by May Dawson
“Promise me?” Her eyes brightened.
This girl had far too desperate an attraction to wicked men.
“Promise,” I assured her. “Now I’ve got to bring Winter and Bennett back before the hordes break down the walls to murder Winter’s daughter.”
Her cheeks flushed faintly with the desire to be needed. I slid into the driver’s seat and backed away down the drive.
Alice waved, but when I paused at the bottom of the driveway, it was the house behind her that caught my eye. Maddie was in there, alone. Leaving her behind felt as if my chest was being clawed open.
“Mew?” The cat stared at me as if she would claw my chest open if I didn’t get myself together.
“Okay, okay.” I pulled onto the road.
Ever since Maddie and Tyson escaped the lab and inadvertently destroyed half of the Day, the coven’s survivors were broken into cells, scattered between three different houses. Winter moved between all three, but he favored our house. He liked the young, impressionable witches the best, and I was sure he liked his workshop, too.
He’d hopped through a rip at another coven house, so I had to head up there in order to bring him and Bennett back. The witches were already growing restless without their fearless leader. They wanted blood in revenge for all the dead witches.
My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. I hoped Maddie would listen for once. I’d put up my wards to block anyone but me from going in as well as going out, to keep her safe from the other witches.
“The problem,” I told the cat, “is that Maddie is resourceful. Dangerously so.”
She crawled into my lap in response, then draped herself over my thighs with her head under the steering wheel.
“You’re not as calming as you think you are,” I told her, but that, of course, was a lie.
I stared at the rip left behind in the forest behind the coven’s safe house. It shimmered between the pines, a rip that stretched upward until I lost sight of it in the dark clouds that hung low across the sky.
“Was the rip this size when he left?” I asked calmly. Winter was using the rips recklessly to move not just between worlds, but between one location and another here on Earth. It was foolishness. Even I took an Uber or stole a car to move around in this world.
The old woman who stared at the rip too shook her head. “No.”
I had to get Maddie out of here, alive and with whatever she needed to protect her fellow wolves. And I had to stop Winter. He seemed to be intelligent enough. How did he not understand that even if he won his war, he might be destroying the earth so that he could never enjoy that victory?
“Given its size, the wards to keep anything from crossing over into our world might fail,” I said. “Keep a watch, please.”
She started to say something, but I was already starting the spell to bring down the wards long enough to walk through and track him.
Maddie was going to get herself into trouble while I was gone, I just knew it.
As I opened the Door that Winter had left in place to block the rip, the rip shimmered. Through it, I could glimpse greenery.
I put my hand up to rub the cat’s head between her ears. “Are you staying or going?”
She meowed and didn’t move.
“Good,” I said. “I could use the company. Hang on.”
Worried that she would freak out, I pressed my hand over her furry side to hold her against my shoulder.
When I stepped through the rip, cold burned through my skin, and I gasped. Winter’s rips lacked a certain elegance that I was used to. The world went black, and then I stumbled out the other side into bright, blinding sunshine.
I was surrounded by trees, ancient, towering trees that stretched toward the sky, the trunks wider than the car I’d driven in.
The cat meowed and jumped to the ground, her back claws scraping across my shoulder before her little paws landed silently in the thick grass.
“I’m surprised you still hang out with me when I stole your name,” I said.
The cat shook her head, but I wasn’t sure if she was disgusted by me or by the Fae world. She always seemed a little bit offended.
“I was short on inspiration,” I said, by way of excuse. “Stay close. Lots of things in the Fae world would love to eat a cat.”
She mewed, but she did move closer to me.
“Yes, yes, lots of things would love to eat me too.” I turned around in a slow circle, trying to get my bearings. “Where the hell would Winter have gone from here? We’re in the outer edge. There’s no one here to steal from, is there?”
Winter was supposed to be on a mission to retrieve the last pieces of the Dark Collar, the binding spell that had once forced the Fae shifters to obey the high Fae. Every world had its wars, I supposed.
I cast a spell to try to find Winter. Follow the scent of dark magic and narcissism. It was hard to get a perfect read on the spell that had my feet itching to walk, but I got a general impression of west. Closer to the rips.
“This is dangerous territory,” I told the cat as she trotted beside me. “The Fae have all but abandoned the outer edge because of the things that come through the rips…and the Fae aren’t easily impressed, as they’re quite dangerous themselves.”
Through the trees ahead, I glimpsed a towering stone building.
“Try to look Fae,” I told the cat.
She looked at me skeptically.
“Okay, okay, fine. You’ll pass. You already look like you’re full of magic and eager to eat the guts of anyone who crosses you. I’m the one who has to worry.”
We came up near a towering gray castle in the middle of the spreading trees. Winter was in there. I wondered if he was in the dungeon or if he’d managed an audience with some Fae king. The Fae had a ridiculous quantity of royalty; any chance they had, one Fae knifed another for a pond or hill and called himself a king.
As a group of Fae rode out through the gate, I concealed myself behind a tree. The hooves of their horses thundered across the hard earth.
When they were almost past me, I glimpsed them from the corner of my eye: two males in Fae armor, a young woman with streaming lavender hair.
