Hazel wouldn’t have leaked the info, would she? I mean—she’d said some things about how we were better off being ruled by the horsemen. After her time with the dragons, she’d come back a totally different person than she used to be. Hazel thought that you should always choose the winning side of a war, no matter what the costs. But she wouldn’t have turned on her own sister.
Right?
“Are you worried about Adonis?” she asked.
“Yes. I know he won’t die. I’m the only one who can kill him. But I don’t want to think about what Aereus the Angel of Torture might be doing with him.” In my current state, I wouldn’t be able to rescue him, and I didn’t want to lose my mind imagining the worst. “I’m going to get him as soon as I can.”
“I don’t think that will be anytime soon.”
Was I the only one who saw the danger we were in? Every day that we let pass was another day the Heavenly Host could come out of hiding and slaughter the rest of the earth’s inhabitants. And we didn’t even know where to find them. “We don’t have much time to fuck around, Hazel. I don’t know what the angelic horde is planning, but it’s not going to be pretty.”
Hazel shoveled a forkful of mashed potatoes into my mouth, and I studied her. Her blasé attitude was a little concerning.
What if Kratos and Hazel were working together? Maybe they were both lying to me, keeping me here until they could take over the world, along with Famine and War.
Ugh. Speaking of losing my mind, I would probably drive myself nuts imagining all the possible scenarios that might destroy the world.
I needed to keep a clear head and speak to Yasmin. It had been far too long since I’d gotten in touch with my handler from the Order. We could exchange information, and she could help me figure out exactly how to ferret out the leak. Maybe the Order even had some information I could use.
As soon as I physically could, I’d haul my broken body out of bed and find a way to contact her. I wasn’t going to get complacent here in my comfortable bed.
Night had fallen in the garden.
A beautiful man approached me—completely naked. His hair hung to his shoulders, and moonlight washed over his perfect body. I recognized him from somewhere—from the statue at Adonis’s castle. Azazeyl, the original fallen angel.
He handed me a grape, and I ate it. The sweet, tangy juice burst in my mouth, and as it did, chaos erupted in my mind. My own voice echoed off the inside of my skull—screaming about death, until I no longer knew who I was or what I was doing here. The world collapsed into chaos around me.
My own scream ripped me from my sleep.
I gasped, trying to sit up, but my body still wasn’t quite there yet. I’d come a little too close to dying from an iron arrow to the heart, and my mind wasn’t letting me forget it. The door slammed open, and I lifted my head just enough to see Kratos rush into the room in a blur of copper.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
To a thousand-year-old horseman of the apocalypse, “I had a bad dream” probably sounded a bit lame. “Just, uh … just the pain from the arrow wounds. I rolled on my ribs funny.”
A brusque nod. “Oh.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. The timing of the ambush had been interesting. The other horsemen had busted in right before I could remove his curse—almost as if he was still working with the Heavenly Host, still committed to completing his sacred duty.
“Do you still want your curse removed?” I asked.
He sat at the edge of my bed, his weight compressing the mattress.
“Of course. But we will wait until you’ve had a chance to heal. The iron still courses through your blood.”
How convenient. “Actually, I think I’m on the mend. I want to find Adonis as soon as I can.” I could hardly sit up, but these were minor details.
Kratos frowned. “You’re in no condition to travel. In any case, Adonis will be fine. The other horsemen can’t kill him, and they’ll want to use him.”
“For what, exactly?”
“To trade for you and Hazel.”
My chest tightened. “They want Hazel, too?”
“She’s from the same bloodline as you. If you can harness the power of the Old Gods, so can she. But Adonis will be fine. I’m sure they’ll torture him within an inch of his life, but—”
“Exactly why we’re going after him as soon as we can.”
“You can hardly move, Ruby.”
Convenient, again. Angels had brought language to the earth. And along with language came the ability to lie.
Blocking out the pain, I forced myself up onto my elbows. “We’re running out of time. There’s a horde of angels who want to slaughter us and everything else on earth, and you don’t seem particularly bothered about it. You know, I never saw who knocked me out.” Just a hint of an accusation tinged my voice.
His eyes flared with gold. “What are you implying?”
“It’s just interesting that my injuries mean that you have to keep the curse, just like the Heavenly Host would want, and we can’t go after Adonis.” I’d planned to play it cool, but in the dead of night, with the pain wracking my body, I was kind of failing at that.
“If you want to pull the curse from me now instead of in the morning, be my guest.”
I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to sit up as agony danced up my spine. “It doesn’t hurt that much,” I said defensively.
Kratos touched his heart—maybe unconsciously reminded of his own pain. His heart hurt when he didn’t hunt humans like he was supposed to.
If I took his curse away, all that would change.
“How does this work, exactly?” he asked.
“I just need to see the curse around your throat. It looks like black vines. Then, I’ll pull them from you.”
He arched his neck, and I let my eyes linger over his throat. The stones in my forehead began to warm up, and I stared as the ropes of dark, thorny magic began to writhe around his skin. The invasive magic of the heavens.
Instinctively, I reached for them. I stroked the magic vines with the tip of my finger, scraping it across the thorns. Blue light beamed from my fingertips. At the touch, a powerful jolt of ecstasy raced through my hand, arcing up my arm and blazing into my chest.
