Healing Eden (2 page)

His pulse fluttered beneath her fingertips, faint and irregular.

A thud sounded behind her. Her name registered, a voice she recognized.

She ignored the call. Shedding her mortal form, she dove into Reese’s unconscious body and let her spirit spread and assess. Gaping, charred flesh at least two fists wide, muscle and sinew around it lifeless from the electrical shock. She followed the damage, too much impairment radiating dangerously close to his heart. She couldn’t lose him. Traitor or not, her instincts didn’t care. Only knew this moment would shape the rest of her life in a way she didn’t dare ignore.

Shouts rang out beside her. Short, brusque words delivered with a frustrated bite. Footsteps shuffled around her and the injured moaned. Detached in spirit but still connected to her physical senses, the muffled distractions rattled as she healed.

Five inches. That was the gift of her intervention. Had she not flown in the path of Jagger’s bolt, he’d have pierced Reese’s heart. Blood seeped from the violent gash and his heart trembled with the aftershocks of the delivering jolt.

Swift and sure, she spread her spirit, cauterizing and mending the most critical lesions. A touch here. A brush there.

Near his heart, a fine opaque mist appeared.

Her spirit vision faltered. The odd substance settled into every nook and cranny. It shimmered and sparkled, a mix between morning dew and midnight fog. Seventy years she’d been healing men and not once had she seen anything like it.

“Damn it, Lena, we need you.” The admonition rang in her ear and a firm hand clamped on her shoulder.

Galena ripped her spirit from Reese’s body and spun in a levitated twist to a defensive crouch, hands lifted to protect herself. Her vision wavered.

Ramsay came into focus, the whites around his gray eyes glowing in a way that promised dire loss of control and a vicious scowl aimed squarely at her. “What in histus is wrong with you?”

Her knees nearly buckled. Maybe she’d put too much into her healing. “He’s wounded.”

“He’s a traitor. To me and to Eryx.” Glaring at her, he swept his arm behind him. “What about them?”

There were dozens of them. Good men, battered, bloody, and fatigued. Most were upright and lumbering across the battlefield, checking for rebellion survivors. Six were laid out for triage close to Maxis’ estate, Eryx and Ludan seeing to their care.

Her cheeks burned and her stomach pitched. There wasn’t any logic to defend her actions. She’d acted on pure emotion and instinct, and put the lives of loyal men at risk, but she still wouldn’t change what she’d done. Not a second. A truth she wasn’t altogether sure how to process.

“Focus on the ones worthy of your gift. Not someone—”

“Enough.” She straightened and met her brother’s scowl. Every muscle shook with fatigue. “I watched an innocent woman die tonight. Held her in my arms while she screamed.”

“Trust me.” Ramsay glowered at the unconscious man behind her. “He’s not innocent.”

For years she’d trusted her brothers. Loved and followed them with unwavering loyalty wherever they asked her to go. Until this moment. She inched forward on trembling legs, hands fisted at her sides. “Innocent or not, I saw goodness in him. Watched him say a prayer over Phybe’s body and felt his grief. Healing is my gift to use when and how The Great One guides me. Not to be commandeered and directed by a man swept up in the heat of battle. Life is life, no matter whose heart feeds it.”

Ramsay sneered. “Even Maxis Steysis?”

Nearly six hundred years their families had been at war, since their grandfather left Maxis’ grandmother pregnant at the altar in favor of a commoner.

“Everyone has a shred of goodness in them.” Well, maybe not Maxis. But she’d be damned if she let Ramsay question her judgment. There was a reason she was drawn to Reese. She just needed a little time to figure out why. “If you’d stop and think for a minute you’d know saving him is a smart move. If he fought with Maxis, he knows things. Things you won’t be able to learn anywhere else.”

Reese’s chest rose and fell, slow and steady. With a push from her senses, she registered the faint but solid rhythm of his heart. More than anything she ached to kneel beside him. To finish the job she’d begun and skim her fingers through his wild hair. Perhaps link her fingers with his long, tapered ones and rest alongside him while she waited for him to wake.

Praise The Great One, what was wrong with her? This protectiveness didn’t make sense.

Eryx’s best friend and somo, Ludan, shouted from the furthest edge of battle. “Ramsay.”