“We’ve got to stop Feyr,” she said. I knew that name: Feyr, prince of the summer court. In preparation for going through the rips, my fellow students and I had spent a lot of time at school studying the lands we’d pass through.
The two men exchanged a glance. Then one of them said, “All right, princess. Tell me when you have your memories back, and then we’ll talk about a coup. If you still give a damn about your people.”
The three of them began to argue, then rode past me as I edged around the trunk. When their hoof beats had faded into the distance, the cat meowed at me.
I knelt so she could jump onto my shoulders. “I’m curious too. But we aren’t going to waste time in the Fae world eavesdropping today.”
The cat cocked her head at me, as if she’d picked up on the word today.
I raised an invisibility spell and wrapped it around me like a cloak, hoping it would hold. Invisibility spells were fickle beasts.
“Stay there.” I rubbed her between the ears, hoping it would be an incentive. “No matter what happens. Or they’ll be able to see you.”
I was talking to a cat as if she could understand me. I was starting to lose my mind.
Or maybe I’d been out of my mind before, when I didn’t particularly like cats. I couldn’t tell anymore.
My breath caught in my chest as I headed between the two guards at the gate, then side-stepped a couple more knights riding out. They were young ones, barely out of their teens, as if the Fae fight against the rips grew desperate.
That was no surprise to me. The government of my own world insisted that there was no danger posed by the rips, but with people like Winter dancing in and out of them, the fabric between worlds shredded more each day.
Maybe I should find a way to push him into one of many carnivorous plants or trees in this world a
nd call it a day.
I headed through the castle, passing young religious acolytes in their long robes, practicing with swords in the yard. Children darted around them, and I stopped, struck by the realization that this place too was full of orphans preparing for war. Something bitter and cold lodged in my throat.
When I found Winter and Bennett locked in cells in the basement, I hesitated, tempted to abandon them.
“Hello?” Winter came to the bars eagerly, as if he’d sensed my magic even though he couldn’t see me.
The likelihood was too great that he would ultimately escape, and once he did, I’d have lost my chance to work undercover within the Day. My mission was to protect Maddie Northsea and to stop the witches from tattering the fabric of the universe any further. To do that best, I still needed to keep Winter close.
Sooner or later, though, it would be time to kill my girlfriend’s wicked father.
If she didn’t despise me for everything else I did, that might be the final straw in the Silas-and-Maddie saga.
But I’d sacrifice anything to protect Maddie and her world, including her love for me. My resolve hardened as I undid the collar of my cloak. For now, I was Winter’s faithful lackey.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said as I slipped my invisibility cloak off my shoulders. “Is there any particular reason you couldn’t get yourself out of the cell, oh grand wizard?”
I wasn’t a particularly respectful lackey, but he tolerated me anyway.
Bennett, behind Winter, pulled a face. “Fae magic.”
“Then I guess we’ll do this the old-fashioned way.” I turned on my heel and went back to the guard I’d seen outside.
He was watching the other way, not expecting anyone to come from the prison side. His eyes widened when he finally saw me, but I knocked him out quickly, then bent and plucked the keys from his waist.
I hesitated, still tempted to abandon Winter and Bennett to their fate with the Fae, or better yet, finish them off myself while their powers were muted by Fae magic.
But the Day didn’t need Winter to kill my friends. Maddie and the rest of them would still be in grave danger. I’d grown closer to Penn, Ty, Jensen, Chase—even Rafe and Lex—than any spy had the right to. Keen would have my head if she realized how much I’d become attached to them all. I wasn’t supposed to have friends in this world.
I wasn’t really supposed to have friends at all.
I blew out a breath and went back to release them. Stupid. Even the cat looked at me as if she knew I were being stupid.
“Thank you,” Bennett said as I released them from the cell.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. I stepped over the body of the guard as I led our way back down the hall. “We haven’t made it to the rip.”
I looked at Winter. “Maddie came home, by the way.”
A dangerous smile lit his face. “Wonderful. We’ll complete our mission and return.”
“I’ve got to get back now,” I said. “Good luck. I’m so glad I came all this way to open a door for you, but some of your witches aren’t particularly fond of your darling daughter.”
“Echo, we could use your help,” Bennett said. “We found a piece, and we tried to negotiate because we couldn’t reach it.”
He meant they couldn’t steal it.
“Your negotiation seems to have gone well.” I gestured airily around the dungeon as the three of us headed for the door.
Winter stepped over the unconscious body of the guard, but his heel came down on the man’s outstretched fingers and he ground his heel down. I was sure that he’d broken the boy’s fingers.
God, I couldn’t wait to kill Winter, but my mask of indifference was firmly in place.
“We did receive some very interesting intel,” Bennett filled me in. “The Shield of Cain is here in the Fae world.”
“That shifter fairy tale?” I asked.
“It’s no fairy tale,” Winter said as the three of us strode through the dungeon toward the stairs. “It’s the shifters’ best chance at reversing the Cure, and we need to prevent that.”
I scoffed. “I don’t think it’s even occurred to them.”
