Ashes (The Divided Kingdom) Read online

  Musing, she threw him a bone. “Fine. You caught me, Officer. I command a gutter gang.”

  “You steal for a living?” Disgust coated the words.

  She arched an eyebrow. “You kill.”

  “Well, I’ve always been a bad seed.”

  He launched forward, surprising her into lashing out with the dagger. Fabric rent in two as his hand grabbed her tank top, yanking her down. She fell heavily, using the momentum to flip over. Her back to him, she whipped her head, smiling when something cracked. A vicious curse exploded from him.

  His hands caught her elbows. She brought them in closer to her body, using his hold to propel herself upward, and shoved her feet into his knees.

  They both stumbled, Ana crashing on top of him. Pain flashed through her as her dagger sliced her own arm. She drove her elbow into his stomach and flipped upward, ignoring the sting.

  She swung around to threaten Shade’s belly as he streaked up behind her.

  Both breathing heavily, they froze in that tableau as his retrieved dagger poised by her throat. Again.

  Ana eyed the weapon. “Standoff.”

  “Looks like.”

  She adjusted her weight. “Well, you could let me go.”

  “Or you could let me go.”

  “And you would…?”

  A slow, wicked grin curled his lips. “Interrogate you.”

  Ana swallowed at that dark-chocolate tone. Fire stroked a teasing hand along the underside of her skin. “I’m not Liberty.” Lying through her teeth.

  He bent his head toward her as his chest rumbled with an animal chuckle. “Pet, if that wasn’t Liberty, I’d be worried to meet her.”

  “Pray you never will.”

  “I’m not a man who prays.”

  Ana fixed her eyes on his, ones of solid black behind a mask. “Then what are you?”

  “A predator.” He tossed aside his blade at the same moment his mouth covered hers.

  Her dagger sank into his belly as he moved into her. A strangled gasp escaped, she wasn’t sure from whom. A tremor rolled through her like a wave.

  He cupped her face with hands as rough as his mouth. Forcing her lips open, he took control, his tongue plunging where, fires help her, she welcomed him.

  Back in the room, Ana.

  Trick’s training roared inside her head, keeping her alert, as she shoved her dagger deeper into his stomach. Though his breath hitched, he tightened his hands around her jaw, serious strength indicated in the powerful hold. The swipes Shade was making with his tongue became lazy swirls designed to make a woman shiver.

  Stay focused. She twisted the hilt, relieved when his kiss paused. A pained grunt slipped from his lips.

  The calluses on his fingers stroked roughly over her skin as he dipped to her mouth again, smoothing downward as he did something with his tongue that made her breath stutter.

  She’d never been this overwhelmed. She could lose this fight, an impossible possibility. She should…

  Her brain quit thinking as his teeth angled around her bottom lip and bit down.

  Her dagger hit the floor soundlessly. She met Shade’s tongue with ferocity, could barely think as they slipped and slid over each other. Trembles began, his kiss igniting the heat that lived within her. She bit his tongue, then sucked on it, delighting in the way his hand gripped her, the growl that poured into her mouth like the most expensive champagne.

  Her stomach tightened in a painful rush and wetness gathered between her legs, though not enough to dampen the wall of flame that’d exploded from the embers that sparked every phoenix’s fire. It battered against her skin, wanting out.

  She had an agonizing urge to rub her chest against his, friction what she wanted, delicious friction.

  When he paused, she hissed. Sensation had caught her in its silken web, trapped her in threads that singed. Trick’s voice had been buried, along with her common sense.

  The silk of his mask rubbed her nose in a teasing touch. It made shivers dance like tiny butterflies down her spine.

  He leaned in to nip at her bottom lip again, then sank his teeth deep. She whimpered, surprising herself.

  Strong hands manacled her wrists. “Sorry, pet.” His voice was ragged. His eyes were an endless blaze of black. “But it’s the job.”

  Clarification dawned after the handcuffs had snapped shut over her wrists.

