54. Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Four

H olt followed her through the tunnels, beyond the wards protecting the soldiers, beyond the last of the cots and the chatter of voices to find Rose shouting at Kej in his wildcat form, Daizin at his side, Saphi between them all. And behind Rose, Raif stood and watched.

Scars marred one side of his face, slashing directly through his left eye, the inky black tarnished by a silvery hue, even more unsettling than the one that remained solid black. Zylah suspected he could no longer see through it if Rhaznia had anything to do with the injury. At their arrival, Kej backed up a step, folding back onto his hindlegs and growling, quiet, but unmistakable.

Rose began to speak but a crack of Holt’s power silenced her. Zylah stayed close to him, his anger just as palpable, just as tangible as hers, though she tried not to let her memories rise to the surface. Not to let every awful thing Raif had done result in a fight her friends could too easily get caught up in. And there was the question of his magic, whether he could still turn someone to ash at his touch, or whether it had been changed just as irrevocably as he had.

“You told me the dead should stay dead. But you…” Zylah forced herself to meet his soulless eye. “You’re…” There weren’t enough foul words for what he was.

Raif cocked his head to one side, his mouth tipping up at the corner and the tip of a fang pushing past his lips. “Like a parasite?”

There was a hint of self-loathing to the question, but Zylah had lost the last shred of her sympathy for Raif when she’d watched him shove a vanquicite sword through Holt’s chest. “You let me believe he was dead,” she spat, stepping past Saphi, Holt moving with her. “You kept me from him.” Rose stepped aside, too, but Zylah ignored her pleas. “Kept me in the dark for months whilst they tortured him.” Her threads were already on the move, waiting for her command. Waiting to attack, to hurt, to maim.

Something like regret flickered across Raif’s face, an apology half out of his mouth that she had no interest in hearing. But it was the sound of her name coming from his mouth that shattered the last of her restraint, and as Raif reached out a hand towards her, Holt’s magic shoved him back, smashing the vampire into the wall, chunks of stone crumbling and falling around him.

“ Raif! ” Rose screamed. But Zylah knew it hadn’t been a fatal hit. Not in such close proximity to their friends. And even though Holt’s wrath matched her own, they both understood Raif wouldn’t have risked his life to seek them all out without reason.

The vampire coughed and spluttered, pushing himself up from the debris with a groan before dusting off his shoulders.

“There’s no one here to protect you this time,” Holt told him, another pulse of his magic filling the space. “Touch her again and I will tear every limb from your body.”

“Holt, please,” Rose begged behind him.

Raif dragged a hand through his short hair, the action far too casual for the hit he’d just taken, a chilling reminder of what he was, what he’d been made into. “No touching. Got it.” But then his cocky grin was back, tendrils of ash snapping from him and moving for Holt.

Zylah had been waiting for it. Her threads reached for Raif’s magic, her stomach rebelling at the thought of having to be in contact with any part of him. But the ash fell away at her will, Holt’s fist slamming into Raif’s face with a sickening crack.

Raif sneered, blood pouring from his nose and his fangs on full display as Holt lunged for him. They were a blur of punches, Rose screaming for them both to stop as Saphi and Daizin held her back. Holt shoved the vampire against the wall, a forearm shoved tight against Raif’s throat and an arrenium blade pressing against the bottom of his good eye.

Holt showed no signs of injury, but that didn’t stop Zylah from securing Raif’s limbs with tendrils of shadows from where she stood watch, waiting for whatever retribution Holt settled on. He’d summoned the weapon to him quicker than she could blink, the glassy material reflecting the single orblight above, and every angle of his body, every taut muscle said he intended to use it.

Zylah didn’t have it in her to care whether Raif lived or died, didn’t want to waste another scrap of feeling on the vampire ever again. Holt echoed the sentiment.

He pressed the blade a little deeper, a trickle of black blood running down Raif’s face like a tear. “I should take your other eye, but it still wouldn’t be enough for keeping her in that fucking hole in the dark. For what you knew,” he choked out. No mention of what Raif had done to him, as if it were the last of his concerns.

It is , he told her gently. But that you had to watch… His anger flared with his words, flames sparking to life at his fingertips where they gripped the hilt of his dagger.

“Please, Holt,” Rose sobbed, breaking free of Daizin’s grip and tugging at Holt’s arm. “Don’t take him from me. I already lost him once. Please.”

Zylah knew it was Adina he thought of when he turned to look at Rose. When he took in the tears streaming down her face. They had all been like siblings once, the three of them. Raif and Holt like brothers. And a large part of that was because Holt had lost his own sister all those years ago. Betrayal and hurt entwined with his anger, but she felt his hesitation, his reluctance to let Raif escape them again. Whatever decision he settled on, she would respect it, because this was far bigger than just the two of them.

Holt slammed the dagger into the stone beside Raif’s head, and the vampire had the good sense to flinch. “Only so that Rose doesn’t have to know what’s it like to lose a sibling.”

Rose let out a ragged sob as Holt took a step back, throwing her arms around her brother. Zylah released her shadows, her threads still unwound and remaining close enough to snap Raif’s neck.

“You have a spy amongst you,” the vampire ground out, wiping the blood from beneath his eye with the back of a hand. “Ranon is waiting for you. If you hold off until the night of the blood moon, he’ll be preoccupied with his task.”

“And you expect us to believe you?” Kej asked. Zylah hadn’t noticed when he’d shifted back into his Fae form, but he stood in nothing but a pair of trousers he’d pulled from somewhere, Daizin on one side, Saphi on his other.

“He doesn’t want to remain this way,” Rose said, looking at her brother. “He needs Ranon’s blood to undo it.”

It’s true. Ranon confirmed it in the maze, Zylah told Holt. But whether he truly wanted to change remained to be seen.

