“Use your sword,” Rush shouted back. “It’s broad enough the metal will displace the mana I send your way.”
Gritting his teeth, Caraway planted Justice’s tip into the grass and used it to lever himself up. Well-damn it. This was embarrassing. Get him in hand-to-hand combat and he would come out on top. But he needed this. The extra training.
The human enemies emerging didn’t play by the rules, and he needed to be ready. He’d failed too many times already.
Anise’s smirking face came to mind and he almost lost his footing. Cute wolfish ears twitching in irritation, dark stain on her nose, big golden eyes with long sweeping lashes. Something squeezed hard in his chest. His old friend had moved away and hadn’t told him where, which meant she didn’t want to be found. He couldn’t blame her. He’d fucked up.
“Stop!” A male shout came from the sidelines.
Caraway squinted into the sun, shielded his eyes. The team leader of the Twelve, Leaf, a golden-haired elf with a superiority complex, waved him over. Leaf was also a council member. This could mean only one thing.
Caraway had a mission.
Wiping the dirt off Justice, Caraway sheathed the great sword at the baldric on his back and then strode over. Leaf, Rush, and his son Thorne almost converged to meet. Fae stopped aging at about the age of twenty years, so both father and son looked almost identical except for their eyes and hair. Rush’s eyes were golden, and Thorne’s were icy blue. Rush’s hair was long and silver, Thorne’s was buzzed at the sides and short on top. All three looked at Caraway ominously.
Why were they looking at him like that? As though he wasn’t about to like what they said next.
“What is it?” he asked.
Leaf folded his arms, his black leathers creaking. “Cloud has finished interrogating the human who worked with High King Mithras.”
“Oh?” Caraway raised his brow and did his best to hide his blatant disgust for both the Seelie High King and the human he’d conspired with. The same human who’d manipulated and worked with the fae who’d tortured Anise for two weeks. “Does that mean we can kill him now?”
Thorne shot Caraway a look with dark eyes and a feral glint. The pacifist in his blood wanted to shrink back. Oxen and Wolves were enemies in the animal world, but Caraway had found this one to be his greatest ally.
Thorne bared his fangs. “The prisoner is mine.”
Caraway folded his arms. “That human tortured Anise.”
“He tortured my mate first. If there’s anything left of him after I’ve had him, he’s all yours.”
Caraway bit back a retort, because Thorne was well within his rights to take revenge on the human. Laurel was Thorne’s Well-blessed mate. They shared not only mana but emotions. Thorne would have relived Laurel’s pain as though it were his own. Anise wasn’t Caraway’s mate. She might not even be his friend.
Not after she blamed him for failing to notice she’d been locked in a cage for two weeks. That tightness in his chest constricted again.
“I hate to burst your bubbles,” Leaf drawled, “but neither of you will get your hands on him yet. Cloud has failed to draw worthy information from the human. His mind is locked tight like a vise. Cloud is finished with his interrogation, but we have other methods we will try next. There is one lead we need you to investigate, Caraway.”
Caraway looked at the other three, more capable Guardians. All of them were part of the Twelve, the most feared and revered warriors of the Order of the Well. Each of them vicious and uniquely powerful in their own way, it was every Guardian’s dream to one day earn their place in the tight-knit cadre of brothers-in-arms. Not only were they powerful, but two of them had already attained a status all Guardians secretly wanted but denied they did—they had found love in this impossible world.
Up until now, it was assumed the life of a Guardian was lonely and empty when it came to mating. Long term relationships weren’t encouraged. Not only was a Guardian’s duty demanding, but dangerous. Lives were often cut short. Short dalliances were encouraged.
Until recently.
Thorne had worked on abolishing the unsanctioned breeding law. Rush had a two-year-old daughter that ran around the Order campus. Times were certainly changing.
“Why me?” Caraway asked. “Clearly I’m not the most experienced in this group.”
“But you have the best connection to the person who has the information.”
“Who?”
“Anise.”
