Ashes (The Divided Kingdom) Read online

  Fury the likes of which were only accessible to a phoenix blazed through her in a heady column of silver power, igniting the length of her body.

  Cade leaped back, cursing as he released her with singed hands. He might be a Kindred, but her fire was a living thing; it knew how she felt. Kindreds could be burned if a phoenix viewed them as a danger.

  “My parents might not have been the best, but they weren’t taking bribes,” she seethed, viewing him through dancing flames. He burned orange and red, branded a traitor.

  “Huge sums of money were transferred into your parents’ accounts on a monthly basis, going on for more than a year.” A frustrated rumble vibrated his chest, as he twisted to avoid a spurt of flame. “It wasn’t an accusation, Alana, or the Treaty would have made it in public. They wanted a discreet investigation.”

  “So you signed up,” she spat. “You betrayed the people that took you in?”

  “I signed up because I knew it would be nothing,” he retorted. “Have a little faith in me, Alana.”

  Ana’s jaw clenched. “Go to hell, Cade.”

  Her footsteps resonated off the brick walls as she marched away.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bitterness coated Ana’s mouth as day gave way to night, the courtyard at the Hotel shutting down as Adelaide and her helper ushered protesting kids inside the main building. The shouts and squeals soon faded into a humming silence.

  She sat on the front steps of one of the older brick buildings as the darkness settled. Cade’s words coiled around her like chains.

  Was she wrong for not wanting to take up the heavy burden of being a royal? She’d always assumed she’d do more harm than good if she returned. Fires knew, everyone had told her often enough that she’d either have to shape up or ship out. She hadn’t had the drive for ruling that her parents had possessed, or the spine to stand up for her ideas. The other Houses would have used her like a puppet.

  Ana released her sigh like a bird from a cage. To tell the truth, she had no idea how Sebby was getting on. How did the poorest fare in the High Lands with her cousin as ruler—who, despite what she’d insisted to Cade, was a bit of an idiot?

  Her eyes narrowed into slits. Damn Cade anyway. How dare he accuse her of being a coward, when he was the one who’d been lying all this time?

  Except she was, too, a hidden whisper inserted.

  Fighting to keep her anger, she pointed out to that devilish voice that Cade could still betray them. It’d been bad when he’d been linked to Edward; it was ten times worse now he was linked to the Treaty. He could kill the rebellion with no more than a whisper in their ears about Liberty’s identity.

  Then there was his outrageous accusation that her parents had been taking bribes. Fingers drummed against the concrete in agitation. So what if he’d insisted he’d taken the offer because of his belief in them? He’d signed up, betraying the people who’d taken him in. Betraying her.

  Her parents wouldn’t have taken money unless they were exchanging something in return. Bribes, no, payment, yes. They might have sucked as parents when she’d grown out of the acceptable-to-cuddle stage, but they’d been good rulers. All they’d wanted was their territory, and the High Lands had been ample. The Treaty had their heads even further up their asses if they couldn’t see that.

  Despite her valid points, she couldn’t hold on to her anger. It slipped out of her buttery fingers, leaving a sense of betrayal that throbbed like an open sore. Cade was right.

  Ana had never been worried about getting in to the crystal palace; it had always been the getting out.

  There would be no getting out if she took up the crown. Ever.

  Dread wrapped sticky hands around her throat.

  A sound jerked her head up, and she watched Sapphy pick her way across the cobbles toward her. From the front entrance of the main building, Rafe lifted a hand and waved. They must have contacted HQ on their satellite phone to let the Hoods know where she was. Like she was a child.

  Ana tipped her head in acknowledgment as her friend lowered herself next to her, her black-on-black outfit blending into the gloom settling around them. “Trick’s sent out the big guns, huh?”

  “Count yourself lucky,” Sapphy advised, dusting off her hands. “Vander was going to volunteer.”

  Humor flared before plummeting back to the cold earth like a firework. Ana managed a smile, halfhearted at best.

  Sapphy’s sigh was loud in the quiet air. “What’s wrong, Ana?”

