Chapter 20

TWENTY

Angelica’s denial was instant and emphatic. “That’s not possible. Heather cringes when I type too hard.”

I could tell Callum wasn’t jumping to believe me either.

Not that I blamed them. Timid, nervous Heather? The browbeaten assistant to the assistant?

And maybe I was wrong. Maybe it really had been a glamoured fae who lured me upstairs. And if so, the fact that Heather was now missing didn’t bode well for her safety.

It seemed I wasn’t going to be able to keep my news to myself any longer.

“I should probably also mention that the saboteur just made contact.”

Angelica turned to me with glacial slowness, a terrifying fury written on every line of her now stiff posture. Her arms crossed, her manicured nails digging into the sleeves of her suit jacket as her fingers clenched with frustration.

“ Probably? ” she hissed furiously.

Callum just waited, watching me with no change in his expression. He was surprised—that much I knew without him needing to say a word—but he was utterly in control of his reactions. Not a single hint of his shock would have been visible to a casual observer.

So I decided to tell them the truth. “He wants me to consider joining his cause.”

Both Callum and Angelica absorbed this silently.

“He also said something about the Symposium not being what I think it is and that it won’t actually protect any victims in the end.” I added a dismissive shrug that was entirely for show. “Crazy, right?”

“Did you recognize him?” Callum asked, his tone almost eerily calm and even.

“It was dark,” I replied, leaving off the part where I thought I’d recognized his voice. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t smell anything. I can’t use shapeshifter senses without being in that form.”

“Did he make any specific threats?”

He hadn’t. Not to the Symposium anyway… only to me, and those indirectly. “No, but I think he was trying very hard to sound reasonable. Hoping to sway me to his side. He couldn’t exactly start with a plan to kill everyone and risk scaring me away.”

“If it was a glamoured fae who lured you upstairs, then we might well be looking for another fae.” Callum’s brow furrowed. “But Draven vetted everyone who’s a part of their delegation. Assured me they were relatively safe.”

“Don’t forget,” I reminded him, “that our attackers have been wielding incredibly diverse magic. Air, earth, and fire elementals, shapeshifters, fae, and possibly a siren.”

Hints of light glimmered in the depths of his eyes—the amber glow of a dragon who’d perceived a threat. “Can you keep him on the hook? Play him for information?”

I thought back to what the saboteur had asked me to do. “I think so,” I answered cautiously. “He only wanted me to ask some questions. To reconsider my own perspective.”

The dragon looked at me squarely. “What questions?”

I couldn’t ask him here. Not with so many others watching and listening. I wasn’t sure how to deal with the aftermath if it turned out the saboteur was right.

“Too many ears here.” I shook my head. “I’ll tell you after the reception is over. And only after I’m sure my family is safe. Whoever is behind this probably knows about them. Might even know where they’re staying. I have to warn them before I make any other moves.”

Callum’s eyes darted sideways briefly before returning to me with an almost guilty look.

“Your family is fine,” he said, a bit gruffly. “There are guards on the hostel.”

My gaze narrowed, and my pulse sped up. “For how long?” I demanded. “Callum, how long have you been watching them?”

The dragon shook his head. “Not me. Faris.”

Why would Faris have the hostel guarded? Had he been spying on us this whole time? Waiting for me to justify his initial suspicions?

As if he’d heard me thinking, Callum reached out and touched my arm for the briefest moment. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Raine. Faris owns the Hotel Idria. He provides it as a safe haven for Idrians fleeing their courts, so they can have a chance to get on their feet. There’s usually one or more of his people keeping an eye out for trouble, but since yesterday, he’s doubled that.”

Faris owned the hostel where we’d been staying.

How much had he known about me, all this time? How loudly had he been laughing at my attempts to keep my secrets?

So much now began to make sense. How they always seemed to know where I was. What I needed. Why Faris had deigned to trust me enough to offer me a job in the first place.

They’d known my every move. Could have removed me and my family from the playing field without ever breaking a sweat. Taken the kids hostage and used them to convince me to cooperate.

But they hadn’t. I tried to remind myself of all the opportunities they hadn’t taken. All the times they could have used this to their advantage.

But there were still too many questions I couldn’t shake. Why had they waited this long to tell me? How many other things were they still hiding from me?

And did those things include the true, sinister purpose of this Symposium?

