Chapter 11

ELEVEN

I was a bit shocked to realize it was still not even nine o’clock when I arrived back at the hostel. It seemed as if the past few hours had lasted a week at least. Or maybe my perspective had changed so much within those hours that I was no longer the same person.

I felt exhausted. Disoriented. Unsettled. And also strangely filled with nervous energy.

Kes and the kids were just about to sneak outside, so I impulsively suggested that we all make the trek to Myriad Gardens for a bit more exercise. The kids had been cooped up for far too long, and everyone needed a change of scenery.

And also… I wanted to believe that Draven was right. That our captors and tormentors were dead, and we no longer needed to fear them finding us.

It wasn’t that we had nothing to fear… There was still a danger that someone would realize what the kids were. But it was a Saturday night, and the park would be filled with people. Hopefully, we would be able to simply blend in.

On the walk over, I gave the kids some rules.

“We have to pretend to be normal humans, okay?”

Logan didn’t respond, and Ari pouted.

“No magic,” I said sternly. “We need everyone to think we’re just like them. We’re going to enjoy the park. Look at the fountains and the lights. Maybe see some ducks. But if the humans catch us, we’ll have to go home early.”

That was mostly for Ari’s benefit. Logan was old enough to understand the dangers.

“And… can we just… sit in the grass for a while?” Logan’s quiet, simple request broke my heart.

“All the grass you could possibly want,” I promised him, putting an arm around his narrow shoulders and squeezing, just for a moment. “Although you might want to be careful. We’re in Oklahoma and sometimes the grass bites.”

He shot me a startled look.

“Apparently there’s something called fire ants,” I explained ruefully. If there was one thing I’d noticed about this place, it was that there were way more bugs than we’d had in Colorado.

Ari was already skipping along the sidewalk in front of us, watching the traffic on Sheridan Avenue, her eyes alight with curiosity and anticipation. Everything was new and exciting, filled with possibility. How she had survived her ordeal with so much of her joy and innocence intact, I would never know, but I would fight to protect it. Fight for her to never truly understand how much danger she was in, or what might happen to her if anyone realized the truth.

Myriad Botanical Gardens covered the equivalent of four city blocks on the south side of downtown. There were trails and fountains, a children’s garden, an ice rink, a pond, and a cylindrical glass conservatory called the Crystal Bridge. Even in October, the grass and trees were still mostly green, and a fall harvest display spilled out of the children’s area, strewing corn, pumpkins, and scarecrows along the sidewalks.

Tonight, even at half-past nine, the gardens were teeming with people from some sort of public event. There were food trucks, booths filled with vendors, and live music from an outdoor stage. We mingled with the crowds for a moment—with a tight grip on Ari’s hand—until I saw that Kes was beginning to look even more nervous than usual.

“Can we… go somewhere quieter?” she asked.

So we meandered around the paths, past a fountain, and down by the pond, crossing under the Crystal Bridge and watching the ducks floating quietly on the water. After a near-miss with Ari attempting to pet one, we climbed back up and found a dark, open patch of grass to sit on.

Logan lay flat on his back, palms to the ground, eyes closed, while Ari darted back and forth, pointing and laughing and gazing with undisguised fascination at the people—especially the other children.

Kes was watching her, sadness bleeding from every taut line of her body.

“You okay?”

She turned her enigmatic gaze on me, and even in the dark I could sense the deep well of grief that she seemed to carry with her at all times.

“Will any of us ever be okay?” Her quiet question hit me hard, and I heard her sigh. “I believe things will get better. I do. I believe someday we will find a place that is safe and we will have no need to live looking over our shoulders. But… I cannot undo what I’ve done. I cannot erase what was done to me. No one can give back what was stolen from us, and… I don’t know that I will ever stop being afraid. Being ashamed that I can do nothing to help you. Feeling as if I don’t deserve this freedom after all that I’ve done.”

“You did nothing to be ashamed of,” I insisted fiercely. And I would keep saying it until she believed me.

