Chapter 19

19

I t was unlucky as hell to have the man show up here, now.

And too late for us to hide. He had his sights set on us, and the rest of them were only a half-step behind him. Even the nice couple at the table beside ours had gotten to their feet and were reaching out for us.

The woman's fingers gripped my shirt near the elbow and tugged.

“Don’t let them leave,” Morgan howled.

Benjamin and the other members of the Claw & Fang collectively lunged for us under his command. They were an angry mob, gone from hospitality to hostile in the blink of an eye.

They’d take us into custody and then?—

“No!” The word burned my throat on the way out and I held my hands up in front of me.

Onyx tried to move to protect me and we ended up crashing against one of the tables in our haste.

Benjamin and Morgan blocked off the front entrance. Dull pain rippled through the hip I’d knocked against the table.

“There’s nowhere to run,” Morgan growled.

A long roar cut through the melee of voices and Noren crashed through the front door, showering wood splinters. He lost his mind, snarling and snapping in an attempt to get through.

I must have called his name. Must have made some kind of noise to get his attention.

He lunged forward and slammed his skull into the small of Morgan’s back.

Someone wrapped their arms around my torso and tugged me back. Only Bronwen’s familiar scent stopped me from fighting against her. The others were trying to get behind us, to corral us right into Morgan’s waiting arms.

He recovered from Noren’s hit soon enough and whirled on the direwolf with his own canines on display.

Torn between Noren and the back door, I paused, stupidly.

A large bang rocked the space. In the next breath, the foundations of the bar rumbled, dust shimmering down from the ceiling and visible beams. The lights went out and plunged the world into darkness. In the chaos, a woman screamed. Every inhalation held the familiar taste of smoke and it burned my lungs until I started to cough.

“What’s happening?” Bronwen yelled beside my ear.

The lights flickered back on as though someone flipped a switch, and the smoke cleared just as rapidly. The air tasted of ozone. Magic. The scent of magic filled every molecule inside the bar, and standing directly in the center of the room stood two new people who had shown up out of nowhere.

Mike.

Mike .

Queen Laina stood at his side with her golden hair twisted around the top of her head in a braid as regal as any crown. She’d traded her gorgeous gowns for a plain sand-colored tunic and pants combination with leather straps around her waist and over her arms.

Mike looked exactly as he had the first night I met him at school, only more. More than I’d ever seen him. He wore a black t-shirt cut high at the arms and a pair of worn jeans yet he radiated strength and poise and?—

My heart leaped out of my chest in an attempt to get to Mike, but before I so much as uttered a word, the two of them jumped into the fight.

Without hesitation. The moment they registered what was going down, they attacked.

Mike moved first and lifted a hand. Wind buffeted out from his outstretched fingers and knocked Benjamin from his feet. The halfling gave a sharp yelp before the unnatural gust knocked him against the bar.

We were more evenly matched with another fae and a witch on our side.

Laina may not fight with her magic but I knew it added heft to any faery spell she cast.

She reached behind her to the space between her straps—a holster, I realized—and withdrew twin whips. The ends were tipped in iron and crackled with a bluish-green magic. Laina cracked the first and the barb landed near the tip of Morgan’s boot.

The queen was every bit the warrior I might have looked up to as a kid, spinning with boundless energy and moving her whips like the fae equivalent of Elektra. If ever there was a time for a girl crush, it was now.

She and Mike exploded into action like they were fury given physical form.

I was too mad myself to look for a clever way out of this. With magic pumping through me., I took off toward Mike, toward the door and our exit strategy.

Bronwen gave a whoop at my back and her magic supported Onyx. Mike cast a spell around us, and anyone who dared get close enough to him rebounded, their skin scalded wherever they touched.

I expected the magic to dip and fray, the way I’d seen it do before. Only this time, and without the Totalis , he saw the spell to completion.

“Take that, you miserable assholes!” Bronwen yelled behind me.

Her battle cry was almost lost in the chaos. With so many members of the Claw & Fang present in one space, it would take a minor miracle to get us out of here without bringing the building down with us.

Noren ran forward and jumped, sailing over the heads of anyone else and landing on the back of another. The man crumpled to his knees under the weight and Noren growled.

