“But I’m sorry to tell you, your sister left this morning,” he said. “We always notice when she comes through. It’s so exciting to have a real celebrity here.”
“We’ll head up to Morte’s room. I’m assuming he’s in?” I asked as I carefully slipped my wallet into my back pocket.
“Yes, but you’ll need the key. He’s not supposed to open the door to his room until his challenge is over.” The man’s face flushed again, reddening even his neck this time. “I—he didn’t say that to me. It’s just what we’ve, you know, guessed, and—”
“He’s not in any trouble at this time,” Jane said. Her attention had already returned to her phone screen. Holding out her hand, she waggled her fingers. “We’ll need the key. We don’t want to jeopardize his next challenge. We just need to check in on him.”
Clearly, we had done enough to convince him because the clerk handed over a small square of plastic, nodded, and thanked us.
No one said a word as we headed across the brightly lit lobby to the bank of elevators. A family of four waited for the lifts, but after one look at our group, they grabbed their kids and rushed down the hall toward the stairwell.
The metal doors slid open, and we entered and turned to watch them close us in. Soft music played, leading into an announcement about the hotel’s seafood buffet. Guilt and anger rose in me like a tumultuous tide, higher and higher.
My fault.
My fault.
“Mack, what the hell is going on?” Darrel growled.
I couldn’t take it anymore. Something broke inside me, and I spun and punched the elevator wall. I had only lashed out a couple times in my life, and I had always held back my strength. Not this time. The explosion of sound from the impact echoed through the space, and when I pulled my hand away, there was a gaping hole in the metal where my fist had connected.
I would have to replace the hotel’s elevator, and the burst of violence made me feel no better. All I felt was misery. I had wanted to bring Scarlet into my life.
What a fool I was.
Chapter Thirty-One
Darrel
I’d seen Mack fight only once, the day we’d had a showdown with my brother. Otherwise, the man the man gave the impression that he was a pacifist compared to all of us hotheaded alphas. He always seemed to calm Scarlet and make her see reason when she was hellbent on sacrificing her own welfare for others. But that hole in the wall said that Mack may be a fun-loving, light-hearted dancer, but he was a fun-loving, light-hearted dancer who could probably kill a dragon with a single punch.
He pulled his fist to his chest and whispered an oath. “Damn it. This is my fault.”
His explosion of anger shocked me out of my simmering fury, and I found myself shaking my head. “Unless you coordinated this with your sister, Mack, this isn’t your fault.”
Everyone in the elevator except Mack gaped at me like I’d said something shocking. When I reviewed my words, they seemed logical, and it took me a second to realize why they were so stunned. I’d always despised the fae, and now I’d done a complete one-eighty.
Well, fuck.
The elevator doors slid open, and we all emptied out into a wide, cream-colored hallway. At room three hundred and forty-two, Jane stuck the key card into the receiver.
We opened the door into a wide space, clearly a suite with a sunken living room. Giant tripods stood along one wall, pointing into the center, their recording lights on. A sign reading “Quiet, Recording in Session” pointed toward the door.
The area seemed trapped in a hush. At the center of the floor were three concentric circles of what looked very much like salt granules. A large tome laid open to one side of the salt circle next to a bronze goblet filled to the brim with a liquid that smelled like blood.
A young man stepped into view in the doorway at one side of the room, looked over at us, and lifted a hand in a wave. He had an oval face and a small, upturned nose. His hair was the same silvery gray color as his sister’s, flowing over his bare shoulders. He wore tight leather pants that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The guy was probably only a few years younger than us, and although his stature was that of a full-grown man, something in his expression screamed that he was still a child.
Crossing to the goblet, he dipped his fingers into the blood before coming to stand before the cameras.
We all watched, frozen in shock as Morte began painting symbols in blood across his chest. “I’m preparing myself to complete the fourth champion challenge. These harmless protection symbols could be painted with any type of ink anywhere on the body, but I don’t like to mess around.” He gave the cameras a smoldering look. “I use blood on the biggest canvas I have available.”
Lifting my foot, I kicked the first tripod, sending it crashing into the next, and that one into the one after that, on until all of the cameras on that side of the room smashed to the floor.
For just one second, Morte stood blinking at me, his bloody fingers pressing into his own flesh. “Why would you do that?” he whispered. “The challenge.”
I crossed the room in two strides and wrapped my hand around the man’s throat. I didn’t squeeze, but it took every ounce of my restraint not to tighten my fingers. “Where did the demon take her?”
Morte grabbed at my fingers as terror filled his eyes. “Take who?”
“Scarlet,” I roared.
The young man’s face paled, and the cloying scent of urine seeped into the air.
It was enough to make me want to let go. An alpha wolf didn’t waste his time challenging peacocks. But this man had conspired to take my mate. Worse than that, he’d had a demon impersonate me to do it. The demon had used my face to get close to Scarlet.
The man’s eyes darted about the room, moving from one of us to the next. “Are you talking about the werewolf in the strip club? I thought her name was Zeezee? She was part of my first challenge.”
“What the fuck is a challenge?” I growled into his face.
