Chapter 6
I was shocked when she put the tattoo on my back. The first few moments I got alone, I stared at it in the mirror and had to suppress a shiver. I had told her a bit of my past and what I got was something that I would not be able to get rid of. The K stared at me unmoving and I resisted the urge to tear it off. It wasn't supposed to have happened this way. I was only to get into the system and close to her but then she had to go and be more perfect than anyone I had ever met before. It was...so unfair. An English teacher getting more power in the world than anyone we've ever known, it was laughable but I would follow her. I had been captured by the very person I was supposed to catch.
"You're doomed by Kyle's standards," Nil told me nodding at the new marking. I shrugged my shirt on again but didn't button it up.
"I'm doomed? I'm not the one going around behind her back to talk to her shadow," I pointed out settling in a nearby chair. Mina had wanted some time to herself and I had given her that. I wouldn't want to look at myself at the moment either.
"Shadow? Can you really still call yourself that even though you're not a Card? What makes you think that the Aces will let you stay by her?" He questioned leaning against the wall. A slow smile spread across my face as I watched him. He wasn't being defiant. He wasn't even challenging me. Hell, he wasn't he informing me of what could happen. All he was doing was staring at me the same way I was looking at him, an examination of a foe that could kill you within seconds. He knew how to kill me from his birthright. I knew how to destroy him from my training. Two peas in a pod on a vine separate from the plant, so to speak.
"What makes you think that I'll be taken from her?" my voice betrayed me with my emotions getting in the way. I had lived for thousands of years and my greatest weakness was my speech. He moved, slowly, to the chair opposite mine that had held the Queen only a few hours before.
"Her nightmares are getting worse," Nil stated. It was a sentence without emotion but held together with a deeper meaning.
"I can't touch her mind without her knowing. I can touch yours," I replied not veiling the threat.
"I don't have issues about dying so if you hurt her, I will come after you. Your own personal Armageddon will come by my hands. Kyle's passing all of your past onto me. Believe me. The Cards will have their revenge...but only if you harm her," He stood up and straightened the tie in the suit he had taken to wearing. The boy had grown up in the short period of time that he had been a Royal. Accepted the fact and put it into play. The perfect thing to do and he did it with such grace too.
"She's perfect and she loves me. She'd make me king at the simple crook at a finger but I've already got a Kingdom, Spade. I don't need another one," I told him tapping the skull on the side of my neck before it faded away. His eyes didn't move from mine.
"Castor beans are extremely poisonous. It only takes eight to kill a fully grown human and even less for a child. I've been searching through the archives that some of the old Aces had saved and they talked about a race even older than ours, one made before humans. Castor beans won't kill you will they? Not that it's any of my business but the texts do say how to annihilate your species. Remember that. I've passed the information off to all of the Royals. The Numbers won't know so consider yourself lucky. They'll only strike if I give the say so. You can think of me as your self-destruct button. Only you don't push it," he warned me standing in front of me with eyes like ice.
"Idle threats don't kill me either. I hope you have the stomach to do it," I informed him but he didn't so much as blink. The kid was smooth. Sighing at the ending of a great game, I leaned back and nodded at the mirror on the wall.
