Page 68 of Rifted Hearts
Kaveh stood with arms folded, watching Rhys with hard eyes. “Remi asked you to show us what you’re carrying. Trust me, I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
Rhys hesitated until Tarasque stepped forward and pointed at his fellow husband’s belt. Not much of a talker, that one.
Rhys pulled the knife off his belt and offered it to Kaveh. Remi took advantage of that obvious decoy move to go into pickpocket mode. He slid his hand into the odd pouch he had noticed when he had been waiting for Rhys to kill him and lifted out an elongated oval shape.
The control object pulsed with an odd, erratic glow.
It felt heavier than it should for its size, and for a moment, Remi could have sworn a pair of wide-set eyes peered out at him before disappearing into the misty substance within.
Rhys cursed and took a step forward. Remi prudently retreated behind Kaveh, who shoved a hand glowing with summ in Rhys’s face.
There was a lot of shouting after that, which subsided when Raion and Kaida put their stone bodies front and center.
“It is the control object.” Kaida moved a stony paw over the glowing surface but didn’t take it from Remi. “It appearsone of your clan removed the device for his own purposes, Matriarch.”
Everyone looked at Rhys, and the matriarch drew in a breath with what seemed like true surprise.
“This offense will be dealt with.” She came out with that, eventually.
Remi could have been wrong, but he suspected she hadn’t known her second husband had unleashed a horde of phantoms so he could control the search for Kaveh’s Matchmaker choice. He still blamed her for going along with draining an entire clan’s life force to control more territory though.
“I’ll take the object and work on restoring the rift boundary,” she said.
“I don’t think so.” Remi held the object higher and addressed Raion and Kaida. “The Colony sent me here to steal this by seducing and tricking Kaveh, and he still fought a duel to save my life. I think he’s the one who should keep it.”
Raion gave a slow nod. “It is customary for the winner of the duel to dispose of the loser and all of their possessions as they see fit.”
“Given that Kaveh has granted his opponent his life, your clan can hardly ask for more.” Kaida directed her comment to Xiang Jao with the faintest note of disapproval. “I will work with him to restore the boundary position, and the disposition of the control object will be up to his discretion.”
Remi expected more arguing, but the guardians, as usual, got their way. The drakones left to return to the keep, and Kaveh watched them with his lips pressed into a thin line and a protective arm around Remi’s shoulder.
Kaveh had made it clear that if it came down to hiswealthy adopted drakone clan or Remi, he was picking the half-human con man whose alter form was a chinchilla.
A terrible choice on his part, but Remi was intensely grateful for it.
With no further extreme winds or draconic earthquakes, the day turned out to be quite pleasant. The sky above was a cloudless blue expanse that faded into purple and gold as the sun began to dip under the horizon. The crowd drifted away after a long line of people came up to express admiration for Kaveh’s fighting skills and congratulate Remi for not being dead. It was like the wedding receiving line from hell, but with each handshake or slap on the back, Kaveh seemed to relax more.
Even though his human friends now knew he could turn into a monster, he wastheirmonster.
Remi’s cousins in crime were long gone, and soon the only people left at the site of the duel were all friends—Kat and Lyall standing a little too close to one another as they spoke, Jeannette and the other wranglers examining the torn-up mounds of desert earth left after Kaveh’s earthquake-like arrival, and an animal contingent comprised of Amanita, her colt, and Snow, who popped back through a portal with Flutterberry, flapping sparks off his wings and accepting congratulations on his performance. Even Bug had come out unscathed in all the mayhem, buzzing around the arena looking for any stray plastic.
“You don’t need to worry about Rhys anymore.” Kaveh spoke softly, which Remi appreciated, since his head was still ringing from the slaps Rhys had dished out. “I let him live out of respect for the matriarch, but everyone in my clan knows I’ll kill anyone who threatens you. You’ll be safe when you go back to Boston.”
“About that.” Remi held up his wrist, the gold not-Rolexglittering in the sun’s dying rays. The Matchmaker was many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. “In light of recent events—namely an angry Welsh drakone trying to murder me—I’ve reconsidered my stance on both Matchmaker pairings and possessive dragon husbands.”
Kaveh went still, and Remi bit his lip, dread settling over him.
Mysterious Riftworld matchmaking sentience aside, Kaveh had no reason to want Remi around. He had saved his life, yes, but that had been an obligation, an honor thing. Remi had lied to Kaveh, put his friend Kat in so much danger he had to run off with a hellhound, and ruined his relationship with the only family the Azdaha drakone had ever known.
Remi was, quite possibly, the worst Matchmaker fiancé in history.
“You’d be willing to stay, then?” The hope in Kaveh’s tone gave Remi enough courage to meet his gaze. The vet smiled at him, and his grip on Remi’s hand tightened.
“I’m not sure why you’d want me to.” Remi swallowed a few times because apologies didn’t come easy to him and honesty even less so. “I’ve been so awful to you, and everything I said when we found out I was your match was horrible, not to mention a lie. From the first moment I saw you, I wanted you. Then I found out you were kind, smart, and every bit as brave as the hero of some old Western. And I wanted you even more, but I didn’t want to admit it. Snow was right—I am a dirty rat.”
“Chinchillas are very clean animals,” Kaveh corrected with a grin. “And you can stop trying to put a halo on my head. I wasn’t honest with you and a lot of other people I care about either. We’re both monsters to many people, whether they’re human or from the Riftworld.”
“I was thinking.” Remi had to get the words out fast because if he slowed down, he’d lose his nerve. “Since my plan to not tell my father I’m your love match has blown up, instead of going back to Boston, I could stay in the monstertown here. I can do my vid streaming in between rift storms and work on my crushing insecurity about being in a real relationship.”
