Every hallway I passed stood empty. No light shone beneath any doors. No footsteps echoed down the well as I climbed the winding staircase to the next floor.
The warnings screamed louder, but I trudged on, stalked low to the ground until I came to the door I’d been looking for. Moss and vines snaked through the top of it and ran in both directions down the marble ceiling. Energy flooded the space around it.
After a moment, I recognized where I stood—the hallway outside Parthalan’s bedroom.
Engulfed in the energy, I realized, with horror, that it didn’t taste the same as what Liam used to lure me to the Conner farm. It was darker, more potent.
My breath hitched in my throat, choking me. I ground my teeth together and leaned against the wall so I wouldn’t fall over. I’d travelled Parthalan’s path like a mouse in a maze, but instead of the cheese, I’d get a date with a psychopath. I’d been thinking myself a genius for finding a way through the horde outside, but they only served as obstacles in the puzzle. He knew I’d find a way around them so he cleared the path inside the castle and probably giggled while I let him reel me in.
Numbness saturated my flesh, and I dropped the pickaxe to the floor with a clank. The door swung open without a sound. I stepped through, and it closed behind me. One bright light shone from the ceiling in the middle of the room where a large glittering circle had been drawn on the floor. Little red droplets interrupted the glowing arc every few feet.
A shadow fell across the light. Echoes of vicious laughter induced a shiver in me. The acoustics made it hard to determine what direction it came from. I gnawed my lower lip while thoughts spun in my head. Stay calm. This is what Mother trained me for.
“Come in, my darling,” Parthalan sang from the shadows.
“I think I’ll stay over here, thanks.” Having the door at my back gave me a sense of security, though part of me knew it was just an illusion. No flying off half cocked, Lila.
Before I could think about what to do next, the door opened again. Torn with where to look, I backed toward the dressing room so I could see most of the room, or at least what little the light revealed.
Deep breaths, Lila. Don’t let him see you squirm. I shook my head. Great, now I’m talking to myself. I hated having Parthalan out of my sight, but his presence pressed on my mind as it always did, giving me a general sense of where he was.
Sebastian came through the door first, holding one of Rourke’s arms. Bain held the other. They dragged the psycho piece of shit into the shadow toward where I thought Parthalan might be.
A few Sluagh entered behind them, along with a dozen or so fae I recognized from the Court. They spread out along the far wall beside the red princess bed, whispering and snickering.
My Light flared and pulsed a golden glow into the room.
A drunken laugh burst out of Rourke. With the addition of my Light, I could see him propped against the wall a few yards from where I stood. He giggled, his weasel face arranged around a lunatic grin as he stared up at Sebastian with wide, contented eyes.
“She broke his legs,” Sebastian said through clenched teeth. He slouched where he stood inside the circle at the end of the bed. He bowed to the far side, a bloody curtain of red hair tumbling forward.
There you are, Parthalan, you prick. Your peon just gave you away. I couldn’t help but smile, but it didn’t last long. Knowing his location didn’t improve my situation much.
“Mmm, getting bolder I see.” Parthalan snickered. “Have your precious rules gone by the way at last?”
“Rourke doesn’t seem to mind, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I grumbled.
“No, in fact you gave him exactly what he wanted from you.” Parthalan’s bare feet slapped along tile.
Why isn’t he wearing shoes? Please, please, please let him have clothes on.
“I have a gift for you, my darling.”
“Keep it. I have all I need.”
“Oh, I think you’ll want this one.”
A scream preceded a scuffle in the hallway.
I turned my attention to the open door, afraid to see but couldn’t look away. My hair swept over my face, and I pushed it back with a shaking hand.
Cas, the plum-haired guard, came through the door towing two sagging forms shackled and draped in heavy iron chains. He wouldn’t meet my glare, and his lips folded into a deep frown. He lowered his cargo to the floor and disappeared into a dark corner of the room.
New and dried blood coated both of the fae on the floor. One didn’t move, the other wept softly.
