Deacon drew himself up to his full height, which meant he only came to Aiden’s shoulders. “You can’t stop me, Aiden.”

Ah, wrong thing to say.

“You want to bet on that?” Aiden growled, his head dropping so that he was eye level with his brother.

Undaunted, Deacon held his ground but dropped his voice. “Do you expect me to sit back and play card games while everyone else is doing something important?”

“Yes, I do, actually.”

Deacon laughed humorlessly. “I can help.”

“You’re not trained.” His hands formed into fists at his sides. “And before you say it, you’re not everyone else.”

“I know I’m not trained, but I’m not freaking useless, Aiden. I can help.” They were in an epic staredown I hadn’t seen before, especially not from easy-going Deacon. “And asking me to sit back and watch everyone else—people that I care about, people like you—prepare to risk their lives while I do nothing isn’t fair.”

Aiden opened his mouth, but his brother rushed on. “I know your over-controlling behavior comes from a good place, bro, but you can’t protect me forever and you can’t continue babying me. It’s a waste of time, because even if you forbid me to get involved, it won’t matter. You can’t stop me.” Deacon took a deep breath. “I need to help, Aiden.”

Something in what Deacon said caused Aiden to string together an atrocity of f-bombs. My brows flew up. Aiden rarely cussed or lost his cool, but boy, he was a grenade whose pin had just been pulled.

He took a step back, placing his hands on his hips. I almost expected him to drag Deacon into the cabin and lock him in there, but instead, he jerked his head in a curt nod. “Okay. If this is what you… need, then okay.”

I was stunned into silence. So was Deacon. Without another word, Aiden returned to where the halfs waited.

Deacon’s eyes met mine and he shrugged.

Shocked that Aiden had given in—and somewhat pleased that he was seeing Deacon as something more than his little brother who partied too much—I followed Marcus over to the rest of the group.

We practiced at that for the rest of the day and even went as far as to use the air element against the rest of the halfs, forcing them to break my hold. I hated doing that, because I knew how helpless I’d felt when the air element used to pin me down, but air users were the most common, which meant over half of the daimons used air. It was one of the reasons so many halfs died in battle against them.

So we had to deal with it.

Fire and earth were rare among pures. Aiden and Deacon were the only two I knew who wielded fire, and I hadn’t met a pure who controlled earth, although I’d seen it used once, in the New York Covenant. The water element came in handy if the user was near water or in the rain. Some thought they had gotten the crappy element, but I knew it wasn’t true. They could pull water from pipes—from anything.

I was squared off against Lea. Not that long ago, I would’ve experienced a twisted sort of satisfaction at taking her down, but things… things were so different now.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then she nodded.

Slowly, reluctantly, I raised my hands and drew the air around me. A vicious stream of wind formed just behind my fingers, and then slid through them. Like with akasha, my aim wasn’t great, but it struck Lea below the chest, knocking her right on her back.

I moved forward, my arms shaking as I forced the element on her. It was hard to look at her, hard to not see myself struggling and thrashing on the ground, unable to gain footing.

Aiden crouched behind her, barking out orders in his own soft way, but the best she could do was draw her legs up and that was all.

Her body trembled as her lips pulled back in a snarl. She fought to just sit up, and I wanted her to, because from there, it was easier to break the hold, but the element pinned her shoulders down to the grass.

Wave after wave of air beat down on her, and she threw her head back and screamed as she raised one hand, her fingers clawing at the invisible enemy.

“Lea, come on. Use your core muscles,” Aiden said, lifting his lashes to pierce me with concrete eyes. “Push through it…”

I hated this, hated this so much. My entire body shook.

Another scream as she slammed her hands down into the short blades of grass. Her fingers dug in, tearing through dirt. Clumps came up as she pushed up into a sitting position. I started to smile, but Lea powered up quickly and rushed me.

She cut through the element, arms wrapping around my waist as she smashed into me. We went down, a tangle of arms and legs. The back of my head smacked off the ground. Starbursts exploded behind my eyelids. Air rushed from my lungs in a painful grasp.

The sound of applause was thundering, and I think Deacon yelled, “Girl fight!”

And then there was silence. No one moved. I like to think everyone was preparing for a massive Apollyon bitch-smack from my end.

“Damn,” I grunted, blinking several times. Through Lea’s coppery hair, the sky was a light color of blue.

Using her arms, Lea lifted up and grinned at me. “Let’s just call that a little bit of payback.” She rolled off and sprang to her feet, still grinning broadly. “Well, that was fun.”

I remained sprawled on the ground, the throbbing in my right temple now spreading to the back of my skull. Quite possible she’d knocked something loose—hopefully nothing important.

A strong, tan-colored hand appeared in my vision. “Up?”

Placing my hand in Aiden’s, I let him haul me to my feet and stood there while he brushed clumps of dirt off my aching shoulders. On second thought, my whole body ached. A small smile played over his full lips. Our eyes met, and while everyone milled around about us, in that moment, it was just him and me.

