by Sadie Moss
Praying she wouldn’t recognize any of them as Resistance members—I still didn’t know how much the Representatives knew about the Resistance, besides Christine’s name—I gestured to the four men behind me. “Jae, Fenris, Corin, and Ak… Armand. They helped me learn how to use my powers. I think being separated from them is what made my magic flare today.”
Akio gave a disgusted grunt at the name I made up for him, but I ignored it. I wasn’t sure if all the Representatives knew about an incubus named Akio who was part of the Resistance. We didn’t even know who in the government had ordered his assassination, and I prayed my grandmother wasn’t involved in that. Although considering that all Rat had given me when I took the hit job on Akio was his address, it was possible that whoever had been behind it didn’t even know what he looked like.
My grandmother regarded the men more closely, her fingers drumming a sharp rhythm against her collarbone. My muscles tightened, ready for a fight.
“You.” She pointed at Jae. “I know you. You’re Jonas’s son. You were at the ball with Lana.”
He nodded soberly. “Yes, Representative Lockwood.”
She narrowed her eyes, shifting her gaze to me. I could almost see the gears turning in her mind. She’d seen me at the Grand Ball with Jae two weeks ago; now she’d just witnessed Fenris kiss me like he wanted to eat me alive and Corin hold onto me like I was a long-lost piece of his soul. I was sure she was trying to put together what it all meant, and I silently wished her luck.
If I knew, I’d tell you, Grandma.
Maybe I should lay a big, fat kiss on Akio’s perfect lips and complete the confusing picture for her.
A wildly inappropriate laugh tried to bubble up my throat at that thought, and I stifled it with a cough as she turned to the other three men.
“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting any of you yet, but if what Lana says is true, I owe you all a debt of gratitude for saving her life.” Beatrice inclined her head slightly, looking both matronly and regal at the same time.
All the men dipped their heads in response.
“We’ll do anything we can to keep her safe.” Akio’s voice was smooth and held none of its usual mocking undertone.
Beatrice stepped forward, her gaze thoughtful. “Yes. I truly believe you would.” She turned to me. “And your magic is settled when they’re near? You have more control?”
“Yes,” I answered, as Corin stepped up closer behind me, his hand resting on my lower back.
My grandmother nodded decisively. “Then you’ll all stay here.”
“What?”
Of all the possible ways I’d imagined this situation might play out, the current scenario hadn’t even crossed my mind.
But Beatrice shook her head, as if she couldn’t understand my shock.
“These men are clearly important to you, and you to them. Their magic is connected to yours, and their presence helps keep your power under control. Am I missing anything? It seems rather clear cut to me.”
“Yes, they—they are,” I sputtered. “It… does. But—”
Was she actually inviting four strange men to live in her home? Simply because their presence would help me, a blood relative who was basically a stranger to her as well?
I couldn’t understand her reasoning, and that made me distrust it. Maybe she knew they were members of the Resistance and was just trying to keep them here long enough for Peacekeepers to arrive.
“Then I won’t hear another word about it.” Beatrice turned to my four. “You are, of course, free to decline the invitation. I won’t keep you here against your will. But if you feel what I think you do for my granddaughter, then please know you are welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
I shot a glance behind me and could see my worries reflected in four pairs of eyes.
“Uh, that’s incredibly generous of you, Beatrice. I don’t know how to thank you. But before they give you an answer, could we have a moment alone, please?”
A smile broke out across her delicate features. “Of course, sweet girl. I’ll go tell Retta to make up four of the guest bedrooms, just in case.” She stepped forward, holding out her hand to each of the men in turn. “Jae. Fenris. Armand.”
When she got to Corin, she paused, and I knew she was feeling for his magic… and finding none. My jaw clenched, hands curling into loose fists. I wasn’t sure what I was planning to do—fistfight my grandmother?—but before I was forced to decide, she held out one small, delicate hand toward him.
