by Bec McMaster
"They just unlocked the door somehow," she blurted through the listening device. Then she froze as the lock gave a telltale click.
In the mirror's reflection she saw the door begin to open, and Adele turned to find Jelena slipping inside, one elegant shoulder bare and her painted mouth widening into a malicious smile.
Not safe.
Trapped.
"Duchess," Jelena murmured, closing the door behind her—and locking it again.
"Malloryn," she whispered, even as she knew her husband wasn't going to be able to save her.
"Unfortunately, your husband is... currently indisposed." The woman slunk forward, white silk skirts swishing around her ankles.
"What do you want?" Adele demanded, though her hands trembled.
"Malloryn's head on a platter. Or yours, if I cannot have his."
One of the debutantes looked around in surprise, even as a knife slid into Jelena's hand, half-hidden by her skirts. The swan headpiece was tossed negligently aside, revealing a gold-embroidered eye patch over the woman's missing eye.
The other two girls remained oblivious, chattering on about some lord and his padded shoulders, but the other girl was frowning, as if she sensed something amiss.
"Get your friends out of here," Adele told the girl, circling a padded velvet chair.
Jelena simply grabbed it and cast it aside. It hit the wall with a smash, pieces of timber tumbling askew.
And Adele had nothing else to hide behind.
All three debutantes screamed.
"Run!" she yelled to the nearest girl.
Could they not see how much danger they were in?
Adele shoved her hand inside her reticule as Jelena stalked toward her. Damn it, where was it?
White drifted into her field of vision, and Adele tried to dart to the side.
A hand locked in the back of her pearl necklace, and she fell backwards as she was drawn to an abrupt halt. She clutched at the necklace, but Jelena twisted her fist, and every single pearl dug into Adele's throat.
Suddenly she couldn't breathe.
"You poor, pathetic little bitch," Jelena taunted, her face coming into Adele's field of reference. "God, what was he thinking? Marrying cattle?" She gave another malicious twist of the necklace, and Adele's eyes popped as the pounding in her temples intensified. "He was given a gift. A near-immortal god, and he casts it all aside to bed down with the filth. I should make this bloody and slow, just for that insult."
So hard... to think. Adele tried to push at Jelena, but the other woman was choking her. Darkness blurred at the edges of her vision, and the pulse pounded in her throat, as if blood was trying to force itself through her starved veins.
The choker of pearls suddenly released as the thin strands broke. Pearls scattered all across the floor and her throat opened as Adele sucked in a rattling half breath.
"Maybe I will make this bloody," Jelena mused.
Adele's lungs pulsed, starved for oxygen, and she thought she'd burst into a coughing fit, but there was no time.
There was suddenly the tip of a knife in her vision, slashing down her cheek. Adele didn't bother screaming; she flicked the silver thorn on her ring out and stabbed it into the other woman's midriff.
Jelena gasped, and then smashed the back of her hand across Adele's face. Thrown onto her stomach in a tangle of skirts, Adele caught sight of her reticule on the floor. Behind her, Jelena made a horrible strangled sound in her throat.
"You fucking... bish...."
Hemlock might not be enough to incapacitate Jelena entirely—its effectiveness was limited by how high a blue blood's craving virus levels were, and a dhampir's CV levels would be stratospheric—but it slowed her down enough for Adele to reach her reticule.
A knee slammed into her back, the knife sliding across her shoulder. Adele screamed as she drove an elbow back into Jelena's ribs. The dhampir assassin was a heavy weight, her body clearly not working properly as she tried to grab a fistful of Adele's hair.
"Adele?" Malloryn's tinny voice in her ear.
He wasn't going to make it in time....
She was going to die. Right here. She'd never see her husband again. Never see Hattie. Never hold her baby in her arms—the one she'd wanted. Little Alex.... Little Alex, oh, God.... Lena.
Never kiss her husband ever again—
"You worthless scrap of nothing...."
