Ashes (The Divided Kingdom) Read online

  His lips pursed. “Kill for her.”

  She hated the little girl who still lived inside her, who wanted to keep Cade’s good opinion. And, because she hated that, she lifted her chin. “When the situation calls for it.”

  “Fuck, Alana. Just fuck.” He spun around so fast he blurred, and punched the door. The metal concaved where he hit, jackal strength creating a perfect impression of his fist.

  Ana flinched. “It’s war, Cade. There’ve been casualties on both sides.”

  “The burnings. I didn’t even connect it, but that’s you, isn’t it.” It wasn’t even a question. “Liberty’s signature. Liberty’s ‘hand’.” His jaw clenched as he took a step toward her. “But she hit a building today, set it on fire. I know it wasn’t you.”

  The news came as a surprise to her, though it explained why he’d veered away from thinking the rebel leader was her. Trick must have enlisted Maia, their Liberty double when she needed to appear in two places at once.

  Ana arched an eyebrow, trying to disguise her trembling hands by setting them on her hips. “How do other people set things alight? You act as though I own fire; it’seasier if I burn the labs, but anybody can do justice with a match.”.”

  “What you’re doing isn’t justice.”

  “Oh, stuff it, you hypocritical merc.” She stabbed a finger at him. Fire flicked and flipped in hissing circles underneath her skin. “You’re not my father, Cade. He died a long time ago. I killed him—remember?”

  “Fucking grow up, Alana.”

  “Tut tut, you’d better watch that language of yours.”

  “Justice isn’t being a vigilante! It’s not knowing when to kill, it’s knowing when not to. For fuck’s sake, half the people in the Southlands are terrified of Liberty and her crusaders. You’re not winning hearts.”

  “No. We’re winning swords.”

  “Oh, right, you’re simply going to swarm the palace. And get how many killed?” He was ruthless as he stormed all the way over to her. He shoved his face closer to hers. “This isn’t what your parents—what I—taught you. I mean, damn. What does she plan to do when she kills Edward—which won’t be happening by chance, trust me.”

  What does he mean by that?

  Ana’s cheeks sucked in as she bit down on the insides. She would keep calm, while her serene and measured jackal went berserk. His eyes were already shifting shape. “There’ll be peace. People will have food, a home, money—”

  “That’s childish, Alana. How is she going to manage that? Once she kills the ruler, the Treaty have no choice but to kill her. She’ll be made a martyr, and her army will fight for her honor. Allies will be dragged in to fight back. It will be an all-out civil war. Again.”

  Ana blinked, shaking her head. Her teeth gritted, she forced words through them. “No, that’s not—”

  “She hasn’t got the people’s best interests at heart.”

  “She has a plan.” Ana held firm on this. “Someone she can put on the throne.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry, Cade. Until I know I can trust you, that’s need-to-know.”

  He growled at her—actually growled. “You think I’d betray you?”

  Ana picked her next words with care reserved for dealing with children. “I think if you decide Liberty’s your enemy, you’ll take the information to someone you do trust.” Like the Treaty. Even though an assassin represented everything the Treaty stood against, Cade clearly trusted them or he wouldn’t keep offering them up as an option. An insane one, for all the reasons she’d pointed out since he kidnapped her.

  Apparently he’d held on to more honor than he’d let on.

  She had to ask. “If you believe in honor that much, why did you become a merc?”

  His face shut down, exactly like the last time. “Don’t go there, Alana.”

  Her hands flew up to her chest. “Oh, so I have to bare my soul, but you can hide behind that titanium shield of yours?”

  “We’re not discussing this.”

  Her claws cut into her skin as embers at her core sizzled. She hated that domineering, arrogant tone. It hadn’t changed since she was eighteen. “We fucking well are.” Ana made sure to pepper her language with a curse. “You talk about deciding who to kill when you’re an assassin! Who are you to tell me that what I do is wrong?”

  His jackal growled out at her when he spoke. “Okay, we both need to calm down.”