“Raine,”—her soft smile broke my heart—“you are the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

I scoffed silently, though I would never express that sentiment aloud. She didn’t need to know the doubts I carried. The mistakes I’d made. The times I’d wished so desperately that I didn’t have to carry the weight of our safety. I did it gladly, but there were days I believed it might break me.

“If it weren’t for you,” she continued, “none of us would have a chance. And I hope you know that I’m grateful you chose to bring me with you.”

“We wouldn’t be here without you, either,” I reminded her. “And this is just the beginning. Don’t give up on any of us just yet. Not even yourself. As long as we’re alive…”

My little pep talk was interrupted by the sounds of chaos from over by the food trucks parked along Sheridan. The crowd split, and a man broke free from the milling people to race across the grassy lawn, angling towards Hudson Avenue, pursued by screams and shouts. There was a bag over his shoulder, and I heard a woman scream that he’d stolen her purse.

Time slowed as I watched him run, looking over his shoulder for pursuit. There were no lights on the grass, so he probably didn’t realize that he was about to run right past us.

There was no good reason for us to intervene. We were trying to hide—to blend in. If we helped to apprehend a purse snatcher, the police might get involved, and everyone would notice .

But it took less than half a second for me to decide that I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. If I was fast enough…

I rolled to my feet just as Ari let out a giggle and disappeared.

Only to reappear an instant later, right in front of the fleeing thief.

I screamed her name, but there was no way to avoid a collision. No chance that he would hesitate to shove her out of the way as he made his escape. I was already moving towards them, ready to defend her with every weapon at my disposal.

But her sudden appearance out of nowhere seemed to startle the thief as well. He jolted to the side, like a football player avoiding a tackle, but his momentum was too great. He wobbled precariously, let out a loud curse, and that’s when the ground jumped up and hit him in the face.

Well, technically, it grabbed him around the ankles. He was too stunned by this unexpected development to do anything but fall flat on his face, and I could swear I heard a crunching sound followed by a scream that was choked by a mouthful of grass.

My head whipped around to look at Logan, who was still laying on his back… with a deeply satisfied smile on his lips. And when I raced over to check on Ari and whisk her away from the gathering crowd, there was no sign that the grass had ever been disturbed.

I returned to Logan and Kes, feeling about a million years older. If my hair hadn’t been white already…

“That was fun,” Ari chirped as we melted into the darkness, headed away from the chaos and the questions and staring eyes as my heart pounded with the aftereffects of fear and adrenaline. “I want to do it again.”

“You promised, Little Bug,” I admonished her as we moved along the sidewalk towards the edge of the garden. “No magic where anyone can see you.”

“But we did a good thing.” Logan spoke up unexpectedly. Sometimes he was so quiet that it startled us when he did speak. “We helped someone. Doesn’t that mean it was okay?”

I opened my mouth to remind him about safety. About consequences. And then I snapped it shut again because every word would have made me a hypocrite. Ever since we arrived in Oklahoma City, I’d been taking risks. Doing things I’d sworn never to do, all because it had seemed like the right decision in the moment. Because someone was in need, and if I had the power to help, it would have felt wrong not to.

So how could I tell Logan otherwise?

“Actually, yeah.” I offered him an approving nod and wondered whether I was completely messing everything up or whether these kids had any chance of living a normal life. “You did the right thing. You stopped him, you did it quietly, and you stayed safe. But next time”—I gazed down at Ari while hoping desperately that there would never be a next time—“ask me first, okay?”

We reached the corner and stopped to wait for the crosswalk, and just as the walk sign appeared, I felt Kes freeze beside me.

“Kes?”

She was standing as if transfixed, turned to face Sheridan, gazing across it at a man waiting on the other side.

He stood alone, despite the groups of people coming and going from the park. Several inches taller than most, dressed in dark, austere clothing. A simple jacket over a black t-shirt, with dark jeans and black leather boots.

But that’s where his similarity with the crowds around him ended.