Corin hesitated only for the briefest of moments, and then his larger hand took hers. Worry twisted in my gut as he shook her hand gently, and only when she pulled back without blasting a ball of fire at him or electrocuting him did I release the breath I’d been holding.
With one final look at me, Beatrice swept from the room. The weight of her presence lingered for a few moments, and we all stood staring at each other silently in the large sitting room.
Then the dam burst all at once.
“Are you all right?”
“What the hell happened?”
“Is your magic back under control?”
“You didn’t bond to anybody else, did you?”
That last comment came from Fenris, and I rolled my eyes before holding my hands up to quiet them all. I’d had the exact same worry, actually, but it sounded funnier when he said it.
“Stop! Hold everything. What the fuck are you guys doing here?” My voice dropped to a whisper by the end of my question, and I shot a glance toward the large open archway my grandmother had disappeared through. “Wait. First, come with me.”
I led them out of the sitting room, slowing for a second as we passed under the arch. I didn’t want to take them upstairs and risk running into my grandmother or Retta, so I veered down a long hallway toward the back of the mansion, passing through another expansive room and pushing open a door that let us out onto the sweeping, manicured lawn.
As we walked down a cobbled path away from the house toward a large, perfectly tended garden dotted with fountains and birdbaths, I kept stealing glances at each of the men. Despite my worries about our current situation, giddy joy bubbled up inside me to have them near again. I hadn’t realized how much, how deeply I had missed them.
Akio caught me staring and raised a languid eyebrow, his angular, inhumanly beautiful features almost shining with a golden glow in the bright sunlight. I shrugged, pointedly not looking away, and he chuckled.
When we were a fair distance from the house, I turned to Jae.
“Can you do some kind of spell to keep us from being overheard, just in case?”
I felt a little silly asking. I was familiar with the basics of magic, and I’d even had a few enchanted gadgets I’d used on jobs before my powers manifested, but there was still so much I didn’t know. Jae had told me once that a powerful mage’s spell casting prowess was limited only by their ability to keep learning, but I didn’t know quite what that meant. To me, magic was still so… well, magical.
Fortunately, he didn’t laugh at my question.
As we approached a small bench set along the winding path, he held his hands out, palms up and fingers splayed. It looked similar to the gesture he made when he called forth the blue flame I’d seen him use often, but this time a golden light burst from his hands, rising above us before settling back down into a wide, broad dome. It was so thin I couldn’t see it even if I looked directly at it. Only the slight glow shimmering in my periphery told me it was there.
“We’ll be safe from any eavesdropping ears here. I don’t think your grandmother sent anyone outside after us, but better safe than sorry.” His green eyes flickered with worry as he glanced back at the house. “I find it hard to believe that Representative Lockwood would so easily open her home to such a motley crew as a mage, two Touched, and a Blighted man.”
“Yeah.” I nodded grimly. “I don’t know if we can trust her motives. But I also don’t know if there’s an easy way to turn down her offer wit
hout drawing more suspicion. Why the hell did you guys come here? I thought Christine said not to let Beatrice see you.”
“Hey, killer, remember what I told you that first day we brought you to the Resistance headquarters?” Fenris settled onto the bench, pulling me down beside him and spreading his long legs wide as he leaned back comfortably.
“Umm…” I got distracted by the sight of his steely thighs encased in dark jeans and had to clear my suddenly tight throat. “No?”
“Fuck Christine.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“He doesn’t mean that,” Jae interjected calmly, standing in front of us to block the sun from shining in my eyes.
“Sure I do,” Fenris shot back. He draped an arm across the back of the bench, turning to me with a serious expression. “You sounded like you were dying, killer. The last words you said to us were ‘help me.’ You really think Christine could’ve stopped us from coming?” He kicked a foot out toward Jae. “And don’t act like you weren’t the first one in the car, Mr. Magic Man.”