  Rage, born of humiliation, flooded through her in a rush of intense heat.

  “You bastard.” Her hands erupted into vivid flames.

  He jerked back with a shout. “What the hell?”

  Ana whipped her legs up in the air and smacked her biker boots into his deceptive head. A sickening crunch sounded as he flew across the room. His head slammed into the arm of her plas-leather chair.

  She stalked over, predator to prey. “I’m going to enjoy killing you.” Color flushed her cheeks. Her hand was a torch, like her namesake, locked in front of her as she prepared to give him the Ana special: roast and toast.

  She glimpsed enough of his features to see the wide O his mouth formed. “Alana?”

  Ana’s flames blinked out with the suddenness of death. Ice trailed fingers over her stomach as it quivered.

  No.

  “Princess Alana?” he repeated, shock coloring his voice. There was something else, some note that teased along paths gouged by memory.

  No. It can’t be.

  Ana shifted, cutting through the mask with her claws. It fluttered in half to the floor, a black flag of surrender.

  She held silence, taking in the sharp cheekbones and defined jaw she’d spotted earlier. She noted the sullen mouth, pale skin. And suffered a stroke of pure pain. Cade. The bodyguard she’d once adored.

  First love.

  First rejection.

  “Alana,” he said for the third time.

  Pain bottled for ten years threatened to detonate, betrayal and hurt a jagged blade across her finer senses. But even she couldn’t kill her first love.

  Despising the weakness, Ana sneered at him. “Cade.”

  She lashed out with a fist.

  Chapter Three

  “So, I might have been a teensy bit rash.” Ana strolled into Trick’s chambers, a false smile curving her mouth. She was still shaken, feeling every step as though on stilts.

  Cade. It was Cade.

  A flame slammed against her skin, a flicker of orange around her fingertips before she could control it.

  Trick appeared in the doorway of his bedchamber, eyes bleary, dark hair in tangles. A pillow crease marked the left side of his face. “What’re you doing here, Ana?” His voice was low, roughened from sleep.

  “Yeah, sorry about waking you.” Ana strode to her usual chair, sliding into it with tense shoulders. “It’s important.”

  “Okay, sure.” He rubbed elegant hands over his face, blinking. “I’m listening.”

  Ana huffed a laugh as he sprawled in a chair across from her. “You’re half-asleep.”

  “I’m listening,” he insisted, through a yawn that showcased his fangs.

  “Okay.” If he isn’t, he will be. She upped her smile by two degrees. “You know how to pick locks, right?” She jiggled her manacled wrists. The metal gave a bright jangle.

  He zeroed in on them, one eyebrow arching slow enough she knew dirty thoughts were flitting through his head. The corner of his mouth twitched.

  Ana kicked out at him. “Stop laughing.”

  “I’m not.” He touched his tongue to one fang, suppressing the smile. “New lover?”

  “No.” The memory of Cade’s kiss shivered through her system, enticing fire into shimmering swirls that stroked the inside of her skin.

  Cade.

  A criminal.

  By the holy fires, who’d have predicted that?

  S
he recalled Cade’s lectures whenever she’d suggest something mischievous. Half of the time, it had been to provoke, the other half to get him to notice her. If she’d only known what he’d become.

  Still, part of her couldn’t believe it. That streak of honor had been ingrained. She remembered once her personal maid, Lei, had been getting hassled by one of the lower footmen. Before the day was done, Cade had had him strung up on the flagpole by his braces, a sign hung around his neck reading Dicks should be castrated. Nobody had been able to prove who’d done it—and the footman hadn’t snitched—but Ana had known it’d been Cade. If she’d ever seen any prejudice around the castle, he’d been the one to go to.

  Her parents had believed in an elegant court, old-fashioned enough to insist on valets and maids, gowns and carriages. They wouldn’t have cared for a maid’s trouble.

  But Cade had.

  “Ah.” Trick returned her attention to the present as though through a narrow tunnel. “Solo experimentation?”

  It took a glazed second before it clicked. Cuffs. He meant the handcuffs.

