Bitter Brambles (The Ivy Institute #2)

Chapter 5

brIAR

U nfortunately for me, getting lost when all I have to do is walk down three flights of stairs is nearly impossible, even for someone as directionally challenged as me. I linger in the stairwell, all the bravado I felt in the tavern long gone. I just want to sleep, ideally behind a locked door, but I have no hope of that, so maybe under a bed or something would be good.

When my eyelids feel too heavy to remain open, I grudgingly take the last few steps across the hall and pry open the door to the dregs. The room is dimmer than it was when I entered earlier, which might be my first clue as to the time of day. Most of the beds have lumps under blankets that seem far too thin to actually keep anyone warm. I chance walking deeper into the room, hoping no one will notice that I don’t belong. The back wall finally comes into view, and I decide the far left corner is my destination. There’s a little alcove similar to the one near the entrance. I just hope someone else hasn’t already claimed that one too. I’ll worry about finding a safer place when I don’t feel the need to hold my eyelids open.

The soft sound of heavy breathing nearly makes me stop in my tracks. I know that sound. I make those sounds when Ziv is touching me. I slam a curtain on all thoughts of him in my head. I wish I could put him behind something heavier, like a steel door, but the truth is, neither male is ever far from my thoughts.

I hold my breath as I walk past the bunk with the occupied couple, making sure not to look down and invade their privacy, but I realize my mistake when a palm wraps around my lower knee, locking me in place.

The female’s sighs of pleasure never cease, nor does the steady sound of flesh against flesh. I’m so caught off guard by the sudden touch, I don’t even resist or try to escape. Instead, I look down and meet the eyes of a male with fiery red hair and brown eyes that would be more at home on the face of a predator.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demands.

He isn’t even breathing that hard. “I’m about to come.” The female is oblivious to my presence, much like I was hoping he would be.

I finally get the brains to jerk my leg away from him, earning myself some nasty scratches from his nails in the process. “Passing by,” I mutter before stalking over to the corner.

“Hawk?” The female finally seems to be catching on that there’s something else going on other than him fucking her.

I put my back to the wall and slide down until my ass hits the cold hard ground. Unfortunately for me, Hawk still has an uninterrupted view of me and I of him. His yellowish eyes never stray from my face, not even when he says, “Shut up,” and clasps his hand with my blood under his nails over the female’s mouth to make sure she can’t speak. It doesn’t stop her moans though. If anything, they get louder while he picks up his pace, thrashing against her so hard I’m half expecting the bunk to start moving.

I try like hell to pretend I don’t know he’s staring at me, but it’s impossible. It feels like he’s burning a hole in the side of my face. Eventually, I brace myself for his intrusive stare, then I turn to stare right back into his dead eyes.

The taste of bile creeps up my throat. Looking into his eyes while he’s fucking someone feels far too intimate, even when he’s watching me as if he’s contemplating how to slit my throat. I let my lip curl up in disgust and wait for the moment he’s done with her, because I know he’ll come for me right after.

Today may be a good day to die. At least I’m not starving anymore.

KAGE

“If you kill anyone else, they will put you down,” Ziv snarls after slamming the door to my creature’s room behind him. The walls rattle with his pent-up rage.

“No, they won’t,” I argue without any conviction. Truth is, I’m beyond the point of caring. I’m willing to try anything if it will get me the fuck out of the Ivy so I can go find Briar.

“Yes, they will, and if they don’t, I will.” He stalks toward me, but that dog lost his bite weeks ago when I realized he’s nothing but a puppet for the other gods. He hasn’t done anything to find my creature.

“Now you want to do something?” I question with disdain.

“Fuck you, demon,” he snarls in my face. He’s close enough that all I would have to do is move my face an inch or two, and I could kill him for breathing on me. He must see the thought gleam in my eyes, because he leans back abruptly and grabs my shoulder to shake me. The fact that he’s so willing to touch me, even over clothing, proves I’m not the only one with a death wish.

“Wake the fuck up!” He gives me a final shove, and I stumble backward but catch myself before falling on her bed.

“I’m wide the fuck awake, fallen.”

“Then quit with this suicidal bullshit. Briar needs us.”

“Needs us?” I laugh darkly. “She needed us when you let her get taken by that bitch. For all we know, she’s already dead!” I scream, and my limbs start to dissolve into shadow. It’s like I’m a kid again, having a hard time controlling my ability to stay corporeal.

