by May Dawson
Mycroft stops and kisses me, his lips lingering against mine. His body against mine is warm no matter how cold the air around us. In between kisses, I run my fingertips over the unfamiliar face he wears. I still think I’d still know him anywhere.
“Keep trying,” I murmur. “I like it when you’re playful.”
“As long as it always ends like this,” he says, before the two of us trade one last kiss. Then we scramble to our feet. This time, when he offers me a hand up, I take it and swing up to his side.
We’re all business when Airren and the others reach us. Our mission is serious, but the moment of lightness and connection between Mycroft and I has me feeling strangely better about the whole thing.
Rian brushes snow out of my hair. “I’ve got a kingdom full of children.”
“I’ve got a snowball with your name on it too,” I promise him.
“As long as it comes with more than kisses.” His eyebrows arch suggestively. I grin back, about to tell him to wait and see once we rescue Devlin.
Don’t let my imminent death cut into your flirting.
I pull a face, touching my fingers to my temple so everyone knows what—who--is distracting me. I thought you said not to take any major risks for you.
Yeah, I still think you should go home. Devlin’s voice is bleak. I got what I wanted when I leapt out of there without giving up any of my rebels.
Devlin’s willingness to die bites into my heart.
Oh no, you’re stuck with us. I tell him. I’ve got a snowball marked for you too.
You do not want to start another fight with me, girl. You’ll lose. But his voice is teasing, warm.
I don’t think I can lose. No matter who ends up on top.
Not if I have my men together. The thought of wrestling with them all in the snow, having a playful snow fight, warms me as the five of us trek through the deep snow into the city.
You’ll want to steer to your right, around the outskirts of the city. There’s a pub called Mait’s. Some of my rebels met there. But be careful going in there—it’s full of criminals and dissidents.
Your kind of people.
Don’t forget it.
We find our way down narrow twisted cobblestone streets, which are packed with ice and snow, and into a Vasilik bar. It’s dimly lit after the blinding reflection of the sun on the snow, and we all blink, stopping to acclimate ourselves.
Well, the humans amongst us do. Airren and Mycroft move into the room without hesitation. The two of them still move like one unit, tall, muscular men who are dangerously graceful on their feet and don’t have to glance at each other to move in sync, watching each other’s back.
Airren’s swagger and the way he leans slightly to one side, reminds me of the day I met him. I knew he was trouble then.
Cax, Rian and I are just a beat behind. The five of us take seats at a table against the wall.
When the waitress approaches, Airren orders us a round of drinks, his accent suddenly pronouncedly Vasilik with his sharp vowels and slightly harsher consonants.
Once she leaves, I cock my head to one side. I knew he grew up in Vasilik; I just didn’t realize he had adopted an Avalon accent and shifted back and forth.
They all look to me expectantly. I glance across the room. See anyone familiar?
Not yet. Don’t stay here too long, he warns. Vasilik is a dangerous place at the moment.
Cax leans in toward me.
“Eavesdropping spell,” he murmurs, catching his hand in mine.
“I’m not sure I can handle any more voices,” I shoot back, but I turn my face into his. Our cheeks brush briefly as he murmurs the incantation in my ear. My lips part with the word to activate the spell.
When we ease away from each other, I can glance at any table, no matter how far away the room, and after a second of concentration, I can hear their conversation as clearly as if I’ve joined them.
A few tables away, two women have already pegged us as tourists.
“That’s a beautiful collection of men,” one of them murmurs to the other over her copper cup. “What do you think they’re doing here?”
“Escaping Avalon?” the second one asks lightly.
“Maybe Vasiliks and Avalonians will keep scurrying back and forth across the border, depending on which country is more of a trainwreck any given week.”
The two of them clink their cups together in a toast.
“I never thought Avalon would pull into the lead so quickly,” one says.
“The king caught up in a hurry, broadcasting executions across the country.”
Rian’s face has drained of color.