“So ask your grandfather to hand it over,” Kej scoffed.

Raif’s laugh was hollow. “Clearly you’ve never met my grandfather.”

Ranon didn’t strike Zylah as the type of male to just hand over his blood, even for his family. Not when he most likely needed to preserve every drop of it for whatever ritual he had planned at the blood moon, not when he was still regaining his strength.

“You came here for our help?” Zylah asked him, making no effort to hide the disbelief in her tone. The audacity of his decision wasn’t even worth dissecting.

But it was Rose who occupied Raif’s attention. “I came here because I love my sister, and I want to keep her safe. Alive.” He turned to Holt. “Because I knew you would understand that.”

Zylah had doubted many things about Raif, but never his love for his sister. Knew he would do anything for her, no matter the cost, just as their mother had described back in Ranon’s maze.

“If you’re using her, I won’t hesitate.” Holt stood at Zylah’s side, the pair of them a barrier between Raif and their friends. That Saphi was hesitant to stand with Rose told Zylah everything she needed to know about how a vampire’s presence would go down within the wards, with the rest of the soldiers. She could practically feel Kej buzzing to snap another retort, but he held his tongue.

Rose looped her arm through Raif’s, sliding her hand into his. “I had a vision.”

“How convenient,” Zylah said, willing her tone to remain emotionless. “You didn’t have a vision about Ranon’s plans, about the spy, about any of it. But only now. Only for him.”

Rose flinched. “I’ve had—” A pinch of her brow, a brief shake of her head. “Several. None of which have an outcome worth sharing.”

The implication of that wasn’t worth considering, not in what might well have been their final hours.

“The spy?” Holt demanded.

“A scout,” Raif said. “They can evanesce. That’s all I know.”

Holt didn’t take his eyes off the vampire before him. “Daizin. Ask Nye who’s missing.” Through their connection. Faster than having him search for Nye in the tunnels; far more convenient, too.

“I never asked for this,” Raif began after a moment of quiet descended over all of them.

Zylah clicked her tongue. “You’ve asked for our help. You don’t get to have our sympathy, too.” She almost wished Holt had shoved the dagger through the vampire’s eye.

There’s still time for that, he said in her thoughts.

“Tell us Ranon’s plan,” Zylah went on. “Tell us why we should believe a single word that comes out of your mouth after everything you’ve done.” Every horrible, awful thing.

“I’m—” Raif cleared his throat at the crack of Holt’s magic.

“It’s too late for apologies, Raif.” Zylah might have accepted them once, might have believed him even. But if it was true he didn’t want to remain this way, that he needed Ranon’s blood to turn him back into a Fae, there was too much at stake for him to fuck this up. He was likely to say anything he thought they wanted to hear to get what he wanted, if past events were anything to go by. “He’s charged his orb. He needs the blood moon. What are his intentions? Is he trying to return home?”

Raif’s one working eye widened at that, but it was all the surprise he showed at her words. “He needs to free Sira first. And then he intends to return home with her.”

Is she trapped in the shop? Holt asked.

I don’t know. I think she was using whoever I met, somehow. They were human but felt very much like a Fae.

Sira was powerful. So powerful Ranon had always coveted that power.

“If you attack tomorrow as intended, he will take out every last one of your soldiers, and he’ll use you to do it,” Raif said, his eye darting over Holt’s face.

Rose didn’t question him, and Zylah wondered if she’d seen it. How much she’d seen of all of it. Whether the Fae had watched Raif keeping Zylah in their grandfather’s maze, and her anger simmered to the surface all over again. Holt pressed a hand to her lower back, fingers splaying over the fabric of her tunic, and she leaned into his touch to ground herself.

“Your vision?” Holt asked Rose.

The Fae looked up at her brother, then back at Holt, her brow creasing. “I saw the two of you fighting side by side to take down our grandfather.”

“This is bullshit,” Kej barked from behind them.

“Kej,” Daizin murmured.

“And I saw Ranon control you. Your magic.” Rose swallowed. “You killed… So many.”

“When?” Zylah demanded. “When did you have this vision?”

“I-I-” Rose stuttered, her attention darting between Zylah and Holt. “A week or so ago, I can’t remember exactly.”

Zylah bristled. If her vision was after what happened at the Aquaris Court…

Then it makes no difference, Holt said calmly. She saw Raif die, and she was wrong.

Zylah eyed the siblings. Not entirely.

“And what was to be your part in all of this?” Holt asked Raif.

The vampire shrugged. “I’m just an instrument. A tool in Ranon’s belt. As are all of his creations, and Aurelia’s creations in turn.”

Rose sucked in a breath at her brother’s words. “I’ll kill her myself for all that she’s allowed to happen.”

“Something we can agree on, at least,” Zylah said flatly.

“Luma,” Daizin told them. “One of Arlan’s,” he added. The missing scout. The spy. Information he’d no doubt received from Nye.

This wouldn’t be good for morale. The merging of their forces had already been tenuous since moving everyone to the tunnels. And now they had an extra day and night to contend with.

“This is as close as you get to the others,” Holt said to Raif. “Rose. You’re responsible for him. I trust you understand the consequences if he’s lying.” He gave further instructions to Daizin and Kej, his eyes never leaving Raif. “If he takes one step out of line, do what you need to.”

Saphi returned with them to the safety of the wards, only Zylah wasn’t certain if it was to put distance between her and Raif or to give Rose some time alone with her brother. Either way, Zylah left her threads unspooled, a few of them remaining at the perimeter of where they’d left the siblings, even though their friends stood guard.

Because no matter what Raif had told them, no matter what he wanted, he was still their enemy. Still a vampire. And they’d just given him access to an unlimited supply of food.