I flipped to the end of the book. More artifacts. Nothing else I recognized. The knife had to be the key.
“You matter to me,” Raphael said. “You always did, and not because you were a knight or a shapeshifter.”
Suddenly the game wasn’t funny anymore. “I mattered so much that rather than waiting for me to get my shit together, you found another woman. Let’s be honest, Raphael, get a blowup doll, put a blond wig on her, and she and I would matter about the same to you. Hell, the blowup doll might be better. She won’t talk.” Christ, I sounded bitter.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” he said. “I love you.”
It hurt. You’d think I’d be numb by now.
“Too late. You are about to be engaged.”
“Rebecca doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Raphael, she’s a living, breathing woman. Someone you felt strongly about. Of course, she matters.”
“Rebecca isn’t my fiancée.”
I froze. “Come again?”
“I said, Rebecca is not my fiancée,” he repeated.
“What do you mean, she isn’t ‘my fiancée’? I mean, your fiancée.”
Raphael shrugged. “She’s some gold digger I picked up at a business engagement. Someone must’ve pointed me out to her as a good catch, so she attached herself to me. My mother has been getting on my last nerve with her machinations, and since I had to go to the Bouda House for a barbecue, I took Rebecca there. After she told Mom that it was very exciting that we all turned into wolves, I explained to my mother that if she didn’t lay off me, someone like Rebecca would be my next mate. Rebecca must’ve overheard me.”
This was not happening.
“You left me,” Raphael said. “No explanation. We had a fight, then we all went to battle Erra, and after she set all of us on fire you disappeared. I thought you were dead. I went to every hospital. I sat in waiting rooms. Every time they would bring in a new charred body, I’d stop breathing because I thought it might be you under all that crusted meat. And what do I get after all that? A note in the mail. Five days later. Five f**king days later, Andrea! ‘Don’t look for me, I have to do something for the Order, I will be back soon.’ A f**king note. No explanation, nothing. You dismissed me from your life and went on your crusade. Now, weeks later, you suddenly decide to call me, like I’m just some mutt who will always be waiting for you.”
I opened my mouth.
“I brought her because I wanted you to know what it felt like. You go through life so hung up on helping people you barely know that you hurt people who actually give a damn. You want the truth about Rebecca? Fine. I barely know her. She was a means to an end. I haven’t even slept with her. I thought about it.”
There were too many words I wanted to say at once.
“Out of spite,” Raphael said. “She kissed me and it didn’t do anything.”
The correct response finally accreted in my mind. I made my mouth move.
“I hate you.”
He spread his arms. “What else is new?”
Everything that churned inside me, everything that hurt and twisted, like a whirlwind of shattered glass in my chest, tore out, shredding through my brave front. “You broke my heart, Raphael!” I snapped. “I cried for hours when I got home last night. It felt like my life was over, you egoistical sonovabitch. And you, you put me through this just to teach me a lesson? Who the hell do you think you are? Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know exactly how much.”
“There is a difference! I was one of those charred bodies in a hospital bed. I was out for three days and woke up in a military hospital, chained to my bed. There was an Order’s advocate sitting by my side. I had no choice: either I came with him or I would be taken into custody by the Order and brought to headquarters in leg irons. I got to write two notes, stop by my apartment for ten minutes to grab my clothes, and we were gone. I didn’t even have a chance to make arrangements for Grendel. I had to take the dog with me and they agreed to it only because I would rather fight the lot of them than let the dog starve to death inside my place. I didn’t hurt you on purpose, but you hurt me deliberately. Am I a toy to you?”
His eyes sparked with red. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“You…you ass**le! You spoiled baby!”
“Self-centered idiot.”
“Momma’s boy!”
“Stuck-up, self-righteous harpy.”
“I’m so done with you,” I told him through clenched teeth.
“I think I’m tired of doing things your way,” Raphael said lazily. “Don’t expect me to go meekly into the night just because you said so.”
My voice could’ve cut through steel. “If you don’t, I’ll shoot you.”
He snapped his teeth. “You better make it count. One shot will be all you get.”
That challenge burned right through the last of my defenses. My other self spilled out of my human body in a mess of fur and claws, exhaling fury. I snapped my monster teeth at him, my beastkin voice a ragged snarl. “I’ll carve your heart out. You’ll regret the day you were ever born. Of all the selfish, egoistical bastards—”
“And you want me.” He grinned. “You can’t wait to climb back in my bed.”
“Grow up!”
“Look who’s talking.”
The magic slammed into us, like a massive deluge. Wards spilled from the top of the door frame and windows in shimmering curtains of translucent orange. Blue symbols ignited in the corners of the room.
The moon on the wall opened its eyes with a metallic screech.
I dived under the desk and Raphael flattened himself against the wall, under the scales.
“Boudas,” the moon said in Anapa’s amusement-saturated voice. “So predictable. Couldn’t resist snooping around, could you?”
Crap! Crap, crap, crap.
Raphael jerked a curtain off the window and tossed it over the moon.
“That won’t help you,” Anapa said. “Don’t leave. I’ll be right there.”
I lunged out from under the desk and hit the ward on the closest window. Pain burned through me, I blinked, and Raphael pulled me off the floor. My teeth rattled in my skull.
“Ah-ah-ah,” Anapa-Moon said. “I told you not to leave.”
Raphael hurled himself at the window ward. His resistance to magical wards was higher than mine. The defensive spell clutched at him, sharp whips of orange lightning stinging his skin. His body jerked, rigid. His eyes rolled back in his skull.