Chapter Twenty
River looked in on her father first. He was napping soundly with Carina, Garion’s cat, close by on his pillow. How could it be that Drakkon was once again responsible for a cataclysmic event in their lives? First her mother and now Ivy. Ivy. She wanted to collapse, fall to her knees and bury her face in her hands. They shared birth. How could she be dead? How would she tell her father? What if he blamed her? And why shouldn’t he? She’d brought them here.
What did any of it matter anymore? Ivy was gone. Only one thing mattered now—killing the Red.
She blinked back her tears as she shut the door to her father’s room. Jacob was waiting for her on the other side. She walked around him and didn’t stop on her way toward the kitchen. She didn’t want to see him. Not now. She didn’t want to be talked out of her decisions. She didn’t want to be reminded that he was the same as the thing that had…the thing that had eaten Noah. Had it eaten Ivy, too? And Graham? She thought for certain this would drive her insane for months…years to come.
She hadn’t said goodbye. She hadn’t even known Ivy had gone. She’d been too busy fawning over Jacob and let her sister slip away.
She pulled in a breath. It was getting more difficult to inhale with each moment. She felt a little lightheaded. She cursed the thought of fainting and stormed into the kitchen. She went directly to the drawer where she kept her knives, opened it, and chose the longest blades.
She heard Jacob enter the kitchen but she didn’t acknowledge him while she set six knives on the table. She snatched up a kitchen cloth and tore off six strips.
“What are you doing?” he finally asked her.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” She didn’t look up while she kicked off her boots and lifted her foot to the chair to tie the first knife to her denim-clad calf. “I’m getting ready.”
He didn’t come closer but rested his hip against the counter. “I don’t want you to try to fight him, River.”
“I don’t care what you want.” She secured the knife to her calf and went on to her other leg. “The monster killed my sister, my friends. If you think I’m going to sit around here and wait until IT decides to show up, you’re wrong!”
The more she had to explain herself, the angrier she became. Though somewhere deep inside she knew Ivy’s death wasn’t Jacob’s fault, she trod upon her logic on feet made of stone and rage. She hated Drakkon for doing this. All Drakkon.
“How do you intend to find him?” he asked in his deep, sensual voice that had become as familiar to her as her own. Disguised slightly as Drakkon, it was the same voice that had first spoken to her in her head. I don’t eat people.
But there was one that did eat people. She tied two more knives to her thighs and then shoved the last two under the belt around her waist. “I’m going to make a deal with it. One it will be too tempted to refuse. Please don’t get in my way.” She stepped around the table on her way out.
He moved to stand in her path, blocking the door. His long hair fell around his face, casting shadows in his eyes. “Don’t get in your way?”
She tried to move around him. He moved with her.
River.
“No,” she said, backing up. “Don’t read my thoughts, Jacob. You won’t like them.”
He flinched as if she’d slapped him. Her eyes stung but she fought back any emotion she felt for him, or for anything else. How could she feel when there was an aching, gaping hole where her heart used to be?
“River, listen to me—”
“Why, Jacob, did you forget to tell me something?” she challenged, folding her hands across her chest. “Like how if the Red is practically immortal, so are you? I was too lost in you to get it until today. Life mates, huh?” She laughed. She’d believed it all. She’d believed they were safe. She’d let him in and believed they were forever. “Until I die and you don’t. Helena told me I’m not a descendant. All this life mate stuff sort of loses its significance now.”
“Not for me.” He looked and sounded as broken as she felt.
She wanted to touch him, to remember laughing with him, flying with him. But Ivy was dead and there was no place for joy or peace in her. “I think it’s best if…when this is all over…you—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
She couldn’t look at him and remain steadfast to her decision. His heavy voice made it difficult enough. “That’s not your choice,” she told him on a tight breath.
“Yes it is,” he said, stepping away. “I know I let you down. I know I brought Red here. There’s nothing I can do to make up for it. But I love you and I’m not leaving you.”
He couldn’t be doing this to her now—tempting her with everything she’d ever wanted since she was eight. But everything was different now. She wanted to go find Red and kill him. She didn’t want to go soft and be distracted from her purpose. She didn’t want to think about all she’d lost in one day. And she didn’t want a Drakkon in her life. They brought nothing but sorrow. “Jacob, this isn’t going to work with us after Ivy.”
