He made to rise from the bed, and only with the cool air over bare skin did he remember his nudity.
As if that reminder was a switch, the riot of emotions from last night swamped him. From the joy seeing her always brought to him to the thwarted desire, to her betrayal…
Merc raised his fist and punched through the wall of the downscale hotel, hoping the jarring of bone would prevent the reappearance of the sick rage in his gut when she moved away from his bound form, when she reached in and grabbed the Spellbook. Sorry she said. Brother. As if those two words could mitigate what happened.
He had given her his trust, the first person in his adult life he could say that about, and he hadn’t realized he had until she broke it.
You are not allowed emotion. You are not allowed rage. You are not allowed fear. You will cast these aside, and you will come out stronger for their loss.
Shisen’s teachings were not absolute to him – he and the old man disagreed about many things these days – but right now he pulled from the deep well of a lifetime of training and shoved everything she had pulled from him into a box to be buried deep.
There was later to deal with that. Right now was the situation at hand. The Spellbook needed to be reclaimed.
How had she managed to steal it? There was no magic he knew of that could get through his defenses and tie him up, and then was able to work within the dream to affect reality. It was powerful and completely outside his knowledge.
While for now the answer to that question was secondary, he needed to research as soon as the crisis passed. If it really was connected to dreams as it seemed to be, that left him defenseless in a way he’d never been before.
Until he discovered more, he needed to avoid REM sleep. It wasn’t pleasant, but he had often done with little to no sleep while on assignment. He could do it again.
The immediate concern was finding her. He knew nothing about her, save she burrowed into him with little more than a smile and the fragrance of the ocean clinging to her skin. Why did you open yourself?
Emotions sank themselves into him with barbed hooks. He pushed back, opening the box and kicking them to the side. He wouldn’t get lost in them, not even the pain that hovered like a malevolent fog. She’d burrowed into his heart, and his pride rose up in rage and rebellion that he’d been so fooled in such a small amount of time. Everything connected to her was unstable.
Push it down.
Yeah, and fucking bury that box.
Pride and ego had no place here. Only evidence mattered, and he opened his memories, abandoning the shadow of pain with ruthless efficiency.
Examine all evidence.
He had discounted it at the time, but it was only in their third meeting that his senses rose up and knocked against his heart, warning him something was wrong. He had ignored it, leaning on the false security of his tattoos and the pleasure being with her again provoked, but something in her manner set him on edge.
Was she after the book from the beginning? He wanted to say no, but every thought was tainted, seen through a shattered prism. He couldn’t trust the results.
That didn’t mean he could sit on his ass. He needed to start somewhere. Fear and indecision couldn’t paralyze him, not now.
He drew a deep breath, letting it expand through his chest and ease some of the tightness there. New plan. Any decisions he made tonight were to be marked with an asterisk, to be examined later when his gut wasn’t churning with this stew of emotion he still couldn’t quite control. Move forward.
No, she didn’t meet with him that first time with the intention of stealing the book. Whether that made him a stupid fool or not, he believed that. Her manner was too changed between the first and last meeting, and if she was a good enough actress to fool him the first and second time, why would she drop the mask the time she actually grabbed the book? And while the words didn’t assuage the betrayal, there was no doubting the emotion that infused every I’m sorry. And of course… brother.
Putting aside how they met in the first place, that change meant a third party got hold of her and started using her. The Guild was an obvious choice and the first one, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Hadrien had a habit of running his mouth in all the wrong places, so the possible candidates were large and stationed all over the world.
His best bet of snatching the book back was getting to her before an exchange took place. If he could find her before the rendezvous happened between her and whoever hired her, there was a chance of retrieving the book.
But where could she be? Near a beach would be the logical place to start, but her joy in her surroundings during that first meeting spoke of someone who was revisiting something well-loved but not experienced in a long time. He would bet money she was born and raised near the water, but not living there now.