He’s on me before I can even blink. My head snaps back with the force of his fist, and pain explodes over my nose. All the noise in my head quiets for the first time in weeks, and I actually feel a sense of peace. The next blow hits my cheek. I actually hear the bones crack, and blood pools in my mouth. It’s bliss.

The physical pain gives me something else to feel other than the anguish that never seems to end. “She’s dead.” I don’t mean those words, but there are times when I wish I did. Thinking she’s gone and I would get to see her again someday, even in the netherworld, is better than thinking about what could be happening to her every day while I do nothing.

“Shut the fuck up!” he bellows as he hits me again, this time in my stomach. I double over with the force, blood flying from my mouth, and a breathy laugh escapes me.

Ziv takes a step back, and I become serious. I don’t want him to stop. I need to feel pain so I don’t feel anything else. “She’s?—”

“Don’t bother.” His lips are sneered in disgust as he interrupts me. “I’m not going to kill you. If you really were a demon, you would know hell is far worse than this. Besides, she needs us, and as long as that is true, I will drag you through this fucking life by your fingernails if I have to.”

“Fuck you,” I grumble, wishing I could put more feeling behind it.

“Yeah, fuck me and fuck you, fuck everyone, but this bullshit of yours, trying to get yourself killed, stops now.” Ziv rips a glove off his hand and tosses it to the floor. He had the forethought to put it on before pummeling me so he wouldn’t die while I was begging for it. I’m weak.

Maybe that’s why I will never be able to touch Briar. I don’t deserve to.

“Go clean yourself up and get your head straight. I have news, and I’m not telling you when you have a noose around your neck.”

“There’s nothing on my neck,” I snap.

“Not physically.” His comeback is quick… and honest. It pisses me off. At least that’s an emotion I know how to deal with.

I spit a mouthful of blood on the floor before doing what I’m told. I doubt I’ll get my head straight, but I can wash the blood off my face.

“You’ll be cleaning that up.”

I flip the fallen off over my shoulder.

“If you want to know what I have to say, you’ll clean that shit up.” His voice is an octave deeper. I know he’s not fucking around, and I also know I’ll clean it up because I need to know what news he has.

ZIV

As pissed as I am at Kage, I’m madder at myself. What he said is true. I let Briar get taken from us. I should have protected her better. Hell, it’s my fault they took her in the first place. I should have known they wouldn’t let me be, even when I fell to get the fuck away from them.

I pretend to be occupied with something out the window while I listen to Kage return and his quick clean up of Briar’s floor. Seeing the blood here, even knowing it isn’t hers, is too much for me to handle.

“What news?” he asks after only a few seconds.

I turn to face him, not bothering to look at the floor where the mess was. “I know where Briar is.”

“Fucking finally. Let’s go get her.” He takes a step toward the door, as if it’s that simple. I debated whether or not I should even tell him, but I knew keeping it from him was wrong. He has just as much right to know as I do.

“Kage.” I lift my hand to hold him back. “We can’t.”

“Why the hell not?” He looks me up and down, not hiding the scorn in his gaze.

“If we do anything now, we’ll risk her life or our bond.”

“Our bond?”

Clearly, he doesn’t know the power the Fates possess. Not many do. The few times the Fates have severed the tethers of mates, it resulted in death. My fear is we would all survive, if for no other reason than to be tormented by the loss. “What they give, they can also take.”

“Bullshit!” he scoffs.

“What else do you think could keep me from her?” I question, allowing my own anger to seep into my voice. “Do you really think I would fear the gods for any other reason other than losing her?”

“They can kill you,” he surmises falsely.

“Can they?” The truth is, I don’t even know the answer to that question. Is it possible for them to end my life? Yes. Would they risk it and in turn allow someone else to know their weaknesses? I doubt it. Would they be happy to torture me for all eternity and allow me to suffer until the end of time? Yes. Most of them would do it happily. To them, I’m a traitor, someone that knows their secrets, and a liability that can hurt them. Worse yet, they are incapable of understanding how I could forsake my godhood. They can’t see past their need for power and adoration. I couldn’t either, until I felt nothing at all.

