Betrayals in Spring (19 page)

He doesn’t let go of my hand or get angry or act like I’m letting him down when I don’t respond. He simply watches me, his face wide open with emotion, the truth of his feelings pouring out of his eyes and into my heart.

“You don’t have to say anything. I know there are the Others and Greer and Pax all fighting for your attention.” He chokes a little on the last word. “But if we die tomorrow…” He gulps a breath, and tears fill my eyes. “I just want to know it’s still the two of us. You and me.”

“But it’s not, Lucas. It’s never going to be the way it was again. No matter how much we wish we could go back there.”

“
We
wish?” Hope lights his blue eyes, lifting the guilt and worry out of the lines around them.

No matter how much I want to make it all better, the looming battle, the fear of upsetting the tenuous balance the three of us managed to achieve tonight won’t let me say the words. I can’t tell Lucas how much hidden parts of me are hoping that one day, it will be the two of us again.

But I can show him.

This time it’s me who crosses the space between us, closes the gap I put there, and presses my lips against his.

Pleasure sighs out of him and wraps around me, and a perfect sense of shelter pulls me tight against him. My free arm slides around Lucas’s neck and his tightens around my waist until our bodies are flush under the moonlight. I lay my head back on his hard bicep and his face covers mine, his hand slipping around to press against my stomach.

There’s no hurry to the kiss, no sense of frenetic need, but it sizzles like none we’ve shared before tonight. My heart pounds wildly as my hands explore the muscles in his back and shoulders, my trailing fingers eliciting delightful gasps. The intense emotion fills me with a thrilling mixture of soft contentment and simmering desire.

This time, I don’t stop him. I’m the one opening my lips against Lucas’s, begging for more, asking him not to halt this perfect moment. The fire blazing through me meets the icy chill of him, playing into a snug warmth that hovers around us. My hands leave his body, wrestle loose the blanket that keeps my body from touching his, and the weight of him offers a new sensation, one I want to feel again and again.

His hand slips underneath my sweatshirt, making me shiver. I copy his movement, sliding my palm up the goose-bumped skin of his side, until we’ve moved enough material that the bare skin of our stomachs press together and we both gasp, our quiet confessions vibrating through our lips.

It’s then that I pull back, as much as I want more. My body needs something my brain doesn’t understand, doesn’t have words for, but hungers for with an innate craving. I fight with my head, which knows that no matter how Lucas can surround me with love and refuge, this isn’t the time or place. The rest of me longs to drag him away into the woods, where no one could see us except perhaps the animals lurking in the night, and follow our bodies down a path they seem to know.

We stare at each other, still pressed tight together, while my heartbeat returns to normal and Lucas’s breath no longer pants against my cheek. My mind clicks back into control, worrying that if I don’t return Lucas’s profession of love that he’ll eventually decide he doesn’t love me after all, or that he shouldn’t.

But I promised myself we wouldn’t let these feelings interfere with the coming fight. As much as I love him, the idea of promising a future after this mess strikes me as tempting fate.

I scoot to the side until we return to our own space, only our hands touching between us. “I’m…sorry. I got carried away. I know I’m the one who said we need to keep things friendly and that was…not.”

It’s hard to apologize for something I’m definitely not sorry happened.

“Oh, on the contrary, that was
very
friendly behavior.” He flashes me his dimple, but the grin doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Don’t do that. Don’t act like it’s okay.”

Lucas reaches over and settles his hand on my hip, his cold lingering. “It’s
going
to be okay. I know it.” He leans forward and kisses the corners of my mouth, then presses his lips against mine until I relax and sigh.

We stay cuddled together under the stars, not speaking. I remember the first night we spent together in my bedroom at the Morgans’, how Lucas’s arms have always given me at least the illusion that they can keep all of the bad things away. The air wrapping around us is a perfect, warm temperature and, after a few minutes, my eyes grow heavy.

Lucas brushes a reluctant, lingering kiss over my cheek, then goes back to his spot on the opposite side of the extinguished fire. The air around me grows too cold immediately, and I wrap the blanket back around me, burrowing against the ground for warmth.

In the dark, I raise my fingers to my mouth, feel the cold intensity of him against me. In spite of all of my fighting, I ignore the terror of disappointment and peek into the future.

Hope against hope that our wish will come true.

CHAPTER 15.

The next morning, I’m the first one awake. I roll over, stretching muscles rolled into tight balls from sleeping on the ground. Greer’s purple eyes are open wide, staring as though she’s sightless and reflecting nothing but abject terror.

Then I scream, and everyone else, including Wolf, struggles frantically to consciousness and to my side. We all stare at Greer.

She makes no attempt to move or to speak, not when we address her or touch her. Just stares.

“I Broke her.” Tears clog my throat. “I Broke her mind. I shouldn’t have gone in there, we don’t understand enough. Why did I think was a good idea?”

“Summer, stop.” Pax grabs me firmly by the shoulders, turns me to face him. It helps, not being able to see her blank expression. “We don’t know anything. Once we find cover somewhere, we can freak out and try to figure out what’s going on, but for now we need to pack up and leave. Quietly.”

He’s right. Screaming out here, with the Wardens so close on both sides, will be the death of us. I don’t know what we’re going to do about Greer. What I do know is that I’m done hiding. Once we locate the Underground Core, I’m never hiding again.

I don’t voice the sentiment to the boys, who will both disagree for safety’s sake. Instead I pull my hair down and run my fingers through the dirt, the benefits of yesterday’s shower long since worn off. “Pax, did you throw any shampoo in the packs? Or toothpaste?” I ask, trying to focus on what I can control.

