by Aileen Erin
If his eyes hadn’t been glowing green, I would’ve thought he was relaxed when he put his hands in his pockets. But I saw that movement for what it really was. He was hiding his hands because the skin wasn’t smooth anymore. His fingers had lengthened, and my mentor, my teacher, my adoptive father who I’d thought was infallible, was slowly losing control.
That little piece of information should’ve scared me—or at least, worried me—but instead, I realized I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought.
“I think we need to talk to Helen. If we have a shot at diplomacy, then we need to try that first, but we’ll have to be very careful.” He looked at Van. “Will you take us?”
“Absolutely not! I forbid it!” Cosette said at the same time that Van said, “Yes.”
Van faced Cosette, and what followed was some sort of silent conversation that involved tiny hand gestures and a few looks. It ended when Cosette stormed out of the room.
“Damn it.” Chris shook his head as he stared at Van. “Just don’t get yourselves in trouble. I’m not sure I’d be able to keep her from coming after you, and that…” He looked at me, his eyes the wolf’s blue. “That would be very bad.” He left the room, following Cosette wherever she’d gone.
I knew I should ask why Cosette was upset, or if she had any advice for me, or if she questioned our decision, but I was desperate for answers. Desperate enough to take on the Lunar Court’s queen with no guarantees or protections.
“When do we leave?” I asked Van.
“Now. I don’t want to give her any warning, and some of the fey here may be spying for her. Helen has too many bargains tied to her—too many fey that owe her a debt—and I’m not sure what that might mean for any of us. Especially your mate.”
The fear was there, swelling up again until I thought it might drown me, but I shoved it down. I shoved it far, far down. I was alive. I was breathing. And with every breath I took, I knew she was somewhere breathing, living, fighting. I just had to find her.
Van reached a hand to me. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” I took it and then looked at Axel. “Wait here. Chris will watch out for you.” I said that bit loud enough that I knew Chris would hear me. He’d watch out for the newly turned were just as well as I could.
Axel dropped his gaze. “Okay, but—”
Van reached out his other hand to Michael, who took it.
And then the world was black, and I was falling and twisting and turning, and I was absolutely sure I was going to throw up.
And then it all stopped, so suddenly that my legs gave out and I was lying on the ground, staring up at a massive, glittering chandelier.
Tessa said traveling this way wasn’t fun, but it was one thing for her to tell me or to see it in her memories. Living it? That was a whole new level of terrible. I absolutely never wanted to travel with Van again.
“Get up.” Van’s words—sharp with warning—were enough to have me moving immediately, even though my vision was still swirling.
But as I stood, I realized Michael was standing next to Van as if nothing were wrong.
Damn the old were. He hadn’t felt the world tumble? Or maybe it just didn’t bother him?
Van’s clothes were different—not a speck of blood—and his hand was tightly gripping the hilt of the sword that now hung at his hip. He was ready for a fight, and that meant I needed to be, too.
Van had brought us to the heart of the Lunar Court, and I was going to find answers.
As the dizziness faded, I started to take in the room around me. If it had been any other day, any other reason for being here, I would’ve been awed by the glowing walls or the galaxy floors or the countless chandeliers filling the Lunar Court’s throne room. I’d seen it in Tessa’s memory, but being here was different. The magic in the room pulsed and pushed against the pack bonds. I could feel it quietly urging me to kneel. To submit. To obey. And I found myself stumbling toward the throne a few steps to follow the order before Van’s painfully strong grip on my arm stopped me.
I looked into his eyes, and he shook his head at me. Van moved to stand on one side of me. Michael on the other.
“Find whatever strength you have inside you and use it. Now.” Van’s whispered words were sharp with command. “Or pull it from your anger that someone in this room stole your mate. Stole your bond. And you fight the compulsion to obey. Do it now or we leave.”
I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to fight the compulsion from my lunar tie, but I had anger. I had so much anger that it was slipping out my seams and spreading through the room wherever I went.
I held on to that anger. I let it fill me up—heart, body, soul—until I burned with the heat of it. And when I was done, I let it rise again. I let it burn away the wolf that was struggling to break free.
And then I felt nothing from my lunar tie. Nothing because all I had was anger.
Helen was sitting on her throne, looking down at us as if we were insignificant. As if she could control me. But she couldn’t. Only one woman could, and she was missing.
Still missing.
I stoked the flames of the anger inside me until it felt like I could melt the room.
Van’s hand stayed on a sword that hung at his hip, and he stepped toward the queen.
Cosette’s mother was equal parts elegant and evil. There was ice in her gaze. The way she held herself—rigid with her hands tightly fisted at her sides—told me that she was angry.
People were standing around her, but they were all frozen. Their gazes darting back and forth between their queen and us. Not rushing to protect her but not getting in her way.
Helen rose from her throne and pushed her long, golden blonde hair over her shoulder. “What are you doing in my court?”
Van stepped forward, and I went with him until we were only feet away from her dais.
“Your advisors have yet to be helpful in locating Tessa,” Van said. “There hasn’t been—”
“I can only act in matters that benefit the fey. Finding a lost werewolf does nothing for me.” The sneer in her tone was enough to have me stepping forward.