  Ana brushed off the cobwebs that clung from the memories. Back in the fucking room. “You’re sick, vampire.”

  “Hey, I don’t judge.”

  “Probably because you’ve done all and everything,” she muttered. “Pick the damn locks.”

  He tutted as he rose, going in search of his tools. Items clinked and thumped as he rummaged in an armoire’s drawer. “How did you get into handcuffs?”

  Extracting the pouch he kept his tools in, Trick ambled over to where she sat. Crouching, he took one of her wrists in gentle hands, eyebrows knitted as he inserted the small lock picks with precision.

  He was going to hit the fucking ceiling.

  Ana sighed. “Shade.”

  Trick’s hand jerked, the picks scratching across metal with a shriek of protest. “What?”

  “He was waiting for me at home.”

  Trick rocketed up, baring his fangs in a hiss. “I told you it was a bad idea to separate from the gang.”

  “I know.”

  His arms slammed down on the arms of her chair, caging her as he leaned in. “No, or you wouldn’t have got the place. What did I say when you left?” He overrode her answer. “I told you it would end badly.”

  Annoyance whipped up inside her, flames unfurling from their sensual slouch. Whispering to her, they began to lick at her skin. The difference between now and eighteen, though, was that now she could contain it. Lucky for Trick. “I can handle myself.”

  “Clearly.” His laugh was a sharp bark as he surged away.

  “He caught me off guard, all right?” She shifted, feeling like she was on the receiving end of a lecture.

  “What the hell did I train you for except to check?” Trick snarled. “You’re in a fucking mess now, though, aren’t you?” He folded his arms. His eyes glittered like gold coins. “Did he make you as Liberty?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Shit, what if Cade tells?

  Edward would know his old fiancée Princess Alana was alive. As would everybody else. There would be questions surrounding her hasty departure, trials maybe. The other Phoenix Houses would kill to know; they might kill her to make sure Sebby stayed governor. There had always been a fierce rivalry between the four Houses. Competition could get bloody, and phoenixes had never balked at assassination. One reason why she’d remained hidden, even after they’d appointed Sebby governor.

  A word so blue it was almost violet snapped from her. That’s what sentimentality got you: a knife in the back. Love was weakness. How many times must she be kicked in the teeth to realize that?

  She should have killed Cade instead of leaving him chained to her bed. A taunt at best. Being a jackal shifter, Cade’s strength beat her ancient headboard hands down.

  “Maybe,” she answered Trick’s question. “He didn’t seem to know what to believe.”

  “I should have kept you here,” he said. “I knew if I let you go, nothing good would come of it.”

  Ana jackknifed up, jarring her injured arm. “Let me? Nobody lets me do anything.”

  “No, you’re a big girl, now, aren’t you?” he sneered. “Making your own big messes.”

  “If I am, who asked you to comment?”

  “If you don’t want my opinion, then you shouldn’t have come here,” he countered, getting in her face.

  “Maybe next time I won’t!”

  “Oh, grow up, Ana.” Trick shook his head. His hands were balled by his sides, posture ridiculously rigid, like a ruler. “This is serious.”

  “You don’t think I know that?”

  “I think you’ve made a mistake, and you’ve come running straight to Daddy to clean it up.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Well, screw you, Trick. You’re not my daddy or my keeper.”

  “You’re damn right,” he shouted. “I’m a vampire. I don’t need this shit.”

  “Fine!” she screamed.

  Temper burning hot, the leap and dance of flames singeing her skin until she could feel her eyes literally shimmer, Ana twisted on her heel and stamped to the door. She slammed the round red button that controlled the door, but before she could exit, a strong arm wrapped around her waist and hauled her backward. Trick hit the button again, halting its opening action and commanding it closed.

  When she was thrown into her chair, Ana sprang up, going for Trick’s face with her claws. The flames were sizzling, warning as they snapped like serpents, attempting to unleash through her skin.

