by May Dawson
I shook my head, and he smiled faintly, as if he knew better.
“Winter’s looking for you for breakfast, and Echo is beside himself.” Bennett held his hand out as if he were ushering me ahead of him. “Let’s go back.”
“Don’t you mean Echo is furious?”
Bennett shrugged. “He seems to feel quite protective of you, in his own way.”
“Or possessive,” I muttered.
I had a few minutes alone with Bennett, and I needed to make the most of them as we wound our way back through the towering pines in the forest.
“I saw an interesting photo of you,” I said. “With my mom and Tyson’s mother.”
“Tyson? Is that the shifter I met under rather perilous circumstances?”
“Yep.”
“Well.” His lips quirked. “I thought they were perilous for you at the time, but as it turned out…”
He seemed to take a surprising amount of amusement in the destruction of half the Day. I didn’t think Winter shared his relaxed outlook.
“Are you Tyson’s father?” I demanded. “Ty believes that he and I are brother and sister.”
His brows drew together. “He’s not my son. And he couldn’t be your half-brother. He’s half-Fae.”
His answer seemed too easy. “How do you know?”
“His power,” he said. “He reeks of their magic. If you spent time in their court, you’d be able to feel the difference.”
“Have you?”
He nodded.
“How?”
“I did a favor for the king of faerie, a long time ago.”
I had many follow-on questions.
“If you’re thinking of trying to get a message to Tyson,” Bennett warned, “it’s both dangerous and pointless. If he’s truly that afraid he might be your half-brother, a simple denial on your part is not going to convince him. He’ll have to work for the answer.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong, Tyson would believe me, but I blew out a breath instead.
Sometimes the men I loved could be a wee bit stubborn.
Tyson’s father was Fae, and that meant we weren’t brother and sister. But I still had my doubts about Winter.
“You were the one who told us to pretend we couldn’t shift, weren’t you?” I asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and I knew that he was.
“Is Winter really my father?” I blurted out.
“He certainly values having you as his daughter.” Bennett’s lips twitched in a faint, rueful smile. “For both our sakes, he’d better be.”
His words struck me with a chill.
“But you’re the one who helped me in the cage,” I blurted out.
Bennett stopped and turned to me, exasperation written across his face. “Maddie, there’s something you need to learn if you’re going to sneak around spying for the wolves and trying to save the packs.”
Dread struck deep into my heart.
“Sometimes the truth doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “And it very rarely matters as much as a good story.”
He started walking again, leaving me behind him.
“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded of his back.
“It means you’re late to breakfast with your father. Let’s go.”
Funny how the closer I got to unraveling the answers I’d been searching for, the more questions I had.
I cursed at Bennett, but followed him anyway.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“I have to leave for a little while,” Winter warned me. The two of us were in his office on the first floor; the fire burned merrily, and I stood in front of it, my hands wrapped around my cup of coffee. Winter had breakfast served in here, just for the two of us.
“I’ll be fine on my own,” I promised him. “I’m quite capable of entertaining myself.”
Winter snorted. “I don’t doubt that last part. But the last time I left you, you were almost murdered.”
I waved my hand airily. “I’ll be fine. People try to kill me all the time.”
I wasn’t sure what that said about my personality.
“I’m leaving Echo and Alice and a few of the others that I can rely on,” he said. “They should keep you safe enough until I come back.”
“Why don’t you bring me with you?”
Regret flashed across Winter’s face. “You wouldn’t like me very much if you saw where I was going, Maddie.”
“Not my sister’s pack,” I said, with a question and an edge of fear in my voice.
He shook his head. “Never your sister’s pack.”
“You promise?”
“I promise you.”
I blew out a slow breath, barely restraining myself from going on. I didn’t want him to hurt any of the wolves, but I had to keep my mind on my mission, and that meant not breaking my cover.
“You look lovely, by the way.”
I ran my hand over the front of my dress. I wasn’t used to wearing such pretty things every day. The few hanging clothes in Echo’s closet had been pushed aside, and I’d found it filled with dresses instead. It seemed like Winter wanted me to fit the part of his daughter. I wondered how well I was playing the role. “Thank you.”
“I’m writing out the next step in your curriculum,” he told me, pausing with his pen held over the page. “There’s so much more I want you to learn. Echo and Alice can teach you for now. There’s so much that has been neglected by the wolves.”
I nodded. I shouldn’t enjoy the way he seemed to care about me, but there was a part of me that could lose myself in that lie.
“Then you and I will have our lessons together,” he said, rising from the desk and handing the list over to me. He smiled faintly. “By the time you’re able to best me, I hope you won’t have any intentions of murdering me.”
For a second, I stared at him in horror before I shook my head.
“You still don’t have to lie about it,” he said. He paused near me and hesitated, as if he wanted to hug me goodbye but didn’t know how.
I offered him my arms and a tilted brow all at once, feeling a mischievous smile tilt my lips.
