Raging Rival Hearts by Olivia Wildenstein

Author:Olivia Wildenstein [Wildenstein, Olivia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-16T05:00:00+00:00

22

The Stone

I clawed at the window, banged on it, trying to get the hunter to startle awake. He was wearing jeans and nothing else. His skin, usually dark, was the hue of molten wax. What the hell had happened to him?

Kajika! I screamed into our bond. Kajika!

The hunter was sprawled on stained, crumpled bedsheets. Hunters bled like humans but healed like faeries. His pallor told me he wasn’t healing from whatever wound he’d incurred. Had he been attacked? Had one of the Daneelies returned to finish him off? Pete or Quinn, maybe? I stopped banging on the glass, stopped breathing, and listened for another presence.

If someone was here, they were being exceptionally quiet. I pumped my fingers to fill them with dust and then stared around me for a rock to crack the glass, but then thought better than to shatter a window and invite the brutal chill of autumn.

I loped around the house to the front door and twisted the knob. When it didn’t give, I summoned my fire and heated the lock until it melted, pooling along the grains of wood. I drew the door wide and stepped in, scanning the dark foyer for a sign of life. When no one leaped at me, I headed toward the gaping bedroom door. My boot skidded over the hardwood floor, and I windmilled my arms, catching myself on a chest of drawers that was so rough, a splinter snaked underneath my skin. Smoke leaked from the puncture wound. I hissed as I pinched the tiny stick and flicked it onto the floor where it landed in what had made me slip.

I crouched and sniffed. Blood.

I rushed to Kajika’s side.

Kajika? I palmed his face.

He was as hot as a skillet. Even though the W on the top of his hand still flickered—a sign of life—I hunted his wrist for a pulse. It tickled the tips of my fingertips, but the beats were so sluggish it did little to appease me. Carefully, I probed his chest for the source of blood.

Although his waist was reddened, there was no cut. At least none that I could see. I tried to roll him onto his stomach to have a view of his back when my thumb grazed a lump on the inside of his forearm. A lump that had been patched with thick stitches. Rivulets of blood thinned by a yellowish liquid oozed around the thread, widening the puddle beneath the hunter.

I was no doctor, but whatever had been sewn beneath his skin was infecting his body. I was about to pad out to the kitchen when I spotted a pair of nail clippers on his nightstand, along with the needle and thread that had been used. Anger rammed into me like the dust bull a jouster had long ago created during a Middle-Month celebration.

I would gas whoever did this. Wita pricked my fingertips. I pushed it back as I snatched the nail clippers. Carefully, I snipped the thread and tugged it out. The

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