Lord of Unkindness Ch. 20

 Notes: Happy Thanksgiving!!! 

Title: Lord of Unkindness Ch. 20

***

Chapter Twenty

 

Passing a panic attack back and forth isn’t the best use of Ciro and Angelo’s time, but he can’t help but lose himself a little bit when he hears that name. Annette. Annette.

Annette Fontaine, of the Fontaines of Lyon, one of two bright, shining stars of her generation. She and her sister Jacqueline had been on the short list as marriage candidates for Ciro from the time he was born—both were older than him, Jacqueline by five years and Annette by two. Jacqueline married when she was eighteen to a man with a complementary magical ability, so the union between Annette and Ciro was affirmed instead.

He hadn’t been entirely happy with it, nor had he been entirely against it. He and Annette had known they were potential spouses for each other their whole lives, and grew up with carefully structured meetings, gradually getting to know each other. She was…

Warm, with curly brown hair and a cherubic face, freckles peeking through the makeup that her mother insisted she wear, smiling with a little twist in the corner of her mouth, like, “Can you believe this?” but quiet. She always wore shades of red, yellow, and orange, and her familiars were cats—and every single one of them was orange.

“It’s my favorite color,” she told him when he was five and she was seven, older and wiser, someone who knew how to handle stupid questions like “why are all your cats the same color?”

Ciro wrinkled his nose. “Too bright.”

“I’m not making you look at them, boy baby.”

One bracing grab around the waist and a hot cup of tea later, and Ciro has gathered himself enough to say, “I don’t think she owes me anything.”

“Funny, that’s not what she told me after I helped her fake her death two years ago.”

He gapes; he can’t help it. “You…what?”

Angelo sets his tea down and looks seriously at Ciro. “Few of us are blind when it comes to your family, Ciro. Everyone with any smarts at all knows to have a backup plan when working with the Hamblys. It’s only gotten worse since your mother died and Nephele was given more responsibility.”

“Too much responsibility,” Ciro mutters. “My father let her start running jobs at thirteen. I can’t tell you how many of them she fucked up on purpose just because she thought it was funny, or because it gave her the chance to do something to someone that she didn’t like.”

“She’s a sociopath,” Angelo agrees. “Annette always knew it, but she didn’t really understand it until…well.”

Until Ciro’s twenty-first birthday party. Until their engagement was formally announced. Until Nephele sent her rats through the cooling system into the room where Annette’s familiars stayed whenever she was visiting in the Tower. She was permitted to have one with her at all times, but never more than that. Of course, they’d be given free rein of the building once she and Ciro were married, but until then her twenty-two other cats were put into a room designed for their comfort.

Nephele let two hundred rats loose in that room while Ciro and Annette were toasting to their future. It was…

Terrifying to see Annette fall to the ground, champagne glass shattering against the marble as she clutched her head and began to scream. Her familiar curled around her, yowling fiercely, lashing out when her parents tried to get near. Only Ciro and her sister were allowed in close, and Jacqueline was the first to put it together.

“Where are her familiars? What’s happening to them?”

Ciro watched blood pour out of his fiancee’s nose, pool in the corners of her eyes, even drip from her ears as her magic was attacked. He left her, then—left her in her sister’s arms and ran to the room where Annette’s precious familiars were resting, playing, safe safe safe, let them be safe—

The room was a bloodbath when he entered. Small orange corpses, many of them surrounded by dead rats, were being torn to pieces by the living ones who remained. “Nephele!” he screamed, looking into the camera in the corner—not that he or she needed it to be aware of each other. His cousin always kept a close eye on him. “Stop it! Stop!”

The rats didn’t stop. The cats were dead, the magic was ripped to nothing, but the rats didn’t stop.

So Ciro made them. He had one bird with him at the time, just one, but he focused all his power on it and funneled it heavily into the creature’s body until it grew larger, larger…a raven the size of an eagle, then the size of a tiger. Then he loosed it into the room, and closed the door behind him. Nephele was most powerful when she used her familiars in their natural state.

Let her try them against him, then, and be snapped up like breadcrumbs.

“Annette almost died in her sister’s arms.” Ciro stares down into his tea with a frown on his face. “I don’t think Jacqueline forgives me for leaving them to go hunt down Nephele’s creatures.”

“Possibly not, but from what I hear, it was your retaliation against Nephele that allowed the Fontaines to get out of the Tower without being accosted by more than threats from your father.”

