Deception

Chapter Fifty-Four RACHEL

“You can’t go without a plan,” I say, but what I mean is they can’t go without me.

“I have a plan: Kill Ian,” Logan says. In his voice I hear the furious need to avenge Donny, Sylph, Thom, and the others who died under his watch because of his brother.

Because of Ian.

The boy who saved me from the Cursed One so he could gain my trust. So he could forge an alliance with me behind Logan’s back. So he could try to use me to get his hands on the device.

Nobody uses me and gets away with it.

“I’m coming too,” I say, and push the blanket off myself with my left arm.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Logan says.

“Logan, he killed Sylph. I’m going with you.” I give him a don’t-bother-arguing look and grasp the little table beside the bed so I can stand without falling.

“You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” Quinn says, and I glare at him.

“Neither are you, but that isn’t stopping you, is it?” I ask as Quinn sits on the side of his bed, pulling on his boots with shaky fingers.

Logan mutters something under his breath, and Willow says, “You’re both insane. Get back in bed.”

Quinn meets her eyes. “No.”

Willow shakes her head and looks away.

“Neither of you should come with us. You’ve been injured, and you’re still weak. You don’t even have a weapon in case he tries to hurt you,” Logan says.

I pull a pair of pants on under the loose tunic I’m wearing. “So give me a knife, and let’s go.”

“You are so predictable,” Logan says. “How are you going to use a weapon? Your right arm is injured.”

“Nothing wrong with my left.”

“You can barely stand.”

“Which will make my facade of weakness even more convincing,” I say. “You aren’t going to stop me. If you leave me behind, I’ll follow you anyway.”

Logan closes his eyes for a moment, and then says, “You can come because I don’t see any other option. But Willow and I are the ones who will capture him.”

“And me,” Adam says.

“And me. For Thom. For all of us.” Fury and grief breathe power into Frankie’s words.

“That’s fine. I’ll be your backup plan,” I say.

“He knows you’re weak from your injuries. He’ll exploit that if he has the chance,” Logan says.

“I certainly hope he tries.”

“I refuse to bring either of you if you aren’t protected by more than your instincts.”

“Where are the weapons?” Quinn asks.

“Are you planning to carry one?”

He shakes his head. “Rachel needs one. I can find her something easily concealed. Seems to me you, Willow, and Adam need to check this floor. Ask around. See if anyone knows where Ian is before we rush through the city looking like a mob ready to burn someone at the stake. Wouldn’t hurt to have a few more people with us when we find him.”

Logan nods and points to the right. “Our cache of weaponry is four doors down. We’ll canvas this floor, get some help, and return for you in just a few minutes. Be ready.”

Quinn leaves to find a weapon for me, and I bite my lip as agony radiates along my arm while I try to button my pants. The pain still feels sharp and real, but I try not to let it comfort me.

My teeth scrape against a swollen nub on the inside of my mouth, and I remember Ian crushing my lips against my teeth as he said, “Shh.”

I’ll show him what happens to someone who shushes me.

By the time Quinn returns, I’ve managed to untangle most of my hair and am hunting for my boots. My hair smells like lemongrass, and so does my skin. Clearly, somebody washed me while I was unconscious. I sincerely hope that somebody wasn’t Logan.

My body flushes with heat at the thought, and I shake it away. I have a killer to destroy. I can think about romance later.

My head feels heavy and off-kilter, and every breath I take burns against my lungs as if the smoke I inhaled still lives deep inside me.

“Which one do you want?” Quinn asks.

I look up as he tosses a silvery metal vest, as thin as a layer of silk, onto the cot beside me and holds out his hands. On the left, a small dagger with a double-edged blade barely fills his entire hand. On the right he holds the knife I’ve carried since the day we discovered the cache of weapons in the Commander’s compound.

I stare at the blades and my mouth goes dry.

Guilty.

Melkin’s tormented gaze mocks me as his blood pours over my hands. I start shoving it away, but stop before I can seal up the cracks in the silence that still crouches inside of me. I don’t want to go back to feeling disconnected from myself. I’m a long way from better, but to refuse to face this now would be to unravel the tiny bit of healing I’ve managed to find.

“I thought the dagger would be better since you’ll be using your left hand, and it’s your weaker—what’s wrong?”

I shake my head and draw in a deep breath. I’ve carried a knife for the duration of this journey, and it hasn’t made me sick with fear. I see no reason to feel this way now, but still I stare at the dull gleam of the blade and tremble.

Quinn’s hands slowly close over the weapons, and he lowers them. “You don’t have to choose one.”

“Yes, I do.” I do. Because I’m not going to confront that monster without a way to bring him down.

But if I kill him, if his blood covers my hands, will it break me like killing Melkin broke me?

“You have other choices, Rachel.”

“Like what? Like facing down a professional killer with nothing but my bare left hand?”

“Yes, if you’d rather. You could trust your survival instincts and trust in our ability to take Ian down as a group. It’s up to you.”

My fingers trace the outline of the bandage on my right arm as Melkin’s face floats to the surface of my mind again. I press lightly and the instant bite of pain distracts me from his accusing eyes.

“It’s not about trusting myself or anyone else to get me out alive. I’m not afraid to die,” I say.

Quinn tosses the blades onto the cot and gently pulls my fingers away from my wound. “What are you afraid of, then?”

“He needs to die. Someone like this—someone who could do the things he’s done and take pleasure in them—needs to die. If I’m close enough to him to deliver justice, then I need to be able to do it.”

“Do you think you’ll hesitate?”

