by Rhea Watson
Not that he had the chance to really hunker down and focus enough to dematerialize from Xargi and reappear somewhere else. Rollo refused him an inch of leeway, shoving him along, kicking him when he faked a fall. Even now, as we climbed the stairs from the prison’s guest foyer, checkered floors and marble columns behind us and Lloyd’s office at the end of the shadowy corridor ahead, he rushed Xargi’s warden along, not caring—barely even noticing—if he stumbled. Instead, he seemed distracted by me for the first time since we had breached the prison as an invading force, glancing down at me with a frown.
Quite a ways down, at that: I’d abandoned those stupid heels, my feet and calves unable to take the strain after months of flat soles, and someone had snatched Lloyd’s wand from me seconds after Rollo threatened to kill us if we cast.
“What do you—”
“I mean, he introduced himself as a prince,” I insisted, readjusting my hold on Tully, arms trembling at his substantial heft. It had been ages since I carried him around like a baby for this long, and from the swish of his tail, the tenseness of his entire body, and the calculating look in his big blues, he wasn’t exactly relishing the special treatment like he used to. “But honestly, we all thought Fintan was full of shit. Because, you know, no offense, but that bird likes to chirp.”
Rollo slowed as we neared the top of the stairs, scrutinizing me for a moment before his wary confusion shattered, replaced by a wry grin and a strange twinkle in his green gaze. “I misjudged you, little witch.”
I lifted my chin ever so slightly. “Katja.”
Prince Rollo offered a nod, his movements regal—almost exaggeratedly so compared to his brother. “Katja.”
We paused at the very top of the staircase, the whole garrison halting, a moment of mutual understanding passing between us as our eyes met. When we started up again, I walked a little taller, my footfalls silent compared to the constant thunder of heavy footwear on tile and armor clinking with every step.
Seriously. How weird was this day?
“That’s his office,” I said, pointing to the closed door at the end of the hall. Once again, Lloyd tried to twist and squirm out of Rollo’s hold, but that only earned him a rough thrashing, the fae prince slamming him up against the wall and trapping him in place.
“Why isn’t he speaking?”
“I took his voice.” I shrugged when Rollo glanced back at me, blooming like a wildflower under the first rays of morning sunshine; after all, I could have sworn he was impressed with me—but maybe I was finally impressed with myself. “It just seemed best for everyone not to hear his poison, you know?”
If looks could kill, I’d have just died ten times over from the glare Lloyd hurled my way. Despite the panic flashing through me, I glared right back, because fuck him. Even Tully hissed, swiping his huge paw in Lloyd’s direction, claws extended and thirsty for warlock blood. Rollo, meanwhile, watched the whole interaction with a smirk, even chuckling softly when things settled, patting Lloyd on his bloody, grimy cheek before hauling him off the wall and thrusting him down the corridor.
While the office door was locked, Rollo had two of his men shoulder through, splintering the wood and ripping the hinges off the wall. For months this place had tormented me, made me sick with just the smell of the books and leather and mahogany. Now, striding into it ahead of Lloyd and Rollo, it wasn’t that scary. Just a room, all the crap righted and back in place after Lloyd’s tantrum. Just a boring, nondescript room. An office designed by the same decorator who did TV sets, it was that pretentious.
“Show him,” I ordered, motioning to the bookshelf Lloyd had vanished behind before he removed my collar an hour ago. “Show him what’s back there.”
Rollo charged across the room, dragging Lloyd along by the neck and shoving him into the shelves next to the hearth behind his desk. Trembling, the rumpled warlock grabbed at the bookshelf’s siding—and just opened it. He hadn’t even bothered to charm it closed, and for some reason, that made me furious.
Knowing now how easy it was—that our salvation was behind an unlocked door in a madman’s office…
Before any of us could slip into the secret passage that bookworms fantasized about all their lives, Lloyd rounded in place with some difficulty, then tapped at his throat.
“Does he need to speak?” Rollo growled, slamming him into the brick hearth, the back of his head making a solid whump on impact. Lloyd, however, just stared at me, full psychopath raging behind the flint, pain his aphrodisiac—or was it only my pain that got him hard?
