The Relentless Warrior (9 page)

“You’re acting weird today,” I nudged her with my elbow. “Since yesterday, you’ve
been acting weird.”

“I’m not acting weird,” she defended herself quickly. “
You’re
acting weird.”
“How am I acting weird?” I demanded. This conversation was feeling a little juvenile,
but it was

like I was trapped inside it, unable to leave without answers. And if I had to play
the part of immaturity in order to win, I would.

I was competitive like that.

“You know how!” She huffed.

I paused our conversation to open the hidden door for her. Kiran and Avalon used to
meet this way back when Lucan was still alive. There was a special key that required
Magic and the right royal DNA or a Titan. But since Lucan died, Kiran had switched
up the lock so that a certain number of us could use it. This entrance was still very
hush-hush, even though the land on the other side of the door was private, guarded
and difficult to access. It wasn’t exactly human hikers we worried would find it,
but the rest of the Immortal Kingdom.

“I
don’t
know how,” I assured her after I’d melted more snow with my Magic and led the way
up an incline.

“Ever since you found out I’m… I’m… like you! You’ve been looking at me differently!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I sounded confident, but internally I
was starting to worry. Was that true? Was I looking at her differently now that she
wasn’t so fragile? So…. mortal?

Or had I always been traveling this path?

“It was like the minute you knew I was
magical
,” she whispered that word like it had filthy connotations, “You got hungry!”

I cocked my head back, abashed by her word choice, “Hungry?”

“Yes, hungry,” she hissed.

I wanted to argue, but we were over the ridge now and a private lake stretched out
before us. Snow rose from every bank in thick, mounds of perfect white purity. The
lake itself was iced over at the beginning of December, with drifts of snow scattered
across its smooth surface. The only disruption to the untouched purity was animal
prints as they tracked from one side of the lake to the other. Huge trees rose from
every side, snow replacing leaves, and icicles hanging from their branches like Christmas
lights.

“Oh my gosh, Jericho,” she exclaimed in a breath of astonishment. “This is amazing.”

She walked ahead of me, moving the snow out of her way a little less gracefully than
me- and by that I meant she sent it up in a blizzard of flurries around us.

She looked at me over her shoulder, her teeth nibbling on her bottom lip, her expression
impish and excited. I had that obnoxious urge to kiss her again, to explore her mouth
with mine, her body with my hands. I wanted to find out exactly how hot the Magic
made her skin, how sweet the inside of her mouth tasted.

I shook my head, trying to clear it of those thoughts. Was I really looking at her
like I was hungry?

Maybe I was. It had been a while since I’d even been alone with a girl other than
Liv.

I definitely needed to fix that.
Now.

“I know you’re planning something extraordinary. So just get on with it. I’m too impatient
to play guessing games,” she was laughing while she ordered me around. I should have
been irritated with her commanding presence, with the way she just assumed she would
get her way.

But it was not irritation racing in my blood or pounding against my chest. It was
something so much more like obsessive curiosity and affectionate indulgence.

“So bossy,” I murmured playfully as I moved to stand next to her on the bank.

She waited with eyes lit with anticipation and her fingers fidgeting anxiously. I
couldn’t stop the smile that spread almost ear to ear across my face. I kicked off
my flip-flops and stepped onto the frozen ground that didn’t feel cold to me at all.

I walked further onto the iced-over lake and released some Magic from my feet, from
my hands from everywhere around me. The air sizzled with the force of my electricity,
crackling and popping as I freed whatever I wanted into the atmosphere around me making
whatever I wanted happen.

The ice beneath my feet melted and I sunk down with a drop as the solid ground disappeared
around me. My jeans were wet, but it didn’t bother me; I would just dry them with
Magic when I stepped out.

The water at my feet heated to hot tub temps and sluiced over and between my toes
like a Jacuzzi. It was fantastic. All around me the water stayed frigid and the ice
stayed frozen, but this small space was just for me.

“Come here,” I demanded without turning around. She wasn’t the only one that liked
to get her way.

I heard the sounds of her shoes slipping off and her jeans being tugged up, but I
waited patiently for her to join me without turning around. I didn’t want to give
her the attention I seemed to be paying her subconsciously. She wasn’t part of my
world, no matter what happened to her.

She stood next to me, enjoying the hot water and the bubbling relaxation that came
with it.

“Magic isn’t all bad,” she admitted in an awed voice. “Is that what you’re trying
to tell me?”

I raised one hand and the snow around us became a swirling cyclone of white. I wrapped
us up in it so that we were in the center as it spun and moved around us. She watched
with an awed smile and then slipped her hand into mine. She laid her head on my shoulder
and we just stood there in silence, enjoying the phenomenon.

Finally I released the tornado of snow and let it fall around us in soft flakes- like
a shaken up snow globe. They landed all over us, dotting our heads and catching on
her eyelashes. She looked up at me and this time
she
looked hungry.

“Magic isn’t all bad,” I finally echoed.

“Tell me something about yourself, Jericho. Something I don’t know. Something about
your life before I crashed it.” She was still holding my hand, but I didn’t think
she realized it anymore.

“I’m important,” I confessed, surprising even myself. I hadn’t exactly intended for
the conversation to go this way. And I wasn’t sure what made me say that. But here
we were. I’d said about the dumbest thing I could and now I needed to explain. “And
I don’t want to be.”

“More words,” she growled adorably.

“A few years ago, we had this thing. A rebellion, an overthrown government, a changing
of the crowns or whatever. The bad king died, so a good king could live. I was on
the rebellion side, second in command I guess. Since then, the Kingdom, the King,
the Queen…. The other King, they’ve all looked to me as a leader. I’ve been put in
charge of a lot. The Kingdom respects me and expects a lot from me. I’m important.”
I shrugged and tried to look away from her ice blue eyes but couldn’t.

