Defy (37 page)

“
Their ineptitude reflects very poorly on
you,” Angius said with a strike of his cursed sword. “It makes me
once again realize how weak Gabriel is.”

He was right. These Gloresti were all
incompetent. They were making a mockery of everything his lauded
leader stood for. They all deserved—

Realizing what thoughts had nearly run
through his mind, he stepped away from Angius, backing away from a
fight for the first time in his existence. Something wasn’t right.
These weren’t his thoughts.

His head pounded. He had to call for a
retreat.

“
Gerald, however, appears more worthy,”
Angius said. He moved toward Zachariah, not willing to stop. “He
asked me to kill you so that he could have a chance to assume your
role.”

That didn’t make any sense, Zachariah told
himself as his thoughts grew more confused and the pain all but
brought him to his knees. Blood seeped between his lips and he
realized his nose was bleeding. His mind circled around the word
retreat, but it was as if there was a disconnect between his
instincts and his actions.

Gerald wasn’t remotely experienced enough to
assume a command position, he thought. But then, how did Angius
know Gerald’s name if not from contact with him? This was Gerald’s
first visit to the mainland.

Zachariah’s weapon shook in his hand. He no
longer fought Angius. He fought himself.

His gaze shifted to Gerald, where the
Gloresti provided a very impressive display of his fighting
abilities. Several Mercesti fell even as Zachariah watched.
Although he didn’t realize it, his feet drew him closer to the
Gloresti male. One corner of his mind ordered him to go the other
way, but that thought was quickly obliterated.

“
He also told me,” Angius said from right
behind him, “that when he has taken over your position, he will do
whatever he can to bring Gabriel down, too.”

A blinding red haze of rage coated
Zachariah’s mind. The pain in his head was so excruciating that he
couldn’t focus through it. He didn’t fully register what happened
in the next brief span of time.

But he knew when the haze finally cleared
that the majority of the Gloresti now lying dead at his feet had
been killed by his hand.

When he looked up, his head still pounding,
he spotted Angius leaning against a nearby tree. Beside him stood a
number of other Mercesti. Angius grinned. “You are our biggest
achievement thus far. Congratulations…brother.”

As realization hit him, Zachariah was
overcome by a shame and depth of despair so great that death would
have been welcome.

Archigos
Malukali removed her
hands.

Zachariah blinked back to awareness. He
noticed that dark green light continued to flow between them as she
wiped at the tears on her cheeks. He also realized that the black
memories he had just revisited were diminishing. She was doing
something to make them less painful.

While part of him considered telling her not
to, that he couldn’t afford to forget again, the rest of him said
it was better to allow those wounds to heal however they could.

When she collected herself enough to do so,
Malukali turned to Tate’s family. “You can rest assured that
Zachariah didn’t convert willingly. Layla’s attack on his mind was
so—he was forced—”

“We understand, Malukali,” Gabriel said. “You
don’t need to go into more detail.”

She nodded and returned to her position
beside
archigos
Knorbis. The Wymzesti elder put his arm
around her and led her away from the gathering. Zachariah heard her
begin sobbing when they entered the forest. He wasn’t sure what to
think about that. So he turned his attention back to Tate’s
family.

Her mother was crying. So was one of Tate’s
aunts…the one with light green eyes. He couldn’t recall which one
that was. The golden-eyed one rubbed the arm of Tate’s mother.

He turned to look at Tate for the first time
since he interrupted the ceremony. Her face was also streaked with
tears. She didn’t even bother trying to mop them as she stared back
at him.

“Why the hell are you crying?” he demanded,
not liking the odd feeling that the sight of her tears caused him.
“You were not the one who just had your bloody head examined.”

She reached up to touch the side of his face.
“Thank you for doing that, Sparky,” she said just loud enough for
him to hear. Then she leaned up and kissed his cheek.

“If I say you are welcome, will you stop
bloody crying?”

“No,” she said.

Giving up, he ran a hand through his hair and
turned back to her father. “Well?”