He hugged me with one arm and brushed his lips across my head in a tentative kiss. He was moving away almost as soon as his lips had brushed my hair, but he reached the door and turned.
“I didn’t know how much I wanted a daughter,” he told me. “Not until you were here.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but he was already opening the door and going out.
When I walked into the hallway, Alice stood out there, and Winter rested his hand on her shoulder briefly. “Teach my girl everything she needs to know. You’re my best witch.”
Pink tinged her cheeks, and she couldn’t help but smile. “After Bennett, and Echo…”
“Best,” he said firmly, fondly. He ruffled her hair and headed down the hall, his cloak swishing behind him.
She stared after him a second before she turned to me.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go to my room.”
I’d already been in there before, but when I entered Alice’s bedroom, I pretended the room didn’t give me flashbacks to having my throat slit. The memory of gagging on my blood rose like a lump in my throat.
Seeking a distraction, I wandered over to the photos taped to the mirror. Don’t ask her about Echo. You’re trying to be her friend.
No matter how dysfunctional the relationship was that Echo and I had, I had a feeling people like Alice might be jealous. Honestly, if it weren’t for my men back home, I probably would have kissed that awful boy at some point. My feelings about him were… complicated.
“I thought today we could talk about magical transference,” she said. “Since you were so curious about it with Winter.”
“You said it was painful,” I said.
“Well, we aren’t going to try it.” A smile played across her lips. “That would be ill-advised.”
Mm, and I never did anything i
ll-advised.
“Have you ever tried opening a rip?” I asked her curiously. Winter hadn’t shared those spells with anyone, but if I were a witch in his coven, I’d try.
Even though I knew firsthand how hard it was. Winter had encouraged me, but I couldn’t open a rip large enough for me to walk through. If I ever really needed to use one, I’d have to wiggle my way into the Fae world through a slit the size of a basement window.
Her eyes widened. “No… we’re not supposed to.”
“Okay.” I settled myself on the floor of her room, pulling one of her stuffed animals into my lap. “Teach away.”
She laughed, but started to explain to me how magical transference worked. I nodded along with her explanation, but it was hard to imagine exactly how it would work without putting it into practice. I was always a hands-on learner.
I was toying with her stuffed animal absently when something occurred to me, and I carefully put it back where I’d found it. “Was this your stuffed animal, or your daughter’s?”
She smiled sadly. “It was Casey’s.”
“Do you think you have the Cure ready for her?” I asked.
She nodded. “I know it didn’t work for you, but that was a one-off. It usually works.”
That was chilling. “How many wolves have you taken from the shifters?”
“Five.” She wrapped her arms around her legs, propping her chin on her knees. “Okay, it’s not a perfect success rate. But when I was Cured, it was this agonizing series of spells. Now it’s over so quickly.”
“You don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said, surprised by the realization. It was written across her face.
“I know they won’t see the Cure that way in the packs,” she said carefully. “I know they’ll think I’m a villain. But they are my people too, in a way. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“How does it work?”
Her lips pursed to one side. “It’s just the same as what you experienced, Maddie. Except one of us has to kill the wolf for them, since they aren’t willing. But once we have the last pieces of the Dark Collar, it’ll all be over an instant.”
“God.” I ran my fingers through my hair, knowing I couldn’t hide how upset the thought made me. “My friends, my sister and her mates—they’d all be devastated.”
She reached out and pushed my knee. “I’m not trying to downplay how hard it would be, but the war could come to an end, Maddie. We all want peace, don’t we?”
“Or it could just be a war between one set of ‘witches’ and another,” I reminded her dryly. “How does the Cure work?”
Her lips pursed. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“I just wondered if it’s really safe. If it’s going to hurt anyone—”
“It won’t,” she said quickly. “If there was a real risk, I wouldn’t use it on Casey, when I find her.”
“Do you have any idea where she is?”
She nodded. “But it doesn’t matter. Winter keeps putting off rescuing her.”
She seemed to catch herself, her eyes widening, and said, “He just has higher priority missions right now, and once we rescue her, she’ll be my top priority, and—”
“He’s busy,” I interrupted. She didn’t want to be disloyal to Winter, fine. I could still work with the opening she’d given me. “I get that. But maybe we could open a rip together.”
“We could never do that,” she said, laughing. “We don’t have that kind of power.”
“Maybe we do,” I said. “If we combine our magic.”
I shouldn’t be stupid. But I desperately wanted to fix the pain in her life that had come from being a wolf. Maybe then she wouldn’t hate us all so much. Reuniting Casey and Alice would be a good thing in a war full of darkness. Alice and Casey could run away together and have a new life, safe from the Day—and from the Council.
I hated the thought of what my wolves would do to these witches, if they could, almost as much as I hated what the witches would do to the wolves.
“That’s crazy,” she said, but I could tell she was tempted.
“Crazy’s kind of my specialty.” I shrugged. “It always works out.”