Her gaze snapped from Van to me, and I wasn’t sure getting her attention was a good idea.
But I didn’t have anything to lose.
“Why would I ever help you?” She didn’t know me, but her voice told me enough. The Queen of the Lunar Court hated me. Hated my mate. She might even hate all the werewolves, but I didn’t want to assume too much.
“Do you know where she is?” I asked plainly because I wanted a yes or no, but I had no hope of getting it. I had to ask anyway.
“Everything can be known given the right incentive.”
That didn’t mean she knew anything. It also didn’t mean that she knew nothing. She wasn’t even agreeing that she could find out. She was making a general statement with layers of lies and manipulations hidden under it.
Helen’s power pounded at me, urging me to speak. To give her the incentive. To promise her my life in exchange for some tiny scrap of noninformation.
Michael moved closer to my side. He had to be feeling the same, but his eyes were his normal hazel. No hint of his wolf’s glow. Most thought that because he wasn’t a member of the Seven, because he chose to teach, that he was weak. But they were wrong.
I was starting to shake as I fought her thrall, but Michael placed his hand on my shoulder, feeding bits of his familiar, fatherly power to me all while facing her down.
I’d known my whole life that he was powerful, and sometimes I thought I was more powerful than him. But I was wrong. I was so very wrong. And now I was starting to wonder how well I knew the man who raised me.
“If you want something, then you must, in good faith, make a vow to me.” The queen’s voice had me shaking.
I pressed my lips together to keep from promising her something—anything she wanted. I wasn’t sure how I was going to negotiate with her. There was no way I could force her to tell me where Tessa was unless she volunteered the i
nformation. I wasn’t desperate enough to believe she’d do that for a second.
“I don’t make vows to anyone,” Michael said. “Not even you.” There was no emotion in his voice. He was fighting ice with ice, and if I trusted myself to speak, I would’ve cheered him on.
“And would your wolf?”
“Come now, Helen.” Michael’s voice held a hint of warning below the ice that I was very familiar with. It was the warning he gave right before he put someone in their place. But I’d never seen him do it with a fey. “We know where each other stands. I see no sense in speaking about it in front of members of your court, but if you—”
Helen rose from her throne, and for a split second, before she pressed them into tight fists, I saw her hands shake. The queen of the most powerful court was nervous, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure I knew my adoptive father at all.
“You are quite right.” Helen’s chin rose a degree higher, and she stepped to the edge of her dais. “What I will say is that as of now, I do not know where Tessa is, and I have no desire to find out the information. She’s caused no end of grief for me and my court, and because of her actions, my most beloved daughter is now estranged from me. The only reason she’s not dead by my hand is because she’s sealing this realm from the one beyond it. And if I know this, then others do, too.”
Her ice blue gaze hit mine. “Take comfort in that.”
Take comfort that she wasn’t dead yet? That whoever took her might understand what could happen if they killed her?
There was a world of space between unharmed and not dead, and I took very little comfort in knowing that Tessa wasn’t dead.
She could be hurt, bleeding, sick, tortured, and that was enough to boil the anger hot enough to burn away the thrall the queen was trying to slip over me again.
“Do you know who took her?” I asked.
“There are many who are up to the task.”
That answer was completely unacceptable. “Who exactly?”
“What would you give me for the information?”
“Dastien.” Michael’s tone held more than a little warning in it, but I didn’t care.
“What would you need from me?” I felt her push of power—one that begged me to make an idiotic, open-ended promise to her—and let it float past me.
This time it wasn’t just my anger that helped me. It was a stronger push than she’d sent before, and I wasn’t strong enough on my own to ignore it. Especially with ease.
But I’d gained power, and some of that power was from Van and Cosette. Power that helped me stay strong when facing the only court that had control over the werewolves, whose supernatural side was tied to the moon.
I glanced at Van, but his focus was on the queen. Yet, there was a push through the bonds that tied us together. I’d never felt power from him before, but that dark, moonlit magic could only be his. I wouldn’t be able to thank him, but I was grateful for the ability to think through the queen’s silent commands.
She wanted me to submit. She wanted to control me. She wanted to use me to get to Cosette, but that wasn’t happening. I might be desperate to find my mate, but I wasn’t going to let my desperation push me into selling out one of my own.
Her gaze narrowed. “Bring me my daughter, and I’ll return your mate to you.”
On the surface, it might seem like a good offer. A mother wanting to see her child. There couldn’t be too much wrong with that.
But I knew Cosette. I knew what she and Chris had been through.
Still, if I could convince her to come back for a meeting with her mom and get Tessa back, I might try it. It was insane, and I was pretty sure Cosette would hate me for asking, but I could almost convince myself that I should try it.
There was just one thing I needed to know. “What would you do to your daughter if she came back?” I was sure she wouldn’t answer, but I had to ask. I had to make sure.
“That’s none of your concern.” She pushed more power at me until all I could see was the light blue of her gaze, like twin glaciers, and the glow of her skin—like bright moonlight.
