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  “Will that be two, then?” asked their waitress, dragging out a battered notepad without even looking at them.

  “Yes please. With whipped cream, chocolate syrup; the works,” Chloe said with forced cheerfulness. The woman merely grunted and shuffled off.

  “What if I don’t want all that stuff on mine?” Eliot queried.

  “Who said they were for you?” She smiled at him then. Her mood was lifting, and he felt it too. He wondered again if it was the blood bond between Guardians and Wards.

  When their drinks came, Chloe was happy again, digging into her hot chocolate with a spoon. He just wanted to lean in and soak up the bizarre combination of comfort and anger, of fear and grace, which had somehow wound up under his protection.

  Chapter Seven: Unethical

  Later, he watched as she dumped out the contents of a yellow and red plastic bag, pawing through a collection of tubes and bottles and fabric and gum. He sat uneasily on the edge of the farthest of the queen beds in their motel room, both hands clutching the red comforter as he wondered what to do with his feet. Chloe stood with her back to him, arranging her things around the gold-flecked formica sink. She seized on a toothbrush, still in its plastic. Slim fingers stripped the clear casing with unexpected clumsiness. Her dark eyes met his in the mirror. He remembered a doe he’d surprised at the creek at sunrise in Gray’s Landing. They both had the same shy frozen grace. Then, as now, he retreated first.

  “Did you find what you needed?” He rolled onto his back, staring up at the stucco ceiling. He was edgy; he hadn’t grown up around girls. He had Callista, of course, but she was like a second mother to him. He didn’t have sisters or close female friends. The only girls he’d ever been around for extended periods of time were as lost and hard-edged as him. The kind of girls who never relaxed their guard because they were too damaged or opportunistic or predatory. In Austin, when he’d run away for a week long music festival, he’d woken up to a girl with dirty blond hair, spider web tattoos and a knife at his throat, going through the jacket he was using as a blanket. It was the first time he’d ever hurt a woman, getting that knife away from her. He still hadn’t forgotten her feral gray eyes, caked with black eyeliner, as she hissed in outrage instead of pain. Whatever she was on hadn’t let her feel the pain.

  He’d slept on the floor at Chloe’s feet. He’d changed her sweat-soaked clothes and put on round after endless round of fresh bandages when she was poisoned and hurting. He’d taken care of her. But this was different. This was a hotel room, not his own familiar second home. A microcosm of the new reality in which she had no one but him, here they were off the map.

  “Mostly I did,” she said, handling her purchases as if performing an esoteric rite. She picked up a silver tube, uncapped it and smelled. He wondered what magic it held, to make her whole body relax. She twisted her hair into a loose knot with practiced ease before testing the running water with the inside of one wrist. Her hands conjured a growing mass of foamy bubbles with smooth circular motions. “I still need to go shopping,” she said, her words uneven and garbled as her face disappeared into the steaming sink. “Your clothes make me look like a boy.”

  “I highly doubt that,” he told the top of her head, reflected back to him in the mirror. He resolutely did not think of her dressed in his second-favorite t-shirt, a threadbare remnant of a long-dead Atlanta radio station. He tried to ignore the pair of his boxers that, even rolled at her waist, still hung from her hips.

  But nothing could erase the picture of her handprint scars, like trapped wings. They were an angry shiny red shot through with silver across her bent neck.

  She finished at the sink and practically stalked over to him. He remained perfectly, rigidly still as the bed dipped with her weight. She lay flat on her back beside him.

  Perfectly, rigidly still. A cobweb on the ceiling. She smells like flowers, he thought as their combined weight on the mattress rolled them slightly towards each other. A crack in the stucco. Eyes unblinking. Perfectly, rigidly still.

  She sighed happily. Not for you, he thought. Guardians don’t get to be with their Wards. Cass told you, time and again…it’s unbalanced. Unethical. He nodded minutely. She has only you, so she’s not for you. Another sigh followed by movement. Her hair, damp from steam, across his cheek. She rested her head against his.

