Chapter 23

Rhi

I'm running,running as fast as I can, my chest heaving as I gasp for breath, my arms and my legs aching, my throat raw and dry. I keep running, keep pushing onwards. I need to get there. It's important that I do – vital.

I need to reach the beast. I need to find it. It's injured, hurt, dying, its life source draining away. Only I can heal it. Only I can save it.

It's important that I do. Fate is insistent. It's my destiny to save the creature. I cannot fail.

I wake up with a start,my heart racing, my body bathed in a layer of cold sweat, the strange dream still vivid in my mind.

An injured creature. I had to save an injured creature.

Immediately, I'm up on my knees, and scrabbling along the floor until I find Pip laid out on the bed.

"Pip?" I say, resting my hand on his little body. "Pip?"

His eyes open a little and then drift shut again. His skin is hot, his body quivering.

What the hell is wrong with him? I stroke my hand down his body.

In my dream I needed to heal a creature – a beast. Was it Pip? Have I neglected him? Did I trust too much in Renzo's opinion? Should I be trying to heal him now?

I close my eyes and feel through his body with my magic. I can feel no injuries, no wounds. All I feel is the remnants of magic – is that the magic that struck him? I try to tug at it, to pull it away, but it's as if it's welded to his very soul, weaved into his very bones.

"Oh Pip," I say, resting my forehead against his. I've always taken him for granted. Always. He's always been with me, by my side, giving me courage when I've lacked it, support when I've had none, a friendly face when I've needed one. I can't lose him. I can't bear to lose him.

"Is he no better, little rabbit?" Renzo says, from somewhere behind me. It's dark in the little cabin and the temperature has dropped. I shudder, wiping away tears from my eyes.

"No better. He's never been sick before. In all the years we've had him. Not once."

"Never?"

"Unless, you count the times he's scoffed himself silly and made himself vomit. But I don't think that counts." I manage a smile, swiping away at another tear.

Renzo comes to kneel beside me and looks down at the pig. "He doesn't seem any worse, little rabbit, and that's a good thing."

"Is it?" I say, hopefully, one minute eager to reject any advice from this man, now happy to latch onto it.

"Yeah." He strokes Pip's ear.

"I dreamed I was meant to save him. That I was meant to heal him."

"I told you, little rabbit, you just got to give him time."

"You don't understand," I say, shaking my head. "It seemed so real."

"Dreams always do."

"But mine …" I peer at the assassin through the darkness. He's dressed in just his jeans, his hair ruffled, his eyes sleepy. He looks more boyish than ever. "My mom was a seer."

"Yeah, I heard that," he says. And somehow I'm not surprised. "You … you think this was the same, little rabbit?"

"I used to have these dreams when I was little. They'd seem so real. And sometimes they'd …" I stare down at Pip, watching as his frail ribcage lifts and falls.

"Come real."

"Yes. But then they stopped. Just like that. And I never had another – I didn't really dream at all."

"Until just now?" he asks, intrigued.

I shake my head. "I dreamed of you. Several months back, I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were trying to strangle me, to squeeze the breath out of me."

Renzo chuckles. "Fuck me, I'd love to squeeze that throat of yours, little rabbit." He leans and whispers into my ear. "You know it would make everything feel even fucking better."

I twist my head and peer into his eyes. I think I could be tempted to do all manner of dangerous things with this man.

But the dream buzzes around my head, pulling at my attention.

"What if I am seer – like my mom? What if this dream meant something? What if I am supposed to heal Pip and I can't?"

Renzo settles backwards, crossing his legs and resting his chin in his hands. "Tell me about the dream. Tell me all about it."

I close my eyes. I can see it vividly in my head, just as clear as that film he'd conjured into the air. I watch it play out against my eyelids, describing it to him in detail. When I'm done, I open my eyes, and he leans back.

"Pip's no beast, little rabbit. I don't think that dream is about him. You've tried healing him. So have I. He's sick. He's going to get better. And that dream–"

"It wasn't just any old dream!"

"Maybe," he says. "But what it means isn't clear. Not yet."

I feel a little comforted by his words but the dream still consumes my thoughts. I want to talk it through with Stone, with Winnie, heck even with Azlan. I miss them all and the separation from my mates is painful, even with the draught Renzo's been giving me. Are they feeling that too?

Is Tristan?

I lay my hands on my belly.

The pain when Azlan and I were apart after we first bonded was unbearable – so strong I felt like my entire body was being subjected to the cruelest form of torture. That pain didn't fade until we started to sleep together. Is Tristan enduring that right now? Is he okay? A guilt about it swims through my body. Tristan hasn't been good to me. He's treated me like shit. He's spoken to me like I was a piece of shit. But he also saved my life – sacrificed his own for mine. No matter how hard I try, I can't feel as angry at him as I was. I can feel myself softening.

"Renzo," I say. "I know you want to protect me. I know you want to keep me safe. But I'm safest with my mates. I think you know that really and I need to get back to them."

"There are bad people out there hunting for you, little rabbit."

"There have always been bad people hunting for me. And I spent the first twenty years of my life hiding away from them, running away. I … I can't do that any longer. I need my mates. I need my friends."