  Even though Sapphy acted put-upon, Ana could sense her friend’s concern in the offhand question. Although she and Sapphy weren’t the type to paint each other’s nails and watch romantic comedies on the holo-screen, being women in a gang where the scales tilted toward the ball-scratching gender had bonded the two. The fact that they actually liked each other was a bonus.

  Ana shrugged. Cotton wool surrounded her, disconnected her. Even watching the kids hadn’t helped blow away the cobwebs. “Shade called me a coward.”

  “So you killed him.” Sapphy made an unconcerned gesture. “It happens. I’ll help you bury the body if that’s why you’re stressing.”

  Ana snorted out a laugh, unable to help it. She angled her chin toward Sapphy. The waterfall of hair braided down her friend’s back was once again a deep black. “He might be right.”

  “Hey.” Sapphy’s eyebrows, also dyed, drew together. She pursed her mouth as her legs shifted. “He isn’t. Do you think a coward could have done what you have? Saved all the people here?”

  Ana swallowed, listening to the faint sounds of complaining children. She imagined Gabriel upstairs, brave Gabriel who knew of the future they’d planned around him and had still agreed. He was the brave one: thirteen, and prepared to pick up a crown.

  Ana was twenty-eight.

  The silence hummed as her friend sat beside her.

  “I’m supposed to be somewhere else.” Ana pressed her hands together until the fingers whitened. “I ran because I thought it was for the best. Now it’s returned. It’s dragging me home.”

  “It’s Shade, isn’t it?” Sapphy cleared her throat. “You knew him before all of this, didn’t you?”

  Ana tipped her chin in a nod, staring across the courtyard. “He used to be my bodyguard.”

  “Whoa—why in the seven territories did you need a bodyguard?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What?” At Ana’s closed expression, Sapphy held up her hands. “Fine, backing off, though that story’s being bookmarked.” The breeze blew a loose curl of hair over Sapphy’s face. She embraced the wind, giving away her affinity even if Ana hadn’t already known. “Man, don’t you love wind?” She took a deep inhale. “It gives us breath, guides us, revitalizes and strengthens. Sometimes it pushes us.” She directed a pointed look at Ana. “Except it’s Shade that’s pushing you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Ana turned toward her fully, leaking shades of desperation. “I don’t know if I’m ready, Saph. I don’t know if I’ll ever be. But how can I let others die?”

  A crease marred the delicate beauty’s forehead. “Why—” She broke off at Ana’s shaking head. “Okay, okay, I won’t ask.” She drummed her fingers on the concrete steps, tilting her head. “Your past—the one you and Shade share. Is it dangerous?”

  Thinking of the Houses, Ana nodded, saying with irony, “Oh, yeah.”

  Sapphy’s eyebrow arched in a pointed movement. “Will it kill you?”

  “Maybe.” Ana’s whisper was serious as she flashed through all the times her mother had started a sentence with, A princess cannot… “I was such a disappointment. To others, to myself.”

  “You’re strong now. Hey, it’s not many people who even know vampires still exist, let alone have one wrapped around their pinkie.”

  “I’m telling Trick you said that.”

 
Sapphy ignored her. “Bottom line is: could you stand up to whatever’s in your way?”

  Ana was silent as she turned that over in her mind. She’d been young when she had to make the decision of whether to rule. Young, and faced with a horrifying scene of blood and death.

  She didn’t think she’d made a mistake; she’d never have been able to stand up for her beliefs. She’d never have believed that they were the right ones. So many times she’d been told she wasn’t good enough.

  Now she was a decade older. A general. If she went back—her fingers trembled—could she tell the whispering Houses to fuck themselves? Could she do what she wanted, when she wanted? Could she do good?

  “Yes,” she whispered. Her hands steadied on the solid concrete of the front steps as a flush of dizziness spun through her. “I still don’t know if I should.”

  “We’ve all got shit to deal with.” Sapphy fiddled with a lock of her dyed hair, clearing her throat. “But when we have the courage to face our past, we can improve our future, and the future of others.”

  Ana stared. “You read that somewhere.”