I didn’t care what I could be losing in the transition. I just couldn’t go on another day the way I was. When I fell, it hurt. It was like nothing I could have imagined, as if my soul was being pulled apart before piecing itself back together in a way that left me feeling raw and ragged, but it at least allowed me to feel something. Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized that was what I was missing. It took me years to recover. In that time, I slept in a way that the gods aren’t capable of. I dreamed, and my soul lost its ragged edges. Looking back, I think it was the first time I ever envisioned Briar. I knew there was something more for me out there, I just didn’t know what it was or how to find it.

When I stumbled onto the grounds of the Ivy, an idea took root. I could train, fulfill the need for battle I still craved even after falling, and piss off the gods who probably thought I would never resurface.

I couldn’t know then that the real reason I was here was to find Briar, and I refuse to lose her. Even if it means being separated from her for a time, I will wait until we can safely rescue her from her captors.

“If the gods kill me, they risk dying themselves,” I divulge, voicing the secret he should never know. “We are forbidden from killing each other.”

“You’re no longer one of them,” he accuses. “Why give up your power in the first place? If you hadn’t, you could just go get her!”

“If I’d done that, I wouldn’t even be in the equation. I would be like the rest of them, watching from the outside and only pretending to care about the outcome so no one knows we lost any mercy we may have had ages ago.”

“Fucking gods,” he sneers, looking at me as if I’m still one of them. I can’t even blame him.

“She’s in Windsheer, at the Frostburn Institute.”

“What? She’s at another institute? Then go fucking get her,” he demands.

“If it were that fucking easy, don’t you think I would have?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why you do half the shit you do and don’t do .” He emphasizes the last part of his comment, making sure I know he blames me for Briar not being here.

“I’m only telling you because I thought you should know. I’m working on getting more details, like finding out why she’s there, who is keeping her, and how we can get her back with us, but it’s going to take time.” The level of calm you can achieve when you know you don’t have any other choice is strange. Knowing that if I do something rash or make a mistake could mean her death gives me an entirely new perspective.

“Is she safe? Are they hurting her?” Kage lets a little of his true worry slip to the surface. I hate that I can’t answer his question, even if it would only be for my own reassurance.

“I don’t have any details about her confinement. I’m still trying to confirm who’s behind it.” I’ve been racking my brain since Oaktar disappeared, going over everything she said and did to see if I missed any detail, or if she gave anything away that might help me understand why this happened, but the entire encounter is a blur. I know I’m not remembering all the particulars because I was too enraged to keep my head straight.

“Do you have too many enemies among the gods to even narrow it down? It’s not like they would have any other reason to take her other than to fuck with you.”

“It wouldn’t take an enemy to do this if having her would benefit them in some way.”

Kage shakes his head slowly in disgust, but then his head pops up, and he looks at me. “You can’t go, but I can.”

“You think they will just let you in if you knock on the door? That’s if you could get out of here. Syrinx would never agree to let you go. She’s already in a near fucking panic over losing Briar.” I still want to kill the banshee for dropping the wards and allowing Oaktar to come and go as she pleased, not that I believe a word she says.

“Make her. She’s afraid of you.”

“Yes, but she’s also desperate to win the fucking Undertaking.” I consider any leverage I might have to force Syrinx to release Kage, but the only thing that comes to mind is actually killing her, and I can’t do that now. It would leave me to deal with the Ivy and its role in the games, and that’s the last thing I want.

“You could make her if you really wanted to.” His words and the way he mutters them show how young and naive he is.

Instead of pointing it out, I tell him, “I will do whatever it takes to bring her back to me.”

“To us,” he insists in the same heartbeat.

I nod, but that’s all I can manage considering the circumstances.

“If going to get her isn’t your plan, then what is?” He crosses his arms over his chest as if he’s prepared for an argument.

I don’t have it in me right now to be evasive, so I tell him the truth. “I’m going to find someone in Frostburn to spy and report back to me. Then, we will at least know she is safe.”

Kage’s eyebrows rise. “That’s your big plan, to find someone to relay information?”

“If you have a better idea, I’m all fucking ears.” I spread my arms wide. Both of us are a breath away from snapping—probably on each other.

“I told you my idea. Get me into the institute where they are holding her, then I can spy and protect her.”

I have to admit, there is merit to the idea, but I know Syrinx. She’ll never let Kage go—not unless I can give her something better in exchange. “I’ll see what I can do. Until then, quit fucking killing the other novices.”

The demon shrugs a lazy shoulder. He isn’t committing to anything. What a damn headache.