The assassin is silent. He tilts his head from one side to the other as if weighing up the decision in his mind.

"I didn't think fate gave a shit about me. I didn't think anyone did," he says without a trace of self-pity, "that was unless I was trying to kill them." The right side of his mouth lifts. "Then they cared about me a lot. But fate, nah! I thought she'd cast me to the curbside long ago. Didn't give a shit. I was wrong. She gave me you. Gave you me. She has something in mind for me. I don't know what that is any more than I know what your dream means, little rabbit. But I'm thinking I'm destined to follow you so that's what I'm going to do. You want to go find your mates, then that's what we'll do."

"You're going to come with me?"

"Need to keep you safe, little rabbit. You have a habit of hopping straight into trouble."

"Yeah," I say, "I do." I smile at him, but it soon fades. "You know they'll kill you?"

"Who?" he asks, his eyes flashing like he likes that idea.

"The man in black, Stone. Probably Tristan and Spencer too."

"I'm like a cat. One of those mangy street cats. I have nine lives. You don't need to worry about me."

"So you'll take me to Los Magicos? You'll transport us there?"

He shakes his head. "Too dangerous." I start to argue but he points at my pig. "I don't think the little man could handle it."

"So how will we get there?" I say with frustration. "You said there'd be soldiers out on all the roads."

"We'll go the long way. Over the mountains."

"Over the mountains?" I stare at him in disbelief. He really is crazy. "That isn't even possible."

"Little rabbit, you really do underestimate me." He leans forward and, before I know what he's doing, he pinches my chin between his finger and thumb and stares into my face, his only millimeters from my own. "Everyone always does," he says, and then presses his mouth to mine and kisses me.

The two of us have thrown our lot in with fate now. Both trusting that she knows what the hell she's doing. And so, when the assassin kisses me – hard and incessant, seeking out my tongue with his – I kiss him back. Just as hard, just as incessant, just as needy.

We pack a few supplies from the hut into a rucksack, take some of the warm clothes stuffed in a tiny chest of drawers, wrap Pip up into a blanket and set off into the night, me desperate to start moving, Renzo adamant it's too dangerous to stay in one place for more than one day.

It's far colder outside than it was in the little hut, the sky heavy with a blanket of cloud and wisps of snow fluttering around us. I wrap the scarf I took around my head, my eyes tearing as a wind sweeps through the foothills of the mountains, and peer up at the peaks.

Out here in the open, my head is much clearer, not clouded by the proximity of Renzo or the masculinity of his scent. And I wonder again if I'm doing the right thing. If I'm trusting the right person. The mountains loom above us, tall and menacing and I can't see how any person could possibly scale them. Then again, Renzo Barone is like no other person I've ever met. He sees things in a different way, I'm learning that. He looks on challenges that others have labeled impossible, crazy, suicidal, and sees opportunity. Fun, even.

We follow what I think must be paths cut through the scrub by mountain goats. They weave up the hillsides, only wide enough for us to walk one behind the other and soon we're trudging through snow, more of it blowing in our faces and catching in my eyelashes. To my surprise, despite the bitter conditions, our progress is fair, and before long we're high above the land below. I stop to catch my breath and gaze down through the falling snow. The valley and the land – the few buildings that bedeck them – are small and tiny like pieces on a chessboard. As if I could reach out and pick them up with my hand.

Renzo places the sleeping Pip, wrapped in a bundle of blankets, on the ground, and comes to stand behind me, wrapping his arms around my middle and resting his chin on my shoulder.

"You see all that, little rabbit, I think it could all be yours." I frown, unclear what he means. "I think you could have it all if you wanted to."

"I … I don't understand."

"It never occurred to you, little rabbit?"

"What?"

"You're special. The black Prince's daughter. Maybe you're the one who should be ruling this country. Not the chancellor. Not the authorities. Not Lowsky or those jerks from the West. You, little rabbit."

I frown harder and push him away. Is this why he wants me? The real reason?

"With you by my side, I suppose. Ruler of all the land."

"Yes, little rabbit. We could rule it all," he says, not hearing the sarcasm in my voice.

"And my other mates?"

"You're angry?" He attempts to grab my hand.

"It doesn't matter," I say, with irritation, reaching down to pick up Pip. "Let's keep moving. It's freaking freezing out here."

I hug my coat around Pip and hold him close to my body – partly to ensure he's warm and partly because he's acting like a mini hot-water bottle.

We climb some more. The terrain becoming steeper and more craggy, large, jagged rocks frame our path, the snow deeper, my breath hanging in clouds in front of my face. I can see the peak of this first mountain above us, the ridges of it sharp against the sky like the tooth of a predator piercing the silver clouds. It makes me shudder, but we don't stop. Soon we're scurrying over and down the other side, the valley and the land lost behind us, and we enter the heart of the mountains, more peaks rising up in front of us.

Renzo tugs a bottle of water from his bag and insists I drink, before taking a swig himself and then pouring a little into Pip's mouth. Pip wriggles in my arms, his eyes screwed shut, but he gulps it down. I murmur some words of comfort to him, kissing his head, as that strange dream rumbles around my mind.

And it's in that moment that a roar pierces the silent night, so loud, so fierce, it shakes the ground beneath our feet.