My heart hammered in my ears, while the voice of my mysterious visitor lodged somewhere in my brain, insisting on answers. But I couldn’t ask for them now. Did not dare give Callum even the smallest hint of my doubts. I had to continue to act normally until I got a chance to talk to him in private.

“Raine?” His deep voice rippled through me, and I wanted so badly to cling to that sound. To find it as comforting as I had only this morning.

But suddenly, I was beginning to feel as if the room was too crowded. I needed space. A cold sweat broke out beneath my collar and I tugged at it, unable to get enough air. I needed to focus, but I couldn’t seem to think clearly.

“She’s going to faint.” I heard Angelica’s disgusted declaration, right before my knees wobbled.

Callum’s hand caught my arm, warm and utterly immovable. I couldn’t have fallen if I’d wanted to.

“Here.” A glass moved into my field of vision. Callum took it from Angelica and held it up to my face. Water.

I took a small sip and choked. Whatever the clear liquid was, it was not water. It burned—my tongue, my throat, my nasal passages—and tasted like the desert at midday. Scouring heat, blistering sun, winds roaring across the sands…

“What…” I gasped for air as tears began streaming down my face. People were beginning to notice. “What was that?”

Angelica took the glass back and sniffed at it. “Just the basic elemental wine we chose for the reception. Very light.” She took an experimental sip. Shrugged. “Barely stronger than water.”

But I was getting more lightheaded by the moment. My vision blurred, and panic began to claw at my throat—sharp and desperate.

“You…” I had to struggle to force the words out, my fingers grasping at Callum’s sleeve, trying to tear it away from my arm. “You drugged me?”

“Raine, I swear there is nothing strange in that glass.” I looked up, peering at him out of burning eyes, noting his expression of stunned desperation. He really believed that. Or wanted me to think he did.

“Have to get out…” I was coming out of my skin. Surrounded by enemies. The world was on fire.

“Hold on.” Callum’s voice in my ear. “Raine, I promise this wasn’t me. I’ve got you.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted it so badly. But that voice from the darkness kept echoing in my mind.

“ You’ve chosen to protect the very person who is striving to destroy the freedom you’ve made for yourself.”

Who was lying to me?

And what did it matter when I could no longer stand up on my own?

My knees finally gave out, but Callum never let me fall. He caught me, lifted me, and then I heard him explaining to the bystanders that one of his employees had fainted.

And curse it all, as he carried me out of the room and raced up the stairs, I felt safe . My body let go and simply curled up in those powerful arms, content to be held—more than content. Almost at peace.

Meanwhile, my brain gibbered away, screaming of treachery in its bony prison, unable to reach my limbs or make itself heard.

I felt when he laid me down on a soft surface. Heard a phone ringing, his worried voice echoing oddly, and then…

Nothing.

I returned to consciousness slowly, slipping in and out of sleep a few times before I finally woke up for good.

I was in an unfamiliar room. Not a hospital. It was neat, but not particularly expensive looking. The decor suggested teenage girl, but nerdy, with gaming posters on the walls, fantasy books on the shelf, and a black bobble-head dragon on the desk.

If I’d been kidnapped, apparently it was by someone who was quite fond of RPGs and J.R.R. Tolkien, which made me somewhat less worried about their potential motivations.

Fortunately, before my imagination ran away with me, the door creaked open and Kira’s head appeared. Her eyes widened, and she positively beamed when she saw me looking back at her.

“Finally!” She practically bounced into the room, her eyes lighting up like it was Christmas morning. “I can tell my idiot brother to stop texting me every thirty seconds when he’s supposed to be focusing on all that boring political stuff.”

Speaking of focusing… At least my eyes seemed to be doing that part of their job normally again. And as for the rest of me…

I sat up and turned my head experimentally. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“How long have I been here?”

Kira sat—or rather bounced—onto the bed before landing in a cross-legged position and regarding me with fiercely narrowed eyes.

“First, I want to know if anything hurts. Are you dizzy? Feel nauseated?”

I took a moment to focus on my body. “No. Not right now anyway.”

“Oh good,” she breathed. “We were worried there might be some lingering effects.”

“Lingering from what?” I had to fight to conceal my anxiety over her answer. What could possibly have knocked me out so hard that I hadn’t noticed when they moved me to a completely different location?

Thankfully, Kira was all too ready to spill the details of the time I’d spent unconscious.