“Please, let go of my neck. I’ll show you,” he begged. “They’re delivered with room service. You see, I did everything on my card, but one of the other mages screwed up on the first challenge. They were eliminated. It’s just me and one other contestant now.”
I forced my fingers away from his throat, though they ached to return. But I didn’t trust myself, and this man might very well be guilty of nothing more than being a fucking idiot.
Morte grabbed his neck, smearing fresh blood there. His big brown eyes rose to meet mine. “I think this is all a misunderstanding.”
“Twenty-six people are dead in this misunderstanding,” I growled. “A war has been declared over this misunderstanding.”
“People are dead?” Morte’s eyes widened, and he rubbed his chest, smearing his protection runes. “No. This is a TV show. Prime time. It’s controlled. There are celebrities on this show.”
“One celebrity,” Mack said in a low voice. “My sister, Princess Mab. She set all of this up to use you and five other mages to assassinate our mother, Queen Titania. We need to know where the demon is now, Morte. He’s taken the alpha of Six Rivers.”
“The queen—no.” Morte’s hands rose to this throat. “No. Queen Titania is part of this. She’s doing a celebrity cameo on the last challenge.” The boy stumbled back, shaking his head. He was a boy. I couldn’t think of him as an adult, even if he was in his twenties.
“Morte,” Jane said, her tone far gentler than I could manage. “There is no television show called Mage of the Ages. You’ve been conned into raising a demon for a political assassination. One that failed, taking the lives of twenty-two innocent fae and three other union mages, the same mages who also believed they were part of this competitive show.”
His whole body started to shake, and the man stumbled back, slipping in a pool of his own urine and falling to the floor.
“You don’t have Scarlet Riley, alpha of the Six Rivers pack here?” Jane asked.
“I don’t even know w
ho that is.” He curled up, sitting in his own puddle of piss, hugging his legs. “No one has come to check on me in three days. I just get the challenges from room service, and... I’ve been deep in filming.” He gestured to the fallen cameras. “It’s almost over. Only me and one other contestant left. I’ll be the Mage of the Ages...” He trailed off, his voice going hoarse.
Aaron crouched down. “There are no contestants left, Morte. The demon got them all a week ago. Your sister’s looking for you. She’s risking her life to find you.”
Morte’s head lifted. “Nancy? They told me not to call anyone on the outside.”
Jane crouched down as well, going eye to eye with the kid. “What are the challenges they delivered them to you? Were they in print?”
“Yes, but...” His voice dropped. “I burned them. That’s what they told me to do. I haven’t burned the last one. I’m still using it. It’s next to the TV in my bedroom.” His head lifted, and realization lit in his big brown eyes. “The recordings. They’ll all be on the recordings. Everything is on there.”
While Jane headed to the bedroom, I strode to the line of cameras. When I pressed on the tape release button, nothing happened. Grabbing the camera between my fists, I cracked the thick plastic, finding only a hollow shell inside with one wire running to a red light beside the lens. I turned the broken prop camera toward the kid and watched his expression fall.
He’d still been holding out hope, but this finally drove the message home. He wasn’t the champion of a television contest. He was the weapon used in a mass murder.
Princess Mab deserved to have her fucking head ripped off for this alone. She had turned a man with the naivety of a child into a killer, and he hadn’t even known it.
The whole thing made me fucking sick. There was nothing that I hated more than a person who stole innocence for their own gain. That bitch was the worst kind of monster.
“I want to call my sister, please,” Morte whispered. “Twenty-six people... Are you sure they’re dead?”
“You can call your sister from my phone, Morte,” Jane said as she crossed into the center of the room. “But I really need you to answer a few more questions first.”
As she spoke, Jane handed Lance a piece of paper. Lance read it and handed it to me.
Looking down, I read the message once before scanning it a second time.
Congratulations, exalted mage! You have made it to the final round. You’re one step closer to becoming the Mage of the Ages and winning your own reality TV show, starring you!
For this challenge, we’re testing your endurance and grit. Your demon has brought the queen what she desires most and spent one steamy night with his mistress, but the queen wants more.
Our team of necromancer experts are there to ensure her safety, so why not? Can you give your demon one more message before the game is decided, or will you be the one eliminated? This test will be the hardest yet. Are you up to the challenge?
“Don’t destroy that.” Jane stepped before me, breaking my concentration with the note. She held out a hand. “He’s going to need every single piece of evidence, and he doesn’t have much.”
I handed the note over and looked up at the kid. “Can you send the demon to kill Mab?”
“Please, no,” Mack said from across the room. He sat down on the steps, his head in his hands. “Shit. She deserves it. She deserves worse.” His head came up, his piercing blue eyes finding mine.
“Damn right, she does,” Lance growled.
Mack sighed. “My mother has been trying to kill Mab for centuries. They’re both extremely powerful, but my mother is more so. Last time, the queen almost succeeded, and Mab asked me if I could kill Titania. I’m the only one powerful enough to do it. Fae ask me to do it all the time. Hundreds of people have asked me. Even the queen of Autumn asked, telling me that she would let me out of our engagement if I killed my mother. Mab’s request was the only one I ever considered. Mab is a horrible person, but the things she’s gone through at the hands of our mother...” He shook his head. “I said no, and then Titania was cursed and took the four fae princes as hostages.”