Caraway’s heart stuttered. His mouth dried. They’d found her? “You want me to interrogate her?”
“No,” Leaf replied. “None of that. But we want you to infiltrate her journey. Go where she is going and conduct your own investigation.”
“I’m not following.”
“She’s been invited to see the Ice-Witch.”
As though the hag was standing next to him, Caraway’s bones froze. The Ice-Witch was a powerful sorceress who, not only made the most heinous magical bargains with fae, but did so without scruples or discrimination. Every Guardian knew you didn’t bargain with the witch unless you were prepared to offer your soul and submit to eons of torture. If you came out of her ice cave with anything less, then you were having a good day.
But did Anise know this?
“The witch is a powerful adversary,” Caraway said. “Any of the cadre would do a better job.”
“It’s Anise,” Thorne replied with a soulful gaze. “It was me who pulled her from that cage, Caraway. But it was you she called for. If she’s heading to the Ice-Witch, then... she’s going to need a friend.”
Caraway swallowed the lump in his throat and he stared hard at the ground, trying not to let the burn behind his eyelids overflow into tears. Anise had asked for him, even after he’d failed to realize she was in trouble. He’d left Crescent Hollow before she’d been taken because Anise and he had argued. She was fed up with the red-coated royal Seelie guards causing havoc every time they came to town. She was fed up with the town’s Lord and Alpha, Thaddeus, ruling the village so cruelly. And she was frustrated that no one took her seriously as a lesser fae. As usual, Caraway had stayed out of the unrest. Guardians were forbidden to get involved with general fae politics. If it didn’t involve mana, then it wasn’t their problem.
Guardians were a dying breed and the war against warped magic and keeping the integrity of the Well alive was growing every day. They simply didn’t have enough resources to be the police of everything. A line had to be drawn, and fae politics was on the other side.
“How did you find her?” Caraway asked, throat dry.
“You know how Laurel and I got sent to the Ring by causing a disturbance at the Birdcage?” Thorne asked. “We ran into Anise there.”
Caraway nodded. The Birdcage was an elixir den in Cornucopia. Fae from all over Elphyne went there to unwind with dance, drink, or to screw, and to satisfy their deviant urges. Being in Cornucopia, the establishment got away without adhering to any laws that restricted revelry in the Seelie or Unseelie Kingdoms. Usually, this freedom leaned toward the hedonistic side, but Caraway had seen darker rooms and cages with strange sadistic goings-on.
That was where Anise had been working?
“We need you to drill the Ice-Witch for information,” Leaf continued. “All our prisoner gave us was her name. But it’s the most we’ve received after days of interrogation.” Leaf plucked a feather from his shoulder and flicked it to the ground. Then he met Caraway’s eyes. “You’re authorized to use force if necessary, but if you discover the witch is the source of the perversion of magic the humans have been using, then don’t do anything. Bring the information back and we will assess. At the very least, get a location for us.”
Granting wishes to make someone taller or more beautiful was one thing, but lately, mana-warped monsters had been emerging all over Elphyne. If the witch was responsible for those, then she would be dealt with by the Order. If she was also the one feeding the humans secrets on how to use mana, then she would
rue the day she betrayed her own kind.
Something else occurred to Caraway. “What would Anise want with the Ice Witch?”
“What does anyone want?” Leaf replied.
Anise’s cute tail swished into Caraway’s mind and his heart stopped. It was the one thing she’d always been self-conscious about, and he’d bet his sword that she was going to bargain away her soul so she could look like a normal fae.
The two of them had become friends over a mutual bond—they’d both been branded as outcasts. He, for his Guardian status and his family’s disdain for violence. She, because she couldn’t make the full shift into a wolf. She couldn’t shift at all. It had never bothered Caraway, but he knew she stewed about it.
This was not good. He couldn’t let her make this mistake. Anise was perfect, just the way she was born. Becoming a shifter was not worth the damnation of her eternal soul. That was priceless.