Apparently, it had been around forty hours since I collapsed at the welcome reception. Callum had taken me to his apartment, then called in an Idrian medical specialist. She’d examined me—in Kira’s presence—then said I seemed generally healthy, but had probably experienced an allergic reaction to something in the wine.

They tested the wine, tested the glass, but found nothing.

Callum had ordered a search of the entire building for intruders, as well as for Heather, who never returned with Angelica’s headache meds. When nothing turned up, they even alerted Faris’s network throughout the city, but our assistant to the assistants might as well have grown wings and flown away.

Though under the circumstances, it was more likely that someone else had done so and taken her with them.

Unless, of course, she’d served her purpose and been murdered to make way for an imposter, but I didn’t suggest that to Kira.

“And the Symposium?” I asked swiftly. “It’s going ahead as planned?”

Kira nodded. “The first day went well. Even better than Callum hoped. Today they’re just hammering out the details of the document they’ll all be signing tomorrow.”

That meant I’d missed an entire day. Missed my chance to ask questions. And it meant no one was there to watch Callum’s back if the saboteur got tired of waiting and decided to move ahead with his plan.

Unless I could haul my butt out of bed and get myself to the banquet tonight. It was my last chance to find out the truth. My last chance to determine whether I’d chosen the correct side.

I threw back the blanket and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

“Where am I? Is my family okay?”

“You’re in my house,” Kira informed me. “Or my store, rather. I don’t live here full time anymore, but Hugh does, and he keeps it safe.”

I recalled the disgruntled expression of the gargoyle I’d met my first night on the job and wondered how he felt about having an intruder in his space.

“And your family is fine,” she added. “Faris has kept them updated on your condition.”

My condition …

“If it’s any consolation, I can’t handle any of the Idrian liquors either.” Kira offered me a commiserating look. “Maybe because I was raised human, but I react almost as badly as they do.”

Oh crap. “How do humans react?” My voice sounded oh so very casual, when on the inside I was anything but.

“Depends on the human and the liquor in question, but the combination lands a few people in the hospital every year. No matter how many warnings we give them, they just have to try the magic juice. Like they think they can get magic from drinking it or something.” She rolled her eyes.

Clearly, I’d had a narrow escape. It was probably a miracle they’d chalked up my reaction to an allergy instead of figuring out the truth.

But in the midst of my panic over that near miss, I was also deeply relieved. I hadn’t wanted to believe Callum—or even Angelica—would drug me. I was just going to need to be far more careful moving forward.

“How long do I have until the banquet?” I stood up carefully, keeping one hand on the bed in case my legs decided not to hold me up. But other than feeling a little lightheaded, everything seemed to be in working order.

“No need to worry about the banquet.” Kira seemed to be making a deliberate effort to sound soothing. “Callum isn’t expecting you to work. You can just focus on recovering.”

“I’m going,” I insisted. “I feel fine.” And this was my only chance. I had to talk to Callum. I had to get answers before it was too late and then decide what to do.

“If you’re sure…” Kira shot me one last questioning look, and when I maintained my stubborn stance, she grinned and whipped out her phone.

“Okay then. We don’t have much time, and I’m going to need to do some research, so we better get busy.”

At first, I was confused by her insistence that we didn’t have much time. It was barely past noon, and the banquet started at seven. All I needed to do was put on the dress, let her curl my hair and do my makeup, and voilà—I’d be fancy.

As it turned out, I had no idea what was involved in getting ready for a formal event like this one.

First she dragged me into her living room and spent the next hour doing a manicure and pedicure while her hairless cat, Chicken, looked on from his perch on the back of the couch with baleful skepticism.

She put something in my hair—multiple somethings—then proceeded to experiment with updos, curls, braids, pins, and who even knew what else. Once she was happy with the result, she started in on my makeup.

And she wouldn’t let me see. Just insisted she’d watched all the tutorials and found the best colors for my skin and hair and that I should trust her.

Given that I knew nothing about makeup, it wasn’t like I had a choice, but a part of me was convinced I was going to come out of this looking like a showgirl sans the feathers.

After what felt like six hours—because that was literally how long it took—she finally let me put on the dress. Strapped on a pair of sparkly, low-heeled sandals from her own collection. Added a few spritzes of hairspray and something that smelled expensive.

Then she led me back to her bedroom, dragged a full-length mirror out of the closet and leaned it against the wall.