  He realized he could feel her heart beating, feel her breath on his face. Inches. She was only inches away. Their weight had rolled her on her side to face him without realizing.

  “I don’t remember Annwyn.” Her bitten lip was swollen, her words barely a whisper. “Tell me something.” She let gravity press the entire length of her body against his. “Tell me about the ceremony that made you my Guardian.” She caught his hand and brought it up between them, weaving their fingers together against the speeding, crashing thing that was his heart. “What did we promise? What were the vows?”

  Perfectly, rigidly still. He had fallen against the warm weight of her as easily, as naturally, as water rolls downhill. As easily as breathing. Only he wasn’t breathing. He was drowning. “Um.” He had to dig to find his voice. “Well.” Flowers and heat, soft curves and expectant eyes. He couldn’t breathe. His throat was closing, his vision graying. Was this what Cass warned against, reacting to her nearness, her body against his?

  She needs you. You can’t do this.

  He sat up so fast the world was a hurricane with him at the eye.

  “Eliot?” He felt her reaching for him, felt her alarm and hurt through the same bond she asked about. The bond he was perilously close to breaking. “Are you all right?” Her voice climbed as it did right before she got really upset. He forestalled her with the flat of his palm.

  “A moment,” he said, getting his breath back. He moved back an arm’s length. He would keep that between them. He must.

  But he could tell from her face, from her taut, angry, empty arms, that she didn’t understand. He would make her, then. It was what they both needed, to understand why this could never be.

  “First, they cut us. Here.” He indicated his palm with a vertical slash. He smiled. “You cried when they did that.”

  “But not you.” It was not a question, but he nodded anyway.

  “Then we held our palms together, and our parents wrapped them with a silver chain. Then I read from a big, dusty book. I don’t remember the words, only that you cried.”

  Emotions flashed across her face so fast he couldn’t identify them all. “Wow.” She gripped the bedspread. “I was what, six? How is that possible? How could we have even known that we were making promises that would last the rest of our lives?”

  “We were born to it.” He reached over and grabbed his own small red and yellow bag from the nightstand, twisting it and stretching the plastic.

  “Right. I’m only the heir of a non-existent kingdom and all that.” She made a face: half eye roll, half grimace. Sarcastic and embarrassed all at the same time. “But you? I mean, I know your uncle’s a Guardian, too, but what do you mean you were born to it?”

  There it was. The question he still didn’t want to answer. It was painful on so many levels. But he didn’t want to lie to her either, so he tried for part of the truth. “Guardians become quite close to their Wards. It’s impossible not to.” He rushed through the worst part. “Guardians and their Wards, they can’t… be anything more. Not …together. It’s against the law. Or it was, in Annwyn. But even worse, it would break the bond.” He found that he couldn’t look up from his plastic. He rushed on, his words filling the shocked silence. “They would stop being Guardian and Ward, and you… or your mother, for example, would be unprotected. Not that it happens, mind you,” he rambled, trying desperately to rein in the conversation before he made an even bigger idiot of himself. “We have families of our own, and more often than not, the heirs of Annwyn and the children of Guardians grow up together. It’s a natural fit, to bond together two children who are already close.”

  “Like us?” Chlo
e asked quietly. Wistfully, even.

  “You could say that,” he hedged, diplomatically. At her raised eyebrow, he broke down into soft laughter. “Ok, I thought you were a pain. You followed me around and got into trouble and I always got blamed for it. So I tried to keep you out of trouble to save myself.” He grinned. “I didn’t succeed, most of the time, but I guess our families decided it was a good enough fit.”

  “Not much different now, is it?” She smiled back.

  “Over the centuries, the same two or three families tended to produce Guardians and other protectors for the royal family. Like mine, the Grays. So in a way, it is something that’s in my blood.”

  “Your parents were Guardians?” she persisted.

  “Just one of them. My father was a scientist. My mother was the Guardian.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I knew some Guardians were women. Callista’s was. Who was…”

  He tossed the small bag at her, cutting her off. “It’s really late, Chloe. Do you want the first shower, or what?”