“But you don’t want to be?” She prompted.

“It’s not the responsibility or the sacrifice,” I assured her quickly. “I’m fine with
the long hours and spontaneous travel. In some ways I feel born and bred for these
tasks that I do. It’s mostly, I’m bored. I was better when we were at war. I was better
when there was something to do. I’m good at playing the diplomat but I was better
at being the warrior.”

“Well, aren’t you getting to be the warrior now? Aren’t you guys kind of at war again
or whatever?” Olivia turned to face me completely. Her eyes bore into mine and I knew
this wouldn’t make sense to her. It wasn’t like the human world was without war or
conflict, but Olivia was. From the first moment I picked her up off the ground in
the ruins of Machu Picchu, it was obvious she wasn’t a warrior. A fighter, yes, that
girl could survive anything, but she wasn’t a trained soldier.

“Yes, there are people at war,” I answered vaguely.

“But you personally are not at war,” she concluded.

“The reasons I’m here are very important,” I argued, more with myself than anyone.
“And my duty to the crown is bigger than my personal aspirations. This isn’t about
you or O, though. This is more than that, bigger picture kind of stuff. This is about
me and what my life will be like after this conflict is over. Terletov is a terrible
Immortal and he will pay for his crimes. Avalon, Kiran, any of my friends will ensure
that happens. So what happens after he’s gone? It’s like I’m restless for a fight.
And I can’t imagine living agitated and bored for the rest of…. however long I live.”

“O and I are the reasons you’ve stayed back?” Olivia whispered and I wondered if she
heard anything else I said. Her eyes were big with surprise and her expression was
so confused I wanted to rub my thumb in between her eyebrows and soothe out her adorable
wrinkles.

“Liv, don’t look so surprised,” I laughed. “You have to know I stayed back for you.”

“I never thought about it,” she shrugged, shaking herself out of her stupor. “I just
assumed it was your job to help us.”

“It is,” I answered quickly.

“No it’s not; your job is to fight.” Her eyes were glinting with resolve now.

“And I will fight,” I promised her. “As soon as my king gets back, I’m planning to
go. I need to be part of this.”

“I know you do,” she whispered.

There was a moment of utter stillness between us, where neither of us moved or spoke.
I wasn’t sure we even breathed. She looked into my eyes, or through them or beyond
them into a place so deep and hidden inside of me I felt torn open and exposed before
her. She unsettled me with her perceptive intelligence and intuitive thoughts. She
was different than any girl I’d ever met or known- she was something more than every
girl before her.

And I realized I had a little infatuation with her.

Hungry
. The word echoed in my head.

There it was; I could admit that she was right. So much strength, tenacity and beauty
wrapped up into her tiny, heart-stopping package. How could I not crush on this girl?
How could I not think about her as more than a friend? Or at least an object of desire?

“Tell me something about you, Liv,” I echoed her earlier words. “Something I don’t
know.”

She hesitated for a few seconds, as if deciding which secret to share. Finally, she
let out a heavy sigh and said, “O and I took that trip to find ourselves. She was
deciding what school she wanted to go to and I was…. I don’t know what I was doing.
But I needed a break.”

“From what?” I was suddenly desperate to know everything about this girl. She was
answering questions that had been bothering me since I found her; the few short facts
and vague answers she did share seemed to be accidental and followed with regret.
I forced myself to wait patiently for the explanations I’d been dying to hear.

“School,” she shrugged. “Where I go… it’s intense. There’s a lot of competition and
I’m an underdog just for being a girl. The guys I go to school with can be huge pricks.
The very thought of a girl accomplishing more than them is like incomprehensible.
And I just want to be good at what I do. You know? I just want to erase all that competition
and do what’s best for me. But it’s constant. It’s so bad I’ve thought about quitting
and just walking away; but that’s not me. I don’t give up; I don’t walk away. But
here I am… Or there I was in Peru. Except I had decided to tough it out. I only have
two semesters left anyway. But it was almost the exact moment I decided I could handle
everything, those guys kidnapped us. I have to wonder if that was some kind of sign.
Right?”

I didn’t want to answer that question. The idea of her returning to humanity with
all this untapped, unpracticed Magic seemed too dangerous to consider. But I wanted
to root for her at the same time; I wanted her to succeed, to show those idiots how
incredible she really was.

“What were you in school for?” Deflection. Nice.

“To be a chef. I was in culinary school,” she answered like a prayer. It was obvious
how passionate she was about this just by the reverence in which she intoned the words.
She felt like this was her calling and threw the entire force of her dedication and
loyalty into it.

I smiled down at her, “I love to cook.”

Her forehead creased in confusion and I watched a hundred different responses flitter
through her eyes. “Like macaroni and cheese from a box?”

“Like more than macaroni and cheese from a box,” I leaned forward as if telling her
a secret. “But I’m pretty good at that too.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then I’ll have to show you.”

“You’re not making me feel better.” She crossed her arms and shook her head. She was
adorable and feisty and so much more when I got beyond the attractive surface. This
girl had layers upon layers. And the more I fought my way through them, the more lost
in them I became. Suddenly the water felt higher than my shins, higher than my head.
I was drowning in something and I couldn’t even begin to describe what it was. The
only thing I knew though was that I could still breathe. Even under all this water,
my lungs moved in and out easier than they had in years.

Now it was my turn to feel hundreds of thoughts spin through my head. I wanted so
many things in that moment… to pull her into me, to kiss her senseless, to prove to
her I knew how to cook, to turn her around and send her back to wherever she came
from, out of my life and out of my thoughts forever.