  “You fucking calm down!” She was seeing red, mad at him for not seeing Liberty as a beacon of hope, mad at him for upsetting her beliefs, and mad at him for being so stubbornly sexy despite it all. “What would you have me do, Cade? Leave Liberty behind?”

  “Maybe.” He searched her face, something flickering over his expression. Suspicion?

  “Well, I can’t. I wouldn’t. Too many people depend on her, on me. And we do have a plan, one I will see through.”

  “Is the vampire a part of it?”

  Ana closed up. “No.” Cade might know about her, might eventually suspect the rebel was actually her, but no way was she going to implicate Trick.

  He sent her an infuriated glance, hot enough to singe. “Is she worth this?”

  He didn’t get it. Of course, he didn’t know to whom he was speaking. The rebel had given her an outlet for her energy, a goal, a purpose, a way to shelve the guilt at running from her parents’ murder, her throne, and make a difference. No matter the argument Cade set forth, Ana wouldn’t be turned from Liberty.

  “I’ve been with her since the beginning.” Ana shrugged, irony pulsing through her next words. “I’d die for her.”

  “I want to meet her.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ana slurped up a noodle, dispensing with table manners. Cade sat in sullen silence as he ate his egg noodle and powdered duck dish with an economy that left no action spare. Typical of a brooding man.

  “You’re not even going to talk to me, huh?” She inched her eyebrows up. Belly full and fire building, she sat cross-legged on the bed as he lounged in the chair. Night lent a cool gaze to the bedroom through the window, the shadows offset by three lightstrips arranged on the cheaply plastered walls.

  Cade lifted his gaze to her for a mere second before focusing back in on his meal.

  She’d like to say it didn’t hurt, but the spikes that drilled into her gut disagreed. She pressed forward. “I’m not bringing an assassin to meet Liberty, not when you’re still on Team Edward.”

  “Fuck you, Alana,” he said politely.

  “Ouch.” She sat in silence, poking at noodles and an odd bit of dried duck left in her scratched-metal bowl. “Don’t you think you’re being childish?”

  He closed white teeth over a shredded piece of meat with deliberate disinterest.

  She ground her teeth together until she swore she could taste powder. Fire nibbled the underside of her skin in a caressing hum, comforting her. She could hardly introduce him to Liberty without revealing it was her, and she still had a kernel—okay, a nugget—of doubt where Cade was concerned. Not only was he still under contract with her enemy, he was also obsessed with handing Liberty over to the useless dicks that sat in swivel chairs and called themselves a government.

  Yeah. She hadn’t survived this long by being an idiot.

  “Tell me about Gabriel,” he said into the silence, putting aside his bowl. “How did your group know to rescue him?” He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. Wiry black hair curled across his arms, drawing out the image of the same wiry hair dashed across his chest.

  Filled with the need to fan herself, Ana watched him with the trained eye of a rebellion leader. Maybe with a pinch of trust on her side, he’d give like for like.

  Ana moved her bowl away. “His mother was part of the resistance.”

  Surprise painted stark lines on his face. “Undercover?”

 
; “Not at first,” Ana admitted. “I approached her five years ago to gauge whether she’d be up for the task.” A small smile. “She was.”

  “Five years? Wasn’t that how long you said Liberty had been around?”

  Ana confirmed with a cautious nod. Careful. “Meredith—Gabe’s mother—was our eyes and ears in the palace for a year, until one of Edward’s closest advisors began to suspect her. You must remember him: Jonah. He was at the banquet the night…” She blinked, skipping over the memories before they began to whisper.

  He nodded.

  “When Meredith missed her checkpoints,” she said, continuing. “We made it a priority to find out what had happened.” Bitterness struck with the speed of a viper. “We were too late.”

  “Why didn’t you get Gabriel out then?”

  “We did.” Seeing his confusion, Ana explained. “Edward has spies everywhere; it was only possible for Meredith to check in with us every six months. Maybe not even then. When we hadn’t seen or heard from her in a year, we knew something was up. That’s when we found out about her ‘disappearance’…and Gabe.”