Suddenly she was months in the past, as Lord Corvus clasped at his bloodied cheek and looked at her with fury in his eyes. "You little slut—"
And he'd come at her, knife swinging, before she'd darted under his arm and bolted through the gardens, fleeing directly into Malloryn's arms.
Corvus hadn't beaten her then.
And Jelena would not beat her now.
"If Malloryn wants you so badly, then he can have little pieces of you," Jelena whispered, the words barely penetrating the throbbing pulse in Adele's ears.
Like hell.
She was Adele Cavill, the Duchess of Malloryn, and she'd spent years fighting for the right to survive in this cursed world. Blue bloods had cut her and bled her and pinned her down. They had treated her exactly like the cattle Jelena called her. She was not going to be ended here, not like this.
Adele's hand curled around the small glass bottle of perfume. Her bloodied gloves slipped and slid, but she thought she had her fingers around the rubber bulb of the atomizer.
Another slash of pain—through her ear, this time.
A sweep of blinding heat went through her, and blood splashed wetly down her throat as Adele tried to scream.
In the distance, she could hear someone yelling. Fists pounded on the door. But she pumped a full dose of her perfume into Jelena's face, and then squeezed again. The liquid splashed across the dhampir's mouth and cheeks, and rage filled her eye and then—
Jelena jerked, sucking in an enormous mouthful of the perfumed poison.
She reared back, dropping the knife and clutching her throat.
Adele scrambled out of the way as Jelena thrashed on the carpets. Black veins spread across the other woman's cheeks, bloodied spittle spraying from her lips. Adele's ear throbbed, and when she clapped her hand there, she could feel hot blood pumping through her silk-clad fingers.
My ear.
There was a bloody knife on the floor right in front of Adele.
Jelena's knife.
Adele's hand locked around it, and then she threw herself atop the fallen woman and stabbed down. It went right through the other woman's chest, and Jelena's eye widened as black blood sprayed from her lips.
Adele lifted the knife again, seeing red.
This was for all the blue bloods who'd ever hurt her.
For this entire damned society that thought she was little more than cattle.
For Lord Corvus, who'd thought Adele his personal plaything.
For Hattie.
And her father.
And her ear.
"Adele! Adele!" Hands caught her by the wrist, and then Malloryn was there, forcing her to withhold her next blow.
"Let me go!" she rasped, clutching at the hilt.
"She's done for. She's not breathing." He held one sleeve over his mouth and nose, coughing through the superfine. "Jesus. What did you do?"
Thin threads of black began to wend through the capillaries in his cheeks.
Dhampir weren't the only ones vulnerable to Black Vein. And it was that fact alone that cut through her rage.
"You idiot!" Adele dropped the knife and shoved herself under his shoulder. "You shouldn't be in here!"
Together, they lurched toward the door.
Malloryn slammed against the wall, blood spattering his lips as he coughed.
Gemma appeared, dangerous in bright blue silk with a pistol held low against her thigh. She took one look at Malloryn's face and jerked her reticule open.
"Here." Removing a thin syringe, she jabbed it into his upper arm and pumped its contents into him. "Ava's cure."
Malloryn coughed, dropping his sleeve from his face. He leaned against the wall. "How much... Black Vein did she put in that... bottle?"
"Enough to drop an elephant," Gemma said dryly. "You, of all people, should know better than to run into a room filled with atomized Black Vein."
"Sorry," he snarled. "I wasn't aware it was. All I saw was Adele with a knife, and Jelena on the floor beneath her."
Gemma eased the door open, protecting her mouth with her glove, and took in the room. Her eyebrows rose. "You killed her."
"Not me," Malloryn murmured, his attention all on Adele. "Are you all right?"
And suddenly it hit her.
How close she'd come to dying. That she'd killed another woman.
He must have seen it in her face, for his brows drew sharply together. Adele threw herself into his arms, burying her face against his chest.
