“Aye, you could kill me, if you could catch me,” I acknowledged the unspoken threat blazing in both their dark gazes. “But you’ll never touch me.” I smiled faintly and without mirth.
Nor, likely, would anyone else. I hadn’t risked fucking since the cliffs, fucking I needed like I needed to breathe. But I had no taste for killing another woman. Such things threatened my Highlander’s heart, blackened it.
“Barrons,” Mac said urgently, “forge an alliance. We don’t want a war with Christian. You’ve pushed his back to the wall. The two of you would do no less than he’s doing, under the same circumstances.”
“Alliance, my ass,” Ryodan clipped.
“She’s right,” I said. “We can be enemies or allies. Choose carefully.”
Barrons looked at Ryodan. “He could be useful.”
I snorted. “There will be many conditions if I agree to be allies. The first is that you return my uncle’s remains.”
In my arms, Mac sighed and went supple. “I told you that you should tell him,” she said to Ryodan.
I angled my head to look at her. “Tell me what?”
“I told them they should trust you. That you had a right to know.”
Truth. I relaxed my grip on her and she straightened in my arms but didn’t try to break free.
“You wouldn’t have done what you did,” Mac said to Ryodan pointedly, “if you hadn’t been willing to live with the essential makeup of the one you did it to for a very long time. That, more than anything, is a testament to what you think of the Keltar clan. Trust Christian. Make him an ally, not an enemy. We have more than enough enemies out there already.”
Ryodan looked at Mac for a long moment then smiled faintly. “Ah, Mac, sometimes you do surprise me.”
“I take that as one hell of a compliment,” she said dryly. “My point is, yes, you can keep trying to kick Christian’s ass. Yes, you could hunt him and, if one day you catch him, kill him. You could all stalk around for a small eternity being the testosterone-laden brutes you all sometimes are.”
Barrons and Ryodan shot her a nearly identical look of disgruntlement, and I laughed softly.
She ignored them. “But consider the power he has. Do you really want that turned against us? You, Ryodan, more than most, have the ability to clear a logical path through dense emotions. Think about the potential if you become allies. Think about the grand waste if you become enemies. Three incredibly powerful men stand in this corridor. If you want to brawl, make an alliance, then beat the shit out of each other. With limits. No killing. Ever.”
Ryodan growled, “You fucking Highlanders. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you’d be trouble.”
“Friend or foe?” I said.
Ryodan stared at me, unmoving for a long moment. Finally, “There are times I could use a sifter,” he allowed.
“You think I would let you that close to me?” I snorted.
“For you to take someone like Dancer or Jada to inspect various places.”
I inclined my head. That was easy enough. “There are times I may need assistance as well.”
“Such as the cliff we just dragged your ass off of,” Ryodan said flatly.
“See how well you’ve been working together already?” Mac said brightly.
“You will never speak of what you learn tonight,” Barrons said.
“I won’t agree to that,” I said.
“Then destroy my club,” Ryodan said coldly. “And I, and all my men, will hunt you until the end of time. Enemy or ally, Highlander. We’d make stupendous ones, either way.”
“Pledge your alliance to me. Tell me you will never try to kill me. Say it,” I demanded. So I could take fair measure of it. These were men of honor, in the same way I was. Corrupted as we are, there must be a solid core or we become the villains. If Ryodan spoke and it rang true, he would adhere to the letter of the law he’d chosen. As would I.
“I can’t guarantee I can make that claim sound like truth,” Ryodan warned. “There’s a part of me that obeys no one and nothing. And if you focus on that part, no words of mine will ever sound like truth to you.”
“Then we’ll be enemies. I suggest you convince me.”
Ryodan glanced at Barrons and they exchanged a long look. Then Ryodan glanced away as if consummately chafed. “We are allies,” he said.
“And we will protect each other and fight together against common foes. Say it.”
He repeated it coolly.
I waited.
He looked at me, I at him. I wasn’t asking. He knew what I wanted.
“And we will never turn on each other.” His words dripped ice. It didn’t matter. He’d said them.
