Page 89 of Crave Me

“Neither have I,” Kaspian agreed. “But we recently acquired two phantoms who might know something about it.”

“Noxious,” I said, meeting his gaze as a bolt of adrenaline spiked my blood. “Do you think he did this?” He’d admitted to his penchant regarding chemicals and weapons, which was why he’d chosen his own name.

And Bane had stated his own talents for using Noxious’s creations.

It made sense. They were both new to our territory. “But what’s his motive?” I pondered aloud before Kaspian could respond to my first inquiry. “Why would he—or potentiallythey—do this?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Kaspian replied, a dark emotion lurking in his tone.

If Bane and Noxious had betrayed us, Kaspian would be the one to handle their punishment. Because he’d been the one to take on the task of training them, and he would feel personally attacked if our suspicions ended up being true.

“We’ll need to involve Kieran,” I told him. “This sort of breach impacts his House—and potentially our relationship with that House.” Because this could have been a ploy on behalf of Death and Diamond. Perhaps Bane and Noxious had been sent here to create chaos.

But I didn’t know what Sabrina or Kieran would gain from that.

They had their hands full with the new territory assignments, and they’d been more than willing to work with Gold and Garnet to ensure a smooth transition. So why risk that by having Bane and Noxious cause strife near my headquarters?

Unless this wasn’t about attacking my people at all, but about Nyx—the true victim of the attack.

Hmm, no, that didn’t feel right either. Kieran had been particularly nonchalant about the whole thing.

However, he had told Elias. Which I’d expected him to do. But maybe my allies weren’t as supportive as I’d hoped. Perhaps Noxious and Bane had been sent here to remove Nyx.

Except, no, that didn’t make sense either. They’d arrived in DublinwithKieran. And that was before any of them had even known I was fate-mated to the entity we’d been hunting all these months.

“Nothing about this makes sense,” I finally said. “We definitely need Kieran here—if anything, so that I can try to get a better read on him.” Taste his truths, determine his lies.

Kaspian nodded. “I’ll call him.”

“No, I’ll talk to him,” I said. “I need you to find Bane and Noxious.”

“They’re asleep in my house,” Kaspian replied. “Paxton set up a barrier spell, so I’ll know if they leave.”

“Your house?” I asked, arching a brow. That was news to me.

“They have nowhere to live yet,” he reminded me.

“We have local mercenary housing.” Which I knew wasn’t full because I’d spent the last few weeks evaluating all of the properties within our territory. And even with the new relocations necessitated by today’s explosions, we still had plenty of space available.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at me.

So I dropped it.

If my second-in-command wanted to play house with some phantoms, I wasn’t going to begrudge him of the experience. However, knowing he’d developed some sort of camaraderie with them had me hoping we were wrong about their involvement in this attack.

I didn’t enjoy seeing anyone hurt, least of all my best friend.

“You can call Kieran,” I told him, realizing he needed the distraction so that he didn’t go home and potentially murder the phantoms before we had a chance to talk to them. He was masking his anger well, hiding his emotions behind a stoic shield, but he had to be fuming.

“Make sure you tell him that we don’t know anything for sure yet,” I added, my words more for Kaspian than for Kieran. However, I disguised them as a request. “We need to interrogate them first.”

Kaspian’s jaw ticked, but he nodded.

“Perhaps Kieran can bring another witch with him. While Paxton might not recognize any hint of a spell, someone else might,” Cara suggested as she returned the bag to her pocket.

I dipped my chin in agreement. “That’s a good point. Maybe he can bring Trixie, if she’s still in his territory. And perhaps the supervisor Noxious and Bane had mentioned. Max, was it?”

Bane had said something about their former boss enjoying experiments. Perhaps he would recognize whatever agent had been used on the bullets.