Chapter 37

Chapter 37

F ey followed Dameon and the Shifter deeper and deeper into the palace, keeping enough of a distance between them to prevent them from seeing her. At some point she became aware of Alastair moving alongside her, his steps making no noise against the marble floor.

Shooting him a glare, Fey hissed, "Go back to the party."

Alastair shook his head at her with a sneer and mouthed two words back at her: Fuck. You.

She didn't have time to argue with him. Scowling, she continued her chase. If the Vampire insisted on accompanying her, he better keep out of her way.

They passed room after room, heading out of the main palace and into the Western Wing. Fey barely had time to resent Alastair's presence before he made himself useful. They reached a fork in a hallway, a staircase on either side, one leading up and one going down.

Fuck . Fey hadn't seen which way they'd gone, and she looked frantically between the two options, trying to decide which way was more likely. But it was impossible without knowing where they might be going. She was about to take a chance and just guess when Alastair touched her shoulder lightly, cocking his head to listen for a moment before pointing to the staircase leading up.

Of course. They were far enough away now that Fey couldn't hear their footsteps, couldn't make out any sound of their conversation—but Alastair, blessed by the Goddess with preternatural Vampire hearing, could. Nodding, she followed his lead and headed up the stairs.

She wasn't familiar with the Western Wing of the palace at all, and twice more she had to rely on Alastair to point them in the right direction before she started to recognize where they were. The moment she did, she knew exactly where Dameon was heading.

Abruptly, she took off down a hallway leading away from their prey, nearly at a run. Alastair gestured frantically, pointing back the other way to indicate the way they should be going. Fey caught his eyes and shook her head, mouthing two words back at him, just as he had done to her.

Except the words she mouthed were, trust me .

Alastair nodded and followed.

Dameon had a room in the Western Wing of the palace. Years ago, before he and the Queen had all but given up on hiding their relationship, Fey and her sisters had brought their reports to that room. If he were taking the Shifter there, then she knew exactly how she could keep an eye on him.

Fey slid to a stop in front of a door. The rooms here were almost always unoccupied, but even still she sent a wordless prayer to the Goddess for luck before she quietly opened the door and peeked inside. She must have been listening. The bedroom inside was empty, set aside like so many others in the palace as a place for visiting aristocrats and important Witches from around the realm to stay while visiting the Queen. And, just as she'd guessed, this bedroom was on the Western wall of the palace, with a view of the palace gardens and Solare.

Perfect , Fey thought, slipping into the room and striding straight over to the window.

"Fey, what the fuck are we doing?" Alastair asked, but Fey ignored him, unlatching the window and pushing it up to open it as far as it would go. It wouldn't be easy to do this, she realized, but she could do it.

" You're not doing anything," Fey told Alastair. She leaned herself out the window, sitting on the windowsill to face him with the top half of her body outside and only her legs still in the room. " I'm going to see what Dameon is up to with that Shifter, and you're going back to the party."

Not bothering to wait for an answer, Fey swung her legs over the windowsill and dropped.

There was a small ledge that ran along the exterior of the palace—barely two inches deep. They'd seen Merle use it before, walking the thin lip of the ledge to navigate his way around the palace without being seen.

Fey was no Merle, and while she might not have the effortless feline grace that he did, she was fueled by raw determination, and that would have to be enough. If a cat could do it, then so could she.

A gust of Air kept her in place as she balanced on her toes on the ledge, gripping the exterior wall with her fingertips. Slowly, Fey scooted her way down the wall, passing room after blessedly empty room from the outside, making her way down toward Dameon's old bed chambers.

A scuffing sound on the ledge next to her made Fey jump and almost lose her footing. She turned her head carefully and snarled when she saw Alastair there, balanced on the ledge next to her.

Furious, Fey pointed at him, then at the window they just passed.

Alastair just took one hand away from the wall and raised his middle finger at her.

Fine . If he wanted to get himself killed, so be it. He had no safety net, no power over Air to keep him balanced on the precarious ledge they stood on. Still, he seemed perfectly at ease, and something in the effortless way he maneuvered until he was next to her reminded her of Merle's feline grace.

Swallowing all the profanities she wanted to scream at him, Fey turned away from Alastair and kept moving.

They arrived at Dameon's window just as he flipped on the lights.

Fey pulled back immediately, terrified she could have been seen, and the momentum caused her to lose her grip on the wall. Her body tilted back, falling.

Alastair's hand on the small of her back stopped her fall, and his light push enabled her to regain her footing, her heart hammering in her chest, mouth dry with panic .

She twisted her face to thank him, but the self-satisfied grin on his face and the wink he gave her made her scowl even harder at him, instead.

Aren't you glad I came? that grin seemed to say.

Asshole .