  “I may or may not have watched a screen-article recently about coping with fear.” The fae shrugged defensively. “Vander stuck me in lockdown when you were first taken. I had to do something.”

  When it came, Ana’s smile was genuine, even if her fingers still quivered. The embers at her core were glittering, heating, but not rising. A sign of acceptance. Her hands were bloodless on her knee as she gripped them together. “You’re saying I should go back.”

  “Hey, screw what I think.” Sapphy leaned on her elbows. The night sky was smeared with cloud. “If you think anything can be gained, any lives saved, by facing your past, then the Ana I know wouldn’t hesitate.”

  The words powered her to the gang’s HQ, toward Trick’s quarters, where she found Cade pacing as though his life depended on wearing a pathway into the floorboards.

  She’d had to enter the code, so she knew he knew she was there.

  Trick sat in his chair, reading a novel. Gold eyes flicked to her face, seeming to read it as easily as the book he held in one hand. “Thank the good gods,” he said with a heaping of dryness. He returned to the page. “Take him away before I kill him.”

  Cade’s eyes were tormented fires, his hands balled by his sides. “Alana?”

  She drew in a breath and let it out, queasiness riding her stomach. “Okay,” she said, voice quiet, but firm. She felt Sapphy come up by her shoulder. “Let’s do it.”

  She was going to kill someone.

  Ana clenched her teeth and tried to walk again, unfamiliar with the high heels Sapphy had produced. She wobbled her way across the gang’s inner courtyard, a space twenty feet square and yet still able to stretch for miles when she was strapped into stilts. Leafy plants spilled out of chipped china pots, scattered in an effort to make the square attractive. There was one bench, painted a vivid green, from which all the men were voicing their unwanted opinions.

  “Sway your hips more,” Faer suggested, scratching his right horn. “Women sway their hips.”

  Ana would have shot him a glare if she weren’t afraid she’d overbalance. “I am a woman, you jackass.”

  “Coulda fooled me.” He snorted, laughing as she stumbled.

  “Nah, she’s a woman,” Vander told him. “See the way she fills out that dress?”

  Both cocked their heads. They studied the baby-blue dress that hugged her hips, boosted her cleavage and stretched down the length of her arms.

  Death. Much death.

  “A princess shouldn’t make that gesture,” Trick commented from his seat. He slouched with his ankles crossed, watching the progress with amusement.

  As it happened, her royal heritage had hardly caused a ripple.

  Sapphy’s eyes had rounded, before she’d snapped her fingers and said, “I should’ve guessed runaway royalty!”

  Vander had barked a laugh, insisting she needed to introduce him to all the palace babes.

  Faer had said solemnly that he’d always known she was a royal…pain in the ass. Then submitted to many punches from said royal. He’d then dragged her in for a hug.

  And Trick. Well, he’d embraced her carefully, whispering in her ear, “It changes nothing.” Like she’d always suspected, he’d known since she’d arrived in the Maze that she was the missing phoenix princess. Ear to the ground, that vampire.

  Ana would forgive them the teasing if only because of their unhesitating loyalty. How many people didn’t drill questions at you after a revelation like that? She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said this was her family.

  She stumbled again, throwing up her hands. “I hate this. Why would anyone choose to walk in these things?” Hopping on one foot, she took off one shoe and then the other.

  “They make your butt look smaller?” Vander offered, snorting until one of the shoes hit him in the face.

  Ana smirked, turning to Cade. He’d been businesslike with her since she returned, ordering her into the royal makeover before she could talk to him about why she’d changed her mind.

  The whole operation—the dress, the heels, the idea of being Princess Alana—made her feel like she was going to vomit on Sapphy’s borrowed outfit. Thank the holy fires for her gang’s banter, reminding her how much she’d changed, and Cade’s solid, steady presence as he guided her through.

  He should know. The idea stormed through her with its rightness, flames dancing from her core. The whole truth. And if they could both pick up the shattered pieces created from their mutual lies, maybe, just maybe, there’d be something to build on.

  “I need to talk to Cade,” she announced, cutting into Sapphy’s lecture on encouragement. Four pairs of eyes, not counting Cade’s, snapped to her as she jerked her chin toward the exit.