I looked at Barrons, who then repeated the same. Both of their voices held the knell of a sacred pledge. Smacked of truth.
Sauntering close to the walls I’d thrown up, locking gazes with me, Ryodan said with silky menace, “And we will guard each other’s secrets as our own.”
Fucker, I thought. But I knew he’d not seal the alliance without it. And I knew we’d be at an impasse forever if I didn’t. Truth was, I preferred them as allies, not enemies. The Unseelie sure as hell didn’t have my back.
Barrons echoed it.
“Now you, Mac,” I said.
She looked at me, startled, but repeated the entire oath.
I said it with her. All the way through. Right down to guarding each other’s secrets as our own. Then I withdrew a blade and cut my wrist.
Barrons and Ryodan exchanged another of those inscrutable glances.
“Blood,” I demanded. “Yours with mine. It’s a pact ancient and binding, made to an Unseelie prince.”
“He’s one demanding fuck,” Ryodan murmured to Barrons.
Barrons said to me, “Magic doesn’t bind us.”
“I’ve heard some does,” I said. I’d caught wind of Lor getting chained up by the Unseelie princess in Ryodan’s office.
Barrons gave me a dark-edged smile that disturbed me more than a little. “Have you any bloody idea what you’re doing, Highlander?”
“I’ve no doubt sharing blood with the two of you will screw with me in ways unimaginable and uncounted. Nevertheless, we’re doing it.” I dropped my walls and released Mac. Moved forward slowly.
The four of us came together in the middle of the corridor, meeting warily.
Only when each of us had smears of all of our blood mixed together on our arms, above an open vein, Mac, too—and she was a bit of a challenge, as quickly as she kept healing—did I relax.
I could see the magic of our sworn oath shimmering on the air around us. Performed properly, by a high druid, oaths have enormous power. It wasn’t just the Unseelie blood in me they should worry about.
Barrons was at Mac’s side, shooting me a killing look that said clearly, Never threaten my woman again.
Those two. Christ.
“Come.” Ryodan turned and walked away.
—
I followed him to the north corridor, my wings canted up behind me, so not to have my feathers serve as a bloody broom and attract every bit of dust and slosh of ice on the floor.
At the wall that wasn’t a wall but had been as impenetrable as those of the Unseelie prison, Ryodan stopped and pressed his hands to the air, as if there were indeed a surface there. He murmured softly, touching various places, then traced runes in the air.
A corridor was revealed before us.
From the far end, terrible sounds echoed.
I stiffened. What the bloody hell was down there? But I held my tongue and trod in silence, boots echoing on the stone floors, barely audible above the din.
Ryodan stopped outside a cell, one with a small window and bars in the door. The baying became deafening then abruptly ceased.
I moved forward to join him, wondering what the bloody hell they were doing with my uncle’s body. Had they fed it to some creature, thinking it might assuage torture beyond imagining? In olden days, the blood and flesh of a druid was considered sacred, reput
ed to have enormous healing properties, especially the heart.
“Think before you react,” Ryodan warned, stepping aside so I could look in.
I looked.
I blinked and stared.
I shivered and drew thunder from the sky without even thinking. Far above me, it rolled and lightning crashed, followed by screams and something enormous falling, exploding into rubble. I knew it to be a concrete chunk of Chester’s ceiling far above, in one of the many subclubs.
“I said bloody think before you react! If you intend to be allies, get a goddamn grip on yourself,” Ryodan snarled. “And you will fix that later.”
I turned slowly from the door. Feeling carved of marble, as I once had in the icy prison. Feeling a storm brewing in me, a storm that could rip and crack and tear asunder.
But Ryodan was right. I had to think before I reacted. With my power, I always have to think first. I won’t become wanton destruction like my brothers, my dead brothers who will no doubt rise again, inside some other tortured human male. I made that choice on the cliff, dying over and over, carved it into the flesh of my Highlander-druid heart. The heart that I’d refused to let freeze and decay to blackened Unseelie flesh. A heart I’d kept beating with force of will and memory of love. In large part because of the one who lay shuddering beyond the bars of that small window.