“Donovan!” I dashed toward him, but Sebastian beat me there.
He held a black pistol to my unconscious father’s forehead. “Take another step, and he dies.”
Garret lifted his head from the floor. When his swollen eyes opened and landed on Rourke, he wailed and jerked in his chains. My mind wanted to haunt me with scenarios of what my brother had gone through in Mr. Psycho’s hands, but I couldn’t allow the distraction.
“I’m here, Garret.” I ached to gather him into my arms and heal his wounds, to tell him it would be all right, but I didn’t want to lie to him. My energy answered my rage, brightening my skin.
My little brother looked up at me. Tears washed white paths down his blood-stained cheeks.
I nodded encouragement to him.
Green-haired Lochlann grunted as he walked backwards through the door, struggling to hold Liam. One of his eyes had swollen shut, and his clothes were torn to shreds. Bruises and gashes covered most of his pale skin. Lochlann threw Liam to the floor and put a foot in the middle of his back with a sneer contorting his coffee-toned face.
The sight of Liam made me want to scream, but I kept it inside. My hands clenched into trembling fists. Keep it together. For him. For all of them.
“Step into the circle, Lila” Parthalan commanded. “You have five seconds to obey before one of your precious fae will cease to exist.”
“We’re not worth it,” Liam muttered through swollen lips.
I swallowed the fear and anger like a black, wriggling snake and shook my head. “You’re wrong.”
I walked toward the glowing line in the floor and froze after I passed through a thick and itchy ward as if I’d been wrapped in wool. Parthalan’s silhouette stood before me, a few feet farther than the light could reach. I didn’t need to see his face to know he wore a triumphant grin.
“I’m here,” I said, “so let them go.”
Parthalan stepped into the circle with the grace of a phantom easing across the floor. He wore nothing but a pair of tight black leather pants. His midnight hair danced around his head. A creature from another time and place where gods and demons roamed the land. Light played along the hills and valleys of his body, accentuating the muscular ridges along his arms and stomach. He either practiced his poses in a mirror, or he had a natural flair for the sensually dramatic. At least he wasn’t naked.
If I hadn’t been terror-stricken, I might have rolled my eyes.
“So terribly predictable.” He sighed. “I don’t understand the draw to this—” He flicked his fingers toward Liam. “—half-breed peasant.”
“I could explain it to you all day, and you still wouldn’t get it.”
I caught my eyes creeping toward Parthalan and forced them elsewhere. Panic whispered through my chest like a stalking beast. I’d forgotten the effect he had on me without Liam’s interference. How could I kill a fae that could render me helpless by appearing shirtless before me? He reminded me of Medusa, but instead of stone, he turned me into a raging nympho.
“Do you see what I mean now, Liam?” Parthalan moaned as he ogled me, his voice more suited for lovers’ words shared between satin sheets.
Things down low reacted, swelling and tightening. Damn it!
“Do you see how she’s drawn to my power? Do you smell her desire?”
“I said let them go! This is between you and me.” I scratched my arm to break my growing ache to touch him, to run my hands along t
he hard lines of his body beneath the soft leather. His power had never overtaken me so fiercely, hot and potent with the potential to eat me alive if I let it.
His laughter rippled into the room. “I said nothing about releasing them, my darling. Only that I wouldn’t kill them if you arrived in time. Now, we start the clock anew.”
My mind spun. I started toward Liam, desperate for comfort, for an idea that would save us. At the edge of the circle, I bumped into an unseen barrier. “What the hell is this?” I ran my hands down an invisible, but spongy, surface. The well in my mind opened, releasing Light into my flesh. I tried to keep it in, but it swelled within me until I thought I’d come apart. My skin lit up with a golden cream, illuminating the Sidhe and Sluagh standing along the walls.
Liam strained against the chains. The look in his eyes ripped my heart from my chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You weren’t supposed to come.”
“Don’t.” I pressed my palms against the barrier.