  She held them back despite her anger, not mad enough to seriously hurt the vampire she usually thought of as a brother.

  He hissed at her, hands warding her off. “Calm the fuck down.”

  “You calm the fuck down,” she retorted, knowing he was right even as she argued. At this flashpoint, she could do some serious damage if she touched anyone. It was why she tried to control her emotions, why she had few lovers—and those episodes had been subpar at best. When you had to monitor flames pouring from your body, it was challenging to find a man willing to be barbecued. Only other phoenixes or the rare Kindreds could handle it. And fires above, did she not want a Kindred. Kindreds were men or women who were biologically able to take the heat of a phoenix’s flames in a sexual context and filter them. It was also incredibly intimate, and intimacy was a no-go in Ana’s life. She’d settle for subpar sex or none, thank you very much.

  She tightened her jaw. Cade had returned to her life for two hours and already she’d lost control. No.

  Ignoring Trick, she began soothing the flames to a low-grade burn.

  When they were once again a whisper, Ana knocked her biker boots’ heels together. Sulking, she slapped at Trick’s hands when he went to pick up her cuffed wrists. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t be pissy.” He tugged her to her chair. “Sit.”

  She sank down, holding out her wrists with enough reluctance she could have been fifteen again and attending her coming-out party. She watched as he attacked the lock with his picks. “You’re such a shit sometimes.”

  “Whereas you’re sweetness personified.” The cuffs fell away.

  She rubbed her wrists, muttering a common phoenix insult. “Ash-heap.”

  “I’m cut to the quick.” He retreated to stand, hands linked behind his back. Except for the disheveled hair and the pillow crease, he was the epitome of an elegant vampire. He leveled knowing eyes on her face. “You want to explain the overreaction?”

  Ana knew he meant her lack of control. Nerves rubbed raw, first from Cade, then Trick, she felt as much like telling Trick about her emotional overload as she wanted to peel the skin off her bones. So she said nothing.

  As he studied her, she could hear Joel and Faer gossiping like two old grandmothers in the tunnel that ran between Trick’s quarters and the kitchen and common area.
Her name and Trick’s featured. Embarrassment painted itself in lavish shades of red across her cheeks.

  Whether Trick saw or not, boiling gold simmered down to a placid citrine. He inclined his head. “Okay. Then I want to know what went down between you and Shade.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ana.” Trick lost his temper, eyes shimmering as fast as a finger snap.

  “Fine, fine, fine.” Needing something to do with her hands, she bent forward to pick a leather-bound book from the Persian rug. Her fingers stroked the spine in idle passes. “He surprised me with a dagger to my throat.”

  “And?”

  She let her shoulders ride a wave, up and down, placing the book on the circular end table parallel to her chair. “And we talked.”

  “You talked. You had yourselves a chat?” Ana could hear the skepticism. “About?”

  “Whether or not I worked for, or was, Liberty. I was distracting him,” she insisted, throwing an arm out. Her lips twisted in a wince as a bolt of pain streaked from her upper arm to her brain. She’d forgotten about her own fool dagger slicing her upper arm, the shock of the past stabbing through to rule her thoughts. The blood had crusted over in the time she’d taken to retreat to HQ, the skin stretched taut.

  At her wince, Trick pulled her upward. “Hold still,” he ordered. One cool hand grazed the injury. “I’ll get a bandage.”

  “You don’t have to bandage my arm.”

  He bared his fangs.

  “Fine, fine, fine.”

  She held her lips closed as he retrieved a kit from the flat top of a bookcase. He plucked from it a tub of antibac that smelled like it’d expired in the Kingdom Wars. Rotting fish. Pleasant. If the human advancements in medicine had been compatible with her physiology, healing would have been a lot faster and a lot less smelly. Sadly, with Others, it was either antibac or nothing.

  When she made to move, Trick’s eyes narrowed dangerously into slits.

  She stayed put.

  The brutal sensation of ice trailed over the muscle Trick touched, burning as the healing gum spread and thickened to a crusty paste. “Fuck.”