My stomach clenched. “I shouldn’t have called you. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck that!” Corin burst out. He rested a foot on the bench on my other side, leaning in toward me. “Having you here in the Capital and us stuck in the Outskirts is godsdamned torture. The only thing that’s kept me from losing my mind is knowing you’d contact us if you needed anything. And even then, hearing you fade out like that today and being so far away from you…” He trailed off, a haunted look in his eyes. Then he pushed back from the bench and turned to Akio and Jae. “Fuck it. I say we stay.”
“Corin, no—!”
“Your grandmother has already seen us, Lana. She knows who we are. She could report us to the Peacekeepers, have us followed, jail us—or at least me—right now if she wanted to. We already made our choice by coming here.”
Jae nodded slowly. “He’s not wrong. And Christine doesn’t want us to return to the Resistance base for the indefinite future, not until she’s sure we’re clear.”
I leaned forward, resting my head in my hands. “This is all my fault. I should’ve moved faster, gotten some valuable intel sooner so Christine would let me go home.”
Akio crouched in front of me with cat-like grace, tilting his head to look me in the eye. “That’s not how this was ever going to work, kitten.”
My nose itched from holding back tears of frustration. “Godsdamn it. I don’t know how to be a spy. I’m not good at… ingratiating myself with people.”
He cocked a brow. “I don’t know about that. You have all four of us wrapped around your little finger.”
I snorted. “Yeah, but with you guys, I cheated. You have to like me.”
The incubus’s enigmatic eyes darkened, and his nostrils flared. Before I could decipher his expression, he stood abruptly, gazing down at me. “We’ll help.”
“Yeah,” Fen piped in, his hand running lightly down my back. “From what you told us earlier, it sounds like the Representatives are more divided than we thought. Maybe we can use that to our advantage. Make nice with the right people and start changing things from the inside. Find out if any of them know more than they’re saying about the disappearing Gifted. Shit, if we could dig up proof that someone in the government is involved in those attacks on the Gifted, we’d have an actual shot at turning the elite against them.”
“I don’t think any of the Representatives I met today are going to be much help. There are several I have yet to meet, but I don’t—” I broke off suddenly, my head jerking up to stare into Akio’s eyes. “Wait! Couldn’t I use demon charm on them? Put them in a suggestible state and get them to answer any questions I wanted?”
The sunlight glinted off his dark hair as he shook his head. “I’m afraid not, kitten. Powerful magic users are harder to charm, for one thing. And even if you did manage to charm them, you can’t keep someone, let alone a group of people, enthralled permanently. They’d break the charm sooner or later, and when they came out of the trance, they’d know something had been done to them. If an incubus or succubus could just march into the palace and gain control over the entire Council of Representatives, they’d have killed all of us long ago.”
Damn it. That made sense. It had been too much to hope that I could just magic my way out of this, but Akio’s words put me back at square one.
“So how do I get the Representatives to talk to me then?”
Akio flashed the seductive grin that always sent butterflies fluttering through my stomach. “You’ll have to use your actual charm. The nonmagical kind.”
Oh.
We were screwed.
Chapter 7
As unprepared as I felt to charm anybody sans magic, an opportunity came sooner than I had dared hope. A few days after the men burst through the door of Beatrice’s house, my grandmother informed me that she’d received an invitation for a celebration at the palace. Unlike the Grand Ball, this event was just for government officials and their invited guests, so it was the perfect chance to do a little schmoozing with the Representatives and lower-level officials.
Beatrice shocked me by suggesting I bring my four with me. I was still suspicious of her motivations for inviting them to stay with us in the first place and found myself waiting anxiously for the other shoe to drop.
But so far, it hadn’t.
Beatrice had been kind and pleasant to all of them, including Corin, although I did notice she rarely addressed him directly. She’d even keyed them all into the wards on her house so they could come and go freely, a gesture of good faith I could hardly believe. Maybe our conversation after my magic flare had affected her more than I’d thought.