“Maybe,” Ciro allows. “Nephele tends to take up a lot of space when she’s throwing a tantrum, and she threw a hell of one that day.” He brushes a hand over his left shoulder, where he still bears scars from her clawing hand. “She was furious with me. They all were. What else were we supposed to do, though, force Annette to stay?” It occurs to him now that perhaps that was exactly what his father expected—blind loyalty before all, a complete sublimation of norms in favor of power. The Fontaines hadn’t seen it coming.

Ciro couldn’t be part of something so vicious. “Once they were out of the Tower, the dynamics changed. They were free of Hambly influence, and Annette said she’d never marry into our family, or eve return to the Tower. And then she—” died, he’s ready to say, except she didn’t. He knows that now. It’s a comfort, but it hurts too. Annette didn’t trust him with the truth, even when it would have helped soothe his wounded heart.

They hadn’t loved each other, not the way the best couples did. But they’d been friends. They could have lived well together, supported each other, stayed friends and had children and done the things they needed to do to make their families happy without making each other miserable. Annette had been Ciro’s best hope for a good life while in the grips of his family, and then…

“She wanted to make a clean break,” Angelo says, reaching for Ciro’s hand. “With everyone, even her own family. Only her sister knows she’s still alive. She lives a very careful existence now.”

“She makes it work.” There’s accusation in his tone, and Angelo acknowledges it with a nod.

“She does, but Annette at her most powerful has never had more than, what, twenty-three familiars? Whereas you have well over a hundred. And she’s never been able to manipulate their forms like you can, which is why she turned to a new sort of magic as she recovered her power away from the pressures of your respective families.” Angelo smiles. “She still has a cat. Orange, cute, kind of dumb. Just the one, but she’s capable of magic beyond what her familiar can do. I know she can help you, Ciro. And I know she’ll want to.” He squeezes Ciro’s hand. “She misses you.”

“I miss her, but. The risk.”

Angelo nods. “I’ll have to help mitigate it, which means I need to go see her and bring her back here in person. It won’t take me long, no more than a day, but you’ll be on your own in the meantime. Is that all right?”

Ciro forces a smile. “Oh no, a whole day by myself. How will I survive?”

“The smart way,” Angelo says, and he’s not smiling back. “By staying inside and recovering your strength and doing absolutely nothing to draw attention to yourself. You promised, Ciro.”

“I know.”

“Don’t break it.” Don’t break me, Ciro hears, and he won’t. He can’t. He’s got to give this a shot, for Angelo’s sake.

And maybe for his own, too.

“I’ll wait for you,” he swears. “And I’ll work hard for Annette.”

And won’t that be a fucking head trip. He hopes she doesn’t slap him across the face first thing when they meet again after two years, but he’d deserve it.

He’s got at least a day to brace himself. It’ll have to do.

 

Freebie!

 Hey darlins! Just an FYI--Treasured, the start of my M/M urban fantasy series, is free on Amazon today!

You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Treasured-Book-One-Cari-Z-ebook/dp/B095QSXCRM

 

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Ten, Part One

 Notes: Uh-oh, things are happening, decisions are being made, PEOPLE ARE BEING PEOPLE! Which is to say, self-serving. At least that's something we can always count on, huh?

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Ten, Part One

***

Chapter Ten, Part One

 

“Hey, Lizzie. It’s me. Zakari,” he added at the end, hoping the change in name would be enough to clue her in to the fact that things were amiss. Not that she wouldn’t already know that, if she had any sort of communication going with Catie…or even if she didn’t. Still, it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

“Identification code, please,” Lizzie said after a moment, and oh, Kieron could kiss his girl if she had a cheek to kiss. She was playing along beautifully.

“Desfontaines 3141 Outer Elys.” Thank goodness the little games they’d decided to play along the way to this fucking planet had included codes for if they got separated. Putting Desfontaines in as his primary identifier should clue Lizzie in to the rest of his assumed identity. 31 meant he was the only one of their party of three there, 41 indicated there were four other people surrounding just the one of him, and Outer Elys was an obscure reference to an ancient mythology. The Elysian Fields were, according to this old piece of human culture, the nicest part of their hell.

It was still hell, though, and the Outer Elysian fields meant he could tip over any moment into Tartarus.

“Acknowledged. What happened to you? We’re all so worried.”