Caleb stepped away from the others and
approached. “I know you don’t want sympathy, so I won’t offer it.
What I will offer you is the opportunity to try to pair with Tate
if you’re interested and willing.”

“I damn well did not go through all of that
for nothing,” he said. Then, realizing he should probably say
something more polite, he added, “I am interested and willing.”

Turning to Tate, Caleb brushed a tear from
her cheek. “I trust this makes you happy?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Thank you,
Dad.”

Nodding, Caleb looked again between the two
of them before returning to his position by his wife’s side.

Then Zachariah fully faced Tate. Now that
this moment was actually here, he was left with the realistic fear
that it wouldn’t work. What if all of his Gloresti abilities had
been fully eradicated by the conversion? Would her parents still
allow him to remain with her?

Well, he told himself, the only way to know
was to try.

Tate would never forget what Sparky did to
win the chance to try and pair with her.

She hoped he wouldn’t remember whatever it
was that Malukali channeled. The powerfully intuitive elder had
been impassive at first as she sought the memories she needed. Once
she found them…well, the sounds she made had everyone who witnessed
the display cringing in shock and concern. Tate saw Knorbis shift
agitatedly more than once, as though debating whether to end the
connection to stop whatever his wife experienced along with
Zachariah.

Even that hadn’t been as difficult to endure
as when Malukali started whispering, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,”
over and over again as she wept.

Tate’s own tears had been unstoppable. She
knew whatever terrible violation Sparky had endured was what had
sent him into isolation for all this time. Yet, despite what he had
gone through, he had resurfaced now.

Returning his considering stare, she asked,
“Why did you come, Sparky?”

“You need protect—”

“Lie.”

“Damn it. Do not do that!”

“Then answer me.”

His eyes moved to the small crowd watching
them. She knew he was trying to determine who could possibly hear
them. Although they spoke in low voices, she imagined it wasn’t the
most private conversation in the world. That wasn’t about to stop
her.

“Will it help if I tell you that I’m in love
with you?”

His gaze slowly shifted back to her. He
opened his mouth as though he was going to speak, but she had
apparently rendered him speechless.

She had discussed the subject of love with
him at length during her rambling confessions when he gave her the
tea. She had talked about how much she loved her family and how her
parents felt about each other, and how she really wanted to find a
love like theirs.

“You remember what you felt through me when I
talked about love, Sparky?” she asked quietly. She caught him
glancing at her parents and then back at her. “Well, what you felt
then pales in comparison to what I’ve discovered that I feel for
you.”

They stared at each other. She waited for him
to acknowledge her declaration or at least answer her question
about why he was there. He seemed to be waiting for her to continue
talking. It gradually occurred to her that she wasn’t going to get
any confessions of love or even like from him. He didn’t know what
love really was, and he wasn’t a male known for flowery speech or
compliments of any kind. Why would she have expected anything from
him, really?

“In order to pair with her, you have to
actually touch—” called out one of the Gloresti.

“I bloody well know how to pair with
someone,” Sparky snapped over his shoulder.

Tate sighed when she realized they couldn’t
put off the pairing ceremony any longer to discuss the matter of
her heart. She didn’t argue when he took her right hand and held it
palm-up. A thrill went through her at the contact, making her want
to sigh again over her own foolishness. When he pressed his right
hand on top of hers, he caught her gaze.

Then he spoke the Gloresti vow. “I,
Zachariah, vow to protect and defend you, Tate, to my death, or
until such time as this bond is formally dissolved. Do you accept
my vow?”

She took a deep breath, then issued the
response she had been coached to give. “I, Tate, accept the vow
made by you, Zachariah, with sincerest gratitude.”

He grasped her hand in his as though to hold
her in place. Puzzled, she studied him to figure out what was going
on. He seemed to be waiting for something. The longer they stood
there, the darker his expression became.