Aaron rested a hand on Mack’s shoulder. “I thought you said your mother was cursed when you were a kid.”
“I was seven when Mab asked me.” Mack’s hands fisted. “This is all my fault. If I’d said yes…”
“You’re telling me that Mab tried to convince a seven-year-old child to murder his own mother, and that’s why we shouldn’t kill her?” I growled.
Damn. I thought our family was fucked up. Clearly, Mack’s family surpassed even having a man-eating megalomaniac brother who sent us to die because we were competition.
I didn’t think I liked Mack. I didn’t really know how to feel about my mate’s fae lover. But heat surged into my whole body when I thought about the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his mother and sister. There were many kinds of abuse. His mother and sister may have never physically touched him, but they’d callously sacrificed his innocence to pull him into their twisted death games. But despite his family, Mack had turned into a man who was obviously capable of showing Scarlet infinite patience, kindness, and love.
Mack worked his jaw back and forth, his miserable face betraying his conflicting thoughts.
“Look,” I said. “I know what it’s like to protect a monster in your family, just because they’re family, but this monster has Scarlet.”
“We can’t kill Mab,” Lance cut in. “First, sending the demon after Mab might endanger Scarlet. We don’t know for sure where or why she took Scarlet, but we can be pretty sure the demon delivered her to Mab. Second, we need her confession to stop the war.” He turned to the kid. “Can you immobilize the demon?”
“No.” Morte squeezed his knees to his chest. “But there’s a team of necromancers that are there to immobilize it.”
“Give me patience,” Jane whispered, her eyes cast to the ceiling. She turned to Morte. “You’re the only one controlling the demon. There are no other necromancers. What can you do to immobilize it?”
His face paled, and he ran a hand through his long silver hair. “I… Are you sure?”
“Can you at least track him?” Lance asked.
“He’s in the queen’s palace,” Morte said.
“Good,” Jane said, speaking in a soothing tone. “Can you tell us what you remember about the other challenges?”
“First I told him to meet with the queen. Every day I tell him to replenish his power. Yesterday’s challenge was for him to bring the queen what she desired most and obey her desires. But he’s becoming increasingly hard to reach. It’s taken more and more control every time.”
That sounded really fucking ominous.
Mack stood. “I can get back into the palace to find Scarlet if the demon took her there. I think I can do it undetected.”
“We can’t go in there half-cocked.” Lance paced down the length of the room.
“I like Mack’s way,” Aaron said, his hand falling on Mack’s shoulder. “If we go with one of your plans, Lance, we’ll be enacting the perfect way to extract her corpse.”
I flinched, feeling the word ‘corpse’ down to my bones. But Lance was right. This was not a situation we could handle alone. We were dealing with a demon that had almost broken free of his binds, and Scarlet was trapped in the fae palace with Titania and probably Mab, too. Taking my phone from my pocket, I leafed through my contacts. “I’m calling Rick, the union rep.”
“What?” Morte breathed, his face turning as ashen as his hair.
I ignored the kid and said, “Jane, you call Nancy. Mack, is there anyone you trust in that palace, anyone at all?” It took something out of me to ask it, but right now, I knew that this was the only way that we might save Scarlet. “Someone you could ask private questions to ensure they’re not the incubus.”
Mack’s eyes blazed. “My brother Naveen. He’s a trickster, which is what we need right now.” His face fell, his jaw clenching. “But if the queen is d
ying, so is he.”
Lance stopped pacing. “We can’t contact the palace. If we reveal the incubus without providing any proof, it’s only logical that Titania will continue to point blame in a constant direction without turning to a new suspect. She’d likely execute Scarlet.”
If she hadn’t done it already.
The cold knot of tension coiling in my belly tightened. I would not consider that possibility. If my mate was dead, I would know. I would feel it. She was alive, and I was going in to get her and killing every fucking person who attempted to stop me, even if I had to kill the queen of the fae herself.
I would do that.
Yet again, Lance was right, though. This was a delicate situation, and if we didn’t go into it the right way, the queen would kill my mate before I could get to her.
“I think I have a plan,” Lance said. “But it’s going to risk all of our lives and then some.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Scarlet
There was a certain comfort in constant pain after I’d been chained in silver for… I wasn’t sure how many hours. It woke me each time exhaustion pulled me under. It whispered that I was still alive. When Mack had confided about his day chained in iron after Jacob kidnapped him, he’d said he went into a meditative state. I’d thought he said it to ease my guilt over his capture, but I found myself slipping into mindlessness, a place where no thoughts existed, only that low, constant agony.
The worst pain was in my face where the queen’s kick had shattered my bones. My wolf had no chance of healing the injury. She couldn’t even muster the energy to wake. We were dying. The silver would kill her first, and I wouldn’t survive without her.
The fire in the hearth had died hours ago. At first, my mind kept marveling at the trust these fae princes had in one another. What other reason but absolute faith would keep the Autumn prince from checking in? And then I realized. They were dying. The four princes were dying right along with the queen.
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