29. Kai

Sneaking through the fae stronghold was more difficult than Kai had expected, and it was all Rei’s fault because he’d declared it a no-magic zone. The elf was confident the fae lurking in the halls of the royal residence would be able to sense his presence if he used magic, giving away their only advantage—stealth.

It had been a long time since he’d last relied on his human skills. Even while holding Xiang captive, he would sneak in bits of magic here and there when the vampire hadn’t been paying attention.

Guilt twisted a tight, heavy knot in the pit of his stomach as he trailed behind his mate. Xiang was astounding to watch. Swathed in black, Xiang could disappear into the shadows in a heartbeat and move without making a sound. He was cold and merciless death, and Kai worried he was holding his mate back. Was Xiang moving so cautiously because he thought Kai couldn’t keep up?

As they reached the end of a corridor, Xiang shoved Kai into a dark niche and leaped upward. His right foot pressed to the wall, allowing him to push off and send his lithe frame sailing to the opposite wall. At that second, a guard turned into their hallway. Kai’s fingers tightened on the hilt of the blade he was holding, preparing to launch himself at the guard, but Xiang was already on the move. He came down behind the guard, his own blade slashing across his throat before the elf even knew what was happening.

Kai lunged from his hiding place as the elf crumpled to his knees. He picked up the corpse and dragged him into an empty room. Xiang followed a step behind and shut the door while Kai tucked the corpse inside of a bureau. While there wasn’t anything they could do about the small trail of blood, they could at least hope the guard wouldn’t be discovered anytime soon.

“That was only the third guard we’ve encountered since sneaking into the palace,” Xiang whispered in Kai’s ear. “It seemed like there was the normal amount outside, but the protection on the interior feels too light.”

“Maybe we’ve killed more of the fae than we thought,” Kai replied.

“As much as I would love for you to be right, I’m not willing to bet our lives on it.”

Kai couldn’t disagree with that. Entering the castle had been about distractions from Junjie’s team and sneaking past those guards they couldn’t move. Killing any of them would have alerted the fae to their presence all that much faster. Guards checked in with each other constantly. Someone failing to check in would have sent up red flags.

But the castle was a different story. There was no sign of servants, and the guards were sparsely placed on irregular patrols. Or even like this fellow, who just turned down the wrong corridor at the wrong time. Kai hadn’t even noticed a sword on him when he’d stuffed the man into the bureau.

His brain tried to argue that it was the middle of the night and that most of the castle occupants were asleep in their beds, and yet he couldn’t buy the excuse. He’d walked the halls of the emperor’s palace in Chang’An and other cities over the centuries. Regardless of the hour, guards had been every few feet and there were servants constantly scurrying about, cleaning or preparing things for the emperor and his family. This was too empty.

Xiang picked up some bit of lacy cloth that was resting on a tabletop and used it to wipe his blade clean. Kai looked over the room to find that they were in a bedchamber. Definitely not a room for a member of the royal family, judging by the moderate size and somewhat plain decor of white and pale pink. Maybe for a noblewoman or a spare, unused room judging by the staleness of the air.

“Do you have any feeling for where your sword is located?” Xiang inquired as he tossed the now-bloody fabric aside.

“Close, but nothing exact. I don’t get the feeling that it’s moving.”

Xiang flashed him a half smile as he gave his arm a small squeeze. “Not moving is a plus. It’s easier if we’re not chasing your sword.”

“True,” Kai agreed, forcing his lips to form an answering smile. Everything about this mission felt off. Ever since they’d stepped one toe inside of the castle. His skin crawled with endless chills. All of his instincts screamed that he should grab Xiang and fly out of there, but they couldn’t. Even if he were willing to walk away from his god-given sword, they still needed to eliminate the queen. If not for his own sense of justice, then to save all the humans who still lay in her path.

They paused at the door and listened for the approach of anyone new before slipping into the corridor. On silent footfalls, they crossed the intersecting hallways and darted down a set of winding back stairs that were likely reserved for servants. As they reached the bottom, a scent drifted past Kai’s nose and his hand snapped out, catching the collar of Xiang’s shirt and stopping him.

Xiang didn’t say a word. He lifted one eyebrow at Kai in silent question, while the rest of him froze. Kai couldn’t answer yet. Couldn’t even put into words what the scent was. Only that it was familiar.

He turned his head, catching another slender tendril of the odor up the stairs. Xiang’s shirt slipped from his fingers, and he backtracked up the stairs, while pulling a throwing knife from its sheath on his hip. This was the one place in the world where something familiar did not mean it was good.

At the top of the stairs, he headed along the corridor they had just left and paused at the intersection. The scent was gone now, as if the cause had vanished.