His skin was a dark, steel gray, marred by the faint silver lines of four, strange parallel scars running from his hair to his jawline, interrupted only by the equally severe line of his mouth—cold and unsmiling. His effortlessly styled short hair was white, just like mine. And the light eyes staring at us across four lanes of traffic were a silvery gray that seemed to catch the gleam of a full moon and reflect it back, alight with magic and mystery and… shock.

He was fae.

He had seen us.

And he was clearly in shock.

“Go,” I murmured, grabbing Kes’s hand and tugging her back into the crowd. Back to the east, where the people and the noise might hide us.

Logan and Ari stayed close as we slipped through the chaos, crossing the park and circling around, moving swiftly and with purpose, but never running. Just four people on their way home after a fun night. We crossed the street to the south and went another block before we headed back to the west, towards the hostel. Twice, we ducked into an alley to check for pursuit, and saw nothing, but my heart still pounded uncomfortably.

You never knew with the fae. For some strange reason, this one had chosen to appear unglamoured in a public park, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use that glamour whenever he chose. He could be the homeless woman pushing a shopping cart down Reno, singing softly to herself. He could be the teenage girl smoking outside the gas station.

And we wouldn’t know it until it was too late.

But for now, there was nothing we could do. Nothing but return to the hostel, lock ourselves in our room, and hope it had been a mistake. That he’d seen my hair, and thought I was someone else.

But that hope died when I looked at Kes and caught a glimpse of her expression.

Fear. Pain. Memories. Even a strange glimmer of regret.

“Do you want to…” My question trailed away into silence at the look in her eyes.

“Not now,” she said softly.

So I didn’t press her. We clustered together and returned to the hostel in silence, and only once the kids were safely asleep did Kes curl up in her favorite spot in the window and offer me a glance that suggested she was ready to talk.

“Who was that?” I asked quietly, settling on the floor next to the window with a wince. My muscles were beginning to protest both the unaccustomed work from the night before and being thrown around by a bossy dragon shifter earlier that evening.

“You didn’t recognize him?”

I thought back. Pretty sure I would have remembered if I’d ever met someone with that face. Because even with its coldness and scars, even without glamour to give it that otherworldly edge, it was beautiful. Those eyes, haunted by some painful past… I would have remembered them too.

“No. I don’t think I ever saw him in the compound.”

“Neither did I,” she said with a sigh. “I hoped… I always hoped that was because he had nothing to do with it.”

“Where did you meet him?”

Her eyes closed, as if she couldn’t bear the answer to that question.

She’d never told us anything about her life before we met. Never explained how she came to live alongside us, not truly a prisoner, but forced by our captors to use her magic at their demand.

“At the Fae Enclave,” she admitted finally, her voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

I just barely kept my jaw from dropping.

“You lived at the Enclave?”

Her nod was almost imperceptible. “I grew up there. My mother was a part of the Elduvars’ court. My father, of course, was human. A single reckless night that my mother later regretted, but she brought me up at the Enclave with the other court children.”

I could imagine how that had probably gone. Given the fae prejudice against half bloods, her life could not have been easy.

“For some reason, Crown Prince Llyr decided I was his favorite target. No one knew I had any magic, so I was easy to torment. The only one who ever stood up for me was…”

Her chin dropped. Her lips trembled, fingers clenched.

“Prince Rath,” she whispered shakily. “The fae at the park was Prince Rath. And I think he recognized me.”

My heart took a quick detour into my stomach as I tried to process that information. The new Crown Prince of the Fae was here . In Oklahoma City. And he knew Kes.

“From the way you’re reacting, I’m going to guess that he didn’t always stand up for you.”

Her eyes met mine swiftly. “He never hurt me,” she said, a fierce note entering her tone as she defended him. “But the part he played at court was that of a genial idiot. Always smiling. Never taking anything seriously. It was not who he was. Rath was as fierce and dangerous as the rest of them. But it meant he could not always stop them without giving away his game. And that sometimes, they hurt him too, for daring to help me.”

Oh. She was afraid that he associated her with his pain.

“Isn’t he supposed to be king now?” I didn’t know a lot about fae politics, but it was impossible not to pick up some tidbits from living among them for so many years.