“I’ll go,” Caraway said. “Just tell me where and when.”
Chapter 3
Anise woke to the sound of knocking at her door. A peek from beneath the bed showed sun rays had escaped the confines of the curtains to lighten the room. She rubbed her eyes. She should already be awake and on her way by now. Damn it.
Sleeping under the bed felt safer, but it was also darker and she’d missed her dawn wake-up call.
Knock-knock-knock.
Frowning, Anise found her dagger and shimmied out from beneath the bed. Cracking her back, then neck, she eyed the door with suspicion. She’d been living here for over a year but hadn’t told anyone. There was no reason she’d have a visitor. She gripped her dagger hard and darted a glance to the window, suddenly cursing the lack of opening for an escape. She supposed she could break the glass.
“Anise?” came the muffled deep voice. “It’s me.”
Anise stared at the door.
It’s me.
Oh, how she’d dreamed of hearing those two little words over and over whilst captured and tortured in that cage. How she’d hoped and longed for them, held onto them as though they were a lifeline.
A lifeline that never came.
The tension in her body shifted until it crumpled her face. She opened the door and scowled despite her heart galloping and her stomach fluttering. Damn it.
Caraway loomed in the hallway, his big bulk taking up most of the room. His head and curved horns almost brushed the ceiling. Segmented pauldrons on the Guardian uniform hit the walls on either side—he was that broad. Bone stud buttons ran down the front of his flat torso. Blue piping accentuated the shape of his body—bulging where his biceps stretched the leather jacket almost indecently. A broadsword was holstered over his back.
And the most dangerous part of all—his big, brown, long-lashed doe eyes staring right into her, reaching inside and tugging on her atoms, sending them into a frenzy.
His presence stole Anise’s breath away. Nothing had changed in the way her body reacted to him. Only her mind.
She looked closer and took in his face, surprised to note his usual jolly, flushed coloring was gone. Messy shaggy hair fell over his curved horns. Scruff over his square jaw. Dark, bruised circles beneath those long lashes.
His usual nonchalant vibe had been replaced with hard lines. A pinched look to his face, a flattened press of his lips, and tendons in his temples pulsed from a clenched jaw.
It didn’t suit him.
The old Anise wanted to ask what had happened to suck the jolly out of him. The sound of his big-bellied laugh had warmed her on many cold nights during their friendship. But the new Anise, the one he’d left in that cage to rot, didn’t give a shit.
“Go away,” she said and tried to close the door.
Caraway shoved his giant boot in the gap, stopping it from closing. He put his big meaty hand on the door and pressed. It seemed effortless, and the marked difference in their body strength drove her nuts. This was why she was going to see the Ice-Witch. This.
Helplessness swam over her and she stood back. Caraway ducked to get under the doorframe, came in, and closed the door behind him. He surveyed the room with trepidation.
“This is where you’ve been staying?”
His gaze landed on the pillow decoy in the bed, tilted to see the blanket and sleeping arrangement beneath, and then caught the dagger still in her hand. When his shrewd gaze lifted to meet hers, it softened.
“I don’t want your pity, Caraway,” she said, pointing the dagger at him, and then the door. “And I told you to go away. So you should respect a lady’s wishes and do just that.”
But he didn’t go. He started poking around the room as though he owned it. He went to the window, opened the curtain, looked outside, and then tested it to see if it opened. Turning, his eyes tracked around the room until they landed on her knapsack, filled and ready for her journey. His brows lifted.
“Where are you going?”
“None of your business.” Anise folded her arms. “Why are you here, Caraway?”
Those brows lowered darkly. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Anise. Why are you running away from me? I thought we were friends.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Friends don’t leave friends to the mercy of evil, twisted people.”
“I didn’t know about that until it was too late.”
“I told you things were getting dire in that town. I told you.” The accusation was a spear of vitriol. The moment the words were out of her mouth, Caraway flinched as though hit.
He sat heavily on the bed. It creaked from his weight and the great sword at his back twisted to accommodate the new position. He put his head in his hands.