“You’re standing inside a circle of protection Sebastian designed just for you, darling.” Parthalan moved closer as he spoke. “It also confines your power to a small space, increasing its potency.” He moaned from right beside my ear, startling a yip out of me. I whirled around and found him kissing close. “The effects are most … intoxicating, wouldn’t you agree?”
I edged away, testing the perimeter of the circle with my fingers.
His eyes followed me with a predatory glint.
“What do you want?”
A silken laugh slid over my skin. “So direct.” His smile faded. “I want your Light. Renounce Liam as your mate. Use your Force of Will to sever the bond.”
“No!” Liam and I shouted in unison.
Parthalan stroked a hand down his abdomen as if to draw my eye to its perfection.
“Liam’s death will also sever the bond. Either way, I’ll get what I want. The method of delivery is yours to choose.”
“Don’t you dare,” Liam said. “He’ll bind you, and you won’t be able to stop it. You won’t remember me. You won’t remember that he killed your family. I know you. If you do this, your soul will die. He’ll use you to destroy everything we are, and have been for millennia. Please listen to me now.” His eyes—both open because he’d begun to heal—pleaded with me.
“But he’ll kill you, and it’ll happen anyway.” The truth in my words sliced through my mind like a white hot blade. “I have no choice.”
“You told me there’s always a choice.”
I offered a weak smile. “Not this time.”
The sight of his quivering chin and the wetness around his eyes gripped the wound in my soul and tore it wider. If it could have bled, I would have died where I stood. I had to find a way to fix it, all of it. Everything I needed lay before me in chains. Family. Someone to care for me despite my hardness. I imagined a life in them I’d never allowed myself to want in the past, and I knew it would break something inside me if I let it go or caused its destruction. A single tear left a hot trail down my cheek.
I won’t fail you. Goddess help me.
Parthalan beckoned Sebastian to him with a wave of his fingers. The two of them whispered outside the circle. Sebastian’s face brightened, and he looked at me. His grin made me clutch my stomach.
He nodded and walked around the perimeter of the circle toward Liam and the others.
“What’s he doing?” I ran to the edge of the ward as the redheaded shit came closer. He stroked a hand over his gun.
My muscles tensed to the point of pain as I pushed against the barrier, pounded my fist against it. I backed up and launched a kick only to bounce off and stumble back, screaming my frustration.
Parthalan came for me, his head tilted forward. His glass eyes dared me to challenge him. When I tried to dodge him, he moved to block me. With no other option, I stood my ground, teeth clamped together.
He stopped short of touching me, his warm, sweet breath washing across my lips. I held my terror inside as his shadow enveloped me. His Light differed from mine, similar to the eerie glow before a storm when the potential for destruction lingers in the air.
“We’re going to play a little game now,” he whispered, his mouth close to mine. His power licked at my skin, wrapped a cold, intense pleasure around me.
I didn’t move, but it took effort. Part of me wanted to taste that power, to take it into myself and let it drug me into a stupor.
“What game?” I didn’t want to know, but he appeared to be waiting for an answer.
“Every time you disobey your King, Sebastian will shoot Liam. The first bullet will hit his lower extremities, then continue up his body until he gets one between the eyes. The bullets have iron in them, so he can’t heal them himself. And he can’t shift and leave because the chains are pure iron.”
I swallowed past the cotton dryness in my mouth. “Let’s finish this, just you and me. Let them go, and I’ll stay with you, no fight, no fuss.” I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my voice. My hands trembled at my sides. I shoved them into my pocket so I wouldn’t slide them along the smooth swell of his chest or pound him in the face. I couldn’t decide which held the greater urge.
“Where’s the fun in that?” He stepped away with a snicker, stroked the sharp lines of his jaw with his fingers. “Shall we begin?” His eyes glittered. “Show me what you can do. Destroy something.”
I searched the room, my stomach in knots. “What do you want me to destroy?”
The dark thoughts passing through his eyes tensed my shoulders. “I’m curious. How accurate is your power? Did you break Rourke’s legs on purpose, or did that just happen to be where your power manifested?” His gaze wandered the room as he stroked his chin and made a come-hither motion with his finger.
