Chapter 9

ChapterNine

“What do you mean, you couldn’t find her?” Greed snarled.

He’d taken the advice of his two most trusted advisors, Ivo and Morag, and stayed in the castle. They had claimed it was far too dangerous for him to ride in his current state, and he hated to admit that they were correct. His skin hurt. His muscles ached. His tail was in a sorry state that he genuinely hoped could be fixed.

Riding his mount would have been a painful and arduous process toward what he knew would be a disappointing endeavor. And he knew the beast would fly over the sands.

In his mind, he’d already ridden toward the thief. He’d scooped her up underneath her arms and tossed her over his saddle. She’d scream, of course. The woman was a fighter and she wouldn’t give up without drawing blood. But he’d have her at that point. Slung over his saddle and the back of his mount like a war prize he’d hunted down himself.

Ivo blinked at him. The tall guard at least had the understanding that he’d angered Greed. Of course, he had no idea what the reasoning behind the emotion was.

His sister, on the other hand, had a bit more sense to her. She frowned at Greed with a curious expression, trying to puzzle together why he was so upset over a little human.

Greed pinched the bridge of his nose and reclined back on the silk pillows strewn about his room. Bandages covered his entire body. Too many to count. The healers had seen to him well, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t ready to leap to his feet and hunt that woman down.

They’d popped him back into his private rooms, the luxurious silks covering the floor meant to make it easier on him to heal. He’d thrown countless pillows across the floor to lie upon, and a sunken bed in the corner was where he was meant to rest. Everything was painted in shades of green. The pillows, emerald. The sheets, olive. The walls were even a pale grassy color, although they were hard to see. Everywhere he looked were jungle plants, blooming in bright pinks and violets while covering the walls with their massive green leaves. Monstera plants grew tall over his head and moved in the slight wind from the floor to ceiling windows that were currently standing open.

Ivo shuffled his feet. “She disappeared across the sands. By the time we’d gotten enough of our warriors together—”

“Did I not train you myself?” Greed asked. He lowered his hand to glare into his guard’s eyes. “Did I not give you all the abilities that you required? Hid you? Kept you safe? I have given you far more than any other of my brothers would have, and still you deny me this?”

“We deny you nothing,” Morag replied. “We merely wish for you to understand that the thief is not as easy to find as you might think. Greed, we will find her. We have never failed you before.”

“No, you haven’t,” he grumbled. And there was a good reason for it.

Gesturing to the pillows in front of him, he watched as his two most trusted guards sank onto the cushions. Ivo didn’t move quite like a mortal should. His body had an inherent grace that would give him away to anyone with a pair of working eyes. His movements were so fluid, so smooth, so unnatural.

“I thought I told you to work on that,” Greed said, pointing at Ivo. “You look like a spirit.”

“You move like this.”

“I do. But people expect me to move like that. My brothers included. You are not supposed to exist.” Greed leaned forward, the heat of his power rolling through his body as he said Ivo’s true name. “Loyalty.”

Immediately, Ivo bristled. He sat down hard on the pillows, almost tripping into them. “Is that better?”

“It is.”

Morag hissed out a breath and settled on the pillow just the way a human would. Perfectly awkward and natural in her awareness of her body. “Leave him alone, Greed. You know it’s not as easy for him as it is for you and I.”

“I do, Passion.” He eyed his two guards with a critical gaze before he let out another sigh. “I apologize for snapping. I find myself in a strange situation with this woman. I have never... Desired something so much.”

“Desired?” Morag asked, her eyes seeing everything. “Or wanted?”

“Want, desire, need.” He waved a hand in the air and sank back onto the pillows. Staring up at his emerald painted ceiling, he shook his head. “She would be the most impressive addition to my collection in years. You should have seen her, Passion. All fire and ice and hatred wrapped up in one lovely package.”

“I saw her.”