“Okay,” she said, standing in front of it to block my view, her hands clasped together and an oddly hesitant expression on her face. “You can look now. And if you hate it, you can say so. I had a lot of fun, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be something you like, and you should like the way you look. We can change anything except the dress.”

Then she stepped to the side.

And I got a good look at myself in the mirror.

Or at least I got a look at the woman currently pretending to be me.

On the inside, I was still a mess of competing fears and desires. A woman without a home, trying to make peace with her past. A tentative disaster, stumbling blindly forward and trying to cope with all the mistakes she was making along the way.

But the mirror showed the person I wanted to be. Not her dress—though it was even more beautiful than I remembered—but her confidence.

Whatever Kira had done with my makeup made me look powerful and mysterious instead of uncertain. Smokey eyes, defined brows, and the lightest lip tint for balance. My hair was half up, creating a cascade of white curls that poured down my back like a waterfall. Sparkling ear cuffs added a hint of rebellious glamour, and around my neck was a glittering net of tiny silver chains.

“Do you hate it?” Kira’s voice was gentle. Promising that she wouldn’t be hurt no matter what I said.

“I don’t hate it,” I told her sincerely, turning to clasp her hands firmly. “And thank you . It’s… well, it’s stunning. I’ve just never seen myself like this, and it’s going to take some getting used to. I don’t know if I can live up to what you’ve created.”

She stepped up beside me and hugged me from the side. Hugged me. I didn’t know if I would ever be quite comfortable with the way everyone around me showed affection so easily. So naturally.

“It’s okay to let your clothes give you confidence,” she said quietly. “Okay to recognize that this isn’t really you and choose to wear it like armor. But it’s also okay to say that you don’t want it, don’t need it, and would rather feel more like yourself.”

“I think I want to keep it, just this once.” I reached out and tentatively hugged her back, trying not to wrinkle the dress or smudge the makeup. “I may never have a chance to do this again, and I want this memory. So, thank you again. I don’t think I could possibly explain how grateful I am for your help. You did an incredible job, and I am seriously in awe.”

Kira beamed. “Callum is going to take one look at you and forget how to use words.”

All thought processes slithered to a halt as I stared at her in panic.

“I don’t… Why would you… What do you mean?” Surely I hadn’t let my hopeless attraction show on my face.

But Kira just winked. “I swear I won’t say anything to anyone else. But I decided the two of you would be the cutest couple ever .”

I flailed, literally and figuratively. “That’s not…”

“I know, I know, I shouldn’t meddle,” Kira said with a sigh. “But I’ve never seen him show much interest in a woman until he met you. And maybe I’m wrong, and he’s just trying to help you, but I think you might be exactly the kind of person he needs. Someone he can protect to satisfy his dragon instincts. And yet, also someone who won’t take any of his crap. Who will keep him from turning back into his grumpy, workaholic self. Challenge him. Tease him. Force him to soften where he needs to. And someone who will protect him just as fiercely.”

My heart cracked, and for a moment, every fiber of my being cried out, yes. I want this .

But I didn’t dare let myself dream that it might be possible. Kira was a hopeless romantic, seeing attraction where there was only kindness. Possibly even pity. And even if that were not the case, there were still too many unanswered questions. Too many insurmountable barriers.

He was the king of the shapeshifters. Powerful. Respected. Bound by their rules and their expectations.

I was not truly one of his people, and I could never allow myself to forget it.

“You like him.” Kira’s soft voice intruded on my thoughts, and I offered her a wan and weary smile.

“Yes? Maybe? I don’t know.”

She let out a squeal and pressed her knuckles to her lips, trying to conceal her delighted grin.

“But how I feel is beside the point,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Even if I thought he shared those feelings—which I’m not delusional enough to believe that he does—the reality is, I’m trying to build a life here, and he’s leaving after the Symposium. I have a family to provide for, and he has his court to think of. So I can’t let myself think about it. Can’t let myself consider it or even hope without more to go on.”

Kira smiled a little sadly, squeezed my hand, and stepped back. “Understood. I promise I won’t say anything to him.”

I nodded in acknowledgment and turned back to the mirror. “Is this it then? I’m ready?”

“You’re ready,” she confirmed. “Draven and I will drive you over, and then the rest is up to you.”

The rest was up to me.

I had a terrible sinking feeling that her statement might prove more true than she had any idea of.