The threat rattled around in his throat and I nodded to give him the go-ahead to use whatever it took, whatever horrible means necessary, to break us free.

My own lips peeled back in a snarl and I called my wolf. For half a heartbeat I wondered what Mike would think about my change. Too late . She responded to me immediately and my muscles twisted painfully. I kept the same feral expression on my lips through the transformation, my gaze darting back and forth across every enemy in the bar until my human form no longer stood.

I looked out at the world through the eyes of the wolf.

Laina struck again with her whips drawn high. Mike, propelled by the air magic he commanded, cut a hasty path toward us.

The power of the combined occupants of this room hummed through me as I leaped into the bulk of the fighting. My jaws swung open and I clamped them down on the nearest man’s ankle hard enough to shatter bone. He cried out and I threw everything I had into the bite, striking at him with magic in tandem.

Mike boosted me. Not purposely, of course, but by the fierce pride at his arrival.

Bronwen hadn’t been the only one looking for me.

Mike came through.

He wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t feel something for me.

A tidal wave broke inside of me and I howled, the noise tightening my skin until my hair stood on end. Onyx took up the cry, followed by Bronwen and Noren, until the room filled with the keening wail.

On we fought, with the battle cry burning my lungs. Every part of me yearned for vengeance. I needed it more than life itself. Vengeance against everyone in this bar who saw three young adults and turned against them.

We’d done nothing wrong.

Another wave of magic poured out of me as I bit and kicked and ripped, using my power to get me toward the door. I came to a halt in front of Mike and Noren landed to my left, his tail swishing and his magic building.

Mike raised his hand in a defensive maneuver and the air around us tightened.

After a startling beat of silence, everything went tight, his magic drawing the air out of the room.

He brought his hand down and the vacuum seal popped. Whoever had been on their feet now fell.

A cruel, wicked, beautiful smile pried his lips open.

I shifted back to human form. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He winked at me. “You’re a hard girl to find!”

Laina swung her whips and set her eyes on Morgan, who seemed to grow with the weight of the challenge. He barked out another command but a flash of movement came from the corner of my vision.

I lurched aside in time to make room for Bronwen and Onyx. They moved in tandem, faster than I would have thought possible, and a shower of blades hurtled toward Morgan and his cronies.

Whatever order he’d managed to release didn’t matter. We rushed for him, a battle cry uniting us, and the daggers struck home at the same time. Burrowing in a circle around him and his friends.

Onyx snorted and the weight of the power in the room crashed against me as he lit the daggers on fire. Through the flames I saw Morgan glaring at me, his one good eye mirroring the gilded flames.

Bronwen tensed and ducked as someone swung a sword toward her head. The tip nicked her shoulder and she lost her balance, keening forward closer to the flames.

“No!” I cried, and the word echoed from somewhere around me but I couldn’t spare Mike another glance as I stepped up to protect Bronwen.

A thought—and weight filled my palm, a replica of the sword the other man carried.

Immediately the use of magic took a toll and I lost my breath, my heart beating wildly. I lifted the sword in time to parry a strike from the man, blocking him at every turn.

They were too close to us, and the fire might keep Morgan and the others blocked off but it also filled the small bar with too much heat. My skin was turning to ash and my forearm burned where I’d been bitten.

Bronwen got to her feet, wincing at the spray of blood across her shoulder. Her magic pulsed and she sliced her own sword at the man.

“Don’t tell me you’re tired already?”

My head snapped toward her but the pause cost me. The pain in my arm flared and traveled up to my back, hammering every vertebrae of my spine.

Mike brought a solid shield of air around us and stopped the man’s next parry dead in the air.

“Tavi?”

I recognized the concern in his voice.

“We have to get out of here.” The press of heat, the cost of the shift and conjuring the sword, threatened to weigh me down and I gritted my teeth to remain standing. Several members of the Claw & Fang managed to get themselves together and they threw a blast of water magic at us with such force it nearly sent me flying.

It also doused the magical flames around Morgan.

Laina’s whip darted out snake-fast and wrapped around the arm of the nearest attacker, pulling him backward and off his feet. He collided with the back wall and lay still.