He sat back up at that, his hair flopping in front of his eyes before he shoved it all back. He stared at her, waiting for Morag to continue with her nonsense before angrily grumbling, “And?”

Morag shrugged. “She looked like any other little human. Her nose was crooked, so I assume she’s broken it before. There was a scar above her right eyebrow and that’s all I could see past the mask she was wearing. Pretty eyes, I suppose.”

He hadn’t noticed the broken nose. He’d thought her nose was rather charming when he’d looked at it.

Frowning, he flicked his gaze to Ivo. “And you?

“I didn’t see her.”

Ah, why had he wasted so much time bringing these two into existence?

Flopping back onto his back, perhaps a tad dramatic, he stared back up at the ceiling. “I will not rest until I have her back. You understand me?”

The two spirits remained staring at him, quiet and confident as always. He hadn’t meant to bring them into this world, not really. The two of them had followed him since the beginning.

They were his friends, he supposed. Neither of them were like him or his brothers. Their emotions were not as complex, nor were they as powerful as Greed or any of the others had been. Likely, they shouldn’t have been gifted bodies at all. But he’d seen them, trailing along behind him and never feeding—because when was he going to feel loyalty or passion—and he just... couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t let them continue on like this when they had attached themselves to him for some stupid reason.

He already knew what his brothers would say. It wasn’t his place to decide which spirits got bodies and which didn’t. In fact, it should have been the entire group’s decision. If they knew that Ivo and Morag were anything other than very strange twins, then they’d likely kill them.

And he didn’t know what happened to spirits if they were killed in their mortal forms. He had a feeling it wasn’t pleasant.

Still. He’d helped them find bodies. He’d poured them into the forms himself, and then he had trained them to be the perfect soldiers. The perfect guards who would never betray him, no matter how many mistakes he made.

Maybe he had been a little greedy in creating them but... well. It was in his nature.

“What do you want us to do?” Morag asked, her eyes flashing with the faintest pink. “I can hunt her down for you if you’d wish. She may fight me, but I doubt she could fight as hard as I.”

“None of us will hurt her,” he grumbled.

“Then I can send another battalion after her if you wish. They lost her tracks after the storm blew through the desert, but there are plenty of towns. We know what she looks like. Do you have her name? I could send the scouts.”

No, he didn’t have her name. That was part of the problem.

His mangled tail flicked. The pain that laced up through his spine helped to focus him on the moment at hand. If he knew her name, this would all be a little easier. Perhaps he could have sent out the scouts, asking for a very specific thief who had stolen from Greed himself. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t argue with them. They’d point fingers immediately.

But right now, all he knew was that there was a thief with blonde hair out there. A woman. That didn’t narrow their search in the slightest, and any scout asking about her would be laughed out of every town and nomadic group in the kingdom.

There were plenty of blonde women here. Plenty of beauties. Plenty of thieves.

Morag’s face appeared above his, her eyes seeing far too much. “You don’t know her name, do you?”

“No,” he growled.

Ivo grabbed onto his sister’s shoulders and shoved her back. “Leave him alone.”

“Ugh, brother. You are meant to be loyal, not blind! He does not know who she is, and has found himself stuck in obsession yet again that will lead us around the kingdom when we should do anything but!”

They argued like siblings, even if they weren’t. Their spirits weren’t even all that similar. Passion and Loyalty had no reason to be in the same room together, at least, Greed certainly didn’t think so.

He sat up again, his tail aching and his ribs screaming in protest at the movement. His two guards squabbled over what was the right decision here, and he couldn’t help but see the spirits inside them again.

This wasn’t why he’d given them bodies. They weren’t supposed to stay the spirits that were inside them. They were supposed to be mortals, people, learning and growing and changing. But he hadn’t even known if that was possible when he’d poured them inside the two children that had died in the womb.

Lust had proven that spirits could change when they were in this form. That they could grow, just as they did outside of bodies like this. But being in a physical form gave them even greater opportunities and abilities to develop. They didn’t have to just be spirits who were one thing or another. They could be many.