With a sigh and enormous inward focus, I filled my veins with the unending summer of the Seelie court. Beckoned into my body a peaceful day, grass rippling, no clouds in the sky.
Not a hint of thunder.
When I had it under control, I opened my eyes and said, “What the bloody hell did you do to my uncle? What is that…thing in there?”
Ryodan said stiffly, “Dageus is one of us now.”
“You fucking turned him into a…what the fuck are you anyway?”
“He was dying. There was no other option. Of all possible future scenarios, if I saved him, fifty-two percent of them were favorable,” Ryodan said.
“Fifty-two bloody percent? And you thought that was good? Forty-eight percent of the outcomes weren’t? Christ, I’d hate to know what a sick fuck like you considers ‘unfavorable.’ ”
“You would,” Ryodan agreed.
“So, what was your plan? Send us home with someone else’s body and never tell us?” I said.
“He will be incapable of speech for some time. No telling how long,” Ryodan said.
“But then—when he could talk—you were going to tell us?”
Ryodan’s gaze was shuttered. “If there had been an opportunity that was…opportune.”
“Christ,” I said again, disgustedly. “You weren’t even going to let us know he was alive. How the bloody hell did you plan to keep Dageus from telling us? Were you planning to keep him caged down here forever?” Thunder began to grow in me again. I inhaled deeply, fisted my hands, exhaled slowly, and opened them.
“We were working on that,” Barrons said.
“Dageus would never give up Chloe,” I said.
I glanced in the door again. Glanced sharply away. My uncle was in the same kind of pain I’d been on those bloody cliffs.
And not human. Not entirely.
Never again entirely.
Changing. Becoming something else. Bile flooded the back of my throat. Now, Dageus, too, was something else, something more. And he’d already been complicated to begin with. “You had no right—”
“Your uncle is alive,” Ryodan snapped. “Would you prefer he wasn’t? Would Chloe prefer he wasn’t? I broke every goddamn code we live by to save that bastard’s life. And will pay an enormous price if I’m betrayed.”
“Good,” I snarled.
“You’re being an ass,” Mac growled. “And you know it. Ryodan saved your uncle’s life. Dageus is here. He’s not the same as he was before and he’s messed up right now, but in time he’ll be just like Barrons and Ryodan.”
“Now there’s a horrible thought,” I said flatly.
She snorted. “That’s not what I meant. He’ll be capable of living again.”
“And what else will he be?” I looked at Ryodan. “What price will he pay for his miraculous second life?”
“He’ll live forever,” Mac said heatedly. “So will you. That means you’ll always have family. That’s priceless.”
“And the other prices? The ones that cut into flesh and bone? I’m not daft, lass. This kind of thing always has consequences. Terrible ones.”
“Perhaps he will choose to discuss them with you. If so, we’ll probably have to kill you,” Ryodan said.
“We made a pact,” I reminded him.
“Does it matter, Christian?” Mac said. “Your uncle isn’t at the bottom of a gorge or buried in the ground. One day you’ll be able to talk to him again. He didn’t die for you. That must be a weight off your shoulders.”
“My clan has the right to know.”
“If you tell your clan, the tribunal will hear of it and you’ll lose him,” Barrons warned.
“What is this tribunal?” I demanded.
Mac perked up beside me, suddenly all ears.
Barrons shot me a look, something ancient and feral moving in his dark eyes. “None of your bloody business. There are terms, Highlander. You may know he’s alive. You may be of help to him through what lies ahead. But no one else may know. If word of his existence gets out, you’ll only be giving him back to your clan to lose him again. Permanently.”
“Our secrets. Yours now. And yours, ours,” Ryodan reminded.
“You don’t know my secrets.”
