The Worth Series: Complete Collection

by Lyra Evans

  “What did she say?” Oliver asked, still angrily flipping through channels to find a reporter not analyzing every last word of the High Warlock’s speech. He didn’t understand what needed analyzing; the words ‘act of war’ and ‘claim control of the Werewolf Court’ seemed fairly self-explanatory to Oliver.

  “Kayla’s responded to Carmichael’s threat,” Connor said. “She’s fought off Lane and Juniper, the rest tentatively declared her Alpha. For now at least. And the moment she was named, she made a similar speech to the High Warlock. Said Werewolves have been complacent for too long, allowing Wizards to dictate the terms of our lives. Said we should never have let Wizards and Witches into our borders; it was always a mistake. ‘They can’t be trusted, will blame us for things we didn’t do,’ and on and on. She said Wizards will always view us as little better than animals, and that in their marble Court they’ve lost touch with nature and forgotten to fear it. So if we’re animals, we’ll act like animals and fight for our territory.” He sighed, sagging against the countertop. But the tight, sharp edge of his jaw belied the concave line of his back. Connor was exhausted, but fury seemed to keep him on his feet. “She said she didn’t think I would ever openly flout our traditions and laws with such impunity.” He paused and gave Oli a meaningful look. “I, according to her, always cared deeply for our pack, regardless of my behaviour and ruthless ambitions. I would never have done what I did to Logan, unless I was persuaded into it by an outsider who promised me power.” He grimaced, his beautiful lips pulled into an ugly expression. Oliver felt the same ugliness in his own chest—anger, horror, hatred. “She said she was sure you somehow tricked me into thinking murdering Logan in the night, while he was vulnerable, was the fastest way to Alpha, and that you might have been instructed to do that by the High Warlock.”

  “That’s completely insane,” Oliver said, pushing aside the revolt in his stomach. “I did all this for Carmichael, only to be turned into a fugitive and wanted man?” Oliver shook his head. “I don’t pick my friends well, do I?” Connor grinned ruefully at him. “But they’re buying it,” Oliver said. “Now that Carmichael’s accused them of attacking the border and declared war, he’s playing right into Kayla’s hands. Or is she playing into his?”

  Flipping channels so fast he nearly missed it, Oliver had to flip back once or twice to find the one news outlet showing footage of the Tirnanog attack. The town was normally an oasis, full of old-fashioned cottages and bed-and-breakfasts, with gabled houses and lace drapes in the windows. Colourful doors decorated each home and business, making the whole village seem like one out of a children’s story. There was a fountain in the centre, widely known as the Fountain of Youth, with the statue of a young couple bathing in its waters. Everywhere the water touched, their bodies were youthful and supple, full of life and vigor. But all the areas dry to the sun were wrinkled and sagging. It made for a somewhat unnerving sight, but legend had it that splashing water from the fountain onto the wrinkled parts of the statue would turn them to the supple youth of the wet parts.

  Tirnanog was a spa town, full of culture and tourists from all Courts. The fountain was furnished by a natural spring that supplied the spas as well, and many visitors frequented the little village during any given season. There was an acclaimed theatre troupe and famous theatre in Tirnanog as well, and artisan patisseries and chocolatiers lined the streets between the bed-and-breakfasts and hotels. It was beautiful—before.

  Now the images showed only the skeletons of the quaint buildings, shards of charcoal standing upright against a splash of red ink down the street. The fountain was burned dry, the bathing couple broken apart, pieces scattered about, all the surfaces wrinkled and ancient, bearing both the signs of age and abuse. Amid the scorch marks were scratch marks, slashed across ashy bricks and through the once-colourful doors. Windows shattered, paw prints through the soot, it certainly looked as though Werewolves attacked the town.

  “I don’t think either of them is playing to the other,” Connor said, his gaze trained on the wreckage on screen. “I think they’re both playing to themselves. Whether that was part of the plan all along or not, I don’t know.”

  “Part of the plan?” Oliver asked, studying the lines of Connor’s face. He was careful with his own expressions, trying to cloud the suspicions in his mind, but Connor shot him an unimpressed look.