  “He’d already been blinded?” His nostrils flared at her nod. “You’re sure it was Edward who ordered it?”

  She breathed out through her nose, the sound harsh. “Gabe is an empath. He can see through all deceit. He wouldn’t be lying; lies taste disgusting to him.”

  “How did you get him out?” He didn’t press further, seeming to tuck the information away in that file he kept in his brain..

  “Stealth, distraction.” Ana fiddled with one of the iron studs in her ears, thinking back to the night of the blaze. “We’d found the first of his labs, and planned to burn it as a sign of the rebellion. We coordinated to take place on the same night we planned to snatch Gabriel.” Our first employment of Maia.

  “I remember that.” A frown tugged at his eyebrows. So serious, she could lick him. Back in the room. “It worked, obviously.”

  “We have several talents on our team.” Cade assumed a huge army was behind Liberty. Wrong. Her little group was all that stood between Edward and whatever his end goal was, if and when he gained the power of Others. She doubted the Treaty would see an attack coming in time to put up much of a fight. “It went off without a hitch—especially when we planted a bomb in the wing Gabe had been imprisoned in.”

  “Alana, all those innocent people…”

  “Relax—we cleared the area. Nobody was hurt, but it was enough for Edward to believe Gabe was dead.”

  Cade leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “When was the Hotel set up?”

  Too clever. He could suspect.

  “That night,” she admitted. “There were so many from the lab who needed treatment, not to mention Gabe was at a critical level of empathic development. If we hadn’t got there when we did, his brain might’ve exploded from lack of shielding.” Fire hummed in a song of vengeance. Her claws dug into her skin, drawing blood.

  “Don’t do that.” Cade was suddenly next to her on the bed, cupping her palm. He stroked the small cuts she’d made, head bowed over them.

  Ana tried to wet her throat, which had dried up the minute he touched her. “What are you doing?”

  “Apologizing. Hush, I don’t do it well.”

  A laugh strangled in her throat as his lips stroked the sensitive palm with soft kisses. “For…?”

  She could feel his smile against her palm. “Determined to drag it out?”

  “Always.”

  “Hmm.” The amused growl vibrated against her palm.

  He lifted his head so their faces were a breath apart. His eyes were like brands, claiming her soul. Though she fought against the pull, it was like trying to push back a wall of jelly. “Everything I’ve seen says you’re smart enough to make your own decisions, not blindly follow an inept leader. If you say Liberty knows what she’s doing, I believe you.”

  “What’s the catch?” Suspicion lurked around the edges.

  Cade’s thumb brushed the soft skin of the palm he still held hostage. “So suspicious,” he crooned, as if to a baby bird. “A tiny condition. I need to meet her. Need to see how she works.”

  “Uh-uh.” Not this again. “No way.”

  He held fast to the hand she tugged. “Don’t you trust me, Alana?”

  “Can a mermaid do the splits?” She pursed her lips. “You spin too fast for me to keep up. One minute you’re a dishonorable merc, then an honorable jackass. You’re in league with Edward, then you want to meet my leader. You’re mad at me, and then—”

  She broke off with a shaky exhalation as he leaned in and nipped her lip. Determined to finish, she jerked away, scowling. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? Make me reveal Liberty to kill her?”

  He considered that, stroking up her arm in idle passes. Petting her. Soothing her.

  “You don’t,” he admitted. “So take me on a few missions. See me. Know me. Trust me.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You know you wanna.”

  She stifled the laugh, wondering again how he could have gone from brooding to playful so fast. She’d always been so slow at changing her emotions; she found it challenging to keep up. Probably what the ass intended.

  “I don’t know,” she hedged. While her body wanted to shout that she trusted him, her mind, the mind that’d kept her alive, still suspected this of being a tactic.

  “You still don’t trust me.” Irritation flamed in obsidian.