And then a searing pain flashed across her
right bicep. She gasped and tensed and would have instinctively
yanked her hand from his if he wasn’t holding her so tight. Then
light flared on Sparky’s right bicep. She understood then that it
had worked.

The marks had been made. The vows were
sealed.

It wasn’t quite the romantic moment she had
dreamed of. Still, she gave him a smile. “You’re stuck with me now,
Sparky. For a while, anyway.”

Everyone moved closer to congratulate them.
Tate was busy looking at the image on her bicep—two deep blue-green
arrows crossed over each other—when she felt herself jerked by her
left arm and pulled. She gasped as Sparky dragged her toward the
forest.

“Sparky, you can’t—”

“I bloody well can.”

She glanced over her shoulder and was
surprised to see no one was coming after them. They all watched her
departure with expressions ranging from curiosity to deep humor,
but none of them appeared concerned. Her mother actually gave her a
thumbs up and mouthed, “Wow!”

When they had walked for several minutes in
silence, he stopped. The forest seemed much quieter than usual as
the noise of their footfalls abruptly silenced. She understood why
he had chosen this spot when she saw Nyx in the shadows just a few
feet away. Uncertain, she stood with her hands clasped and looked
up at him. He just stared at her for a long time.

At last, he spoke.

“I cannot stand the sight of you,” he said,
making her blink in surprise and confusion. “I find you stupid and
weak and a selfish coward. You are so hideous to look upon that it
hurts the eyes. There is no one I think less of than you.”

The words sat between them, hard and awkward,
as she processed them. And then her heart flooded with love and
joy. A wide smile spread across her face.

Every word he said had been a lie.

Seeing she understood, he reached out and
cupped the side of her face. “Listen up, Beautiful, because you
will probably never hear me say things like this again. Why did I
come? I came because you make me remember what I used to be. You
see me in a way I will never see myself again. I have spent the
past two weeks trying to forget you, but I came to realize that I
do not want to. Why would I want to forget the best thing to have
ever entered my life?”

She parted her lips to reply, but her words
were cut off with a kiss.

This kiss was everything their first dream
kiss hadn’t been. This kiss was slow and tender and drugging. It
was caressing and tingling and soft sighs of pleasure. It was the
melding of hearts and the merging of purpose.

It was the sealing of another vow
altogether.

“Did we really just pair our firstborn
daughter with a Mercesti?” Caleb asked Skye as they waited for
Zachariah to tell Tate whatever it was he hadn’t wanted to confess
with an audience.

“Yep,” she said cheerfully. “A very hot one,
I might add.”

He glared at her in warning, which merely
made her laugh. Shaking his head at her, he looked at Gabriel and
James. “How do you think he got through the protections?”

Everyone else moved closer at the question.
Gabriel said, “I have no idea. Especially due to his Mercesti
nature, he shouldn’t have been able to get through.”

“Do you think Eirik somehow used the scroll
piece to gain power?” Clara Kate asked. “If he did, could it have
affected the abilities of the entire class?”

“That would definitely not be possible with
only one piece,” Ini-herit replied.

Although they hadn’t yet found Eirik, the
elders were more concerned about finding the remaining two pieces
of the scroll than they were in finding the Mercesti. Once Ariana
was more recovered from her ordeal, they intended to approach her
about assisting them in the search.

“The protections are largely based on the
power of illusion, right?” Sophia asked. “They compel beings
outside the enchanted area to not detect our homes, no matter how
close they are to them. And the moment a being steps out of the
protected area, he or she immediately forgets where he or she just
was.”

“Unless a mind inside the protections lets
him through,” James concluded. He gave Sophia’s head an
affectionate rub. She grinned at him.

“That is true,” Jabari answered. “Do we think
that Tate allowed Zachariah through? Could she somehow allow other
Mercesti through, as well?”

“Not consciously,” Gabriel said. “None of our
children can grant access. But she’s still bonded to Zachariah from
their exchange of bodily fluids. That bond always exists, no matter
how faint. If the being on the other end of the connection is in
danger, it can resurge.”