I gasped, my back arching as euphoria surged. This magic wasn’t splitting my body apart. Instead, it was doing something entirely different and somewhat mortifying to my body. There was something sexual about this magic, and my body warmed, thighs clenching under the sheets.
My eyes opened. I stared at Kratos’s neck, watching the seal dissipate like dark smoke. I was panting, a thin sheen of sweat on my body.
Kratos’s body had gone rigid, his back arched, and golden light radiated from his chest. His fiery gaze met mine, and I tried to ignore what this meant—Kratos could now bone with impunity.
He closed his eyes again, as if in prayer. “Your magic fingertips have stroked me to perfection.”
“You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. His eyes were still closed, hand on his heart—the very part of his body that had tormented him for a thousand years.
After a few moments, he met my gaze again with a reverent look. “Free,” he said quietly. He looked down at his chest, his brow furrowed. “After a thousand years, I control my fate now. I will kill only when I want to. The things that I’ve done….”
His voice trailed off.
I almost felt bad for the guy. Unless he had betrayed us, and then I wanted him to die a painful death.
“It’s over now,” I said quietly. “You’re free. Like you said.”
The back of my neck throbbed, and I rubbed it. The blast of magic from the Old Gods had dulled some of my pain, but it hadn’t healed me completely. Only Adonis seemed to have that power.
I studied Kratos closely. Maybe he’d wanted the curse pulled from him, but I still didn’t trust him.
“How much time?” I asked.
> “Till what?”
“How much time do you think we have until we all die?”
“That’s anyone’s guess. None of us knows what the Heavenly Host are doing, or where they are.”
“Well, someone is going to have to find out.”
Chapter 5
Three days. That was all it had taken for me to heal—at least enough so that I could haul my broken ass out of bed. My ribs and shoulder still hurt like hell, but I could put one foot in front of another.
I might have the power of the Old Gods, but I wasn’t immortal. The fae had long lives, but we were still mortal creatures. And damned if I hadn’t felt that mortality when the iron arrows had slammed into me. Still, I was pretty sure the gemstones were helping me recover faster.
Last night, Drakon had arrived at Hotemet, carrying a piece of stone Kratos had identified. A sand-colored chunk of Sadeckrav Castle.
Assuming we could trust this form of primitive communication, we needed to take a little trip across the English Channel. It seemed Adonis was in the torture palace, just like I’d feared. But I needed a plan before I rushed over the English Channel to France. I didn’t want to screw up this rescue.
With the morning sun filtering through the leaves, I followed the winding path through the forest, moving as quickly as my battered body would take me. I hadn’t seen a single sentinel out here this morning. Had they deserted Kratos since I removed the curse from his neck, ripping away his apocalyptic seal? Whatever the case, it definitely made it easier to move around without them.
My feet crunched over the leaves, and the crisp February air felt cool against my skin. That morning, I’d summoned Yasmin through a few flicks of the candle in the bathroom mirror. I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks, but if anyone could help me develop a plan to rescue Adonis, it was her.
As I walked, I closed my eyes. I tried to block out the rising panic—that little, niggling fear that the Heavenly Host would murder the world’s entire population at any moment. I tried to tune out the dark visions of the torments Adonis might be enduring. Panic was the enemy of strategy.
I breathed in the scent of oaks. As I did, my mind flooded again with images of Eden—grape vines curling up a fig tree, a gleaming blue river winding between thorny shrubs—a crooked cottage, where Adonis sat by a roaring fireplace….
I opened my eyes, stunned for a moment to find this vision alive around me—the fig trees standing where oaks had been, purple thistle instead of deadfall, a rushing azure river. A cottage stood among the trees.
Holy shit. The gemstones seemed to have intensified my powers of glamouring. I’d created the illusion of Paradise. As I stared at the vision around me, euphoria rippled over my body.
I blinked, and the illusion disappeared before my eyes. I hadn’t even realized it was possible to glamour the world around me. I’d glamoured other people before—sentient beings. Never objects, and definitely not an entire landscape.
I stared down at my fingertips. So, I could now create an illusion out of thin air. I concentrated on the space above my fingertips, trying to conjure the illusion of a butterfly. Warm magic flickered over my forehead, tingling along my arms. For just a moment, something winged and pumpkin-orange burst into the air, before the illusion shattered.
I clenched my fists, no longer sure if I was creating illusions or just straight up hallucinating.
I bit my lip, remembering what I’d seen that morning. When I’d woken, light was streaming through the windows—and along with it, the vines from outside the castle had worked their way into the room, snaking over the floor toward my bed. I kept feeling as if the forest were straining for me.
Unless, of course, I was just losing my mind. Maybe a fae like me was never meant for this godlike power. Maybe it would make me insane.
I hugged myself, walking along the winding path again. As I moved deeper into the woods, my thoughts kept returning to that perfect Garden of Eden, and I was sure I could hear the song of the Old Gods whispering through the back of my mind.
“Eden…” I whispered to myself. “The perfect paradise.”