“Doubt it,” I muttered, setting Tully down on Lloyd’s desk with a scowl, then crossing my arms. “I can give it back if that’s what you want.”
With a hurried nod, the fae’s patience finally started to wane more openly, and I swished my hand in Lloyd’s direction. The movement was halfhearted, the Loquere incantation flat and emotionless, but my magic struck him like a runaway bus. A burst of bright yellow slammed into his face, busting his lower lip and blackening an eye.
Yikes.
Should probably get that under control. Cheeks hot, I glanced back at the warrior keeping Lloyd’s wand captive; the spell would have been neater with a conduit, but I wasn’t particularly bothered about the injuries it inflicted—more the implication that Fintan’s girl wasn’t as skilled a witch as they might have hoped.
“There isn’t much space inside,” Lloyd croaked, smearing his bloody lip along the top of his hand—addressing Rollo but glowering at me. “Your garrison should wait here.”
“My lord,” one of the warriors protested, but Rollo’s swift dismissal, nothing more than a raised hand, silenced any protests.
“Show me,” he ordered, and Lloyd cocked his head to the side, finally looking at the prince with an all-too-familiar smugness that made my skin crawl.
“Wouldn’t you rather make a deal?”
As if that was the tipping point, Rollo grabbed him by the front of his perfectly pressed shirt, then hurled him through the bookshelf opening, stalking in furiously at his heels. While I hadn’t been invited, I sprinted after the pair, morbid curiosity and desperation forcing my hand.
In all the time that I had known Lloyd Guthrie on a disgustingly personal level, he struck me as honest. He relished the gory details of my family’s past. He delighted in sharing all the sick, twisted things he planned to do to me outside of Xargi. He defanged Rafe, and I had zero doubt he would have made good on all the other threats he raised against the dragon and fae I loved if I hadn’t given in to him…
So when he had said the space behind the bookshelf was tight, he wasn’t lying: the three of us barely fit, the square footage made even smaller when Tully came prowling in. Lit by a single soft orange light hanging somewhere way up high, the room was narrow but exceedingly tall, magicked to fit the narrow shelves creeping up three of the four walls. Free-floating and less than a foot in length, hundreds of little wooden blocks dotted the walls, and on each sat glowing crystals of all colors and sizes, the shelves stamped with a small copper plate.
Etched into the copper: a number.
Identification for each inmate.
A crystal assigned to a number… powering the collars.
Magic vibrated in the air, unseen but present, foul enough to make my stomach turn.
“Oh, gods,” I whispered, a hand over my mouth, eyes watering. Every trip to the cafeteria was a reminder of just how many supers and shifters the Guthrie empire had kidnapped since Xargi Penitentiary opened, but seeing it all now, dozens upon dozens of crystals pulsing with power and color in the shadowy room like we were standing in some screwed-up nightclub…
It hurt.
And it put things into a painful perspective. I hadn’t seen Willow in almost a month; was she one of these crystals, or had she tried to remove her collar? Did the color dim when an inmate died? Were the unused crystals then tossed outside, just a bit of useless rock, lost in the pebbles that guards and wolves stomped all over without a care in the world?
> “What was my number, you bastard?” I demanded, voice wavering for the first time since I climbed on top of him and slashed at his throat. The warlock peered around Rollo with a sneer.
“You were unassigned, kitten,” Lloyd purred, totally unfazed when Rollo slammed him into one of the walls, a handful of crystals tumbling to the floor around him. “Never officially an inmate—just a guest of the warden… I kept you safe in my pocket most days.”
He patted at his chest, at the hidden pocket my crystal must have sat in.
Close to his heart.
Ugh gross.
“Enough,” Rollo barked, his voice like a cracking whip. “Give me my brother’s crystal—I assume its destruction will remove his shackles?”