“Not Alia,” he whispers under his breath. “Please not Alia.”
I grab his hand beneath the table and squeeze.
“What’s the latest one?” one of the women asks the bartender, and laughter goes up around the room.
As we listen, it becomes clear that the king has been executing people he blames for the rips. He’s broadcast their deaths from the central square in his city to every town square, using the local magicians. He’s been promising the people the end of the devastation tearing apart Avalon, and he’s scapegoating these people.
“I didn’t realize he was such a monster,” Rian mutters.
Airren rises suddenly from the table. I’m not sure what he’s seen, but within a few minutes, he returns with a newspaper. He drops it in front of Rian casually before he takes a seat again.
“The Vasiliks are pretty entertained by this whole affair,” he says. “They’ve been keeping a scoreboard of public deaths. Alia’s not one of them, Rian.”
Rian nods. “Thank you.”
There’s one of my men, Devlin says urgently as the door bangs shut behind a new arrival. Terim.
A tall young man shaking blond hair back from his face stands in the doorway. He glances around the room.
I’m trying to figure out how to start that conversation when Terim’s face brightens, as if he sees someone he recognizes. His gaze is fixed on me, and I barely resist the temptation to turn around to see who he’s really looking for.
He crosses the room to us and leans down and gives me a hug. My men stiffen, but I put my arms around him and hug him back. Without hesitation, he grabs a chair from a nearby table and twirls it around, taking a seat backwards.
“Hello there, Lady Fox,” he says to me.
My brows arch. He’s not supposed to recognize me as Tera Donovan, and no one is supposed to recognize Tera as the Lady Fox.
“Sight enchantments don’t work on Fae—they’re the masters of those tricks, after all—and I’m half.” He says that proudly.
“That only answers one of my questions.”
He still shouldn’t know I’m the Lady Fox. I can’t imagine secretive Devlin shared my identity with anyone, when he did his best to keep his rebel cells divided so they wouldn’t even know who to give away when tortured.
He rolls his eyes. “Oh, you know. Here in Vasilik, we’re a little smarter than your average citizen of Avalon. That mask should never have fooled anyone.”
“Perhaps.”
He leans in toward me. “Tell me you’re here to rescue Devlin, the true king.”
I stare back at him as he smiles. His smile is wide and enchanting; I can believe he’s half Fae.
“I can’t tell you that,” I say evenly. “Where is he?”
“The Castle of Ghouls.” He tilts his head to one side.
In my ear, Devling groans. Really? I’m not even conscious. Why?
“What’s the Castle of Ghouls?” I ask out loud, even though Devlin might answer me. “A high security prison?”
“The highest,” Terim says. “Anyone who goes in there without an enchanted amulet loses their mind.”
Well, I’m lucky I’ve got you all to rescue me anyway. Devlin grouses. None of you are in your right minds anyway.
“Luckily,” Terim goes on, “if anyone were foolish enough to go in after Prince Devlin, I did manage to
steal an amulet.”
Chapter 32
Airren
From the room we rent on the top floor of a rooming house, we can see the Castle of Ghouls silhouetted against the moon. It’s dark and foreboding, its towers twisting up into a sky dotted with broken clouds.
“One amulet going in,” Rian says. He holds the chain in his hands, and from it dangles the disc, in which is buried a sliver of a sacred stone. It keeps the guards from being tormented by the ghouls that are real gatekeepers in that place.
Every guard should wear one, which means as fast as we take out the guards, we can armor up.
Devlin’s man and his rebel cell have promised to cause a distraction in the streets. All we’ll have to worry about are the guards themselves. And the ghouls.
Rian looks to me. “Airren?”
Apparently, he’s put the last of our boarding-school drama behind him. He looks to me as the leader of our group, despite being the prince.
“I wish.” My lips twist, because there’s nothing worse for me than ceding control. “I can pick a lock, and so can Mycroft, but no one’s quicker to figure out foreign tech than Cax. And we don’t know what we’re going to encounter in there besides the ghouls.”
