28. Twenty-Eight Flynn

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-EIGHT: FLYNN

" M aeve!" I gazed frantically around, hoping to see her crouched behind one of the gardens or resting against one of the tall oaks lining the drive. Nothing. She was nowhere in sight. But how could we lose her so quickly, unless...

"Where are you?" Rowan's voice rose with fear.

"Maeve? This isn't funny."

The three of us spread out, searching across the lawn. A riderless horse cantered past my head as I bent to check behind a row of parterres. Nothing. No Maeve.

Rowan came running over, his chest heaving as he struggled against his anxiety. "I've got Ryan and Simon searching the house," he said, his hand over his heart like he was gonna catch it before it flew away. "Aline and Kelly are around the back. You don't think Daigh got to her somehow? That he?—"

"Let's not assume the worst. Come on, I think I saw a couple of riders head around the side of the house." I tore off across the overgrown lawn, descending the slope of the hill toward the edge of the forest. Hoofprints pocked the ground. Yep, horses had definitely been here. A crumpled shape lay on the grass at the foot of the slope.

"Shite, Maeve!"

My stomach lodged in my throat. Not even when a new whiskey distillery offered free tastings had I moved so fast. I scrambled down the slope and slid next to the lump. It was Maeve, all right, splayed out on her back, her pink fringe plastered to her pale face, her chest and arms streaked with blood.

A bone-handled knife stuck out of her chest. The blade had gone in between her ribs, directly into her heart.

The world stopped.

Maeve, no no no no.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, calling her name again and again. Her head flopped to the side, limp and lifeless. Blake dropped down beside me, pressing his hand to her wound and uttering a string of nonsense. Rowan howled.

"She's gone," a cold voice said.

I jerked my head up just as a tall fae stepped out of the forest. Hair like white silk streamed down her back in two plaits, each one woven with silver strands and vines that had wilted and blackened into black streaks. She wore the livery of a Seelie fae, although her clothing was torn and stained with dark patches. A bow and quiver of arrows were slung across her back, and her expression was one of calculated indifference.

"Liah, what are you doing here?" Blake's eyes narrowed.

"Maeve needed to reach your friend in the underworld," the fae said, tossing a plait over her shoulder. "I helped her."

"You killed her," I growled, raising my hand to point my palm at Liah, calling up the scrappy remnants of my magic, drawing what little I had left in me into a big enough blast of water and hoping when I sent it flying that it would drown her where she stood. My veins boiled. My jaw clenched.

If this is how Arthur felt all the time, it was little wonder he hadn't razed the world.

"Flynn, no." Blake shoved my hand down just as I loosed a blast. Water shot out of my palm and scoured out a thick channel in the hillside, crashing against the trunk of a thin oak and splitting the wood.

"Why'd you stop me?" I growled at him, my muscles spasming in protest. I was empty. Now I'd need to wait to call up more magic.

"She's trying to help us," Blake said, turning to Liah, his expression unreadable. "I think."

"I have no interest in helping you to send the fae back to their realm," Liah hissed. "But Daigh cannot be allowed to take up the underworld crown. Your friend also wished to ensure that would not happen. He needed help, so I sent she who was most well-placed to help him. In that way, yes, I am helping."

"Helping doesn't mean you stab someone in the fecking chest!" I roared.

"If we want Daigh stopped forever," Liah said, raising her arm to show the stump of her dismemberment, and the scar of a sigil that bled darkness over her pale skin. "This is the only way. As soon as he wears that crown, he'll gain all the power it contains. He'll control us all."

Blake's hand tightened around my wrist.

She stabbed Maeve. My heart ached as if I'd been the one she stabbed.

"You've been to the Underworld," Blake said, his voice impossibly calm and even. "Can Maeve come back once she's stopped Daigh?"

Liah shrugged her shoulders. "Your friend believes so. I've heard rumours of it done before. I was not concerned about their return – only about stopping Daigh."

"Corbin," Rowan said, his voice so soft I thought I imagined it. "If there's a chance to bring him back, and Maeve too… then I want to do it."

"If we're right about the Lazarus thing, we've got a day to figure out how to bring them back. But now there are only three of us and I don't?—"

Blake's phone buzzed in his pocket. To my surprise, he drew it out and answered the call. His face brightened as he listened to the voice on the other end.

"As Flynn loves to say, Praise be Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all their carpenter friends." Blake hung up the call and dropped his phone into his pocket. "We'd better get to the hospital. Arthur's awake."