Even though she was dissembling, Kieron could tell that Lizzie really was worried about them. “I’m okay, Lizzie,” he said gently. “Just, ah…got separated from the others. I’m not sure where they are right now, but I found some friends who might be able to help me out.”

Lizzie sounded very young when she asked, “Is Catie okay? And Dad?”

There was a vague shuffling from Doubles’s direction, as if it was only now hitting him that the people they’d been threatening included young children. If only they knew. Of course, as far as Kieron was concerned, it was true regardless of the form his kids took.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said honestly. “They were under fire when they flew away, and I think the ship was damaged pretty badly.”

“Oh no!”

“Where is an adult?” Alissa snapped. “Why are we going through a kid right now when we ought to be talking to someone in charge?”

“Lizzie is in charge,” Kieron replied.

“She’s a child!”

Kieron could dissemble, or Lizzie could start using another voice, but honestly? Fuck this. “It’s not like the entire group is going to hang around waiting to see if we survived before heading out,” he said. “It’s a waste of valuable fuel, not to mention time. You think we picked this armpit of a system to settle in because we were spoiled for choice?” He gestured around with a hand. “Between you and the goddamn weather, I think we proved to the rest of the group that Hadrian’s Colony is a poor place to try and raise a family.”

“Are you saying they won’t stay around to help you?” Carlisle said.

It was time to walk a delicate line. If he made it seem like they were abandoned, then there’d be no use in keeping him alive. On the other hand, there was no fleet in orbit, so if they managed to get a signal through the atmosphere to check and found nothing… “I’m saying they’ve got to think of themselves first. They’ll come back for us when they can, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just Lizzie holding down the fort for now.” One ship could be missed. One ship could be explained away as interference or, whatever, a passing asteroid or moon shadow.

“You left your kid up there alone?” Carlisle didn’t seem to think much of that. Kieron didn’t care if she did—she had no room for comment.

“Looks like she’s safer up there than down here,” he said.

“Kee?” Lizzie sounded nervous now. “Is Catie hurt bad? Do you need me to come to you?”

“You stay where you are, baby,” he admonished. “The last thing we need is someone else getting stuck down here. It’s too dangerous to make it through the storms right now anyway. They should only last for another…” He looked at Carlisle and made a “go on” motion with his hand.

“The season’s just begun,” she said after a moment, “but there are breaks. We get lulls in the weather every few weeks. They usually don’t last more than a day—that’s eighteen standard hours, if you don’t know—but they’re consistent enough to get a ship in or out.”

That was a relief. “There we go. I’ll find the others, we’ll wait for a lull, and we’ll come back to you together.” He stared straight at Carlisle as he laid out the plan, watching her face closely. Her expression could have been carved from stone for all he learned from it, but she shifted a little bit on her feet. Good. Feel bad. Feel really bad.

“Okay, Kee.”

“That’s my girl. Be safe, I love you.”

“I love you too.” The transmission ended, and for a long moment silence reigned in the cabin.

“Welp,” Trapper finally said. “That was touching, but there’s no way in hell we’re just letting you go.”

“Trapper,” Carlisle began, but he shook his head.

“No, Boss. That’s not how we work—you taught me that. We don’t walk away empty-handed.” He crossed his arms and stared down Kieron. “You’ve got a ship down here and a ship up there. Help us find the ship down here and hand it over without a fuss, and you and your family can fly away safe on your other ship during the next lull.”

There was no way Kieron could do that. “How can I trust that you won’t take our other ship the moment it breaks atmosphere? No.”

“We can go get it ourselves during a lull if it comes to it,” Alissa pointed out. “One kid’s not going to put up much of a fight.”

“No,” Kieron said amiably. “She won’t.” He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to; he knew that Carlisle, at least, understood where he was going with that.

She won’t, but I will.

“There’s no need for threats,” Carlisle said. “Trapper’s not wrong, though. We can’t let you walk away without getting something out of you. But we don’t need your ship. I want your expertise instead.”

“Boss—”

She held up a hand and Trapper went quiet.

“What skills?” Kieron asked. Not as a mechanic; this crew knew their own ship far better than he did, despite his little party trick with the respirators.

“Fighting skills. You think three moves ahead, you have nerves of steel, and you’re not afraid to get dirty. I think the rest of our people could benefit from some time with a professional.”

Rest of our people… That meant they would be moving. Heading somewhere else, undoubtedly farther away from Elanus and Catie. That was good, in a way—the more space between these mercenaries and Kieron’s family, the better. But that was going to make it exponentially harder for him to reconnect with them as well, especially if they were badly hurt.