“What is it?” Xiang asked as Kai continued to sniff the area with his nose lifted toward the ceiling. He missed his dragon body. There would have been no escaping him. His senses were heightened in this form, better than any human’s, but not nearly as strong as they would have been if he were a dragon.

“I smelled something…familiar.”

“What do you mean familiar?”

Kai clenched his teeth and looked around the area. Thick, elegant rugs covered the marble floors. All the walls possessed landscape paintings or portraits of the queen. They’d passed a few starkly barren spots on the walls where portraits of the king had probably once hung. Or even paintings of Rei. Fall out of favor and the queen had you erased from memory. Yet for all its elegance, this place held the unwavering chill of a mausoleum. It was just waiting for all the bodies to be stacked up.

“Familiar…but not…”

“Like your sword?”

Kai shook his head. “Familiar, like you and your clan. But it’s so faint, I can’t get a lock on the direction or even how it’s familiar.”

“That can’t be,” Xiang muttered, and Kai had to agree. The four teams who entered the castle all came in from different points and different levels, so they wouldn’t have crossed each other’s paths, not yet at least. By splitting up, they had a chance of covering far more ground in less time.

However, Xiang didn’t show a moment of doubt. “Do you want to keep trying to follow it?”

He hesitated for only a second before turning toward the stairs. “No. Maybe it was an old scent, carried over from when Yichen was still captive. I don’t think it will lead us to the sword or the queen. Let’s continue in the direction we were heading.”

Kai didn’t believe the excuse he gave Xiang. The scent was too new for it to be some months-old lingering odor. And it didn’t smell exclusively like Yichen. At the very least, he would have expected there to be some hint of Rei mixed in as well, considering how close they were. No, this was something different.

Xiang said nothing as he led the way back down the stairs that ended in a very plain hallway. It was the first one they’d encountered that didn’t have the ostentatious decorations. The floors had changed from marble to plain dark wood. The candelabras on the walls were even more sparsely placed and only a couple of the candles flickered, casting the corridor in sickly thin light. A hall for servants and even they weren’t much cared for by the royals.

“Servants’ quarters and kitchen,” Xiang muttered low under his breath. The sword wouldn’t be here.

“I think Rei and Yichen are likely to have better luck than us,” Kai whispered. That pair had been sent to the opposite end of the castle to inspect the royal apartments. At this hour, the queen was likely sleeping, and Kai wouldn’t put it past her to be sleeping with his sword.

They had been selected to check the area where Rei thought they might find a depository for collected treasures. Unfortunately, the elf’s guess was wrong. As far as he could tell, they’d located only bedchambers and a few empty parlors. Nothing to show they’d ever held a sword.

Despite the chill that filled the castle, a trickle of sweat slipped along the nape of Kai’s neck. Dawn was still several hours away, but they needed to get moving. While the sun’s rays had no effect on Xiang, the same couldn’t be said for the rest of his clan. They needed to be away from the fae’s domain and back at their own clan home before the sun crept above the horizon.

But it wasn’t just the threat of the sun that was weighing on Kai’s mind. The longer they remained within the castle, the higher their chances were of being discovered. They needed to escape soon to have any hope of surviving.

He opened his mouth to tell Xiang they needed to head to another part of the castle when the warm glow of candlelight bobbed and danced on the walls, growing brighter as it approached. Someone was coming toward their corridor. Kai’s heart leaped into his throat and they both darted away to hide within a shadowy niche.

“Lousy servants,” a gravelly voice grumbled. “Can’t find a one to fetch a bite for a midnight snack.” A creature waddled across the hall, holding aloft a single candlestick. Kai squinted. He was not an elf.

Standing less than a meter tall, the man had extraordinarily long feet and long spindly arms that would have allowed his fingers to drag along the ground if he’d not held his arms up. His face resembled melted wax with its thick skin, heavy lines, and sharp, pointy nose. A couple of teeth poked out from the bottom jaw, sneaking past a thin upper lip.

The creature was familiar with the layout of the castle…and he was alone.

“Grab him,” Kai whispered.

Xiang was off like a black shadow before Kai finished speaking. The candle the man was carrying went out, and there was a brief squawk of surprise that was cut off. Kai hurried after him as Xiang hefted him into the nearby empty kitchen and threw him down in front of the dwindling embers of the cooking fire.

The poor figure bared his teeth at Xiang for a heartbeat, but even that fierce expression melted away when he saw Kai join Xiang. Yes, two against one were not good odds.

“Awww,” the little man moaned as he seized two handfuls of his short straw-colored hair and pulled on it. “I knew I should have joined the others and made a run for it while I could. There was nothing good coming from staying. Nothing good at all.”

