Chapter 34

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Mama, Dad,” Silas announced, standing behind her and settling his hands on her shoulders in an unmistakably proprietary gesture, “this is Petra. She’s mine.” He paused there, letting that flat, no-nonsense declaration land, with considerable weight, at their feet.

Petra wanted to sink into the floor and become one with the worms when his parents shared a quick glance but said nothing.

Giving her shoulders a squeeze, he continued, “Baby, this is Scott and Connie Cuttcombe. You can call them whatever you want.”

That final instruction rang oddly in her ears, but Petra stopped herself from giving Silas a baffled look. Why would I call them anything but mister and missus Cuttcombe?

Settling into the seat across from her, Scott reached out to shake her hand. The sleeve of his shirt pulled back a bit, revealing a slowly swirling cuff of shadow around his wrist — very much like the one that clung to her throat.

“Since last night didn’t count… It’s a pleasure to really meet you, Petra,” Scott said when she forced herself to shake his hand. His smile was crooked. A gentler version of the smirk Silas so often flashed her way. “I’m sorry it isn’t under better circumstances.”

“You saw me last night?” Petra wasn’t sure why that disquieted her, other than the fact that she had no memory of it and was struggling to keep up with all the new information pounding her from all sides. Silas had mentioned his father a few times now, but there was just too much for her to take in all at once for her to really figure out where he fit into everything.

Silas sat in the chair beside her and, sensing her unease, placed a heavy hand on her knee beneath the table. He didn’t even look at her as he began to load up her bowl of chili with a dizzying number of toppings, then slathered a brick-sized piece of cornbread with what looked like honey butter. Even so, that seemingly unconscious touch went a long way to easing the tension in her abdomen.

Releasing her hand, Scott pushed up his glasses and replied, “You two came straight to our house last night, just past three. Not the first time Si has come home unexpectedly needing healing, of course, so I always keep my clinic prepared. Lucky thing, too. You were in a bad way last night.”

Petra sounded dazed to her own ears when she said, “You’re a healer?”

“He is,” Connie replied, chest puffing a bit with pride as she joined them at the table. “A talented one, too. He’s the best healer in the entire county.”

“It helps that there aren’t that many of us in the Neutral Zone,” he quipped. “After the war, there were basically three healers left.”

Connie cast her mate a dark look Petra recognized as belonging to Silas as well. “You hush. It’s not that and you know it.”

Struggling to control her expression, Petra dropped her gaze to her steaming bowl. Silas’s dad is a healer?

Silas, the monster in the night, famous throughout the UTA for his brutality and willingness to take on any job for the right price, was the son of a healer. A being who, as the saying went, was beloved everywhere except a cemetery. A being sworn to protect the sanctity of life. A healer.

Petra hadn’t grown up with healers in the children’s home, but she’d met quite a few in her work. Of course, she was also friends — as much as one could be when she lied through her teeth every day — with the most famous healer in the world, Margot Goode. The sovereign’s consort lived up to every stereotype Petra had ever heard about healers, which was mainly that they were absolutely impossible to hate.

She felt like she was missing something. A piece of the puzzle that would make all of this strangeness make sense. Without it, Petra felt like she just kept walking into one funhouse mirror after another. Everything was distorted and unsettling and not as she expected it to be.

Shaking off his mate’s loving rebuke with a smile, Scott asked, “How’re you feeling?”

Like I’m the insane one, actually. “Fine,” she croaked. Grimacing, she reached for her glass of water and took a large gulp. When her throat didn’t threaten to squeeze her words out all wrong, she tried again. “Thank you for healing me. If there’s anything I can do to repay you?—”

Two appalled noises, one high and one low, came from the other side of the table. Scott rushed to cut her off. “Don’t think of it. I won’t accept anything. Good gravy, you’re part of this?—”

Silas’s low drawl interjected before Scott could finish the sentence. “Petra, you don’t owe anyone anything because there’s no fuckin’ way I was letting you die. I would have dragged you from the underworld myself if you tried it.”

His father gave Silas a paternal look. “Watch it, buddy. Grim’s always listening.”

“Grim can suck my c?—”

“Silas Augustus Cuttcombe, language,” his mother chided.

That was so singularly absurd that Petra actually choked on her laughter. Some of the tension broke.