  “I’m not naïve, Oli,” he said. “I know the only way this all makes sense is if Kayla was involved. I just don’t know how involved yet. But I don’t think that war was part of the initial goal. Otherwise, this wouldn’t look such a mess.”

  Oliver studied the images on screen before they abruptly vanished, replaced by the face of some reporter in Nimueh’s Court. Oliver flicked off the television.

  “We’ve got to get to Tirnanog,” Oliver said. “We need to see it for ourselves. Investigate ourselves.” He slipped by Connor into the kitchen and pulled any supplies he could think of from the cupboards and fridge, tossing them into a small backpack he found hanging on a hook by the door. “The only way to stop this war from happening is to prove it was started on purpose. By both sides.”

  Connor took the bag from Oli, tossing it over his shoulder without thinking. If they had more time, Oliver might have argued he could carry it just fine, or else they could take it in shifts. But time was short, and Connor was stronger than Oliver.

  “Wait, what was your message about?” Connor asked. Oliver pulled open the door, looking back at Connor over his shoulder.

  “Nimueh,” he said, stepping outside. “She’s gathered the families and is ready. We need to go get her to bring this madness to an end.”

  “Oh, I really don’t think you do,” a voice said.

  Oliver and Connor froze, bracing for a battle. Heart racing, Oliver tried to clear his mind of panic and see clearly. The figure standing just ahead of them, between a palm tree and a conifer, was tall and lean. His face was a ruined mess, most of it wrought with scar tissue and some of it hollow in unusual places, as though parts of the bone structure were missing. But the red hair and the jade earring were a dead giveaway. Even mangled and nearly unrecognizable, Oliver could never mistake Sky.

  Chapter 26

  “I’m dreaming,” Oliver said aloud, blinking his eyes several times. “Or I’m hallucinating.”

  “You can dream about me all you want, Oli,” Sky said, his voice so crisply perfect it made the violence of his face that much more difficult to bear. “But that ship has sailed. Straight into a cliff. All souls lost.” He smirked, and the action warped his already destroyed face into the image of a nightmare.

  “You can’t be alive,” Connor said, the growl in his voice stripping disbelief away to reveal the hatred. “My Wolves ripped you apart. They left naught but blood and bits of skin. They would not have allowed you to escape alive. They would have smelled it. Garbage like you stinks for miles.” Nostrils flared, Connor bared his teeth to Sky as though he was already in Wolf form. Oliver was still trying to reconcile this reality with his reality from minutes earlier.

  “Might want to see to your pups, then, Conny boy,” Sky said, his mocking tone full of sickly sweetness. “They didn’t quite finish the job.” He pressed a finger to his scarred chin, considering them for a moment, then threw his hands out in a shrug. “Nah, you know what? I think I’ll teach them a lesson myself. I’m looking forward to seeing them all again once I’m done with you two. See my gorgeous new look is courtesy of them,” he said, gesturing smoothly to his mask of a face. “I’d like to repay the favour. It’s just fair, you know? An equal exchange.”

  Connor jerked forward, barely containing his urge to launch himself at Sky, but Oliver stood partially in front of him and blocked his way. Oliver, meanwhile, had one hand in his pocket, his body angled very slightly away from Sky to shield his movements. He fiddled with the collar he’d bought for Connor, the one he was meant to return to his lover when this whole mess was over. The obsidian stone at the centre of it was fastened tight
ly, the collar tied carefully to his belt loop to store safely in his pocket. Moving as little as possible, Oliver fiddled with the clasp, trying to undo the collar and refasten it at his wrist.

  “You’ll never get close to them again,” Connor spat, his fists balled with a tightly coiled rage. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Sky grinned widely, his teeth sharper than Oliver remembered. He looked more and more the picture of a goblin now, mutated and hideous by their own making, living in warrens dug deep beneath the rocky ground in the northern-most point of the Three Courts. They feasted on live animals, relishing the taste of their blood as they died. Sky had once been so beautiful, a trick of fate to hide his inner villain. At least now the horror of him was on the outside for all to see.