“He was part of those who took down Elayara last year. He survived, and was preparing to be crowned after his father disappeared. But the day before the ceremony, Dathair came back. Picked up his crown as if nothing had happened. Said Rath wasn’t ready.”

Suddenly, the pain in those silver-gray eyes made all the sense in the world.

“Why didn’t you want to see him?” They’d been allies once, so it seemed unlikely that he would want to hurt her.

Kes’s gray eyes met mine, swimming with tears. “You know what I’ve done. What I helped his mother do. She used my power in so many terrible ways, including against her own son.” A low sound of pain ripped from her throat as her eyes shut and she tried to hold back sobs. “Raine, Elayara gave him those scars . How can I face him, knowing that I may have been a part of his torment? And if he knows, how could he not hate me?”

I rose from the floor, wrapped my arms around her shoulders, and let her cry. Hoping this moment might be even the tiniest bit less painful because she was not alone.

But I had nothing to say. There were no words for this kind of pain. Only a silent promise to myself.

Never again. I would do everything in my power to prevent her from ever being hurt this way again. Kes was a kind and gentle soul who’d been deeply scarred by the things she was forced to do. Sometimes it was even difficult for her to accept that the kids and I knew everything and loved her anyway.

If the ones who’d tormented us were truly dead, then there was no way for me to find them and make them pay for what they’d done to her… to all of us. But I could still devote myself to ensuring that no one else ever suffered the same fate. No matter what it cost me.

Callum hadn’t told me what time to show up the next day, and I’d been too tired and shellshocked to ask. But it seemed that among humans, the typical workday began at eight, so that’s when I presented myself at my new place of employment the following morning.

As Angelica had promised, restoration crews were already at work. The ugly words had been removed from the wall, the broken glass was gone, and a new window was being fitted into place.

Wait, speaking of broken glass… Every window in Callum’s apartment had been shattered, so where had he slept last night? Was he even here, and if not, how could I find him?

Clearly, our business relationship was going to need some improvements. Also, we would need some way to communicate that didn’t involve me having a phone—those could be too easily tracked, and it wasn’t like I could pay for the service.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the building.”

I turned from peering in the window to see a uniformed security officer bearing down on me, mustache bristling with indignant protectiveness. His starched white shirt bore the logo of a local security company, so he wasn’t one of Faris’s people. And considering the stun gun he wore openly on his belt, he might actually be human.

“I uh… work here,” I told him, and promptly second guessed myself. Did I work here? What did a bodyguard even do when the person they were supposed to be guarding didn’t need them?

Yet another thing we hadn’t managed to discuss in between attacks.

The most intense moments of the past night’s events seemed to flicker in my mind like dying light bulbs. Windows shattering. Callum tackling me to the floor, amber eyes glowing with fury and power. The terrifying black dragon. Almost falling off the roof. The thrilling rightness of using my elemental magic. Callum throwing the lion across the room. And then that moment where we’d met on either side of the window, and the rest of the world had ceased to exist…

“What’s your name?” The security guard pulled out his phone. “I’ll have to check it against the list.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I was quite ready to face my dragon boss again. Maybe I could work up to it.

“Actually, I need to run across the street for a minute or two.”

The mustache bristled even harder. Pretty soon it was going to look like he’d glued a hedgehog to his lip. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you some questions.”

No, he really wasn’t. “Don’t worry.” I offered him a fake smile and a cheery wave of my fingers as I backed away from the building. “I’ll be back. After I find my friends.”

The moment I said it, I realized how it probably sounded.

The guard’s eyes promptly bugged out. One hand dropped to the stun gun, and his phone came up again as if he were preparing to call for backup. But I was already in full retreat, jogging across the street and heading for The Portal. Hopefully, the poor guy didn’t spend the rest of the day waiting for me to come back with an army.

At the front door of the club, I was greeted by not only the usual “Closed for Renovation” sign, but an additional piece of paper taped to the window that read “No Really, We’re Closed.”