And though he thought himself too far gone for any of that, he’d like his guards to experience it.

Holding up his hand for silence, he waited until the two of them settled before looking at him. “I want you to feel this moment. Yes? Both of you are passionate about what you believe. Both of you are loyal to your desires. You are one and the same, with different opinions on how best to go about it.”

They stared at him with blank expressions.

“What I mean to say is that you’re both changing. Growing closer to regular humans every day. This pleases me.”

And there were the blank stares for even longer. They clearly didn’t care if they seemed like humans. They were still in the mindset that they were created for him to point at an enemy and fire. Strangely enough, he’d thought the same thing for a very long time.

Why the change of heart?

He had no idea.

That little woman had wriggled her way under his skin and he wondered if she might stay if he was a better version of himself. Still greedy and desirous of all the things she could give him, but perhaps a little softer around the edges.

Like Lust.

Lust had changed himself almost entirely for his woman and he looked... Happy. Greed hated that he’d seen the way they looked at each other. Now he couldn’t get the sight out of his mind.

He wanted it, he realized. That’s why he had pursued Selene at first, and that was why he’d let her go. Not because he wanted to help his brother, but because he had been so jealous it made his throat close up and his hands curl into fists. Greed didn’t want Lust to have something he didn’t have, and now his brother had the most stunning woman with power unlike anything the brothers had ever seen.

He wanted... that. He wanted his brothers to be jealous he’d found the better woman.

And now, he thought, perhaps he’d found someone who would give him that. He thought perhaps he would bring this woman to his brothers and display her in all his gems and jewels. They would gasp in awe over what she looked like and they would tell him for the first time that they were jealous.

Rubbing his chest, he tried very hard to keep the thoughts to himself. He didn’t want anyone to know what his plan was. Not yet. Not even his most trusted guards.

“Greed?” Ivo asked, his voice hesitant. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He waved a hand and then tried a pained smile. “This woman saved my life. You understand? They had Bonescraper, the blade which almost took my life centuries ago. They knew exactly how to hurt me and they would not stop until I was tortured and beaten. She didn’t have to save my ass, but she did. And now I wish to repay her for that.”

Ah, it was cruel the way he played Ivo. The spirit’s loyalty had never once been in question, but loyalty like what the thief had proven? It was bound to ignite a fire in his guard’s chest. Ivo respected one thing and one thing only. The proof that the person anywhere near Greed was just as loyal as he was, and that meant that he would suddenly be very interested in this thief as well.

Flicking his gaze to Morag, he played with the strings of his other guard’s heart as well. “She was unlike any woman I’ve met before, Morag. Fierce and dangerous. She fought me every step of the way, corrected me when I stepped out of line, told me when she didn’t like what I was doing. There was a fire in her unlike any I’ve seen before. She thieves, yes, but she does it for a reason I cannot understand. I think, perhaps, you could understand it.”

And there it was. Passion. The pink hue in her eyes darkened, the only sign from his second guard that she wasn’t quite what she seemed. The two of them were suddenly much more interested than before.

If he was anyone else, he might have felt a little guilty for manipulating them like this. But he had created them. Given them the breath in their lungs. He had the right to aim them, just as they wanted him to. If that brought them further away from being mortals who made their own decisions, who learned and grew, then so be it.

He would aim these weapons at that little thief and they would drag her kicking and screaming back to his side.

“You can find her,” he told them. “My guards, my friends, who are so much more talented than any of my other scouts or soldiers. You will find her and then you will report back to me. Don’t touch her. Not yet.”

“She’ll never know we’re there,” Morag said. She pressed a fist to her heart. “But we will find her for you, Greed. And then you will have your newest toy.”

His newest toy.

Why did those words sting?

Instead of looking deeper at that, he turned his attention to Ivo, who nodded. “I’ll find her, Greed. No matter the cost.”