He smiled faintly. “You might be surprised. We shared blood.” His eyes said he knew what that meant. In a druid sense. And that maybe I didn’t know what that meant in a whatever-the-fuck-he-was sense. That I was as bound to him as he was to me. And I wondered for the second time if he’d not left most of the dungeon unprotected for a reason. If he’d not perhaps arranged this very scenario, wanting me bound to them. What better way to get help with my uncle, draw another Keltar into the fold? Was he that diabolical?
I dismissed him and weighed Barrons’s words for truth. “Your tribunal would take him? It could take him from you?”
“Yes. And yes,” Barrons said levelly.
“Truth. Fuck.”
“He must always remain hidden. You uncle died in that gorge,” Ryodan said.
“Chloe.”
Barrons said, “Perhaps in time. She, like Mac, would have reason enough to protect his secret. If she passes our tests.”
“You would test my aunt.” I was incensed.
“You should hope they would,” Mac said. “No point in giving him back only for her to lose him again.”
“My entire clan can be trusted.”
Barrons and Ryodan snorted.
Mac said, “Save your demands for another day, Christian. Deal with today.”
I turned to look at Dageus, shuddering on the stone slab. Finally, I said, “What is he going through?”
Ryodan said to Barrons, “I’ll take the Highlander from here. Get her out of here.” He jerked his head at Mac.
“Oh, come on!” Mac protested. “Don’t you trust me by now?”
“Need-to-know basis, Mac. And you don’t. But he,” Ryodan jerked his head at Christian, “might just prove a grand babysitter while we figure out how to save the world.”
Babysitter, my arse.
Mac and Barrons vanished down the hall.
When Ryodan opened the door, I followed him inside, unable to shake the feeling he might just have intended the evening to end this way all along.
19
“It’s time to begin, isn’t it…”
“Have you located the other Unseelie princes?” Cruce asked.
The roach god had to finish molding his many roach parts into the stumpy-legged shape of a human dwarf before he had the mouth to reply.
“All but one have been slain,” he said, when he’d completed his tongue. He craned his neck to stare up at the tall prince, roaches scut
tling to shift position with his movement. It was complicated to function in this form. It required incessant readjustments, yet it was this mimicry of those around him that had enabled him to strike his first alliance long ago. The more he donned it, the more he despised its limitations, envied those who suffered none.
“Which one remains?”
“He was once a Highlander, now mutated.” He shifted slightly, settling the remaining stragglers into place, reinforcing his knees.
“Useless. Who killed my brethren?”
“Ryodan and Barrons.” He observed his new ally closely. “I was there, beneath the desk when they placed their heads on it.”
The winged prince demonstrated no weakness of rage at the news. He absorbed and moved on. The roach god’s satisfaction with his choice of allies increased. Success did not grace the stupidly violent, but the patient, the unseen, those who lurked and bided and seized the correct moment.
“The Seelie princes?” Cruce demanded.
“Dead as well. The last of them slain by the same two.”
“The concubine? The female that was in this cavern the night they imprisoned me,” Cruce clarified. “The one with the Unseelie king. You were there that night, were you not?”
“Ryodan bade me scatter my parts through the abbey that night, while the wards were down, listen and learn. He misses no opportunity. I’ve seen no sign of that woman.”
“And the Unseelie king?” Cruce said.
He shook his head, masses of roaches swaying and churning, but not one of them slipped. In his upright form, he was cohesive enough to do a few things. Far too gelatinous to do most. He resented that deeply. He was tiny, weak, in a world of giants who crushed him beneath their heels, drenched him with sticky hair spray or canned poisons that made him sick, sick, sick, even flushed him down a toilet as if he were excrement.
“No one leads my race. They are lost. Who do they follow?” Cruce said.
“They scatter, establishing small strongholds, warring among themselves. Most do nothing but feed and slaughter.”
Cruce shook his head. “The depths to which my race has descended.”
The roach god had studied the world carefully for eons. When the Fae began to walk openly, he had finally been able to show his face, too, as the powerful entity he was. He that knew the world’s best-kept secrets could rule it. He suffered no delusion of being king himself. But he intended to be the one who stood beside the king, granted every liberty.
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