Aiden leaned over me, his breath warm against the curve of my neck. A fine shiver scuttled over my skin, and the ache in my right temple eased off. I inhaled deeply, surrounding myself in his masculine, earthy scent. Everyone around us disappeared.

“I know what you did,” he whispered.

I jerked back, eyes narrowing. Not the sweet nothings I’d been hoping he’d whisper. “What?”

Arching a brow, he then turned and swaggered off to join the congratulatory group forming around Lea. I popped my hands on my hips, shaking my head. There was no way he could know. No way at all.

CHAPTER 15

Later that night, I was on the hunt and Aiden was my prey. After training, he’d disappeared. After dinner, he’d disappeared again, and hours had gone by since then. It was a few minutes past midnight, and I knew he wasn’t on rounds. Solos was, and the niggling suspicion that Aiden was avoiding me was turning into full-blown paranoia.

Prowling through the lower floor, I hoped to burn off most of the nervous energy and stave off the beginnings of a headache. Right now, it was just a dull ache behind my eyes, but I had a feeling it was going to turn into a head-splitter.

There was another long night ahead, made worse by where my thoughts were. Of all things I should’ve been worried about at the moment, I knew this wasn’t it, but I hated that there was this wall that had come out of nowhere. And it was a weird wall that…

I weathered a sudden, terrible memory of Aiden staring at the bottle of Elixir I’d held in the kitchen after my first dinner back in the land of the sane. Had seeing that Elixir reminded him of what he’d taken part in? He couldn’t be… feeling guilty over placing me on the Elixir, could he? I’m pretty sure everyone in the world would agree that had been necessary.

“You look pissy.” Lea’s voice rattled me out of my thoughts.

I stood outside a small study that held only a couch and a desk. Bookcases lined the wall, but most of the shelves were empty. The only light came from the little lamp peeking over the back of the couch.

“I’m not pissy.” I was confused, frustrated and paranoid, tired and… okay, I was a tiny bit pissy.

She tucked a stray strand of hair back. A moment of silence passed and then, “I know what you did.”

That was the second time someone had said that to me in a few hours, and honestly, neither of them could really know. Could they? Wasn’t like I wore a sign on my forehead.

I stared at Lea blankly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She made a show of slowly closing her book and putting it aside. Biting back a groan, I walked into the room and leaned against the desk. “What?” I demanded, folding my arms.

My arch-nemesis stared back at me unflinchingly. Whatever I’d dished out at her over the years, she’d always returned. In some ways, we were a lot alike. We were two alpha females, constantly at one another’s throats.

But it was more than that.

In a flash of disturbing insight, I knew why we’d become sandbox enemies so very long ago. When I was younger, before Mom had yanked my butt out of the Covenant, before Lea and I hated each other, we used to be decent. That is, until one day, I’d said something terrible to her.

Even at the age of ten, Lea had loved her pure-blooded stepmother and half-sister—to the point that the rest of us halfs thought something was wrong with her. Most of the pures ignored their half-blood children, especially the ones who hadn’t birthed or sired the half-bloods. Stepparents in our world were truly step-monsters. But in Lea’s world, her pure-blooded stepmother must’ve loved her dearly. Every Monday, after spending the weekend with her stepmother, Lea would talk about all the wonderful things they’d done together—shopping, watching movies, and getting ice cream. None of us had that with our step-monsters. Lucian used to lock me in my bedroom when Mom wasn’t home.

So naturally, we’d been jealous.

We’d dogged her constantly about her love of her stepmother. Destroyed the dress she had bought Lea by spilling cranberry juice on it. Hid the tiny photo album Lea carried with her all the time. It had been polka-dotted with pink stripes, full of these pictures of her and Dawn, her pure-blooded half-sister. Once I’d found a card Lea’s stepmother had written to Lea, tucked away in one of her textbooks.

I had ripped it to shreds in front of Lea, laughing as she cried.

Then one day, while we were all running laps, Lea had stopped to stare at a visiting pure-blood Council member. Her face had taken on this glow that none of us understood. It looked like respect and wonder. But that couldn’t be right. Because, as halfs, we didn’t stare at pures in open admiration, like we’d cut off our left arm to be like them.

After class, I had found Lea sitting in the courtyard with her friends. Followed by Caleb and a few others, I’d stormed their circle and stood in the middle. And I’d said the biggest, meanest thing I could ever say to another half-blood.

“You have more pure-blood in you than half.”

The same thing Seth had said to me once before.

Come to think of it, I think I may have spit on her, too.

Lea pretty much hated me after that, and honestly, I don’t know how I had forgotten that. Then again, I probably chose to forget what’d started our sandbox hate. I always chalked Lea’s animosity toward me as a product of her general bitchiness, when in reality I had been nothing more than a bully.