I clenched my fists until my fingernails bit into my palms. You know what else was the enemy of strategy? Fantasizing about damn gardens. Stay focused, Ruby.
When I reached the grove of mulberry trees—overgrown with hellebore and cockle weeds—I knew I was nearly at the meeting spot. And when I spotted the mouth of the pine-flanked cave that was our meeting point, I sped up my pace. Yasmin and I had to make a plan, stat.
I crossed into the dank cavern, where I found the her—the Queen of Poisons.
Yasmin’s dark eyes were wide in the dim light. “Well, well. It’s been a while, Agent Hudole.” She stared at the stones in my forehead. “What in the gods’ names are those things in your head?”
I touched them gently. “Yeah. I guess we didn’t get to update you about this yet. I stole these from one of the Old Gods, who I found in a cave in Lebanon when I was trying to raise one of the horsemen from the dead. And now they’re in my forehead, and I think they might be messing with my thoughts a little.”
Her eyes widened. “You did what?”
“I accidentally raised the horsemen from the dead after stealing gemstones from the gods,” I repeated, trying to act blasé. “I think you’ll agree this situation could have happened to anyone.”
Something like rage tightened her features. “Slow down. The horsemen were dead? And you brought them back?”
How did I explain to her that I couldn’t just let Adonis die, that if she knew him like I did, she’d save him, too?
I traced my fingertips across the gemstones. “Look, the horsemen are at war with each other, and Adonis might be our only hope. Problem is, he’s been abducted, and now the odds are against us. He and I were ambushed, and I’m going to need your help to get him back.” My gaze flicked to the skies. “Look, we don’t have a ton of time. The Heavenly Host are somewhere on earth, and we’re all gonna die, like, any second, so….”
“You want to save the Horseman of Death. I’m not even sure what to say to you.”
I let out a sigh. This was a hard sell, and I hadn’t prepared well enough. “Adonis has been working against the other horsemen. His seal was never broken, and his curse never took hold. For thousands of years, he staved off the power of the curse by hurting himself. With the magic of the Old Gods, I was able to pull it from him. We need him to fight the other angels, or we don’t stand a chance. The Heavenly Host are mortal on earth. Once we know where they are, he can kill them all in an instant.”
“And what makes you think he would do that?”
“He’s the one who helped me get the stones. He sacrificed his life so I could rid the earth of the horsemen. He’s only here because I brought him back.”
From there, we stood there in the cave for what seemed an eternity, arguing over Adonis until she reluctantly conceded I might have a point, that he might be a key to our survival.
“Maybe I will keep an open mind.” Yasmin’s dark eyes were fixed on me intently. “But don’t rule anyone out as a leak. Hazel, Kratos, the fae boy—they’re all suspects. Feed them false information, and see what they do with it. Find out which of them passes it on to the other angels. If you allow them to keep passing on information, we don’t have a chance in hell of defeating the destructive angels.”
“Like leaking a fake plan of attack?”
She shrugged. “That could work. Get your enemy to show up to a specific location. You’ll know who leaked the information when you know where they show up.”
Seemed simple enough. “Maybe I can do this at the same time I’m rescuing Adonis.”
Yasmin crossed her arms. “When you go to Sadeckrav, I’m going with you. There’s no way I’m letting you make decisions on your own at this point. Not with the stakes this high. I just need to find someone to look after my daughter, and we’ll head off together. I want to make sure you don’t cock it up this time.”
I raised my eyebr
ows, not entirely sure I liked her tone. “You’ve lost a bit of faith in me, haven’t you?”
“Like you said, we don’t have time to mess around. The Heavenly Host have come to earth, and it’s only a matter of time before they slaughter each and every one of us. And apart from your terrible decision-making, I’m not sure you’re handling your new powers well.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I saw you muttering to yourself as you approached me.”
I crossed my arms. Okay, maybe I was losing my mind. “Right, come with me if you want. But what’s important is that I want to get back to Adonis as soon as we can.”
“Don’t rule out Adonis as the traitor, either.”
“What? No. He was captured, along with an asshole angel named Muriel.”
She shrugged. “It could have been a ruse on his part. Maybe he and Muriel were in on it. What if you were the real target, and the plan simply failed?”
My throat tightened at the idea. I didn’t want to argue the point too much. It would just make me seem biased. “Fine. Maybe it was Adonis. Any chance you have any good news to share? I could really use some right now.”
“Perhaps. While the angels have been fighting amongst themselves, things have changed in the human cities. Humans have been organizing themselves into armies. They’ve formed a resistance. Your former rookery in Whitechapel is one of the command centers. While the Hunter no longer patrols the streets, they want to take the opportunity to rise up against the angels.”
My eyebrows shot up. I’d been desperate to know what happened to Alex and my other rookery-mates. “Do you know who’s involved?”
Yasmin nodded. “I’ve identified the leaders, but they don’t trust the Order. I’m working on making inroads.”
I took a deep breath. “That Whitechapel rookery you mentioned.”
“Yeah?”
“If you can find a man named Alex living among the resistance, I want to know how he’s doing. And his friends, too.” Adonis had taken them to a safe house out of the city after Johnny had nearly killed them, but it was possible they’d found their way back.
Rogue Fae Page 3