Huh. The door was actually locked, so I trekked around the block and entered through the back door, hoping I wasn’t making a mistake. Was I going to be accused of trespassing, since I didn’t technically work here anymore?

The hallway where I entered was dark and a little ominous. I could hear voices from upstairs but the rest of the building was silent, and suddenly, I felt as if I definitely wasn’t supposed to be here. What if I heard something I shouldn’t? I knew Faris was running some kind of strange underground organization. What if they were having a meeting? Discussing dangerous secrets?

I turned and headed back out again, but I didn’t get far. I’d just reached for the door handle when my wrist was seized in an iron grip… by a completely invisible hand.

Glamour.

And that meant fae.

I fought back an instant and nauseating surge of panic. There was no way to know whether the owner of the hand was trying to scare me or attacking in earnest. But once I saw the gleam of metal out of the corner of my eye, I no longer cared.

Every nerve lit up with some combination of fury and fear. I made a pissed off sound and whipped around, stepping back and into my attacker before shoving my hip into a muscled midsection. Definitely a male. With my knees bent, I yanked the arm across my body, then flipped him over my hip to land on the floor in front of me.

I tried to run while he was down, but a moment later my ankles were kicked out from under me. The floor hit hard, but I bit back a curse, rolled to the side, and came up in a crouch.

I had to keep moving. That was the first lesson. Never stand still long enough for them to hit you. Watch the shadows. Feel the air currents. Not all fae could glamour themselves with full invisibility, and sometimes you could see a distortion as they passed by solid objects.

After four steps backward with no attack, I darted sideways through the swinging door into the kitchen. It was mostly dark. Pans and utensils hung neatly over the prep table. Plates and trays were organized in orderly stacks.

But not for long. Even a fae had to concentrate to stay fully glamoured, and it was hard to concentrate on much of anything with utensils flying at your head.

The moment the door swung gently inward, three of Irene’s largest pots hit the wall in rapid succession, with the full strength of my arm behind them. They were followed by every spoon and spatula I could find, but those were mostly intended to litter the floor so that my attacker wouldn’t be able to take a step without alerting me to his location.

I paused, listening. Nothing. After taking a few shallow breaths, I moved around the prep table so I could see both doors.

Aha. The door into the main room of the bar seemed strangely dark. I couldn’t quite focus, couldn’t quite see its outline…

I ducked, just in time. A breeze fanned my face as I dropped back and down, rolled over my shoulder and came to my feet with one of the dropped spoons in hand.

A metal cooking spoon against a glamoured fae armed with a knife. Actually not the worst odds I’d ever faced.

A whisper of cloth against metal alerted me to movement, so I ducked again, sidestepped, then grabbed a full bottle of something off the table and threw it. A pained grunt came from the shadows, followed by a crack of broken glass, so I grabbed the next weapon I saw, which happened to be a baking sheet.

It impacted with an extremely satisfying metallic thud, giving me a precise location for just a single moment.

With nothing else immediately to hand, I grabbed the mop off the wall beside me, and swung, just as the lights went on.

“What in blazes…”

Faris strode into the kitchen, green eyes bulging as he took in the full scope of the disaster. Pots and utensils on the floor. Ranch dressing spreading in a growing puddle from the broken bottle. And me, holding a mop and a spoon, sparring with empty air.

I froze. Somehow I could tell that my glamoured enemy was no longer standing there.

“Raine?”

Behind Faris, Kira popped into view, then Seamus, then…

Auburn hair, amber eyes, and broad shoulders. Lowered brows and a questioning gaze, on the very last person I wanted to see me looking like an absolute idiot.

“I…”

…Could not possibly explain this, could I? I probably wasn’t even supposed to be here, so why would they believe me if I said I was fighting an invisible enemy?

“Someone attacked me,” I muttered, standing up straighter and slowly lowering the hand holding the spoon. Maybe I could hide it behind my back. “He was glamoured, and he had a knife. I swear I was just trying not to die.”

Faris looked at the floor, then at Kira. She walked around the table. Bent down, then stood up again, holding up fingers covered in ranch dressing. Apparently, my attacker had left footprints.