“Lower your voice,” Xiang hissed. He pressed the point of a blade into the creature’s throat, stopping the bob of his Adam’s apple as he attempted to swallow.

He lifted his trembling hands in surrender and lowered himself to the floor, shrinking away from the knife. “There’s nobody around to hear me, even if I shouted for help,” he cried.

“What are you talking about?” Kai demanded.

“Most of the servants and even the nobles have run off. The queen’s gone mad. Completely insane. Obsessed with controlling that dragon of hers. She’s given up on all her plans to destroy the humans and take over their realm. All she thinks about night and day is how to break the dragon, but everybody knows no one can control a dragon that doesn’t wanna be controlled.”

Kai might have needed to bite his cheek to hold in his smile about that. At least this creature understood dragons. Far better than his queen. No one could control him.

Well, maybe he’d happily hand the reins over to his sexy mate, but that was a different, sexier kind of control and not what the creature here was talking about.

“That would explain why we’ve seen so few people since we entered the castle,” Xiang mumbled, pulling Kai’s wandering thoughts to their current problem.

“Between the death of the king and exiling her favorite son, nobody is happy right now. Throw in the mess with the dragon and most of the Silver Court has run off to either hide in the human realm or gone to our own home realm.” The man’s face crumbled up even more, so that it was hard to even pick out his coal-black eyes among the wrinkles and folds of skin. “Knew I should have gone. Nothing worthwhile in the human realm except a good block of cheese and those flaky little pastries with the fruit inside. You ever had one of those?” He perked up briefly as his mind turned to food to the point of even waving an excited hand at Kai.

“We’re not interested in food,” Xiang growled, and the man cringed away to lie like a lump on the floor.

“Where’s the sword?” Kai inquired.

“Sword?” their new friend repeated.

“The blue crystal sword the queen uses to control the dragon. The sword that never leaves her fucking side,” Kai snarled. What calm amusement he felt toward their temporary captive evaporated. They were so fucking close, and he knew this whiny weird creature could point them in the correct direction.

“It’s with her. Like you said, it’s always with her. Half of us have been wishing she’d sleep with the damn thing and cut her own head off when she rolls over.” The informant scrubbed a hand over his face and released a sound that was half moan and half sob. “Shoulda left. Just shoulda left.”

Xiang pressed the tip of the knife to the underside of the man’s chin, lifting his face so that he was forced to look at them. “Where’s the queen? Her chambers?”

He started to shake his head, but he stopped when he nicked himself on the edge of the blade. “No. She-she’s in the throne room. She almost never leaves the throne room now.”

“How do we?—”

The figure’s right hand shot out, pointing to the doorway they’d just come through. “The fastest route is to travel down this corridor, make a left and then a right into the main hall. Follow that up the central staircase and it’s through the double doors facing the stairs,” he directed before Kai could even finish his questions.

“Now, let’s try that without leading us past every remaining guard in the palace,” Xiang snarled.

Kai smiled as well. “You know your way to the kitchens. You must know the servants’ corridors to the throne room.”

Their new companion audibly gulped, his black eyes widening so that they caught glints of the dying embers. “Um…um…right out of the kitchen. Just keep following it around until you hit a set of narrow stairs. Up one floor. There will be a set of black doors. They’ll open on either side of the dais to the throne.”

“How many guards are in the throne room?”

“I-I-I don’t know.”

“Lies!” Kai pressed the tip of his own knife into the creature’s gut, poking through his shirt.

“No! No! Seriously! I’ve never counted. It’s been weeks since I last dared to stick my head in that room. I’m just a paper-pusher, as the humans would say. My job is to keep an eye on the gnomes, dwarves, hobgoblins, and the like. The diggers who can find the queen shiny gems and such. If you’re not an elf, you don’t get much of an audience with the queen. Not that anyone wants that now.”

“Then take a guess,” Xiang sneered. “How many guards are going to be with her?”

“A dozen. No! Fewer than a dozen now. She has more when she’s holding court.”

That at least made sense.

Kai was about to withdraw his blade when a new thought occurred to him. “What about Trin, the queen’s bastard son? Is he in the castle? Has anyone seen him about?”

The mere mention of Trin made the man’s eyes bug out and his face pale. His mouth bobbed open, but not a sound came out for a second. “I-I saw him once about three or four nights ago when I was on my way to get a snack. Like tonight. He was standing in a dark corridor, speaking low, but I couldn’t see anyone else with him. I’ve not seen him in the castle since. Don’t know if he’s here or not.”

With a soft grunt, Kai straightened. They had no clear sign of what Rei’s half brother was going to do next.