Galena knew that tone. Had heard it after too many battles. Another warrior in need of care. With a last glance at Reese to placate herself, she headed in Ludan’s direction. “I’ve got it.”

Three steps in she stopped and glared at Ramsay. “You may not care for him. May see him as the vilest of men. But do not disrespect my gift by hurting him.”

She left her frowning brother behind, and prayed the promise of a traitor’s information would stay Ramsay’s hand until she returned.

Seventy years. Seventy fucking years since Maxis had been this dumbfounded, with not one thought, word, or deed to spur him forward.

The sun beamed brighter than normal through the thick Asshur clouds. The faint winds at his back were unseasonably warm, as though nature conspired to lure him from his trance.

He wasn’t interested in moving. Couldn’t fathom his next step, and wasn’t sure he cared to bother.

More than three-quarters of his men, gone. On the red clay valley below, what remained of his army jerked and stumbled through an embarrassing display of drills.

It wasn’t possible. If he hadn’t seen the scorched fields and twisted bodies surrounding his home for himself, he’d have never believed it. When he’d left with Serena the night before, the malran’s men had been grossly outnumbered. There was no way they should have survived. But Eryx and his men had done it. Done it and saved the new malress and Maxis’ best-trained slave in the process.

All because of his traitorous strategos.

His eye twitched and the slow ache at the back of his jaws sharpened. He’d trusted Reese Theron as he’d trusted no one since his grandmother’s death. That fucking betraying, shortsighted bastard. If he’d killed Phybe as instructed, Eryx would never have found Maxis’ home or been able to save Lexi.

The warriors dropped their weapons and took up bickering like a nest of hormonal bitches. Not an ounce of organization among them. Unsurprising given the limited time Reese had led them, but still, one would think some of their brawn would extend to their brains.

Maxis reached through his link for Reese. Still not so much as a flicker, the same as every other time he’d checked this morning. Reese was either dead, or captive in zeolite.

Serena’s sultry voice crooned behind him. “If the look on your face is any indication, you should have stayed in my bed this morning.”

Maxis winced. He knew better than to lose sight of his surroundings. With Eryx out for vengeance, daydreaming was a bad idea no matter how many of his warriors were within spitting distance. That a woman had managed to catch him unaware only validated his level of distraction.

A wisp of yellow fabric billowed beside him, no doubt another of the elegant gowns Serena preferred. Why the malran had abandoned his relationship with her years before was beyond Maxis. With vivid blue eyes and ridiculously long blond hair, she was the picture perfect model for a malress. Fortunately, her thirst for revenge as strong as Maxis’.

“No good morning for your lover?” She gripped his hips and nuzzled his neck. The brush of her soft breasts at his back pricked his temper.

“Enough.” He pushed her away and crowded the ledge overlooking the training grounds. He had enough to contend with without Serena adding petulance to the mix.

Serena glided beside him and scowled at the men. “I guess if I had to take credit for that mess, I’d be bitchy too.”

He spun so quickly she gasped and took a step back. He gripped her hair before she could escape and yanked her so no more than inches separated them. “Watch. Your. Mouth.”

She froze, but the challenge in her exotic eyes held. Only four or five inches beneath his stature, she carried herself with a regal grace, and damned if her lemon and honey scent didn’t taunt him as boldly as her stance.

“Damn it all.” He shoved her away and stalked along the ridge, watching his men.

“You could talk about it.” Patronization at its finest, with a bit of dare mingled in for good measure.

“Which part? The fact that I’ve lost a chunk of my men, or the fact that Reese is captured or dead?’

She shrugged. “Both are replaceable.”

The warriors, yes, though at the expense of time. But Reese? He’d wanted to kill his strategos. To watch his eyes stretch wide with pain while Maxis shredded his brain to bits via link the same way he’d killed Phybe. So why in histus was he so agitated with the prospect of his demise?

“Recruitment’s a must with the plans you’ve laid out, but we’d be wise to find others to handle the legwork,” Serena said.

Maxis faced her. “We?”

The imperious chit lifted an eyebrow. “You got me in this mess, so yes, it’s a ‘we.’” She glared at the men below and her dusty pink lips curled in a vicious grin. “From the looks of things, you could use a little help.”