Silas eventually eased his grip on her leg, but only after she managed to get a few bites of chili down. Conversation wasn’t exactly smooth, but it wasn’t horrible, either. Silas’s parents seemed to be making a huge effort to be both welcoming and also not too pushy with her, which she appreciated, since she still felt like she was walking through some bizarre, upside down reality.

Silas was mostly quiet, his focus split between the meal and the occasional possessive touches he gave her beneath the table. Watching him eat spoonfuls of homemade chili while his mother peppered him with updates on a laundry list of cousins was a bit like seeing a tiger pretending to be a house cat. There he was, an apex predator, content to sit at the table and pretend like he cared that Janie had another baby while he was away, isn’t that nice, and your Papaw will want a visit soon, so don’t you forget.

Petra thought they asked polite questions about her, too, but her head was too full to really remember them after the fact. It was muscle memory at this point, anyway, the stories she told when people asked her about her family, her career.

“My parents passed away when I was young.” How young? She never said. Most people were too uncomfortable to ask for details.

“I joined the Temple when I was a teenager.” Everyone assumed she must have joined immediately after the death of her parents.

“Yes, being High Priestess is stressful, but there are good parts, too.” Platitudes usually followed that one, with plenty of oh I can only imagine’ s and I could never’ s.

Though she couldn’t really recall the specifics of what they asked, Petra did feel like they were dancing around something. Several times one or both of them would begin to say something, but stop themselves or be cut off by Silas. Petra couldn’t quite connect the threads, but assumed whatever it was had to do with the fact that they probably knew she was involved in something unsavory. They might’ve known she’d killed a man, depending on what Silas had shared.

Even if they didn’t, it was odd that they never brought up why she’d been shot, or why Silas brought her to them for healing rather than to a clinic.

Her suspicions were roused when, after his parents finished their bowls, they stood up and began to clean, their body language speaking of some increasing urgency to leave.

“I made you a big pot of chili,” Connie said, speaking softly to Silas as he joined her at the sink. “And there’s heaps of meals in there for you both. Half the clan dropped things off, since you haven’t had time to stock up for— Anyway, you should be all set for a few weeks. If you need anything at all, give me a call and I’ll have your Dad drop it off at the door so you aren’t disturbed. The rest of the clan knows not to come ’round.”

Petra glanced at the silver pot on the cooker and did a double take. It was huge.

Just how long did they think she was going to stay? Does it even matter? Silas could keep her prisoner and it wouldn’t make a difference. She was a fugitive. It wasn’t like she had anywhere safe to go, anyway.

Petra rubbed her eyes. Her head felt heavy, too crammed with every question and unknown for her neck to support it anymore.

Connie paused. Then, in a tone Petra couldn’t pin down, she asked, “Is Tal around, honey?”

Silas took a scrub brush to his bowl. “He knows to stay away for a while.”

A thread of feeling Petra could actually identify entered Connie’s voice: nervousness. “Oh, good. Of course. Of course he knows.”

Tal? Petra’s head really did begin to pound then. Too much. There’s just too much. She barely knew where she was, she had no idea what she was going to do, and now nothing about Silas or what she assumed of his life made a damn lick of sense.

She wanted to hide somewhere for a while, some place cool and dark and quiet, and curl up into a tight little ball until the world stopped spinning.

A gentle hand touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Petra forced her head back up and summoned a smile. “Still recovering, I think. I probably didn’t sleep as much as I should have.”

Scott’s lips thinned. He shot a quick look at his son and mate speaking quietly as they packed up the leftover chili, the lines on his freckled brow deepening. Holding out his hand, he asked, “Can I take a quick look?”

She wasn’t sure why she hesitated to put her hand in his. Scott was a healer and he’d almost certainly saved her life. There was no harm in letting him check her over. And yet something drew her eyes to Silas.

He’d stopped what he was doing and peered over his shoulder. Their eyes met. For a split second, she wondered if she’d sought him out because she worried he’d attack another man for touching her, but dismissed the thought as soon as it manifested.

When he gave her a small, encouraging nod, Petra realized she’d been looking to him for reassurance.

He’s safe, Silas seemed to tell her. I’m here.

A tight ball of fear unwound in her chest, allowing her to once more reach out for Scott. A handshake was one thing, but the idea of letting a man weave his magic inside her made her skin crawl. The memories of what Antonin wanted to do to her, how he’d planned to force her into compliance, made her heart beat erratically.