If Michael hadn’t grabbed my shoulder, I would’ve closed the distance and knelt before the queen. But Michael’s power hit me—stronger this time—and Van’s moonlit magic intensified and yet I was still struggling—
“I think that’s absolutely our concern,” Michael said, taking her focus away from me again.
At once, I felt the power of the queen lessen, and I could breathe again.
“We won’t hand Cosette over for you to harm.” Van said it casually like he wasn’t worried or bothered by the queen. “You should’ve thought of the consequences when you sent me to guard her.”
The queen was quiet, and that was answer enough for me. She couldn’t tell us what we wanted to hear. She wasn’t able to lie.
If I asked Cosette to come here, she might agree. And if she did, she’d die.
I couldn’t trade a life for a life. Tessa would never forgive me if I did.
Michael dropped his grip on my shoulder and stepped closer to the dais. “Do you have Tessa? Yes or no.” His voice was laced with ice again.
I heard Helen swallow. It was faint. Her hands were still fists at her sides, but her chin was raised—as if she had nothing to fear—but even I knew that was a lie. It was clear that Michael had some kind of history with her.
“I do not have her in this court,” she said finally. “And I don’t know where she is now.”
“Is she in any fey court?”
Helen smiled, but it looked more like a grimace than anything else. “You do know me well.” She shook her head. “I do not believe any of the courts are currently holding her captive.”
That was something. If she wasn’t in a fey court, then she was somewhere we could find her. Somewhere in our own realm.
“Was it by your hand?” Michael pressed her, and the queen stepped forward. The walls started pulsing with light, and the room grew colder.
“I grow tired of wolves in my court. Leave now.” She waved a hand, and the walls flashed right before I felt power slam into my stomach.
I flew backward through the air, and the world went black.
I was tumbling, twisting, turning until the ground slammed into my back. I thought traveling there with Van had been bad, but this was worse. So much worse.
The world seemed to be staying still, but my stomach had other ideas. I rolled, smelling the grass under my hands a second before I lost the contents of my stomach.
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth when I was done. “What the hell was that?”
“We were just booted from court.” Michael reached a hand down, but I couldn’t take it. Not yet. Not while the world was still spinning. “Where is Van?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t throw him out. Not like us.”
“Should we be worried?”
Michael was quiet for a second before answering. “No. He’ll be fine. He’s not just any fey. He’s—”
“How’d it go?” Meredith’s voice called out to us, and I looked behind me to see her running toward the two of us.
If Meredith was here, that meant the queen had kicked us out the door to her underhill. Which meant we were in Ireland.
“Cosette called me to keep an eye out. She thought you might end up here.” Meredith stopped a few feet from us. Her hair had streaks of hot pink in it today, but she looked happy. Strong. Safe.
But as her focus moved from Michael to me, all I could see was the pity and sorrow in her eyes.
“What did you find out?” Meredith asked.
I shook my head and stared into the night. I couldn’t speak. I’d been stupid to hope that we might find something concrete from Helen, but now that hope was gone. All I was left with was emptiness.
“They don’t have her.” Michael’s voice sounded like it was far away, even though I knew he was standing beside me.
All I could think was how I’d failed. Again. I hadn’t gotten an answer, and
worse, I’d nearly succumbed to the queen. The anger I’d felt was gone, and all I had now was regret.
I was an idiot. Why did I think going to the queen was a good idea?
“—the fey did at one point have her,” Michael said.
That had me standing. “What?”
Michael gave me a small smile. “You didn’t catch that?”
No. I’d heard, but…
“The queen was behind this.” Michael sighed. “But Tessa’s not in any of the underhills anymore, and Helen doesn’t know where she is. Which means someone put her somewhere and purposefully didn’t tell Helen. In case she was asked, she could speak plainly on that point alone. We’ve got no proof and no way to hold her to any consequences, even if we did. So…”
Meredith let out a string of colorful words, ones that would’ve made my mate smile.
I looked at Michael. “I thought that if they didn’t have her, then that was one less place to look. It would be easier if she was in our realm and—”
“That’s true, but now that we know for sure that they did this, then we also know that their magic is hiding her. Which isn’t nothing.”
“Right.” Damn it. Even if this was the most we’d learned about Tessa’s kidnapping, it wasn’t enough to find her. “What now?”
“We go to the witches. It has to be fey magic that’s hiding her. Claudia couldn’t break through it, but maybe some other witch can,” Michael said. “Your bond is still there. All we have to do is remove the fey magic from hiding it. Once you can see the bond again, you can find her.”
I hated relying on other people. I wanted to fight. I wanted to do something, anything. But if I had to rely on the witches, I would. I would do anything. Almost anything.
Maybe I would regret not giving Cosette to Helen so that I could get Tessa back, but I couldn’t do it.
“Helen did this, and she didn’t do it alone. If I picked up on that, Van did, too,” Michael said. “He must’ve gone back to looking for answers inside the courts. Once he knows, that will help, too. A lot.”
It wasn’t enough. I wanted to be thankful for his help, but I wasn’t doing anything. “And if the witches can’t remove the magic from my bond? If Van can’t find who took her? What then?” I hated that I was dealing in ifs, but I needed to know what we’d do. How we’d keep going if we kept coming up against dead ends.