“That’s the basic premise, yes.” Lloyd squirmed in the fae’s grasp, his shirt collar stained red as his neck wounds continued to ooze. “Unfortunately, I can’t recall Fintan of the Midnight Court’s inmate number off the top of my head… If you’d let me peruse the records, then maybe—”
Rollo went off like a bomb, detonating a blast of primal fae magic that knocked me back into the door and shattered every crystal in the room. Like the east wind exhaling across a grassy plain, power whooshed through the tiny space, whipping our hair around, the tassels hanging off his helmet dancing. Crystals reduced to powder, the room came alive with color, grains flying up my nose and in my ears. Tully lost his footing, swept up in the mini-tornado, and I threw an arm over my eyes against the raging dust storm.
And as quickly as it started, it stopped. I yelped as all the floating particles poured down, blanketing my shoulders, my hair, piling at my feet. Slowly, I lowered my arm, blinking the bits from my lashes, resisting the urge to dig a knuckle in there and rub away the itch.
“Right,” the fae prince muttered, wiping the dust from his armor with a frown, “sorted.”
In the storm, there was distraction. Rollo had released Lloyd at some point—and made no move to cuff him again. After all, the warlock’s usefulness had run out, the task completed, which left him free to—
“Ah, ah, ah,” Lloyd sneered, snatching up a disoriented Tully by the scruff of his neck. My familiar yowled, flailing, claws out, and my heart pitched into my gut as Lloyd wrapped a hand around his head. Wild grey eyes darted to Rollo, and he clutched Tully tighter when I scrambled toward them, my familiar’s neck so vulnerable, so easily broken with one sharp jerk. “Move and I snap his neck, kitten.”
Fucker. I stilled, the tiny room made even more claustrophobic by the panic clawing up my throat, the mounds of shattered crystals at our feet.
“I have no quarrel with you, fae,” Lloyd insisted tersely. “Take your brother and go, but the girl comes with me. By a blood deal, she is my property.”
Rollo said nothing, did nothing, just looked back to me with a slightly quirked brow. Shit. Fae respected contracts; they dealt in them regularly. If I nodded, I was done. The connection I shared with his brother probably wouldn’t even matter—I belonged to this sadist, and that was that.
The prince exhaled softly, almost disappointed, and I realized my eyes, my wobbling lower lip, had betrayed me.
Tully, however, didn’t give two shits about the legalities of a blood contract. A guttural growl rumbled through him, muffled behind Lloyd’s hand. His tail suddenly poofed and slashed about, and seconds later Lloyd dropped the enormous black cat, both hands flying to his own throat instead. The warlock collapsed to the ground, colorful dust gusting around him, and scratched at his neck, gasping, red-faced and panicked.
Beyond pleased with himself, my spoiled familiar sauntered away like he was wiping his hands clean of Lloyd Guthrie for good, tail up and hooked at the end as he made his way to me.
Flicking his feet like he’d just taken the world’s biggest dump in his litterbox.
Gods did I ever love him.
Elijah, Rafe, and Fintan might have had my heart, but Tully Fox would always and forever be my main man.
Wordlessly, Rollo swiped a blade from his side and offered it to me by the handle. At least nine inches in length and forged of pure silver, the handle mirrored the star constellations patterned on his broad chest plate. I stared at it for a beat, then looked up at him, everything inside gone quiet. My heartbeat steady. My hands still. My knees strong—nowhere near buckling anymore.
Tully eased up on his unseen hold of Lloyd’s throat, and the warlock gulped down a strangled gasp as Rollo faced me.
“Free yourself, Katja,” the prince said softly, his blade hanging between us. “Take it or not… The choice is yours.”
I didn’t hesitate.
I took the blade, coiled my fingers around the ornate handle, and gripped hard. My familiar released Lloyd from his magic, allowing the warlock to topple over, gasping and heaving, coughing into the rainbow dust all around him. Barefoot, I marched right up to him, crouched down, and shoved him upright against the wall. Gritted my free hand into his shoulder, nails digging into his expensive suit jacket.
In his hateful eyes, I saw my mom’s face, the one I only knew from photos—taken from me too soon. I saw Ewan and Jackson, my best friends, my brothers, stolen, their lives cut short. I saw Dad, my rock, my protector—heard his death rattle and felt him slipping away from me.