Who was he kidding? He knew they were badly hurt. Just thinking about Catie taking gunfire made his gut clench, and Elanus’s leg…shit. Kieron needed to be with them. He missed them, he wanted them, he wanted his fucking family back.

Maybe you can steal a ship once you get there. Or a land cruiser, or a hoverbike. Anything is better than sitting around letting these assholes hunt them down.

“Fine,” he said at last. “No more than two weeks, though, and you let me communicate with Lizzie at least every other day.”

“Deal,” Carlisle replied and held out her right hand. Kieron reached out, cautious, and shook. Touching her made his skin crawl, and he took his hand back as fast as he can.

I’ve made a deal with the devil.

Let’s hope I survive it.

Lord of Unkindness Ch. 19

 Notes: What the what are they even doing? Let's find out!

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter 19

***

Chapter Nineteen

 

Ciro expects yelling. It would track, given how most of his intense emotional interactions have played out. When things get hard, people yell. If you don’t yell, then you’re not being heard. If you’re not being heard, then someone else is speaking for you, and that can only lead to things you don’t want. Ciro, for all he feels he’s right, also knows that Angelo cares for him. Of course he doesn’t want Ciro to make this decision. Of course he’s going to yell at him for it.

Ciro doesn’t expect the magical panic attack.

It’s subtle at first. Angelo doesn’t say anything, just stares at Ciro, his eyes wide but his pupils dialing down to pinpricks. He isn’t touching Ciro with his hands any longer, but it still feels like he’s touching him somehow. An intense pressure rises up all around them, like they’ve just sunk several atmospheres deep into the sea without moving at all, and then—

All around them, gold magic appears out of nothingness, once-smooth threads clinging and clumping together like clots. They stick to Ciro, gummy and cloying, clutching at him all in time with a regular thud thud thud that it takes far too long to realize is Angelo’s heartbeat.

“Angelo, stop,” Ciro says, but it’s as plain as day that Angelo can’t. Ciro isn’t even sure he’s hearing him right now; he’s just staring, looking at Ciro but also looking through him, and whatever he sees is bringing tears to his eyes. His hands are still outstretched, and after a moment Ciro tries to take them again.

Zap! A spark stings his hands as soon as he makes contact. “Fuck!” Ciro swears. He looks around, but he can’t sees the walls anymore, or the ceiling. Hell, he’s not even sure if he’s still standing on a floor or if he’s been transported into a place where nothing exists but Angelo’s magic. Which, if that’s the case, things have gone very, very wrong. He tries to touch Angelo again, but the spark is even hotter this time.

Fine. He can’t use his hands? He’ll use what’s left of his magic. He summons his bird, raven-sized once more, who lands on his shoulder and casually pecks at a clump of sticky golden thread. It immediately unravels, stretching out and away like harp strings drawn taut, and Ciro smiles as his bird flies. It uses its beak or claws to pierce each puff of Angelo’s misbehaving magic, calming it down and smoothing it out, until the last clump is finally absorbed back into their surroundings. Then his raven lands on Angelo’s head, bends over, and very deliberately pecks him in the middle of the forehead.

“Ouch!”

The gold vanishes. They’re back in the bedroom, Ciro half dressed and Angelo totally nude and a bunch of harsh words, regrets, and strange magic lying between them now. Angelo looks stunned, like he can’t believe what’s just happened. Now’s the time for Ciro to press his advantage, to get himself out of this mess once and for all and give Angelo his life back.

But…what just happened wasn’t normal. That was far from normal, far from healthy, far from anything Angelo ought to be dealing with on his own. Ciro couldn’t go yet, not if he was just going to make things worse than he already had. He steeled himself, then reached out and took Angelo’s hands again.

No sparks. No pain. Just Angelo, taking a sudden deep breath as though Ciro’s grip is reeling him back into his body. He stares at Ciro for a long moment, then blinks away the suspicious shine in his eyes. “Shit,” he says tiredly.

Feeling encouraged, Ciro takes a step closer to him. “What was that?” he asks quietly. “I’ve never seen your magic do that before.”

“It’s never done that before,” Angelo replies, looking down at their hands. He smooths his thumb over the back of Ciro’s left wrist, where a particularly sticky bit of magic had pulled at his skin.

“Why do you think it did?”

“I don’t…know for sure.”