“River,” he whispered.
“I don’t blame you for her death,” she assured him, biting down hard on her teeth to keep herself from falling apart at the sight of his tormented expression. “I blame myself. Please,” she begged him on a strangled sob, “don’t fight me on this. Just do as I ask.”
“I will,” he said, moving aside to let her pass. “Just don’t ask me to go.”
Part of her was glad he didn’t give in and leave. He wouldn’t leave. It tempted her to wish she was Drakkon so she could stay with Jacob forever. But there was too much sorrow between them now. Her sister was dead…her Ivy was gone because of the three Drakkons she had let into her home. The Red was their enemy. Not her family’s. Not until now. It wasn’t Jacob’s fault that Red had tracked him. It was her fault for knowing it and letting her sister out of her sight the morning after the Red had tried to eat her.
She would regret it for the rest of her life. Immortality? No, thank you.
She would let Jacob stay until Red was dead, and then she’d take her savings and leave Harris. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She could do it now. She’d changed. Jacob had called her brave. And she was.
She didn’t want to think about leaving him, the one true love of her life. She didn’t need the stars to tell her he was. But this had become too real. “Fine. Let’s go then.”
“Where are we going?” he asked, following her out of the house.
“To the banks of the loch. I don’t want it swooping in behind the cliffs and surprising us again.”
She felt his eyes on her while they walked. She loved walking with him, the feeling of being covered by him, feeling his heat, looking up at the chiseled cut of his jaw. She’d been blinded by him, dazzled by his soft smiles, held captive by the mystery and magic of him.
It had cost Ivy, and Noah, and Graham their lives.
She tried to concentrate on the sounds around her. Twice now, the hum of nature had changed when a Drakkon was near. She didn’t need Garion’s seeing stone. She had her instincts to rely on.
And right now, her instincts were telling her not to look at Jacob.
“You’re making a point to call the Red ‘it’.”
His voice reverberated with unspoken questions, dreaded anticipation. It seeped through her and into her veins, compelling her to just look up. She didn’t.
“That’s what it is,” she said through tight lips, keeping her eyes on the road. “A thing. A monster.”
Silence, imbued with hurt and offense, settled between them, making River regret her words.
“Am I a monster, too?” he finally asked, barely breaking the silence.
His breath along her ear sent a thread of warmth through her. She didn’t want to hurt him. She wanted to scream and cry and kill, but she didn’t want to hurt Jacob.
She shook her head. “No, you aren’t a monster. But it doesn’t change anything, Jacob.”
Thankfully, he didn’t push.
“What deal are you going to offer?” he asked instead.
“The Red wants Garion’s blood,” she told him. “I’m going to tell him that I have something better.”
He laughed but there was no mirth in the sound. “He won’t believe it. There’s nothing better than Garion’s blood.”
She finally turned to look at him walking beside her. It was easier when she was thinking about Red. “Sure there is. There’s your blood. There’s Helena’s. And there’s the Red’s. I’m surprised one of you hasn’t already figured it out.”
He looked a bit pale. “Figured what out, River?”
“While you and Garion were searching for Ivy, Helena mentioned some things. One of them being that she thinks you and she are becoming Golds. You have his blood now.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, thoughtfully, and lifted his fingers to his hair.
She should look away, but watching his expressive face as he came to grips with a very possible, very terrible truth, tempted her to never look away again. He understood the magnitude of what this could mean. The Red, with the power in his blood to alter people, would be cataclysmic for the human race.
“You can’t tell him,” he said on a deep, trembling whisper.
“I don’t intend to. But when I make the offer, he must believe that I’m telling the truth.”
“If you’re right, and he discovers it—”
“He won’t,” she assured him. “Then you agree he needs to die.”
“I never disagreed.” He took her arm and stopped to turn to her. “Do you think I could after what he did? I know what needs to be done, but I don’t want you to do it. You’re not immortal. Look at me, River! Red can kill you. What do I do then? How do I live after that?”
“The same way I’m supposed to live now,” she shouted. “I lost my sister and I…” She stopped. She didn’t want to say anything more. Her eyes were burning. Her chest felt like someone had dropped two more boulders on it. She didn’t want to cry, to lose control.