  His connection to her had also been revealed, something they’d all accepted with complete indifference. He was on their side now, one to protect.

  Picking up on the undercurrent of tension, Sapphy began herding the men out. Their grumbling echoed long after she’d shooed them from the square, leaving Ana and Cade to circle each other like fighters on a timeout.

  He was the one to break the silence. “What did you want to talk about?” His tone was distant, polite. She hated it.

  Ana pulled her lower lip into her mouth. Nibbling, she gestured toward the vacated bench. “Can we…?”

  With a shrug, Cade walked to the bench and sat. He sprawled into its lines, hunter’s eyes defying the relaxed posture. His fingers pinched the air as he slung an arm over the top of the bench.

  Ana perched next to him, gripping the metal with her fingers until they pricked with pain. Her embers smoked as if sensing her dread. “It’s so strange,” she murmured. She didn’t know how to start, so went with the first thought. “Wearing clothes like this.” She fingered the material of the dress, feeling the chill that snaked underneath the hip-hugging skirt. She wiggled bare toes on the concrete floor to center herself.

  “It’ll come back to you.”

  So distant. She chewed the lip she’d already savaged. “Do you honestly think I can do this? Be this?” Despite all her blustering, she counted on his opinion. His had always been the one she’d desired.

  He sat in the night’s gloom, lit by the electric lamp Trick had hooked up to the outside wall. His gaze shifted toward her, melting into midnight. “No doubt in my mind.”

  Ana blew out a breath. “There’re a thousand in mine.”

  “Why did you come back?” There was that carefully neutral voice, again.

  Ana swung her legs to and fro. Flames crackled in electric lines from her core. “I went to the Hotel. The kids…they strengthen me. I spoke to Sapphy.” She reached up to finger the iron studs in her left ear, ignoring the sting as she touched the poisonous metal. The skin around the studs had long ago numbed. “
She reminded me that if I can save lives, I should.”

  “So, I tell you and I get burned, despite my Kindred biology. Sapphy speaks, and it makes you see the light?” His voice was dryer than the Southern Territories.

  She narrowed her eyes in warning. “Being a Kindred doesn’t protect you all the time. What you said…”

  “I don’t know why your parents had that money, but I never—” he started, but she hushed him by raising a hand.

  “It doesn’t matter. I know you were as much a part of that framework as me. I know you’d never have done anything to hurt them.”

  A beat. “Okay?”

  She ignored his surprise, plunging ahead. “I came back because I knew you were right.”

  “Alert the masses.”

  “Shut up,” she told him. Still staring at the floor. Fire crawled in inching steps up her belly. “Even if I’m not sure I’ll do well, I’ve got responsibilities. It’s time to own that.”

  “I’m proud of you, Alana.”

  Sweet words made tears sting; she knew they wouldn’t be what he was saying in a minute. “You reminded me that I’ve always wanted to do the right thing for others. It’s why I joined the Hoods. It’s why I used the skills you taught me to help people, why I—why we opened the Hotel.” Oh, fuck. She felt sick. Inhaling a shaky breath, she forced herself to meet his eyes. “It’s why I became Liberty.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I know.”

  Cade had to admit, there was a small place inside him that was amused at the way Alana’s eyes rounded, eyebrows lifting until they almost zoomed off her head.

  She spluttered, fingers twisting on her lap. “You know?”

  Cade pushed a hand through his hair, settling it on his neck. A shrug rippled through him. “I’ve known for a while.”

  “Since when? Why didn’t you say something?” She made a few unintelligible noises. “And how?”

  “Little things.” Cade ran his teeth over his bottom lip, remembering his doubts and the dozens of hints she’d dropped. “Trick’s loyalty had to have sprung from a place of deep emotion; I’ve seen how he is with you.” His jackal grumbled at the reminder. “Things he said that prompted memories of things you said. The fact that you came here to save people. How Liberty started around the time you finished your training with Trick. You set up the Hotel. Your loyalty to her. The fact that Liberty’s signature is fire.”