Ciro sighs. “Hazard a guess, then.”

Angelo’s lips twist in a self-deprecating smirk. “And have you run away from me even faster? No thanks.”

That isn’t fair. “I’m not leaving because I want to. I’m leaving because it’s the only way you’ll have a life.”

“Thanks for making that very important decision about my life unilaterally for me,” Angelo says caustically. “That definitely makes me feel better about all of this.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing here,” Ciro insists.

Angelo drops his hands. “You’re trying to do the thing that’s simplest for you, instead of putting the hard work in to actually make a change for the better.”

Where is this coming from? “I’m not—”

“Yes you are!” Oh, there’s heat in his voice now, genuine anger. It’s almost a relief to hear it. Here comes the yelling. Only it’s not a yell. Angelo, it seems, doesn’t need to yell to be heard when it’s just the two of them. Ciro always wants to listen to him, and Angelo knows it. “You’re so ready to run, you don’t even want to try and make a plan that could save your life.”

“I don’t want you to give up your life for me!” Ciro snaps.

“It’s my life to give,” Angelo snaps right back. “And if you bothered to talk with me instead of at me, you’d have learned that I know someone who can help you learn to channel your magic in a different way. She’s done it before, and under at least as dire circumstances as what you’re going through right now. If anyone can show you how to change your magical signature, it’s her.”

What the… “Why didn’t you say that before?”

“When did I have the time?”

“I don’t know, maybe while your magic was gluing itself to me so I couldn’t move was a good spot for that little revelation!”

The fire goes out of Angelo almost as fast as it came back to him. He lets go and sits down on the edge of the bed, dropping his head into his hands, and says something under his voice in a language Ciro doesn’t know. After a moment of pulling his head out of his own ass, Ciro sits down next to him. “Why did your magic do that?” he asks gently. He can tell it means something to Angelo, but he’s not sure how bad it is. “Is it painful? Does it hurt you?”

Angelo scrubs a hand through his hair but doesn’t look up. “Not…exactly. It can hurt. Not you,” he hurried to add for Ciro’s sake. “It won’t ever hurt you.”

“That’s good, but I don’t want it to hurt you.”

“That’s not something either of us can control, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?” Ciro asks. “It’s your magic, so you’re the one who controls it.”

“Not under these circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

Angelo shakes his head. “I’ll tell you later, if it becomes relevant. Right now I want to focus on you.” He sits up, and as soon as he’s upright Ciro’s raven perches on his shoulder. Angelo smiles a little, but his eyes are fixed on Ciro’s. “Look. I appreciate that you want me to be able to live my life like I always have, but that’s not an option for me now. There is no way that I’m leaving you to face your fate alone, whether that means confronting your family, hiding so well no one ever finds you, or changing your magic so much that there’s nothing to track you with. I just can’t do it, so please don’t ask me again.”

It’s the way he says it, so simple and forthright, that gets to Ciro. It’s clear now that it’s too late for him to back out of this without repercussions, and not just for himself. “All right,” he says at last. “Fine. So…you think I need to learn a new way of using my magic.”

“I do.”

“And you know someone who can help me do that.”

Angelo smiles a little. “I do.”

“And she’s not going to be pissed at getting dragged into this.”

“She won’t like it, but she’ll acknowledge the debt when I call it in. And from what I understand, she owes you a debt as well, so she really can’t say no.”

Ciro can’t think of anyone off the top of his head who owed him a debt. He hired his services out for money, not favors. Who is this mysterious woman?

Angelo interrupts his thoughts before he could ask. “If we do this, though, you have to promise me you’ll really try,” he says. “No putting in minimal effort and then flouncing off to die your way when it doesn’t work out. I need to know you’re as committed to your own life as I am, Ciro.”

Ciro sighs, because that’s the heart of the issue, isn’t it? He’s not sure he’s worth it, worth all the fuss and bother and pain. Wouldn’t it be easier just to be on his own again, to run until he’s caught and fight until he’s dead? But that wouldn’t be easier on Angelo. Ciro’s let them get tangled together, magically and otherwise, and he can’t leave without doing damage to the one person he wants safe more than anyone else.

Which is, of course, the point. “I promise,” he says solemnly. “I’ll work hard at it. Who’s the teacher?”

A little levity finally comes back to Angelo’s face. “Oh, you’re going to like this. It’s Annette.”

Wait.

What?

Who?

How!?