  “Oh, I’ve already been close to them,” Sky said. “Don’t you recognize me?” He waved a hand over himself and a blurred, reflected light passed over his face. A moment later, the face of a different Fae, plain and unremarkable in any way, took the place of Sky’s mangled one. Oliver’s lips parted, finally recognizing it.

  “The Special Investigator at the scene of Logan’s murder,” Oliver said, horrified. “You’ve been involved from the beginning then.” Shaking his head, Oliver did his best to distract from his minute movements trying to adjust the collar in his pocket. “But how did you know we’d seen you there?”

  Rolling his eyes, Sky shook his head and dropped the illusion. “Honestly, Oli, I’d have thought that was obvious, even to you,” he said, and Oliver tried to ignore the barb. Every fibre of his being wanted to lash out with unrestrained magic and flay Sky alive. He wanted to kill Sky once and for all and mount his smug, mangled head on a pike. But unrestrained magic could easily hurt Connor as well, or backfire entirely on Oli himself. And Oli becoming a murderer was exactly the kind of fucked up turn of events Sky would be hoping for. “I figured you would find a way to get information somehow, so I loitered around the crime scene as a Special Investigator and waited for you to show yourself. As soon as Aurora Birch showed up, I knew she must be feeding you her information somehow. And however good a reporter she is, some of her questions were just a bit too on point, even for a Fae. So I just used her as a launching pad to find you. I’ve been following you for a while now. And you never noticed,” he shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Oli. But even more disappointed in you, little Wolfy. I thought your people had wildly accurate senses?” He pouted his lips in false empathy. “Did Maeve’s Court mess with your precious Werewolf sensibilities? Too much going on here for you? Maybe Wolves are only useful when they’re out in the woods with only a handful of scents to sort through.”

  “Why did you kill Logan?!” Connor growled, ignoring the obvious taunt. Sky’s eyebrows shot for the sky, which was more than a little disturbing on his ravaged face.

  “Still three steps behind, aren’t we?” he said. “I didn’t kill Logan, you glorified Pomeranian.” He leaned back against one of the trees, as though he was having the time of his life, waiting for Oli and Connor to do something. “I just helped out afterwards. With the framing, and all. I missed out on the fun part.” Then with a ghost of a smirk, he added, “I confess, I did watch though.”

  Connor twitched, his muscles working violently to stop him vaulting full over Oliver and straight at Sky. Oliver tried to keep his own body neutral, his jaw tightening and loosening every few seconds. Images of all the violence and horror wrought by Sky flashed through Oliver’s mind, pictures of dead Werewolves, strung up or posed, naked and blindfolded. Then the image of Connor, unconscious and drowning in a pool of rainwater, bound at the back of a shallow cave. He saw the broken, hollow version of himself, the ruins of the Oliver left behind when Sky dropped him without word or reason, just because he wanted to see what would happen. He wanted to own Oliver’s soul, and destroying him was the only way. Until it wasn’t.

  The clasp of the collar unhitched. Oliver began winding it around his wrist, looping the obsidian stone over his middle finger and crossing the collar back over the other side of his hand.

  “Why?” Oliver asked. “Why bother framing Connor and I for Logan’s death? What do you get out of it?”

  Sky quirked an eyebrow. “Oli, Oli, Oli,” he said. “I get to destroy you. Both of you.” He smiled. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Oliver shrugged, feigning ambivalence. Sky’s green eyes flashed. A low, constant growl grew in Connor’s chest, and Oliver’s fingers, sweaty and hot from the environment and the awkward angle of the collar fastening, kept slipping off the metal clasp. “Not really,” Oliver said. “I mean, there were easier ways. More direct. More fucked up, really. You could have come up with a thousand more convoluted and torturous ways to destroy us, I think.” Oliver shrugged again, looking Sky full on in the face and affecting the same unimpressed condescension Sky had mastered. “And I guess I just never saw you as someone else’s pawn.”

  Sky twitched slightly, straightening, his eyes sharper than before. His spine tall and straight, Sky looked a soldier standing at attention, glaring down at Oliver.

