, and she hadn’t touched my belly.
I looked around at the scene in front of me. Aaromon was squatting down by the lifts, holding his head and moaning about wanting to go home. Acidi stood nose-to-nose with Raevu, spewing out nonsense about being his queen, until she spotted me standing there, safe and almost unhurt.
She screeched, “No! You have to die!” With her arms outstretched to claw at me, she ran toward me, just out of Raevu’s reach.
“Eva!” he yelled. “Move!”
I spun out of Acidi’s way at the last second, and the much larger woman freight-trained right past me. I stumbled, stomach flipping at being close to the edge again, only to be caught in Raevu’s arms and gathered close to him.
Acidi didn’t have time to stop herself; she went right over the side. Her shriek faded away until we couldn’t hear it anymore. “She’s gone,” her brother sobbed, bringing trembling hands to his face. “She’s gone. I’m free.”
A wave of dizziness took me over again as my life mate carried me away from the ledge. All I could hear was him repeating, “It’s okay. I’ve got you, love. I love you, Eva. You’re safe.”