“Kitten,” Lloyd rasped, his hand suddenly on my thigh, stroking my bare skin with his thumb. Too intimate. Too familiar. Like he still owned me. “Don’t do something you’ll always regret—”
I thrust the blade into his left eye and didn’t stop until its tip thunked against the wall. Fae-forged, it cut through his eye, his brain, his skull, and right out the other side. While I shook when I let go, falling back on my heels with a stuttering breath and staring at a listless monster, I knew for the first time in my life… I was free.
And I regretted nothing.
32
Katja
By the time we made it back to the visitors’ grand foyer, the inmate population of Xargi Penitentiary had finally discovered there was a whole different side to this hellhole. A veritable rainbow of jumpsuits littered the hall, clumps of supers scattered between the marble columns, scuffing up the once pristine floors with blood and dust from the bowels of Xargi. Among them was the odd warlock guard, some who, maybe like Thompson, weren’t total dicks to the cellblocks assigned to them. For all I knew, the rest were dead—like their warden.
And it didn’t matter.
I didn’t care. With Tully in my arms, traipsing after Prince Rollo with a battalion of fae warriors flanking us, I felt secure—and not because of the armed guard. I had my familiar and my magic again, and the man who had decimated the Fox coven had met his grisly end by my hand.
The only thing that would make this moment better was if—
“Rafe!”
My vampire stood out in the sea of lost inmates, not only because he was one of the few red jumpsuits, but because of him. Ridiculously rugged and handsome, a supermodel with heart and soul. His gorgeous aquamarine gaze soared up the staircase to me, and Tully wriggled out of my arms—smitten little traitor—and blitzed through armored fae legs down the stairs and straight to him, me at his fluffy heels.
Rafe marched away from the crowd, many of whom retreated as Rollo and his posse ambled down the stairs, and he met me with open arms and relieved smile. Sprinting barefoot in the most ridiculously tight red dress imaginable, I’d never been happier. I flew into him with a strangled cry, and even though it was like running face-first into a brick wall, I gritted through the pain and latched on tight. Arms around his neck, I stood up on my tippiest toes as relief coursed through my veins like a salve.
“Are you okay?” I whispered shakily, trembling in his embrace—for once with happiness, not horror or fear or agonizing loss. Exhaling sharply, the vampire buried his face in my neck, then made no effort to hide the way he breathed me in, dragging his nose along my shoulder.
“Better than,” he rumbled back. “You?”
Over his shoulder, I spotted Fintan
in his green jumpsuit weaving through the crowd of gathered supers toward us, and I nodded.
“Getting there,” I told him, voice thick, eyes darting about in search of the fourth member of our little prison gang—the one who possessed a third of my heart and had since long before we were born. Bound by fate, my dragon ought to be here right alongside us.
But only Fintan approached, nose in a splint, dark purple rings around his eyes. He was totally fixated on Rafe and me, the intensity of his stare and that ridiculously confident stride making my knees weak—until he looked slightly beyond us. Then he stumbled, all the smoldering sexy melting away, replaced by an endearing boyish affection.
He’d spotted his brother.
And from the expression on his face, from the way Rollo had fought tooth and nail to get into the penitentiary, those two loved each other.
As Rafe loosened his bone-crushing hold on me, Tully circling around our legs and purring up a storm, the fae blitzed by, slowing only to pinch my ass in passing, and when I peered over my shoulder, I found Rollo yanking him into a brotherly bear hug.
A rogue tear slid down my cheek, and Rafe brushed it away, black brows knitted with concern, but I shooed his fears off with a smile and a giggle and a hard, fleeting kiss that turned his concern to dumbstruck affection.
I hadn’t meant to cry—but they were tears of joy, something about seeing siblings who loved each other plucking at my heartstrings…
Made me briefly remember the good times of my childhood, the ones spent with Jackson and Ewan, brothers who I adored just as openly as Rollo and Fintan did each other.
They had reunited at the bottom of the staircase, and when the hug finally ended, Rafe and I drifting in their direction, entwined and moving as one, Rollo grabbed Fintan by the shoulder and held him at an arm’s length.