Cax looks up quickly. “Me?”
“Yeah.” The word burns in my mouth. “You. You’ve got the lead on this one.”
If there’s one thing I realized after our time in Merlin’s house, it’s that Cax is the one who can get us through the puzzle of the Ghouls. What matters is that we all make it out of there safely.
“We don’t know exactly how long it will take for the ghouls to affect us,” Rian says, accepting that easily. “We’ll have to move fast, but if things go awry…you’ll be responsible for keeping us sane, or at least alive, until we’re able to get medallions for everyone.”
Cax nods. There’s a grim set to his mouth. He can do this, I know he can.
No matter how much I hate it.
We finish our plans. While everyone else is still talking, I head into the bedroom to clear my head. I step out onto the balcony that overhangs the dark, twisted street. Those narrow streets are designed to be highly defensible. My home country was built for war, and so was its people.
There are so many things about this plan I don’t love. Trusting another Vasilik, for one.
But I’m putting my faith in Tera, and in Merlin, and so I’m putting my faith in Devlin and the rebels he swears by.
“Knock knock,” Tera says. She leans onto the balcony. “Mind if I join you?”
The moonlight catches the highlights in her strawberry blond hair. I shake my head. Never. I never mind having her near me.
“You hate this,” she says softly.
“I do.” There’s no point in denying it.
“But you’re here. Sword in hand.” She touches my chest lightly, and my hands rise to cup her hips.
“Devlin is one of us, apparently.”
Her lips quirk to one side. “He appreciates the welcome.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not what he’s just said. I brush her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Can you shut him up? Give us a second alone?”
She shakes her head. “Perpetual threesome. Sorry.”
“Then I guess he’s welcome here too.”
She sways against me, and I tilt my head down. Our lips graze lightly, and then she presses her mouth against mine intently. When her lips part against mine, I could lose myself in her kiss.
When she pulls away from me, she says softly, “Thank you.”
She doesn’t want me to be so protective of her. But she does want me to protect her family, I guess—the five men she’s chosen.
And if that’s what she wants, that’s what she’ll have. To the best of my ability. Even if it kills me.
I could pretend I don’t understand what she’s thanking me for, but we both know I’ve always been the biggest threat to the happily-ever-after for the six of us. For her, though, I’m all in.
“Of course,” I say, even though it was never certain at all. I take her hand in mine. “Let’s go save your Vasilik.”
“You mean my other Vasilik?” she teases.
“Well, I renounced citizenship a while ago.”
“You still do the accent quite well.”
“I can do any accent, Tera. I’m a spy.”
The banter makes her smile, and her smile eases my own tension as we head out into the night.
We take a series of tunnels under the city and come up through a trap door into the castle itself. We emerge into a cellar, surrounded by industrial-sized bags of potatoes and jars of jelly, and climb narrow stairs to emerge into the bright lights of the empty kitchen.
I look around the gleaming, empty room in disappointment. I’d hoped to encounter some guards sooner rather than later. As long as we dispatch them quietly and get in and out before the alarm goes up, I’d sure like to find five of them quickly—one for each of us who doesn’t yet have an amulet. Devlin will need one as soon as we find his body.
Outside the kitchen is a long hallway. It’s odd that we haven’t even seen a guard yet. It would be good if we could cover more ground, but we can’t risk splitting up until everyone has an amulet.
“Here.” Mycroft points to a branch off the hallway. “It’s locked.”
Cax moves ahead of us quickly and his fingers fly over the lock. He’s moving quickly, but I feel a creeping sense of unease ripple up my spine. There’s someone, or something watching us. But even though I search down the hallway, I can’t find it.
Tera’s lips part, her gaze troubled. Time to let it go. I give her a wink, and she smiles faintly back at me before taking my hand.
