Unstable by Lacey Carter Andersen
6
Emory
We’re sittingin the back of the SUV. Kiera is driving, and she has the location we’re heading toward plugged into the GPS. She says it’s a little over a three-day drive from here, depending on how fast we go and what we run into along the way. I’m hoping the damned Blood Mages gave us enough time to retrieve the relic and head back before we’re all dead, because I would’ve expected Maxen to keep the stupid thing closer. Adam is sitting next to Kiera in the front, and I’m in the back by myself, studying Cole, while Drake sits next to him, pretending the guy doesn’t exist.
I don’t like Cole. Not just because he acts like a dick now, but for a lot of little reasons.
There are a thousand moments from our childhoods when I remember him as a scrawny kid. He’d been thrown into our daily lives as a playmate for Maxen. The thing that always struck me about him was how hard he was to figure out. I never knew if he liked Maxen or hated him. Sometimes Maxen would do something awful, and I’d look at Cole. He was always staring back at me, but I wasn’t sure if he was disgusted, or if he had the same sick obsessions as my half-brother.
Today, he’s just as hard to read as he was then.
I want to believe no one would ever like Maxen or willingly side with him. But Maxen had broken me down as a kid. Had he broken Cole too? Or does Cole just have a black heart?
It’s frustrating that I really have no idea. Especially when this situation involves Kiera. She’d already been through so much at the reform school, and through even more with Maxen. Not that I was much of a help with all of that. I still didn’t regret pretending to side with Maxen to keep her safe. But if I was a different man, a better man, maybe I could’ve figured out a solution that didn’t create a fracture between me and this group of people I care so much for.
“So,” Adam pipes up, turning around with a tired smile. Poor guy, still healing after the hell he went through. Technically, we’re all still healing, but he was definitely the worst of us. “Emory and Cole, you guys know each other?”
A strained silence follows his words.
Drake clears his throat. “I’m guessing they both grew up with his royal assholeness.”
I wait for Cole to answer, curious if I can gauge anything about the man, but he says nothing. After a minute, I answer. “We were sort of Maxen’s playmates. Whether we wanted to be or not.”
Cole glances back at me and those dark, almost black, eyes of his give nothing away.
“Was Maxen nicer as a kid?” Adam asks, a strange hopefulness to his voice.
“No,” Cole and I say at the same time, then he looks away, facing the front of the car once more.
Adam frowns. “So he was actually just rotten to the core? I thought all people had something good inside of them.”
“Not all people,” I say, but I can’t help thinking about myself. Is there anything left that’s good inside of me?
A movement in the forest catches my eye. “Stop!” I shout.
Kiera jerks the car off the road, sending us all bumping around the SUV, and comes to a stop. I pull the door open and race out, heart in my throat. It can’t be. It just can’t.
“Princess!” I shout into the shadowy woods.
For a second I think I’ve actually lost my mind. That no one is there. Or maybe it’s actually some terrible enemy. And then, out of the underbrush, Princess emerges. He looks tired, battered, and filthy, but he’s there.
I kneel down. “Are you okay?”
I’ve been better. He limps a little as he comes up to me, and I surprise myself by picking him up gently. His body is tense as I carry him to Adam.
Adam opens his car door, and his eyes are wide. He races over and hugs us both.
Princess grumbles. What is it with humans and always hugging?
“I can’t believe you’re okay!”
Adam takes him slowly and returns to the car. Princess arranges himself on Adam’s lap, and then Adam carefully shuts the door. I go back into the SUV, and my heart actually aches. I can’t believe how much I wanted Princess to be okay.
So what are we doing now? What trouble are we in?Princess asks, and his voice in my head sounds tired.
“Who the hell said that?” Cole asks, looking around in confusion.
“We have to return the relic Maxen stole from the demons, that allows them to open a portal to their world, back to the demons, or the marks the Blood Mages left on us will slowly kill us,” Kiera says, sounding as tired as Princess.
Okay then, Princess says. Find a relic and survive. For now, sleep.
Adam and Drake relax back into their chairs as if Princess makes more sense than the rest of us, but Cole looks back at me in surprise. “Did that cat just talk into my head?”
I can’t help but grin. “We’re an odd bunch, but you’ll get used to us.”
There’s a spark of something in his eyes. There and gone in an instant. But I swear some small part of him wants to belong with us.
Or maybe, that’s just wishful thinking.