“I know,” he said softly. “But I’m not allowed to get involved with—”
Anise held up her hand. “Oh spare me the same rigmarole. I’ve heard the Order’s mantra before. ‘Not mana, not my problem,’ right? You and I both know it goes deeper than that.”
She’d meant deeper in the sense that the world wasn’t painted in shades of gray, but when Caraway shot her hurt, accusatory eyes, she knew he thought she’d meant something else. She stuttered and sighed. The tension in her body melted. “You know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I think you did,” he shot back. “You of all people know what my family thinks of me.”
She worried her lip with her teeth. A band of guilt wrapped around her chest. When they’d been close friends, Caraway had confessed his darkest shame one night while they were both inebriated. His family was peace-loving. He wanted to save the world and had embraced violence. At least if it was in the name of the Well, he had a higher, holy purpose no one could argue with. If he resorted to helping Anise out and doling out his own version of justice to the humans and other fae reprobates who’d kidnapped her, then the lines were blurred and perhaps he really was this lower-than-low person his family accused him of being. He’d be a monster no different to the mana-twisted beasts he hunted.
The real, open regret on his face plucked at Anise’s heart and for the first time, she realized that perhaps those hard lines he’d grown were from her, just another person in his life who’d asked him to make an impossible decision.
She sat down next to him with a heavy sigh and hand-signed an apology. She put a fist to her chest and made a circle motion. Fae don’t voice their thanks or say sorry, for it left them in another’s debt. Only family freely spoke these because it was known that true family would do anything for each other, regardless of debt.
Caraway hand-signed his apology too. “I should have been there to protect you, no matter what. You’re right. Ignoring the plight of others because it isn’t my job isn’t a way to live.”
“I get it,” she soothed. “The Prime doesn’t want you to get involved.”
He gritted his teeth. “But that’s not stopping the Cadre of Twelve. Rush and Thorne have both broken the rules recently. And the Prime’s not reprimanded them.” He scrubbed his face. “What difference does it make if I’m fighting to preserve the integrity of the Well i
f the world it goes to is turning to shit?”
Her heart reached out to him. It might have only taken him a few decades, and almost losing her, but he was finally getting it.
“It was also unfair of me to throw the burden of my capture at you,” she said. “I know you would have been there if you knew.”
He turned to her, eyes brimming with hope. “Can we go back to being friends?”
Her heart lurched. Her hand slid under the cover on the bed and grasped the paper invitation that had consumed her life for the past year and more. Indecision rocked her. What would he think of her choice?
“What’s that?” he asked, eyes toward where her hand moved.
Alarmed, she looked down. The white letter poked out from beneath the blanket. There was no way he’d let her go without an explanation, so she took a deep breath, and let it out.
“It’s an invitation to see the Ice-Witch.”
Silence.
She closed her eyes and waited for the reprimand she knew was coming. Caraway had always been a come as you are kind of male, but while he’d spoken the words, his actions were louder. He’d only dated high fae. She never saw him with a lesser fae. None like her.
Warm, rough fingers touched her cheek. Her eyes flew open and met his. In them, she saw pity. She knocked his hand away and stood up.
“Don’t judge me, Caraway.”
“I wasn’t.”
She looked sideways at him. “You weren’t?”
“No. But visiting the Ice-Witch for any reason won’t have a happy ending. You know this.”
Bitter pain and failure swirled in her gut. He had no idea what it was like to be sub-par. To be teased your whole life, first by cruel kids, then by even meaner adults. That last customer at the Birdcage hadn’t been a one-off. Fae like her treated Anise differently all the time. It was the tail.
She’d considered cutting it off once, just to be rid of it. But then there was the discoloration on her face. The darker nose. The black-rimmed eyes. The bigger than normal wolfish ears.
“You know the reason I’m visiting her,” she said to him. “And you know the hurt I feel is bone-deep. I’ll do anything to be rid of it.”
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