Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Jacaranda

“ A nd if you needed to take a meeting with someone Sarah didn’t like, would you have asked her permission?” I asked, annoyed with Deacon’s continual rant after Sarah left our quarters.

“Of course I would,” he said defensively.

“Bullshit. You would have gone without a second thought!” I dropped my fork and it clattered against my plate. Our in-room breakfast had turned into an in-room argument. It was odd to me to see Deacon so out of sorts when he was normally the calm, rational one. Well, until last night, anyway.

“Well, I can defend myself! Sarah can’t—”

“She is a capable woman who has special powers, the likes of which we haven’t even explored yet,” I countered, just as heatedly. “She is fine. And we have to trust her to be able to handle things alone, and on her own. We won’t always be there to protect her.”

He huffed out a breath and pouted like a damn boy. Which, admittedly, I found kind of cute.

“I don’t like it, Jac,” he grumbled.

I sighed in frustration. “You don’t have to like it. I don’t like it—”

“Then why aren’t you freaking out with me, instead of making me feel like I’m alone in this?” he insisted, his voice rising all over again.

I hated hearing that from him. I took his big hand in mine and looked deep into those intense hazel eyes. “You are not alone, Deacon,” I assured him. “Not ever. I am with you, always.”

“But—”

“My freak outs and your freak outs are very different,” I pointed out before he could go on. “To be honest, I think I’m trying to calm you down, because it calms me down, too. Trying to see the reason in her decision and the logic in the matter, it’s soothing.”

He quirked a smile. “Maybe we have traded places.”

I laughed and leaned forward, kissing him. I stroked his hair, from his head down his neck, to his back. He moaned against my lips and started to relax, just as I intended. His tongue tasted of smoked dreck and sweet banwine—our delicious breakfast.

The taste and feel of him combined with my own silent panic of not knowing where Sarah was and if she was okay. When we had tried to leave our room after she’d departed, we found the door was locked. A servant told us she was dining with Rex, and we were to dine in our room, which had sparked our argument.

Something shifted in our kiss, and our hunger for each other grew. I kicked the table out of my way, sending it crashing to the floor before I straddled his lap. He grabbed my ass and yanked me closer, so I could feel his cock stiffening beneath his uniform pants.

I needed this, I told myself. I needed to prove to my heart that I absolutely believed Sarah was okay without us and I didn’t need to worry. It was the only way to know that I fully trusted her to take care of herself.

If she’s okay, then there’s no harm in me enjoying Deacon by myself, because she’s fine and not in need of rescue. If she’s not okay, there’s no way I could get it up, because I would be worried about her. I’m hard, so she’s fine and not in need of rescue and fully capable of taking care of herself. Sarah is not some damsel in distress .

But a lingering voice in the back of my mind told me I was lying to myself. Doubt was a bastard.

I forced myself to focus on Deacon, and it didn’t take much longer before we were naked and on the bed, taking our aggression out on each other in a more physical type of way. We grappled and fucked each other, hard and rough, both of grunting and groaning as pleasure consumed us both, leaving us spent and no longer at odds with one another.

It was the best way to work out our hostility and anger, I decided, as we both showered then collapsed back on the bed to await Sarah’s return. Deacon fell back asleep, but I was wide awake.

My mind whirled, unable to shut down. What secrets was Rex hiding in this massive mansion? Where was our consort? Why did Grace try to kill me—the real reason, not some bullshit version of mercy. The questions swirled around in my brain, demanding answers.

I dressed and walked out to our balcony. In front of me was a view of the water around Rex’s estate and the trees. A fragrant yellow flower vine bloomed as it wrapped around many of the shorter trees. The building was two stories high and to my estimation, scalable. The stones were uneven in the wall—perfect for a climber. To the right was greenery as far as I could see next to the strangely calm river moat beside his house. A few windows also had balconies, but they were empty. The left was the same.

No guards? Odd.

I took my shoes off and tossed them to the ground, before I scaled the wall. It had been a while and my skills were rusty. When the mortar bit at my fingers, I comforted myself with the thought that the fall wouldn’t hurt much, but luckily that wasn’t an issue and I made it to the ground safely.

After reshoeing, I carefully dodged the first floor windows as I made my way around the building. I found nothing out of the ordinary. What did I expect ? I almost laughed at myself for thinking I would find any kind of answers outside.

But then I saw Sarah.

She was walking through a garden with Rex. And she was perfectly fine. I breathed a sigh of relief. Well, that’s one thing off my worry list . I headed back to peek through some of the first floor windows. Perhaps I could find Rex’s office, since I knew he wasn’t in it. He was too busy flirting with our consort to protect his office.

I crept around until I was back on my original side of the building, the yellow vines perfuming the breeze once again. I spotted them several meters away, beneath our balcony. Before I got back there, I spotted an office through a window. It was almost as fanciful as the rest of his mansion, with tapestries and shining swords on the wall. His desk was dark wood, along with all the other touches in the room. My fingers dug at the corners of the window, searching for purchase to boost myself inside.

Something wrapped around my left ankle and yanked me to the ground. I looked down, expecting a whip and a guard. I was wrong.

It was a tentacle.

A long blue-green tentacle pulled me toward the water a good thirty meters away, where it had come from.

“Fuck!” I yelled in a panic.

I tried to turn over and dig my fingers into the grass and ground in legitimate fear, but it corkscrewed me around and around. I couldn’t grab onto anything—there was nothing but the spinning grass beneath me and the whirling sky above me.

I pulled out my bone knife, stabbing at the tentacle, but another came out of the water for my other ankle, followed by another for my waist. I stabbed at anything, everything, frantic to get free before I reached the water, until the spinning wrapped my arms in the tentacles, too.

Another tentacle came out for my face, and I couldn’t see or breathe or scream as it wrapped around my head. Then the water swallowed me whole.