She grinned. “This is brilliant.” Then her expression changed, becoming positively thunderous as she turned towards the door into the bar, where the shadows were once again just a bit thicker than they ought to have been.

“Look, you know I love you, but I think it’s time for you to explain this little stunt.”

No way. My attacker was…

The shadows dissolved, and Kira’s assassin fiancé appeared, a blade in his hand and a tiny smile tugging at his lips. A red, angry looking welt decorated his jaw, which granted me a surge of vicious satisfaction.

But still…

Why had Draven attacked me? Did he suspect me of something? Was he working for someone other than Faris? And how was I not dead?

“I needed to know,” he said, shrugging as if he’d been merely indulging his curiosity.

“Needed to know what ?” Suddenly the kitchen seemed an awful lot smaller, as six and a half feet of pissed off dragon stormed across the room and glared at the assassin, fingers twitching as if he was contemplating pulling off his arms and asking questions later.

After yesterday, I wasn’t convinced that he couldn’t.

“I’m not going to wait forever for an explanation,” Callum growled. “Family or not, you don’t get to attack my employees just because you feel like it!”

“Settle down before I stuff both of you in the basement to cool off.” Faris now looked more annoyed than outraged. “Draven, what the…” He devolved for a moment into incoherent mumbling before growling, “ What do you think you’re doing ?”

“It was a test.” The former assassin looked over at me coolly, then offered a nod that seemed curiously like respect. “After that first night, it seemed obvious that Raine knew how to fight, but had learned under less than ideal circumstances. She’s not an assassin, but she clearly has unusual skills. If she’s going to be close to Kira, unsupervised, I needed to find out more about how and why she has those skills and what she’s likely to do if provoked.”

A part of me wanted to throat punch him and toss him into a river full of snakes. The super poisonous kind. Another part of me… understood.

“Why didn’t you just… I don’t know, ask ?”

He met my gaze without judgment. “You couldn’t have told me what I needed to know with words.”

I swallowed. What had he learned? What exactly did he think he knew about me now?

Callum, too, seemed to be suppressing the urge to punch his future brother-in-law in the face. “And are you satisfied?”

Draven continued to hold my gaze, still curious, but now also… regretful. What was he going to tell them?

“I am,” he said, then shot a quick, unfazed look at the dragon looming beside him.

My breath caught. Waiting for him to go on. To expose or damn me.

But he stayed silent.

“I’m so glad to hear it.” Callum still sounded coldly furious. “But from now on, feel free to stay out of my affairs, Elduvar.”

Wait.

Elduvar?

I looked at Draven. Something in those silver eyes seemed to soften.

“Who are you?” I asked, through lips that had somehow gone numb.

“Draven Elduvar.” The words held old bitterness. Old pain. “By birth, I am the eldest son of Dathair Elduvar.”

Kira’s fiance was not just an assassin. He was also Elayara’s stepson.

But he’d also been a part of the team who’d helped to destroy her ambitions. Who had hunted down her accomplices until they were entirely accounted for. And from what he’d told us yesterday, he was probably even familiar with the underground facility where I’d spent most of the last ten years.

Did he know what they’d done in that labyrinth? Was there anything about me that might tell him I’d walked the same halls? Trained in those caves? Screamed myself hoarse in those dark cells?

I knew they’d left records. But had anyone read them before they destroyed them? Worse yet… What if they hadn’t been destroyed?

“I…” What was there to say now?

“Well fought, by the way,” Draven said casually. “You have a creative approach to dealing with glamour, and you’re clearly used to fighting without the use of sight.”

“And I hope you have a creative approach to cleaning up this mess,” Faris grumbled, “because Irene will be here in less than an hour. Next time you want to test someone, don’t do it in my kitchen. Do you hear me, Elduvar?”

The assassin just shrugged, clearly unrepentant. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

“And you.” Faris turned to look at me, brows drawn. “Come with me.”

I set down the mop. Set down the spoon. Looked at the clock on the wall.

It wasn’t even nine in the morning yet, and I already needed a nap.