“I know.”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. But suddenly, it didn’t matter. He was here. He hadn’t left her since he’d learned of Red. He promised not to leave. Could he stand her guilt, her heavy burden? When they were alone, Helena had told her that Jacob had never been in love with anyone before. In fact, he’d never stayed in a relationship longer than a week or two. River had worried that Jacob wouldn’t stay with her either, but his sister reassured her that things were different with him this time and the stars had confirmed it.
And here he was, not running.
“I wasn’t there for her,” she quieted her voice to a whisper, trying to swallow the terrible sounds that ached to come out of her mouth.
“Neither was I.”
Here he was, hurting with her.
She tried to stop the floodgates from opening but he was knocking them down, kicking them aside, ready to catch her in his arms when she fell. She loved him madly, fangs, scales, wings, and all.
*
Jacob closed his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. He didn’t think his heart could break any more than it already had, but he was wrong. River’s sobs broke through every barrier he’d ever built. He didn’t know what to do to help her, so he held her tight and cried with her. After a few minutes, he lifted her and carried her to a rock wall along the bank. He sat down against it and pulled her close.
She tried to speak a few times but her body seemed to exist solely to house her cries.
How had this happened? How had he allowed such harm to come to her? Maybe she was right. Maybe he should leave. She’d be safer without him in her life.
But the scent of her, the sound of her, the feel of her would haunt him. She was everything to him. She was home. She was satisfaction, contentment, the fulfillment of his every desire. He’d never be able to stay away from her.
He’d help her do whatever she needed to do to smile again. But he couldn’t let her tell Red anything about their blood.
She was mumbling unintelligible things into his soaking wet neck when he thought he heard something else.
A small, weak voice.
He sat up almost pushing River off him. “A cramp,” he explained when she blinked her tear-filled eyes at him.
Hello?
Jacob, it was Red, bringing Jacob to his feet. After you mentioned my eating a girl—when I hadn’t, I went back and had a look around, I found this little morsel with blue hair washed up on the rocks, half-drowned and banged up pretty bad. She probably slipped and—
Red, is she alive?
Bring me Garion’s blood and you can have her. That’s all I want, Jacob. You can save her. I don’t think it’s too late. I could be wrong though.
“Jacob?” River asked cautiously as she rose to go to him. “Is it your leg?”
His eyes poured over her. He could make it all right again. He could get Ivy back without involving her.
“Yes,” he groaned.
Red, I have something more valuable than Garion’s blood. Tell me where she is and I’ll bring it to you. Alone.
“Can you like…open a line so I can speak to Red and make my deal?” River wiped her nose and asked.
Jacob nodded, then pretended to connect them. He listened in while she called to him and felt like hell for what he was doing.
“River,” he began. He had to tell her. “I think I—”
What do you want me to think you found, White?
“Why isn’t it answering?” River demanded.
Her hair blew across her face like red war paint. A different kind of storm than the one that had just passed brewed in her eyes. Looking at her was like looking at some ancient Pictish warrior queen. She was strong. Stronger than Jacob had given her credit for. She’d let herself grieve and find some comfort in his arms, but now she was back to wanting to fight. He had to keep her away from Red.
“What kind of coward is this son of a—”
“River,” he stopped her. He needed to tell her what was going on or risk losing her for good. She would be able to handle it. “It’s Red. He’s talking to me now. He won’t open a connection to you.”
Red, he quickly switched his thoughts back to the Drakkon, like you, I found something. It has tremendous power. I don’t want it. I simply want the girl. She has become part of my treasure. We make the trade and Garion doesn’t have to know anything.
“What do you mean he won’t talk to me? Why not?”
Jacob looked at her. He’d do anything for her, but he wouldn’t let her go.
A part of your treasure, you say? Red asked, his interest piqued. What can this thing do?
Everything. It makes the Gold’s blood obsolete.
Is it an egg? Red asked with excitement in his tone. Has a White found an egg yet again?
We’ll talk again soon, Jacob replied and cut the connection, leaving Red wanting more.
“Jacob,” she tugged on the sleeve of his robe, “tell him my deal. Tell him to meet me—”
“River,” Jacob put his finger over her lips to quiet her. “I think I heard Ivy.”