“Time to move,” she called out.

She was right. We needed to get away from Dorian Jade’s followers and get far enough from this place to recover.

Had I thought the Faerie Trials were bad?

If I had half the strength I’d had during those, I’d have blasted every last one of these dudes with magic and gleefully watched them bleed.

But every time I tried to call my power back to me, it receded a little further. Even Mike had gone pale and his spells were losing their potency.

I swung my blade again and my muscles burned from too much force. We were close enough to the door to get out of the building. Laina cast her final spell and it spread out through the interior of the bar, chains of magic the same color as the lethally tipped whips keeping them pinned in place.

I didn’t give a crap what happened to them once we left.

Bronwen was the closest and I grabbed hold of her, my body shivering with the effort of trying to continue. She wrapped an arm underneath mine and cried out at the top of her lungs, “We’re out!”

Onyx and Noren had been locked in battle with three other halflings. The direwolf turned to me with the promise of fury and violence still in his glowing eyes, but Onyx was like me. He’d pushed himself too far.

Laina recognized it, helping him toward the door.

Black emotions churned inside of me.

We raced off into the city, putting as much distance between ourselves and Sea’s Deep as physically possible. Noren outpaced us all and at the end of the group limped me and Onyx, my steps slow to accommodate our injuries. But we couldn’t stop.

Not yet.

We had to keep going until we were far away from that cursed building. And hope like hell we were able to control our scents. If Morgan so much as got a hint of us, he’d be able to track us again. We’d never be safe.

In the midst of a cluster of two-story buildings, their cupolas graced in gold, we stopped to catch our breaths. The overlapping rooftops cast shade over the alley, and from this vantage point I no longer saw or heard the ocean.

I slapped my palm against the stone and heaved in a great gulping breath of air. My lungs seized, unable to accommodate so much at one time.

As the seconds ticked by, breathing became easier.

“Hey, are you okay?” Fingers trailed up the back of my neck and increased their pressure, massaging lightly until I looked up into Mike’s concerned green eyes. “You look like you're ready to drop.”

Without thought, I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed him tight. His arms banded around me automatically and if he wanted to complain about the way I clung, he kept those thoughts to himself.

“I’m not okay,” I answered with a voice muffled by his shirt. “I’m not okay at all.”

“Then it’s a good thing we found you,” Mike replied.

I wanted to ask him how he’d tracked us, and why. I wanted to ask if he’d forgiven me for the part I played in his father’s coma. I said nothing.

Finally, Mike cleared his throat, the sound morphing into a dry chuckle. “You’re probably not going to like hearing this.”

I squeezed him again.

He kept one arm around me and reached into his pocket with the opposite hand, drawing out a handkerchief with a dark spot of dried brown blood on it. “I still had this. Mom used your blood to track your progress but every time we got a lead on you, you vanished again. You never stayed in one spot long enough for us to actually reach you. Until today.”

“Until today,” I repeated, captivated by the handkerchief.

I had no clue why he still had it but thank goodness for that bit of blood. He’d saved it. Why?

Laina stashed her whips back into the holster and their glow dulled. “We evacuated the castle. Teaming up with like-minded souls seemed the best option for people like us.”

“But why? Why leave when the King…” I didn’t want to talk about it and chance upsetting Mike.

Either way, if Tywin had managed to come out of his coma or not, it made no sense for the queen and the crown prince to just take off.

“The premier has taken over the palace. In my husband’s absence, Cosmo Foxfall has risen to near celebrity status and used his power to reveal his secrets. He’s in league with Dorian Jade,” Laina said.

Now that was one name I never wanted to hear again. Ever.

Ice slithered into place at the base of my spine and froze me from the inside out. The same ice became a burning sensation in my veins.

“He believes he is doing the right thing by combining his forces with Jade, waxing poetic about reuniting Seelie and Unseelie. And the first thing Cosmo did was deliver the pure-blood fae to the enchanted wall between our kingdoms.”

“No, he didn’t. How could he—” I cut off, my voice strangled.

The queen dipped her head. “Yes, Tavi. He delivered our people to the Unseelie, where Dorian Jade will decide whether they live or die.”