“Um, toothpaste yes, shampoo no. I threw in a bar of soap, though.”

It’s better than nothing. “I’m going to wash up.”

Leaving Greer brings me both relief and instant concern, not that the boys won’t watch over her or come and get me if anything changes for the worse. I strip and lower myself into the freezing stream, letting the heat inside me flow out and warm the water to a bearable degree. The soap slicks my skin, and my hair hangs in sudsy clumps as my brain tries to untangle my feelings from what needs to be done.

We need to get Deshi. We need to figure out how to help Greer, and maybe Nat and Griffin, if they’re still alive. Maybe the boys think that the Sidhe and especially Nat aren’t our problem, but it doesn’t seem right to pick and choose who we try to steal from the Others’ death grasp. Still, Deshi remains the priority. Getting him will mean the difference between hope and failure.

I finish cleaning myself, getting dressed and then letting my hands warm as I run them through my hair. It’s dry in a couple of minutes, and for once my inherited ability to heat up brings a smile to my face. It does have a few convenient uses, now that I’m comfortable enough to experiment with it.

Lucas trades places with me, heading down to the creek to wash up, and Pax’s eyes light up at my improved appearance. I smile back distractedly, watching Greer stare off into nothing.

I suppose we should be happy she’s not dead or hard to handle. At least this way we can take care of her. Maybe she can even walk. It occurs to me that even though she’s in some kind of weird mental state, her body probably still needs to go through routine functions. “Hey Pax, come here a second.”

He stands up from where he’s packing the blankets in our bags and rounds the remnants of the fire to stand at my side. “Why are you staring at her?”

“Let’s see if we can get her to stand up.”

“You don’t need me for that.” Pax reaches both hands down toward Greer, waving them in her face.

After a minute of befuddled staring, she sticks out her hands. The motion is so jerky that I half expect her limbs to creak as though they’re made out of wood. Pax slides his hands against hers and slowly pulls her up while she unfolds her legs and stumbles upright. When he lets go she sways and threatens to topple over again, so he leaves one strong, tanned arm around her waist.

“Help me walk her a little ways away so she can make waste, okay?”

Lucas hands me a water bottle and some paper we took from the wasteroom at the cabin, then I wind an arm around Greer’s waist and take her weight from Pax. The boys are right about her not weighing anything, but she does lean on me more than a little as the two of us help her a couple minutes into the hills.

I nod at Pax and he slowly lets her go, checking to make sure I’ve got her before heading back toward our fire. “Just whistle when you’re done, or if you need help, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

It takes a long time and near-constant urging to get Greer to eliminate.

When she does make waste, she doesn’t pull up her dress and squat the way I would, but instead pads to the base of a tree in her bare feet and curls her toes into the mud. A few minutes later, spring flowers push up around her toes and circle around her heels, small and weak and most likely unable to survive the frosty spring day.

I fall into a fit of giggles and am actually glad she’s only semiconscious or she would be embarrassed. It’s strange the way I keep expecting all beings to be like me, even though they continually surprise me.

The boys are both clean and ready to leave when Greer and I struggle back to them. She’s supporting more of her own weight now, her step light through the wooded hills, and only needs my hand to steady her once in a while. We find the road again and follow it the direction she pointed yesterday, when she still had wits and life and I hadn’t Broken her.

No. It’s the Others who Broke her. I have to remember that. And find a way to believe it’s the truth.

***

As we travel, the memory from this morning, of the half-Sidhe way of making waste, pushes to the forefront of my mind and I cling to the idea that she might not
be
Breakable, at least not in the human sense. For the first time, I hope Griffin’s right about them being the best and strongest species.

Dark, jagged cliffs rise around us, forming impenetrable walls that force us closer and closer to the road until our cover is nearly gone. If the riders happened by, they would have a hard time missing us, but thankfully it’s not long before we can push back into the brush again. The country here is strange and rough—barren in places, lush in others, and completely uninhabitable most of the way.

The last couple of days warmed up, maybe even into the sixties at midday, but today the temperature sinks. Clouds gather to the west and south, signaling the coming spring storm. In South Dakota, as in Iowa, I suspect we’ve got as good a chance at snow as rain.

It’s late afternoon and the sun is sinking to our right when we find the Underground Core. It rises in front of us and, as Greer promised, it’s not something we could have missed. There are four giant faces carved on the face of a rock.

The sight stops us all cold. Well, except for Greer, who keeps listlessly walking forward until I pull her to a stop.

“What on earth is that?” Pax breathes.

“I don’t know what it used to be, but I’m guess that’s where the Underground Core is now,” Lucas responds.

I grunt my agreement, tugging Greer up from a crouch. “Let’s get closer. It’s going to be dark soon, and we need a better idea of the layout so we can find somewhere to stay.”

It takes us another two hours to get to the mountain itself, but it’s made easier by still-standing road signs here and there pointing us in the right direction. The rock is called Mount Rushmore, and the closer we get the more curious I am as to who the men are and why some humans felt the need to leave their faces on a cliff for all eternity. It frustrates me that we might never find out, so when the signs point us toward an observatory and historical site, I nudge us in that direction.

“Are you sure, Althea? I mean, maybe we shouldn’t get too close until we have time to observe in the daylight.”

“Well, let’s just go check it out. The faces are on a flipping mountain. It’s way bigger than we can check out in a day, so what are the chances the Others are going to notice us, either? We’ll be careful, and if the historical site building is too close to the mountain, we’ll leave.”

“If it is safe, it should give us some shelter. Summer and I stayed in another historical site called Fort Laramie last winter. It had clothes and everything.”