  She looked from the little bag to him. “You’re dodging my question.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t want to talk about dead parents anymore, ok?” She flinched. Mentally, he kicked himself. Her own father’s death was so recent, so sudden. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

  She just shrugged, face unreadable. “I guess it never gets any easier.” She held up the shredded plastic bag. “What’s this?”

  “I thought I saw you looking at it. Go ahead. Open it.” He wanted to be cheerful, but the atmosphere in the room had darkened. He tried a small smile anyway. “I want to see if I was right.”

  Plastic peeled off in strips until she held a cut-glass pendant dangling from a black cord. She held it up to the light. The glass distorted the light and colors around it; cupped in her hands, it looked like a shadowy tree with branches that were both skeletal and graceful. “Yes! It reminds me of the apple tree in my back yard. My mom loves that stupid tree. I’ve never seen another like it.” She held it up to the light where it pulsed and sparkled. “I know this is the symbol for the tree of life, but it caught my eye because it reminded me of home.”

  “Your tree is from the orchards, in Annwyn Forest,” he told her. “I don’t know why there was one in your back yard. I guess Miranda brought a seed. Or Aran, more likely. He had a way with earth. But back there, there were hundreds of them. You used to climb up into them way too high and I’d have to get you down. Or you’d hide and spy on me as I played with the other boys. Or there was the time you ate a whole pile of apples before they were ripe, and I had to carry you all the way back while you were sick all over the place.” He made a face before he could stop himself. “That was the worst twenty minutes of my life. Until recently,” he added darkly.

  She laughed, her dark hair framing her face, and just like that, the room felt lighter. “Ok already! I get it! I was a pain. I’m sorry.” As she slipped the cord around her neck she buried her hands in her face, her shoulders shaking with silent laughter. “Eliot Gray, Guardian mine, I beg your forgiveness and promise never to eat too many unripe apples ever again.” Then she moved fast. Guardian fast. So fast, he didn’t expect it. One hand fingered the pendant while the other cupped his neck. “Thank you. For this little piece of home. Both homes; the one I know, and the one I forgot.” Her kiss was quick as lightening and just as searing. She bounced off the bed and headed towards the shower.

  For that, he had absolutely no reply.

  He checked the heavy lock and secured the chain on the front door while the room filled with steam and the scent of flowers. He claimed the bed closest to the door by sliding a few weapons under the pillow. His sword he placed openly between the nightstand and his bed. He pulled on worn gray sweatpants, a t-shirt from the Audubon Zoo, and sat cross-legged against the pillows, waiting and fighting off sleep.

  Some unknown amount of time later, his eyes flew open into total darkness. His muscles were tense and something warm and heavy smothered his side. He pushed against it, struggling, until her sleep-clumsy arm thumped down on his chest.

  “Stop,” she murmured. “Just a dream, Eliot.”

  “Chloe?” He could feel her beside him, curled into a tight little ball on her side, facing him.

  “Shut up and go back to sleep.”

  “What happened?”

  “You fell asleep on top of the covers when I was in the shower. I tried to get you up, but you weren’t budging. Then you woke me up twice while you were dreaming, so I covered you up with my blanket and climbed in.” She jabbed him in the side with her elbow. Sharply. “I hate being cold. And sleep deprived. So shut up and sleep, or go lay down in my bed with no blanket.”

  He couldn’t remember dreaming, but he held himself perfectly still until her breathing deepened and evened. Sleep wouldn’t come, so he watched her dark hair against the white pillowcase until the sun came up, remembering apple orchards and annoying little girls.

  Chapter Eight: Heironymous Tuttle, Esquire

  Heironymous looked mournfully into his glass. It was almost empty; ice and the barest hint of amber liquid slid around the bottom of the heavy cut crystal. He didn’t bother looking up as he addressed the bored blond bartender.

  “Another, David. Leave the bottle this time.”

  Long, manicured fingers snatched his glass away. “They only say that in movies, Heiro. In real life, this is where I get to say, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’”

  Heironymous frowned carefully at his now-empty hands. “I was enjoying that drink, and quite looking forward to another.”