There was a minute hesitation, and then Malloryn's arms closed around her. Palm spreading wide across the flat of her back, his voice roughening, he said, "You're safe. You're safe, Adele."
And she believed it.
The Duke of Malloryn was a force of nature. He'd helped drag the prince consort from power and ruined Lord Balfour's schemes. Every blue blood in the Echelon secretly feared him.
A hiccup escaped her.
"You're bleeding," he murmured, rubbing that hand up and down her spine. "I can smell it. Will you let me see?"
She wanted to stay right here in his arms, but her ear was a throbbing mess.
Malloryn captured her face in his hands, his pupils black with the craving as he turned her face from side to side. "Bloody hell. She's cut you a few times."
He tore his cravat free from his throat, wadded it into a bunch, and pressed it to her ear. Adele winced.
"N-no more earrings." Adele managed a weak smile as she touched the cravat. And then she remembered what had become of her grandmother's pearls. "Oh, no. My pearls. She broke them!"
Scattered all over the room inside like the pieces of her life.
She took a step toward the powder room, but Malloryn hauled her back. "Gemma will fetch them," he said. "You don't need to see that room again."
Tears wet her eyes as the loss finally hit her.
Her ruined earlobe could be hidden by a strategic curl. The scars on her cheek could be managed.
But those pearls were the only thing she had left of her grandmother—the only family member who'd ever given a damn about her as a little girl.
"That bitch," she said, trying to wipe the tears from her eyes.
"Here," Malloryn said, dragging her bloody gloves off and discarding them on the floor. "We need to get you home and out of that gown. Before people start talking."
Jelena was dead.
His heart wouldn't stop racing. The world around him flashed past in jerky vignettes as Malloryn sent for the carriage: Lady Haynes's face swam in front of him as he curtly made their goodbyes; he fought his way through flashes of garish color as every silk-clad aristocratic lady fought to say something to them; and then there was cool, blessed air washing over him.
Washing away the last cloying lungful's of Black Vein.
Sweeping the clinging tendrils of bergamot from his coat.
It couldn't remove the surreal sensation that he was finally free of those nightmares, or the worry that, even though she was gone, they would remain.
She was dead. Jelena was dead.
All these months of lying in bed, dreaming of what he'd do if he ever saw her again. Both fearing and hungering for that moment.... Craving the need to take back his power over her, and the way she'd broken him.
He felt cheated somehow.
Obsidian had gotten rid of the body, but there was no blotting the blood from the carpets in the powder room. No hiding the tremble in Adele's shoulders as she clung to the coat he'd draped over them.
"Are you all right?" he murmured, though his ears still rung. He needed to pull himself together, and now, but there was an odd dreamlike quality to the moment.
"Never better," Adele lied.
He caught himself before he reached for her. So much for sleight of hand. So much for manipulating Devoncourt. What a fucking idiot he'd been. Too busy playing his own games to keep his eye on the prize.
He'd nearly lost her.
Nodding curtly, he helped her up into the carriage, as Obsidian and Gemma swished down the steps behind him.
"What the hell happened in there?" Obsidian muttered. "I thought you were watching her?"
I made a mistake.
The muscle ticked in his jaw. "I left her with Barrons."
Obsidian searched his eyes. "Why? You were supposed to keep an eye on her. You were supposed to be the decoy."
"And I was." Malloryn pressed a hand to his earpiece, trying to force his body to control itself. "Byrnes?"
"Yes?" came the crackling reply.
"Have you got your tracking device upon you?"
"Yes."
"Good," he said, ignoring the flare of surprise in Obsidian's eyes as he hauled himself up into the carriage. "Follow Devoncourt. You won't have to get too close. He'll be expecting a tail but I managed to plant the tracking device on him. I need you to find me those explosives."
Chapter 24
As Ava and Kincaid bundled Adele inside the safe house, Gemma stopped Malloryn, her gloved hand locking around his upper arm.
"A word?" she asked briskly.