“We need to get moving,” Xiang murmured. “What should I do with him?”

Kai shrugged. “Kill him.” He was a member of the fae—the creatures who’d tormented him, Yichen, and Rei. He’d be content with all of them being burned from the face of the planet. But the frown on Xiang’s lips said he didn’t find Kai’s suggestion amusing.

“No, please. I was helpful. I helped you. Please, don’t kill me. I won’t tell anyone you’re here. I’ll leave and never come back. Pl—” A hard bonk to the top of the head with the hilt of Xiang’s sword cut off his pleas.

“Find a place where we can stuff him. He should be out long enough for us to get this done,” Xiang ordered.

Kai moved through the kitchen, searching as silently as he could until he located a pot big enough to hold their diminutive friend. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and someone will cook him,” Kai teased as he placed the lid on top, hiding the man.

“Do you believe what he told us?” Xiang asked as he led the way to the kitchen entrance.

“About two percent,” Kai admitted. Xiang paused at the doorway and glanced at him, one eyebrow raised in question. Kai smirked. “I can confirm my sword feels like it is in the general direction he gave for the throne room, and I wouldn’t put it past her to be existing on her throne, clinging to her power while fighting to break me. But the part about the number of guards and her people leaving her? I’ll only believe it when I see it.”

Xiang nodded. “I’m inclined to agree with you.”

As he took a step forward into the hall, Kai reached out and snagged his arm, pulling him close so that his shoulder bumped into the center of Kai’s chest. Xiang’s head whipped around, mouth open to question him, and Kai seized it in a deep but too-short kiss, once again staking his claim on the true heart of his hoard, the center of his universe, the source of all his strength and willpower. Li Xiang, vampire of the Zhang Clan and one very sexy man.

A soft noise of surprise escaped Xiang, but he leaned into the kiss before Kai broke it off. Kai pulled away, rubbing his lips across Xiang’s and brushing the tip of his nose along the side of his lover’s. He wanted a million more nights of holding this man, hearing his laugh, feeling the caress of his fingers on Xiang’s cool skin, breathing in his alluring scent. They needed at least a million nights to learn everything there was to learn about each other. There would never be enough time for them, but he planned to treasure every moment he had with the vampire.

“Soon,” Xiang whispered. “This is going to be over soon and we’re going to have so many nights lounging in our hoard, bickering about silly things.”

Kai hummed at the happy image that danced through his head. “Lounging naked,” he corrected as he released Xiang’s arm.

Xiang huffed a soft chuckle and led the way down the dark corridor in the direction their captive had instructed.

Weapons remained at the ready and footsteps were silent as they moved. They expected guards at every turn and out of every doorway, but nothing moved. If Kai didn’t know better, he would have guessed that they were walking through an abandoned castle, and all the rest of the fae had returned to their realm.

He didn’t know whether they’d been told the truth or if a bigger trap was waiting for them past the next corner.

Sadly, they had no way of contacting the rest of the team without alerting the fae. This deep in the forest, there was no cell signal for sending text messages, and a message through magic would have tipped off the fae that there were non-fae members in their midst. They could only pray that by this time, the others had finished their sweep of the outer parts of the castle and were working their way to the throne room. It had been the one spot they’d all agreed to meet if Junjie didn’t send up the signal for the exit diversion first.

With one last nod and a smile, Xiang turned the knob and pushed open the door to the throne room as quietly as possible. Bright light flooded the black hallway, blinding Kai as his eyes struggled to adjust. When he could take in the surroundings, his heart clenched.

Standing in the center of the room was the Zhang team who’d entered the castle. Huli had abandoned his human fox and stood as a multi-tailed fox about the size of a pony in front of Xiao Dan, his teeth bared. Hands were on weapons, but nothing was drawn, as they all locked eyes on the dais.

“Ahhh…and there are our stragglers,” purred a low voice. Not the voice Kai had expected at all.

Xiang led the way into the throne room, past guards who barely spared them a glance to stand next to the rest of his clan. As they moved closer, Kai almost stumbled over his own feet as he took in the sight before them.

Trin stood in front of the throne while Queen Belladonna was on her knees next to him, her white hair wild about her head and her pale-gray skin as thin as paper. And in Trin’s right hand was Kai’s sword.

“Now that we’re all gathered, it seems we have some things to negotiate,” Trin announced. “And there’s an old friend here who’s been very much looking forward to seeing you.”

Kai’s nostrils flared. That scent he’d noticed earlier was back and so much stronger. Close. Everywhere around them. He grabbed Xiang’s arms, unsure whether to pull his sword with his free hand or if he should shift into his dragon form. As promising as this scene appeared, something was very wrong here.