“No. I know I won’t.” I glance at my hands as if I can still see the crimson evidence of my guilt slowly drying on my skin. “But maybe I should. After the Commander killed Oliver and then imprisoned Logan, I was driven by a need to seek justice. But after finding my father’s grave, I wanted nothing more than revenge. Melkin got in my way.”

I look at Quinn. “He got in my way. He didn’t know how broken I was. He didn’t realize what the Commander had done to me, and I didn’t hesitate. I killed him.”

Something dark and painful seeps out of the silence, but I can’t succumb to it. Not when we have a killer to catch. I also can’t bear to shove it away from me, because it’s mine.

It’s mine, and it’s time to stop acting like it isn’t.

“You don’t carry a weapon anymore,” I say. “Why not?”

He considers me before he answers. “Because I was raised to be a weapon. Not carrying one reminds me every minute of every day that I broke from that path, and that I’m never going back. But”—he holds up a finger as if he can already see the thoughts inside my head—“I told you once that I’d found answers, but that I didn’t think they’d work for anyone else.”

“Why isn’t refusing to carry a weapon my answer, too?”

“Because you weren’t raised to be a weapon, Rachel. You were raised to be a warrior. There’s a difference. If you lay down your weapons, you’d be doing it out of fear, rather than out of knowledge.” He smiles, and it warms his entire face. “You aren’t a coward. Far from it. And the people most qualified to carry weapons are those who understand the consequences of using them.”

“And if I can’t stand to have more blood on my hands?”

“Maybe you need to take some time to really consider exactly how much blood is truly yours, and how much of that guilt belongs to others.”

“Ready?” Logan asks as he walks through the doorway.

“Ready.” I reach down and palm my knife without allowing myself to think about Melkin. Later, when I’m not about to face a killer, I’ll think about Quinn’s words. Right now I’m going to try my best to be the warrior they all think I am.

“Dragonskin?” Logan asks, pointing at the thin silvery vest lying on the cot behind me.

“There were several vests in the weapons room. I’m guessing a few of the guards no longer feel the need to wear them since we’re inside Lankenshire?” Quinn reaches for the Dragonskin.

“The guards wore the vests to protect against a Carrington attack,” Logan says. “We all realize they don’t protect us against Ian, because he knows we’re wearing them.”

“Except we aren’t,” Adam says. “We stopped once we got inside Lankenshire because metal next to your skin isn’t very comfortable. Ian wouldn’t expect us to have Dragonskin on again.”

“Vests for everyone, then,” Logan says.

“Including you,” I say to Quinn. He smiles and goes to join Willow and Frankie in the hall outside the room.

“Okay”—Logan looks at me—“let’s get this on you.”

My eyes dart between Logan and Adam, and my face feels like it’s on fire. “Um. I’ve got it.”

Logan frowns. “Dragonskin is light for something made out of metal, but it’s still difficult to put on. Especially if you can’t use your right arm. We’ll help you.”

The fire spreads down my neck and heads toward my toes. “Logan, I’m not wearing an undertunic. If you think I’m going to strip down to nothing in front of the two of you—”

“No,” Logan says, just as Adam turns on his heel and says, “I’ll go get a vest of my own.”

“I sure know how to clear a room,” I say, but my breath is shaky because Logan is so close to me. I can feel the heat of his skin through the thin cotton of his tunic. I look up to find his eyes watching me with an intensity that threatens to turn my bones to water.

“Yes, you do,” he says softly, and reaches out to trail his finger over my cheek and down my neck until he reaches the hem of my tunic. “Turn around. I’ll help you. I won’t look at anything you aren’t ready for me to see. I promise.”

I turn to face the cot, and he rummages in a box against the wall until he finds a sleek undertunic in a shimmery white fabric that looks fancy enough to use for the first night after a Claiming ceremony.

Which is a really stupid thing to think about right now, because my skin refuses to keep secrets from Logan. It glows, my breath hitches in my throat, and a feeling just as real as the pain in my arm but infinitely more delicious spreads through my stomach in lazy spirals.

“This will work.” Logan’s voice is steady, but the fingers that reach around me to gently tug my tunic over my head tremble. His chest scrapes the sensitive skin along my back as he breathes in quick, little jerks as if he’s been running.

I sound like I’ve been running too.

“Hold still,” he whispers, and the shimmery undertunic flows over my skin like water. His hands cup my waist, and he pulls me against him. Pressing his mouth to the nape of my neck, he holds me in place for a long moment. Not that I’m tempted to move. Tiny shivers spark across the heat on my skin, and I wiggle even closer to him.

He lifts his head and says in a voice I barely recognize, “Walk away.”

“I—what?”

“Walk away from me.” His fingers dig into my hips. “Please.”

I don’t want to. I want to forget everything that haunts us, everything we still have to face, and just have this one perfect moment with him.

But something in Logan’s voice compels me to move. I take three steps forward until my knees hit the cot.

“Thank you,” he says after a long silence. Then he lifts the Dragonskin off the cot and carefully settles it over my head. It’s lighter than my cloak, and flexible when I move, but it still feels strange to wear something constrictive so close to my body.

I turn to face Logan, tugging at the Dragonskin with my left hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“For . . . being tempted by you.”

My smile feels just a little smug.

He smiles back. “Let’s finish getting you ready.”

He slides my outer tunic over the Dragonskin. Tugs on my boots and buckles them down. Straps my knife sheath where I can reach it with my left hand, but where it will be hidden from sight. And true to form, he spends the entire time giving me a litany of worst case scenarios, instructions, and plans. Finally, he drapes my cloak over my shoulders and pronounces me ready to go. The leather of my cloak smells like garlic and smoke, and I use the memories it evokes to focus on what matters in the next few moments.

Finding Ian. And making him regret that he was ever born.