Finally. A moment of clarity. A spark of anger he could mold. He prowled forward. “Let’s be clear Serena.”

She retreated one step. A wise move from her for once.

He followed. “You’re nothing more than a fuck. A beautiful and convenient one to be sure, but a fuck nonetheless. Any plans for the rebellion will be guided by me. Not tempered by a bratty social butterfly who spreads her legs on a whim.”

She flinched, though she covered it as well as any longstanding queen and swept her arm out over the disorganized mass of men below. “By all means then. Lord over your precious kingdom. Thank The Great One my name’s not attached to it.” She shot to the sky, never once looking back.

“And here I’d thought you a smart man.”

Maxis spun toward the voice behind him. A grated baritone with a nasally bite. Familiar, yet foreign.

Adobe ground stretched unbroken but for random clumps of gray spindly bushes. Not a soul in sight. Nothing pinged against the bubble-like surface of his sensory gifts.

“Only an idiot would piss away a delectable and advantageous piece of tail mourning over a traitor.” The voice hovered around Maxis, like a shout from the center of a cavernous room.

Maxis planted his feet at shoulder width, weight forward, ready for defense against the unidentifiable presence.

“I’m the least of your worries.” The voice held more substance this time.

Maxis whirled the other direction.

A lithe, dark-haired man stood in clothes unlike any he’d seen in either the human or Myren dimensions. His black tunic shone like silk, and formed an H across his chest before it dropped to his shins. Tall and lean, the man needed a good dose of sun. As it was, his pale skin struck a harsh contrast to the black, ruler-straight hair that fell from his widow’s peak to the tops of his shoulders.

The clang and shouts of men drilling below sounded in the distance. Not one blip in their efforts to indicate they saw the unexpected visitor.

“I trust no one,” Maxis said. “Least of all a stranger.”

A low, sinister laugh filled the space, though the man’s lips barely moved. “I’m no stranger to you, Maxis. Quite the opposite.”

He lifted a hand, palm forward, and his jade eyes sharpened.

The landscape dimmed, replaced with snippets of Maxis’ life. His grandmother Evanora’s death. His mother abandoning him when he was only nine in favor of the half-human child she carried. The human bullies who’d beat him before he’d come into his Myren gifts. The subtle resistance of Maxis’ blade in his father’s chest as he’d plunged it deep. Every critical moment of his life sped by with alacrity. One voice threaded each one.

Maxis’ memories dissipated and the desolate landscape returned. “Who are you?”

The stranger’s smile grew. “Your spiritu.”

“Don’t fuck with me. I asked who you are, not what you are.”

“Ever the clever one.” The man eased into a more casual stance. “I’ve always appreciated that about you. That is, when you’re not sniveling over your worthless strategos.”

“Your name!”

The stranger crossed his arms and waited several breaths. “The name given to me by my people is too complex for your mortal mind, but you may call me Falon.”

“And your people?”

“I thought my race didn’t interest you.”

Maxis fisted his dagger’s hilt.

Falon sneered. “You cannot force my demise. Spiritu are not susceptible to mortal death. Only The Great One rules us in such a fashion.” Uncurling his arms, he stalked forward, the air snapping with electricity. “I, on the other hand, can force yours quite nicely.”

He stopped a stone’s throw away, lifted his hand, thumb and fingers spread as though coiled around an unseen substance.

An invisible pressure blocked Maxis’ airway and crushed his windpipe. His elemental gifts wouldn’t respond to his commands. No call of earth, no fire. Darkness crept along the edges of his vision and his heart thrashed.

“I’m the voice in your mind, Maxis. The one who’s guided you throughout your life and lifted you when most needed.”

The memory of his father, bleeding out on his vast bed seconds after Maxis plunged the knife deep, leapt to life.

“Then most of all.”
Falon whispered in Maxis’ mind.
“It was I who guided you to that moment, and every critical juncture after.”

As quickly as it had begun, the tightness in his throat disappeared, and a fresh wave of chilled Asshur air rushed his lungs. Maxis stumbled back a step and braced his palms on his knees.

The crunch of Falon’s boots on clay pebbles crackled, slow, casual steps promenading around Maxis. “My people are the guides for Myren and humans alike. The passion and inspiration that feed their souls. I am of the dark contingent, those who focus on the headier passions.”