He nodded to Herbert, indicating the butler should drive the carriage around back. The man snapped the whip with alacrity, and then Malloryn was standing there alone in the street with his protégé.
"What is it?"
"You didn't think to tell us about your plan?" she asked briskly.
"It was more of an opportunity taken, than a plan."
"You just happened to have a tracking device upon you? And Byrnes and Ingrid waiting?"
"You knew they were at hand should anything go wrong." Malloryn stared down into her eyes. "I expected to draw someone from the shadows. It's merely happy coincidence it was Devoncourt, and not Jelena."
"And what if it had been she who approached you?"
"Balfour knows her weaknesses. I was gambling on the fact he couldn't afford to let her off the leash—"
"And yet, it seems he did." They broke apart, as Gemma paced. "You took a risk. You should have had someone watching your back. Watching Adele's. We both know you're targets. I should have insisted upon it. I didn't know you were planning to act independently."
"I'm more than capable of defending myself."
"Are you?" The flash of challenge in her eyes made his temper rouse. They both knew he wasn't operating as efficiently as usual. "I'm so sorry I give a damn, Malloryn. I'm so sorry you mean so much to me. To COR."
"You care too much—"
"And you don't care enough!"
The near shout took them both by surprise.
He stared at her. "Don't mistake control for indifference. I care about COR. I've risked my life for all of—"
"I'm talking about yourself," she said, anger thick and constrained in her voice. "Ever since we rescued you in Russia, you've been pushing us all away. Pushing yourself. You're callous and reckless with your own health and safety. Balfour's demise has consumed you and do you know what frightens me the most, Malloryn?"
He didn't have to answer.
"It's not the fact I don't think you can beat Balfour. It's the fact you're acting as though you don't think you'll survive the encounter."
It was true. He hadn't been himself in months. He could admit that. "Nobody knows the outcome of what's to come."
"But do you care? Do you honestly care whether you survive it?"
"Of course I want to survive it." His mouth twisted. "I won't let him beat me. Trust that, if nothing else."
A choked sound echoed in her throat, and then she was stepping forward, wrapping her arms around his waist.
Malloryn held his arms out in surprise, as Gemma pressed her cheek to her che
st. She squeezed him so hard he thought she might intend to break one of his ribs.
"Promise me," she whispered. "Promise me you intend to survive it."
Malloryn rested his chin on the top of her head as he folded his arms slowly around her. "I promise. I can't just leave you all behind. Who else would provide Byrnes with so much amusement? Who else would curse you all, as you try to run roughshod over poor Herbert? Someone has to keep you Rogues in line."
A shuddery breath escaped her as she buried her face against his chest. "I am going to hold you to that promise, because if you let yourself be killed, I swear I will tell Society every damning secret you ever had."
"You don't know all my secrets."
"I'll make some up," she threatened.
A rough laugh escaped him. "Ah, Gem. Who would have ever thought we'd end up here the night Balfour sent you to kill me? You're a menace."
"And you're an arrogant ass," she muttered.
It made him smile.
"So much for being one of my most dangerous spies," he murmured, drawing back to look into her face. "Is this 'hugging' going to happen often?"
"You started it when you thought I'd gone missing after that incident at the tower."
So he had.
Maybe she wasn't the only one beginning to wear their heart on their sleeve. "Promise me one thing."
"Anything."
"If we survive, then you're going to set a wedding date with Obsidian."
She looked up sharply, but he pressed a finger to her lips.
"No more excuses. London won't fall apart just because you took the chance to enjoy your own life for a moment."
"We've been so busy," she grumbled.
"Promise me," he repeated. "I want to walk you down the aisle. I want to see you happy, after everything you've done for me. Give me something to fight for, Gem."
Gemma's eyes narrowed. "I promise. But don't think I'm not aware you're manipulating me right now. 'Give me something to fight for' indeed."
He smiled.
"There is one last little issue to discuss," she said in a warning tone, as she drew away from him. "You've been clucking over Adele ever since we put her in the carriage."