  “To a certain level, I do,” she said. “I wouldn’t have shown you the Hotel if I didn’t.” Trick was going to murder her for that—she imagined Rafe had blabbed about the shifter stranger touring the site when Adelaide’d followed her orders to alert Mikhel. The shadowy informant would get the information to the Hoods quicker than the holo-screen. Trick’d be pissed, yeah, but she knew Cade. He’d always had a thing about bullied kids. “You don’t understand what it’s like to own a secret so big people would literally kill you for it. Until I’m 100 percent sure, my hands are tied.”

  He huffed out a breath, infuriated. “You just parroted everything I said to you. Dammit,” he cursed. “How can I fight myself?”

  Ana shifted so her legs were curled up underneath her, making the bed creak. She rolled her shoulders. “You ever going to tell me why you became a merc?”

  “Salary’s good,” he quipped.

  Ana’s sigh was chiding. “See, you don’t trust me, either.”

  They sat in silence, each caught up in their own webs, each unwilling to let go and trust the other.

  “I have to go out,” Cade announced after a frustrating moment. He settled a stern stare on her. “You gonna be here when I get back?”

  Ana was distracted by the lock of hair that fell forward over his face, and without thinking pushed it over his ear. Her thumb brushed his cheek—prickly—causing him to inhale a sharp breath.

  She moved away immediately, a flush rising to color her cheeks. “Sorry.”

  With a low rumble, Cade snagged her hand, placing it back on his face. “Again.”

  Swallowing, Ana rubbed her thumb over the soft skin, fascinated when she dipped her thumb lower to the rough bristles that snagged her. She brushed her thumb over his lips, jumping in surprise when he sucked it into his mouth. A hot tug in her abdomen responded. Her thighs clenched together as arousal burst through her blood like a firework. Fire roared at the feeling.

  Cade nipped the pad of her thumb, releasing it to sample the delicacy of her wrist. Shivers chased his mouth where it went, lips traveling at a deliberate pace from her wrist to her neck to her jawline.

  Her breathing was unsteady as his tongue traced her stubborn jaw, hands unintentionally gripping his arms as he stroked up her legs.

  “Ana,” he murmured, her nickname intimate on his lips. “Let me in.”

  Lost to the sensual haze that surrounded them like fog,
Ana moved her head, seeking his lips.

  They slipped into each other like a pulsing dream, all wet heat and electricity. Shudders rode her as she was lifted without effort onto his lap, his arms thick with muscle as they rested on her hips.

  Fire surged, leashed by Ana’s slippery grasp on control.

  Their tongues met in an erotic glide, until Ana was sure she could taste the boy she’d once loved. Heat throbbed at the juncture of her legs, and she rubbed it against the bulge barely contained by his trousers. At the contact, she broke the kiss with a strangled noise. Control it.

  His mouth moved to her neck again, nipping. Sucking. He deliberately lifted his hips to rub against her, his heartbeat hammering where their chests were snug against each other. He was hot and musky around her, strong and stubborn, and so damned sexy. He clenched her hips when she ground down on him.

  Her skin grew hotter beneath his fingertips. “Cade…” A warning.

  “Yes.” His voice was a rumble of darkness. “Fuck, yes.”

  He slid one hand from her hip under her tank top, cupping the small globe underneath with a possessive grip.

  “Mmm.” His breath whispered against her, hot and vital. “Lookit what I found.”

  How can he talk? She could barely breathe as she found herself under a sensual attack. Flames circled like vultures, butting up against her skin, demanding freedom. A spark lit her left palm like a bolt of lightning. She shoved it back in, biting her lip at the struggle between control and the pleasure of Cade’s hand on her breast.

  He squeezed teasingly, making her push against him. He returned to her lips with a haggard chuckle. Dominating and determined, he plundered the hot, wet cavern of her mouth.

  It renewed her competitive spirit, urging her to move on him until they were both shuddering. The bed creaked beneath them. Sweat bloomed in a fine line down the nape of her neck. The burn under her skin flamed higher.

  Holding her gaze, he grasped the bare skin beneath her serviceable bra and thumbing the stiff nipple until she wanted to scream.

  “Cade, I swear…” she warned. At a particularly rough squeeze, her head dropped forward, neck no longer able to support it. “If you don’t…I’m going to…”