Mycroft takes the lead as we head down the hall. He stops abruptly, stepping to one side, slamming his back into the wall. He bites hard on his lower lip as he suddenly crouches, as if he’s holding something back. “I keep getting flashbacks of the mines. They make me claustrophobic.”
His voice comes out flat, matter-of-fact.
“I’m glad you told us,” I tell him. It takes bravery for him to admit any weakness. “Croft, it’s just an illusion. We have plenty of room in these hallways to move and fight.”
He hesitates, then nods. When I offer him a hand up, he lets me pull him to his feet. He can’t help but duck his head then, as if he’s afraid he’s going to hit his head, even though the ceiling is two feet above. His face goes blank, as if he’s hiding his embarrassment.
“Does anyone else see anything?” Cax asks.
“Not yet.” Tera shakes her head.
Then, so does Rian. Mycroft’s lips tighten. He doesn’t like feeling like the weakest of us, but no one who knows him would think that.
Together, we head down a hallway of cells. The doors all stand open. Where the hell are the guards?
Finally, at the end of the hall, we come to what must be a day room. The room is simply furnished with a handful of tables and chairs, but one of the room’s few occupants is in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth. His hands are in his hair, or what’s left of it. It takes me a few seconds in the dimly lit room to realize that some of his hair bristles between his bloodied fingers. He’s torn it out.
“After we save Devlin,” I say, “We’re going to rescue the rest of these people, and we’re going to burn this place down.”
Two more men sit at one of the tables, playing cards. They rise, throwing their cards to the table, and begin to move toward us. They move as if they could be guards, but I don’t see medallions around their necks. They seem so confident as they move silently toward us, spreading out as if they’re going to attack us from both sides.
But then I blink, and they don’t look like guards at all.
They’re just children, their hair full of dust, wide-eyed and frozen in time, their mouths slack. They look like the children that Radner and I dug out of the ruins of the orphanage on the Savage Night, the ones that we couldn’t save.
It’s
an illusion. It’s not real.
“Airren,” Cax says warningly just as one swings at me.
Even a glimpse of a blade in his hand that comes from nowhere isn’t enough to completely break the illusion for me. I feel sick as I catch the hand that holds the knife, as my body reacts with muscle memory. Break the wrist, drop the body, take the knife. Within seconds, I have the hilt in my hand.
On the other side of us, Mycroft has done the same. The body of an innocent child, killed all over again, falls to his feet. Blank eyes stare at me. It’s not real, though. It’s not real.
Those small bodies haunted my dreams for a long time, but I thought I had those memories under control.
Cax holds out his hand to me. “No weapons until you’re got a medallion.”
We talked about this back when we were planning. The ghouls might cause us to see enemies within our own ranks. Mycroft and I are dangerous enough unarmed.
I hand the knife over, even though the impulse to keep it is so strong that it almost hurts. I’ve never been one to give up a weapon.
“What’d you see?” Cax asks.
Mycroft answers, his voice low and dark, “My brother.”
Damn it. My heart wrenches in my chest for him. But there’s only one thing I can do to help.
“Let’s find a guard to kill,” I say, moving ahead of them through the room to the door on the other side, which stands open too.
Suddenly, Devlin flies through the doorway. His chest heaves, his eyes wild. “You found me.”
Not him.
Without hesitation, I grab his throat and slam him into the stone wall. He kicks off the wall, bringing up the knife in his hand, slashing toward me. I drop him and move quickly back, out of the range of his blade.
“Devlin!” Tera cries. “Both of you, stop!”
“Tera!” Cax says. “It’s not real. Airren, it’s not real.”
The figure that looks like Devlin advances on me again, and this time I catch his hand, turn the blade against him, drive it into his chest.
Cax said he wasn’t real, but Tera’s anguished cry certainly sounds real. When I look down at Devlin’s face above the bloody wound, which pumps out steadily gushing blood across his shirt, across the floor, shame and horror twists in my stomach.