  “Who says this wasn’t all my idea?” he asked, and Oliver smiled inwardly. Connor shifted behind Oliver, slowly adjusting his position to have more direct access to Sky. “I am no one’s pawn.”

  Oliver actually laughed, glancing over his shoulder at Connor. Connor’s mouth pulled into an awkward but disdainful smile, as though the two of them shared in a secret joke Sky could only guess at. “Please, Sky,” Oliver said. “I didn’t realize you gave a damn about political relations between Nimueh’s Court and the Werewolf Court. Or did you have some secret stake in the proceedings I’m not aware of?”

  A muscle at Sky’s jaw pulsed. “Fine,” he said. “I admit, I’m working with High Warlock Carmichael. Frederick. While I was in hiding in Nimueh’s Court, I heard some rumblings about Frederick’s displeasure with Nimueh and the Werewolves. So I approached him and offered my services. In exchange for a few specific favours, of course.”

  “Favours? From the High Warlock?” Oliver asked. The clasp of the collar slipped from his fingers again.

  “I told him I’d help him take over Nimueh’s Court and the Werewolf Court, and in exchange I would get to destroy you both, however I saw fit.” Sky looked down, considering his nail beds a moment. “That and a full pardon for the charges against me from the Werewolf murders. And a position as his right hand. I’ll be his advisor and second in command, after the war is done and the Werewolves are adequately dealt with.” Oliver and Connor shared a slow, incredulous look. Sky glared at them. “What?”

  Oliver shrugged. “Nothing, nothing,” he said. “It’s just, he’s made promises like that to Nimueh before. You know, to protect her and uphold her reign against all usurpers. It was even part of his vows when he took office. And he turned on her without the slightest compunction.” Oliver pressed his lips into an apologetic pout. “But I mean, that was, what? Twelve hours ago, he betrayed her? And they only had a close relationship since she was a child. I’m sure it’s totally different with you, a man he’s conspired to commit treason with and only met two months ago.” Oliver nodded. “No, you’re totally fine.”

  Sky’s demeanour changed, shifting from his forced calm and amused disinterest to cold, calculated emptiness. “Very good, Oliver,” he said. “Full marks for effort. But you aren’t going to shake me. I can easily deal with my revenge plot against you and still have time to turn on the High Warlock. But I don’t think it’ll come to that. I know what he did, after all. I’ve got proof of all of it—how he conspired with Kayla Pierce to kill Logan and frame the two of you for murder and incite a war. How he planned to take over the Werewolf Court and set up Kayla as leader of the Wolves, under his rule as supreme leader of the two Courts. I even know about his eventual plans to unseat Maeve and take over her Court as well. I’ve got it all.” It was Sky’s turn to shrug with false indifference. He carried it better than Oli, and Oliver felt a shard of ice running down his spine. “Pity Kayla didn’t play b
all. She had to go and stand for Alpha right away, talking about how she would restore the Werewolf Court to its former glory and all. She wasn’t supposed to show herself until later. I guess she couldn’t resist walking in, looking like a saviour.” Sky sighed. “If only she’d kept to the plan, then those people in Tirnanog wouldn’t have had to die.”

  As though the ground dropped out of the earth, Oliver felt something pulling his insides down, everything falling through emptiness. His mind blanked but for the images of a destroyed village, full of innocents and tourists, people just looking for relaxation and rejuvenation. The blood splatters on the cobbled streets, the scratch marks in the scorch marks, the shattered statue of the couple, aged and abused and never young again.

  “So what was your endgame here?” Oliver asked, his fingers finally finding purchase on the clasp in his pocket. Maybe it was the fury that coursed in his veins, or the hardening of his heart against the monsters that orchestrated this whole mad coup, but suddenly everything was clear as water from the Fountain of Youth. “Kill Connor and I? Drag us in for a public execution?”

  Sky shook his head. “Nope,” he said. And then he held out both hands. “I’m here to make you a deal.” Oliver and Connor snorted a cold laugh, but Sky’s expression didn’t change. “Give up both your lives, and I will guarantee that Aurora Birch and her family and Donna Rose will remain unharmed and completely free.”