But Scott was not Antonin. His magic wasn’t searing. His expression was kind and patient. When he used his abilities, a warm rush swept through her. It was a bit like walking into a cozy house after a long day out in the cold.

His inspection only lasted a minute, at most, and when he pulled away, Scott gave her a reassuring smile. “You’re healing up great.”

Petra nearly sagged in her seat. “Thank you. Really.”

“It’s what we do,” he replied. “You’re my son’s— You’re important to him. And even if you weren’t, I swore an oath to heal the sick and injured. So don’t you worry about it.”

She could only nod.

“It’s important that you rest as much as you can this week,” he instructed her, using the gentle but utterly implacable voice all healers seemed to possess. “I can’t stress that enough, Petra. Your wound is healed, but your body was severely weakened in the process. You need nutrients, sleep, and fluids.”

His gaze momentarily dropped to her neck. A confusing protective impulse brought Petra’s fingers up to touch the shadows there.

Yanking his attention back to her face, he continued, “This is damn bad timing, I tell you what. This time of year is hard on all of us even when we weren’t recently shot with molten plasma, let alone when you’re newly?—”

“I’m not gonna hurt her.”

Silas’s energy was a dark, angry buzz along her spine. Petra looked up to find him standing just behind her. Despite the fact that he had locked eyes with his father, who seemed like a soft soul, Silas was once again a predator defending his territory.

Tiger’s back, she thought inanely. A shiver rippled down her spine.

“Never said you would, son.” Scott’s expression didn’t change. He wore a look of paternal concern when he faced off with the glowering demon at her back. “But demons can lose their heads sometimes, especially when it’s so fresh. It’s important to remember that she’s breakable. She needs some recovery time. That’s all.”

“Scott.” Connie’s tone wasn’t quite sharp, but it definitely conveyed the message that she thought he ought to stop while he was ahead.

Glancing between them all, Petra got the sense that they were all having two conversations: one she barely understood and another she didn’t even hear.

Silas slipped a hand under her tangled hair. His palm was warm and a little rough on her nape, the calluses there catching the fine hairs in a way that made a different kind of shudder run through her.

Speaking in that dark, drawling way he did when he was really beginning to get annoyed, Silas told his father, “I’m not gonna hurt her. Not now, not a week from now, not a century from now. She’s mine.”

Petra wasn’t entirely certain where the notion came from, but she was suddenly certain that if Silas hadn’t been speaking to his father, he would have added something along the lines of, “Are we fuckin’ clear?”

He hadn’t exactly been polite otherwise, but compared to how he spoke to just about everyone else, it was downright respectful.

Connie rounded the table. “Of course she’s safe with you, honey,” she said, a little too quickly, as she looped her arm through her mate’s. “You know we just want what’s best for you— and Petra, of course.” She flashed a slightly too-bright smile. “We don’t mean to be a bother about it, you know. This is just new and— and unexpected. A happy surprise.”

When Silas didn’t relax, Petra had to step in, understanding of the multi-layered conversation be damned. “You’re not being a bother.” She cast Silas a reproachful look. “I really appreciate your concern. It’s… Well, it’s nice.”

“We take care of our own,” Connie told her, like it was a fact of life that the sky was blue, Blight was lurking in the dark, and Petra was, apparently, one of their own . For a split second, Connie’s gaze lowered, her attention unconsciously fixed on Petra’s throat, before she hastily redirected her attention to her mate. “Well, this has been such nice supper, but we should get along. I’ve got an early shift tomorrow. Si, honey, if y’need anything at all, you pick up that phone, all right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, eyes glittering with something dangerous but restrained. “Thank you for supper.”

Apparently unbothered by the oddly tense exchange, Scott took a step closer to give his son a wallop on his shoulder. “Make sure she takes those supplements. And if there’s any pain at all, you know I’m here to help at any time.”

That seemed to ease a little bit of Silas’s hostility, but it was a barely discernible change. “Thank you, sir. I will.”

His parents exchanged one last charged glance before they hustled out of the kitchen. Petra watched them go. When the sound of a distant door opening and closing reached her, she swung her gaze around slowly, giving herself ample time to formulate her question.

“Silas,” she murmured, “what the fuck was that?”