I turned to find Sebastian dragging a whimpering Garret into the circle. He dropped him and return to Liam.
“Break his fingers.” Parthalan pointed at my brother.
“What? No!”
Garret’s eyes widened. “Don’t, please!” He struggled in the chains.
Sebastian shoved the gun into Liam’s foot and pulled the trigger. The tremendous sound sent a shock through my head and vibrations through the floor. He screamed. The chains clanked as his body jerked. The ward must have kept me from feeling it along with him. I wanted to take it into myself, but our link had become impassible.
Rourke had climbed to his feet to get a better look, his face rearranged with dark glee.
How did he heal so fast?
“Stop!” I scrambled across the tile to Garret. I knelt beside him and stroked his blond hair, grasping for ideas to get me out of what I had to do. Nothing useful came to me. “Just do it.” He stared up at me with sad blue eyes. “I know you have to. It’s okay. I don’t want him to hurt Liam again, either.”
A few feet outside the circle, Liam clamped his teeth together until his jaw quivered. Ruby ribbons trickled from his wound.
I blinked away the tears that threatened to overflow my lashes before turning my attention back to my brother. Face blank once again, I forced a smile, hoping Garret could see in my eyes how proud I was of him.
After gathering my energy, I placed my hands on his arm. With my metaphysical sight, I searched my brother’s body until I found the bones of his left hand. “I’m sorry.” The terrible cracking made me jump back. Garret groaned and turned his face to the floor, but he didn’t cry out.
“There, you’ve had your little demo, now let me heal him.” Without waiting for Parthalan to answer, I reached for Garret again.
Bain stepped in between us. He grabbed Garret by the ankle and dragged him out of the circle.
“Do you have to touch someone to cause damage?” Parthalan paced behind me.
I hesitated, aching to cross the barrier to my brother. What are you up to now, Glass Man? “The farther I am from someone, the less control I have.”
“So, if you’d forced your will, say, through the floor, you might have b
roken his neck or crushed his heart, instead?”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “It’s unpredictable. I might not even hit the person or object I intended.”
Donovan had woken up at some point. He stared at me, his eyes empty of fear and disappointment. My courage grew a little. I offered him a subtle nod and he returned it.
“How many can you control at once?” Parthalan asked.
I shook my head. “Maybe a few hundred.” I didn’t know how many had been in the Seelie Court, but I wasn’t about to tell him I’d sensed them all at once.
“Try. Feel out the minds in this city. Tell me how many are here.”
His request wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, but I didn’t want him to know I could reach them all. I looked over at Liam. If Parthalan knew I’d lied, he’d tell Sebastian to shoot him again.
With my eyes closed, I stood and gathered my Light until my flesh could no longer contain it. I called my Sight and pushed it across the city like ripples of gold through a black and white photograph. Minds crawled through every dark corner, through the streets and inside the shifters. The sights and thoughts sent a piercing ache through my temples. I knew the number of minds in the city without having to count. “Three thousand seven hundred and forty-six Sidhe, twelve hundred and five wolves and four thousand shifters, though some of the minds are quiet, so I’m not sure of their exact numbers.”
A few gasps carried around the room as I opened my eyes.
Parthalan stared at me as if I’d surprised him. He smiled. “Beyond my wildest desires.” His hand extended in my direction. “Now come to me.”
Sebastian rose to his feet, inspecting his gun. My heart leapt. I sped across the tile to the Unseelie king.
“That’s my good girl. Now bathe me in your Light. Let me taste it without resistance.”
Pompous ass. He could draw out my energy on his own, so why did he need me to do it? Shit. If I opened myself willingly, he could drain me dry. Was he afraid of me? “Why don’t you just take it?”
His gaze sought Sebastian. I threw my arms wide and opened the well in my mind before Parthalan could give the order. I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting Liam again.
The Glass Man Page 24