Taking a deep, calming breath to recenter herself, Fey leaned over the window frame and found herself looking straight into Dameon's room.

It was far nicer than the bedroom they'd entered to get here, and Fey whispered a silent thanks to the Goddess that either Dameon or the Queen had a preference for four poster beds. The thick, crimson drapery half obscured her view, but it did a good job of hiding her if someone inside were to glance at the window.

Dameon and the Shifter were already inside, and the Shifter set something down heavily on Dameon's desk. His body blocked whatever it was. It wasn't until he moved aside, to let Dameon by, that she saw it.

A single wooden crate. One she immediately recognized.

Fey's heart plummeted and she knew what was inside that crate even before Dameon crossed the room and flipped the lid open. Knew what was inside even before he pulled a single small bottle from within.

When he held it up to the light, the golden liquid inside swirled and glittered, like it contained a galaxy of trapped stars.

No. No, no, no.

"This is the last of it?" Dameon asked, examining the bottle before slipping it back inside the crate with the others.

The Shifter nodded. "That's all that's left. Everything else was destroyed—either by us or by your pets, I guess."

Fey felt Alastair tense at the term, but she was past caring what some Shifter called her, past caring about anything. Her head was reeling, as she started to piece it together.

It was Dameon.

It had been Dameon all along.

Dameon had sent Willow on the assignation to kill Professor Phillip Danvers, the one person who could have told them what Alice had been up to. Who might have known what this golden elixir was.

Dameon knew the locations of their safe houses .

Dameon knew the keycodes that would prevent Joy's alarms from being triggered.

It was Dameon who set the plastic explosives that destroyed Alice's apartment.

It was Dameon who'd killed Alice.

It all made sense. Alice had been investigating something, something about this golden elixir, and Dameon had killed her for it. Killed her and used Fey and her sisters to cover it up.

Fey couldn't breathe, and her pulse was thundering in her ears. Alastair's hand on the small of her back was the only thing keeping her tethered, the only thing that kept her listening to what was happening in the room.

"Why didn't you destroy this one?" Dameon asked. He sounded only mildly curious, bored, even.

The Shifter shrugged a massive shoulder. "Figured the Queen could use it, you know? It must be something important, right? For you to want to get rid of it so bad."

Dameon's laugh in response was cruel. He took a few steps toward the Shifter, shaking his head in amusement. "If I sent you to get rid of it, why in the name of the Goddess would you think I wanted any of it?"

The Shifter shrugged again. "I just thought?—"

But Dameon was already in motion, and in the space of a single breath Dameon's sword sang through the air, slicing through the Shifter's neck and cutting him off midsentence. The male's head tilted grotesquely on his shoulders, before falling to the ground with a wet thud .

"See, that's the problem with you Shifters," Dameon sighed, as the Shifter's headless body slumped forward onto its knees and then collapsed to the floor. "You don't think. "

Dameon crouched to wipe his blade on the Shifter's clothes when a voice from the doorway behind him made him turn.

"Dameon?" Willow asked. She stepped into the room cautiously, her eyes going from Dameon to the body on the ground, blood still flowing from the open wound on the Shifter's neck and onto the ornamental carpet.

No, Fey pleaded, terror filling her. No, Willow, get out of here.

"The Queen was asking about you, she…she sent me to find you. What's going on here, Dameon? Who is that?" Willow asked.

"An intruder," Dameon lied. He stood, and Fey noticed he hadn't bothered to clean his sword, after all. Angry red drops of blood dripped onto the carpet. "Go find your sisters. There could be more of them in the palace."

But Willow wasn't listening to him. Her eyes had settled on the open crate before he'd even started speaking. On the bottles inside.

Run , Fey prayed, willing Willow to hear her, to glance back at the window and see her. Run, Willow, please just run.

Willow stalked past Dameon, reaching a delicate hand into the crate and pulling out a bottle. A worry line appeared between her brows as she frowned at it.

"Dameon, what is?—"

Dameon stepped up behind her, slitting Willow's throat before she could finish the question.

Fey screamed.

She barely registered the look on Dameon's face as his head snapped to the window, seeing her there. Barely registered the soft swearing from Alastair as he pulled her tight against him.

"Hold your breath," he commanded. But she couldn't. She couldn't hold her breath, she didn't have any left. She couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't stop screaming.

Dameon was moving towards them, his blade dripping with blood.

Blood from the Shifter, dead on the ground.

Blood from Willow, who clutched at the wound on her neck as though she could knit it back together.

And then all the colors in the world melted away into a wash of grey, and Alastair was Shadow Walking with her, moving them through a space where walls didn't exist, moving her away from Dameon as he flung the window open and thrust his sword in the space where they had been.

Moving her to safety.