“I don’t know, Maddie,” she said, but I could tell she was tempted. “I’ll think about it.”
“Okay,” I said.
She chewed her lower lip. “You’ve tried to open a Rip, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Look at you,” she said, a faint note of jealousy in her voice. “You’ve been here a few weeks, you’ve been a full witch for less than that, and you’re already doing things the rest of us can’t.”
“I can’t do it very well,” I admitted.
“Then let’s see if you can take my magic,” she said softly. “Maybe I can loan you the power to open that rip.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Deep in the woods, Alice and I experimented with transferring our magic all afternoon. It was a strange sensation—a jolt of pain every time, then a burst of power.
When Alice loaned me her magic, I felt like I could do anything. Power tingled through my body, and I could open a rip. I could do almost anything.
By the end of our practice, Alice seemed to stagger on her feet as we walked back to the house. I pretended to be just as tired, although I felt energy running wild through my veins.
Alice and I agreed that we could both use a nap. I went into Echo’s room, then stood there, hesitating. From my window, I could see the edge of Winter’s workshop, a weathered building the size of a two-car garage just at the edge of the woods.
Winter treated me as if I were special, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that liked it. I wasn’t special at the academy. The one time anyone thought I was special in my world, the Council had called on me to infiltrate the Day, starve in a closet and stab my own wolf to death.
Being special as a wolf was highly overrated.
Being special as a witch felt a bit nicer.
But I still had a job to do.
I glanced around, looking for anyone who might see me, then slipped outside and around the house. Winter’s workshop was off-limits.
I wasn’t sure if I could even find the pieces of the Dark Collar. I didn’t know what they looked like, and they might not be here at all. With the labs destroyed, the coven had been scattered across several houses. Winter had smiled when I asked him about the others, and said it made it a little harder for my old friends to come murder us all.
I crunched over the snow-frosted ground to the woods, then circled back through the trees to reach the workshop. This way, I stayed out of view of the house. I didn’t want anyone to see me from the windows.
Winter’s workshop should be safeguarded with magic. I searched for its strings, then frowned when I found…nothing. Was he that confident that he had an iron thrall over his people?
I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The room was softly lit by the windows high above, near the rafters. There was a long wooden work bench with drawers beneath and a metal top; beyond that, the room was lined with cabinets and a second work bench with a wooden top. There was a door to the next room at the end, and my heart hammered faster as I wondered what might be beyond.
There was a faint scent of fresh cut wood and of something metallic, but I couldn’t identify the tang at the back of my throat when I inhaled—it might be blood, or it might be welding material like when Josh and Kai worked on cars at home.
I frowned, my nostrils flaring. My senses all felt shuttered after the loss of my wolf—my hearing wasn’t as keen, my sense of smell was atrocious—and it all made me feel vulnerable. I couldn’t read the world the way I once had. Someone could be in this room with me and I wouldn’t even smell them. Winter could walk up behind me and I wouldn’t know until his hand was on my shoulder…
I turned, but there was no one there. I was alone.
“Let’s get down to business,” I whispered to myself, because there was nothing like a Dis
ney princess earworm to ease some of my tension.
I pulled my shirt sleeve over my hand and began to go through the cabinets. Winter had collected all kinds of what seemed to be ancient artifacts. He had swords and shields hanging up on peg boards, many of them looking bright and new and almost other-worldly.
A hammer with a carved marble handle glistened red, as if it had been dyed with blood that never came off. Something about it drew my fingers, but just as I was about to pick up the hammer, I snatched my hand away.
I had a mission. Protecting my people was the only thing that mattered. I closed that cabinet door a little too hastily, and the sound seemed to echo in the empty room.
I crossed the room to the door. A powerful sense of foreboding lay like a weight in my stomach. My fingers trembled a little as I reached for the doorknob, and part of me wanted to turn and go back rather than discover what my secrets my father might keep.
But I took the cold knob in my hand and turned it anyway.
A hand clapped over my lips. I reached for the arm that had just caught me, already starting to step back to throw the person who had caught me, but they stepped back too, as if they anticipated my movement.
Instead, I found my feet knocked out from underneath me, just as that controlling hand over my mouth yanked me back. I found myself drawn against a hard chest.
“You’re not very good at following the rules, are you?” Echo said into my ear. His voice was harsh, but a surge of relief ran through my body, and then I noticed how he’d pulled me against his leanly powerful body. His other arm circled my waist like a bar. His lips grazed the shell of my ear when he ordered, “Don’t scream.”
I tried to twist my head back so I could see him, could raise my eyebrows—he knew damn well I wasn’t a screamer—but his controlling touch didn’t yield a bit. His fingers on my mouth still held my head tight against his shoulder.
“If you call for help, we’ll be discovered. They’ll tell him. Then Winter will sew our mouths shut and flay us both alive,” he said softly. “Nod so I know you understand.”
When I tried to nod, his hand loosened on my lips. His other arm still looped around my waist, pressing my spine and ass tightly against his body.