  The bartender shook his perfectly styled head. “You need to head on home, Heiro. I’ve never seen you like this. Let me call Jackson.”

  Heironymous Tuttle, former junior partner at Savannah’s largest and most expensive law firm, promptly burst in to tears. “You can’t call Jackson,” he said, accidently wiping his nose with his Rolex. “Because… because he’s not there. No one is there. I have nothing and no one but an empty mauve box of an apartment and a very depressed cat.”

  He heard David breathe a very weary, “Oh, dear,” before a bottle of Jack appeared in front of him. The dangerously cute blond bartender held a glass with ice in one hand, and held out his other empty one palm up. “Car keys first.” He waggled his fingers threateningly. Heironymous handed them over without a second thought and took the glass eagerly.

  “Mauve,” he told the glass spitefully. “Who paints an entire apartment in complementary shades of mauve? Jackson, that’s who. I should be glad he left me, really, even if this is the worst day of my entire life. At least he took his wretched taste in décor and his dreadful Doctor Who box sets with him. And he left me… the cat…”

  Heiro found himself in tears again and hated himself for them. He wouldn’t be that man, weeping over a stupid ex who didn’t deserve him. No, he had more important things to cry about, like the fact that he’d just lost his job over how to handle the death of one the firm’s most important clients. He felt his courage restore the longer he sipped his Jack Daniels. Really, he shouldn’t have waited to get fired. He should have quit, weeks before, over the way Goldman and Sibley were handling the Burke case. He suspected some of his boss’s policies were, in fact, borderline illegal. To delay probate the way they had… and to discuss the particulars with total strangers, not even relatives…

  Heironymous downed his drink in one smooth gulp. That had been the icing, hadn’t it? Just how strange the strangers had been, speaking to each other in a hissing kind of language that still made his neck all shivery, just remembering. They looked strange, as well, as if they had been put together like badly made automatons instead of proper people. And when he’d identified their human companion as Charles Ravenwood, patriarch of the Burke’s archrivals, he’d begun digging. Callista Burke had warned him about the Ravenwoods, during one of their rare face-to-face meetings, when she’d come to change her will about three months ago. Steely-eyed e
ven after the recent death of her brother, Callista set up a trust for her underage niece while her bodyguard hovered.

  Three months after her brother’s death, and now Ms. Burke was gone herself. He pulled the crumpled obituary from his coat pocket and poured himself another drink. The circumstances were terrible enough that the firm should be talking to the police instead of total strangers. Burned to death in a car accident, just like her brother. Heironymous didn’t have to be a rabid CSI fan to know a probable homicide when he read about it. Yet when he’d tried to lodge protests with his new boss over how the trust was being handled, he’d been rebuffed. When he’d taken matters into his own hands, trying to contact the family directly, he’d been fired.

  And here he sat, a bottle of Jack his only companion. He’d come home directly from the most humiliating moment of his career to find Jackson, his partner of four years, gone. He left nothing but a break-up note, not even the house key. Heironymous sincerely hoped he wasn’t planning to come crawling back, demanding his flatware, because there was no way he was giving his former boyfriend anything, anything at all…

  A weathered hand closed around the neck of the bottle just as he was lifting it again. “I wouldn’t,” said a soft but threatening voice. “You’re going to need your wits about you, Mr. Tuttle.”

  Indignant, he tried to jerk the bottle back, but the hand wouldn’t give.

  He turned to see a lean, very tanned man with the most piercing sky blue eyes he’d ever seen. The shock of recognition made him release the bottle abruptly; he expected it to crash against the wood-paneled floor and shatter, but the blue-eyed man caught it easily as it started to fall. He set it aside on a nearby table and swung a chair around backwards. “Mr. Tuttle,” he said, leaning his weight back until the chair sat on just two legs. “Believe me when I say you have two choices: sober up, and fast, or burn to death.”

  Heironymous almost choked. He fought down competing urges to cough up Jack Daniels, or run screaming from the bar. He did neither, however, because he recognized the man sitting across from him as Cassius Gray, Callista Burke’s bodyguard.