On the day of the ball, Jae disappeared for the afternoon and returned with formal clothes for all the men to wear. He didn’t need to bring anything for me this time, since the wardrobe in my bedroom was practically bursting with dresses of all shapes and colors.
My body thrummed with nervous energy as I stepped out of the luxurious glass-walled stone shower in my “en suite” bathroom—a word I hadn’t known until I arrived here. Not sure what to do with my hair without Ivy’s guidance, and still cringing from memories of the pins digging into my scalp from my previous attempt, I left my long red locks down.
Before dressing, I strapped my twin daggers to my thighs. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use them and wasn’t sure how much help they’d be anyway in a room full of the Gifted and Touched, but they were like a security blanket, soothing my nerves.
Yanking open the large wardrobe, I stuck my hand in and grabbed the first thing I touched. It turned out to be a deep purple full-length gown with a plunging V in the front, cap sleeves, and a fitted waist. The fabric was something soft that clung to the curves of my body, and it was embroidered with an intricate pattern of delicate, sparkling beads. I tried not to appreciate the beauty of it but couldn’t help running my fingers admiringly over the shimmering beadwork.
Finally, I grudgingly slipped on a pair of heels and headed downstairs.
My feet followed the familiar path to the kitchen, drawn by the sound of voices. As soon as my four had officially accepted Beatrice’s offer to stay, they’d done almost the exact same thing I had when I first arrived—sought out the warmest, most lived-in part of the house.
Beatrice had been busier than usual with meetings at the palace, making me wonder if there had been another attack on one of the Gifted. Or had the Resistance struck another supply shipment? Although the men checked in with Christine daily, she hadn’t mentioned any new strikes as far as I was aware. But maybe she was keeping our updates on a need-to-know basis now that we were all staying in the Capital. It might be safer for everyone if we didn’t know too much about other Resistance operations.
A high-pitched gasp greeted me as I walked into the kitchen. Retta’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes like saucers behind her thick glasses.
“Oh, Miss Crow! Look at you!”
I flushed uncomfortably under her excited gaze—
and even more under the hot stares of the four men standing in the kitchen, devouring me with their eyes.
“Ho-ly gods.” Fenris let out a low whistle.
He was one to talk. The dark gray suit he wore showed off his tall, muscled body to perfection and made his messy hair and scruffy face look even more handsome. The suit’s color reminded me of his wolf’s fur, and I smiled at the thought.
“You’ll do more than charm people in that dress, kitten. You’ll bring them to their knees.” Akio lounged against the kitchen counter, his eyes slowly tracing the length of my body.
“You look beautiful, Lana.” Jae stepped forward and pressed a kiss to my cheek, surprising me. I’d grown close to him over the few weeks we’d spent together; most of our magic lessons ended up devolving into long talks about everything under the sun. But he kept his emotions so tightly under wraps that I was never quite sure what he felt for me. Even now, his elegant features were carefully neutral, though heat sparked in his green eyes.
“You truly do, Miss Crow!” Darcy bustled around the kitchen, shooing Akio out of the way so she could reach into a cupboard behind him. “A right beauty, you are. You’ll be the envy of every fancy society lady there tonight.”
She shot a glance at the four gorgeous men crowding the kitchen and shook her head wistfully. I had to agree with her there. They might not envy my dress, but they would certainly envy my company.
Darcy and Retta had taken to the men right away, despite the intimidating power that radiated from three of them. The servants seemed to have become more comfortable around me too, and I realized it was probably because I was acting more like myself. I felt more like myself with the guys here.
Corin draped an arm around my shoulder, his fingertips skimming my bare skin. “You ready for this?”
“Fuck, no. You?”
He chuckled. “At least this time I won’t have to serve drinks and get felt up by Gifted women.”
I bared my teeth in a snarl I couldn’t suppress. “Anybody tries it, and I will fight them this time.”
He pressed his lips to my hair, murmuring in a low voice, “You going to defend my honor?”