Winter shot me a dark look. “Don’t underestimate our enemies, Echo. You’re smarter than that.”
Just then, I felt the snap of my magic breaking, where it always ached, deep under my left rib. My face didn’t change at the sudden stabbing sensation—we’d practiced it so much—but my heart rate spiked.
Someone had just broken my ward on the door to Maddie’s room.
“Speaking of underestimating our enemies,” I said.
Winter stared at me impatiently.
Was Maddie an enemy or a friend? I wasn’t sure what she was to me at the moment. My heart raced. No matter what she thought of me, there was no denying the protective impulse that ran through my body when she was in danger.
“I think you’ll manage without me,” I said. “Winter’s daughter just broke out of her cell.”
We reached the top of the stairs, just as half-a-dozen Fae knights came around the corner.
“Go!” Winter ordered. “We’ll hold them off and meet you back at the house once we have the shield.”
I was already running as I murmured the words of my spell, ready to cut down anyone who made the mistake of getting between me and Maddie.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Maddie
It seemed at first like there was no way out, even through the hole I’d bashed in the wall.
This spell was probably a blood magic. I probed the edges of it for a long time, then searched for a cut on my body where Echo had stolen my blood for the spell.
I finally found it—a third nick under the Band-Aid on my thigh. I frowned, irritated at the thought that Echo had probably recognized the cut on my leg as a sign I was using blood magic myself.
I felt too vulnerable when I imagined Echo searching my body with his long, aristocratic fingers, to imagine him brushing his hand across my thigh, then peeling the Band-Aid away. I’d been unconscious, but when I imagined him, it almost felt like a memory.
I didn’t like the way Echo looked at me as if he knew everything about me.
When I brushed against the edges of his spell, the scent of his cologne rose in my nose, and I frowned. There was something familiar about his scent. Not the cologne itself, which was something dark and sensual and awfully heavy for wearing before breakfast. He wore so much cologne that it tickled my nose and made me sneeze. But now, without him around me, I could smell him in his magic. He smelled familiar.
Why does it feel like I already know you, Echo?
Echo was gone; Winter was too. Maybe I could get out of here, find the Cure, and get back to the Council instead of waiting around to see what the witches would do to me next.
I pressed my hands flat against the ceiling and poured my magic into it. I had to keep stopping and re-starting; I’d grow exhausted, magic tensing my shoulders and rippling through the muscles of my back until I was shaking with fatigue. I’d lie down and rest for a while, then get back up and grit my teeth and go to work.
Finally, I felt the magic snap. It broke apart under my hands, crumpling like sand. I smiled in triumph.
One step down to my escape.
Only eighty-three left to go.
I could swear I heard Jensen’s deadpan voice in my head. Lord, he was such an optimist. It made me ache, wondering where he was and how he felt.
Every time I pictured the way the guys had faced me in that hallway, eyes narrowed, radiating genuine anger, it made me shudder inside. They were a terrifying lot when they weren’t mine. I’d been mad—and hurt—beyond the role I was playing at the time, but now every time I thought about their faces, something throbbed in my chest.
I’d specifically destroyed any possibility of being rescued, unless I called on Clearborn and the council. That was a strange thought. I always knew my men would come if I needed them. Now I was missing both my pendant and the mating bond.
>
For the first time in my life, I was really alone.
There were footsteps on the other side of the door, and I abandoned the ceiling, hastily sitting cross-legged on my bed. My heart was beating too fast as the door swung open.
Alice looked in on me, her face sad. “How are you holding up, Maddie?”
“Great,” I said.
She set the tray she carried down on the floor outside the room, then hesitated.
“If I break Echo’s spell, do you promise not to tell him?” she said, her voice light.
“Sure,” I said. “Echo’s not exactly my bestie.”
I watched her curiously. I didn’t think she’d actually be able to break Echo’s spell, but it was a good sign that she felt sorry for me and wanted to help me.
Maybe we could be friends.
Maybe she could be persuaded to give me the Cure, or at least, maybe I could get close enough to take it from her.
She pressed her hand to the door frame, her lips moving in the words of a Latin spell. She didn’t hide her face like Echo had. Just in case it actually worked, I memorized the words.
People call Latin a dead language. They’re so innocent. They don’t realize that the people who speak Latin these days are either scholars or villains or badasses.
Or all three of the above, maybe, in the case of someone like Echo.
There was a faint scent of smoke in the air, like magic disintegrating, and then she walked into my closet, a pleased smile coming to her face.
“Do you like ham sandwiches?” she asked, setting the tray on the bed beside me.
“I was never a passionate sandwich enthusiast before,” I said, “but right now, I’m a huge fan of ham sandwiches.”
As I ate, we talked. She seemed so curious about my life—even though she seemed skeptical when I talked about how I liked life with my own pack—but she brushed off any questions I had about her life. I couldn’t imagine there was anything too great about life in the Day.
When I was done and she stood with my tray, she said, “I hope you won’t think that this—” she gestured around the small space, “means anything. Echo means well, but he shouldn’t treat you like this. It’s not…how we do things. The coven is a family. A good one.”
