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The moment Ella turned to strike Adam, Vadim lurched across the space and just managed to knock some of the power out of his father’s spell.

Adam started screaming, blood gushing from his mouth, and fell, bringing Ella with him.

Alighting beside them. Vadim picked his father up by the throat and shook him like a rat.

“What the fuck were you doing? If you’ve killed her, I’ll?—”

A cool hand touched his arm. “I’ll see to her, my son.”

Vadim didn’t release his grip. “He still dies.”

“I wasn’t aiming at her, you fool! I had a clear shot at Adam!”

Vadim didn’t even deign to answer that; his attention all on his mate, who lay sprawled over Adam’s bloodied corpse. Blood oozed through her jacket from her left shoulder. His mother knelt in front of her and took her hand.

“She’s still alive.”

Vadim exhaled and loosened his death grip around his father’s neck a tiny fraction. “You are very lucky. Now she will be able to watch me kill you in person.”

“I didn’t intend to harm her. If I had, all I needed was to call in my mark. I was aiming at Adam!”

He bared his fangs an inch from his father’s face. “Release her from your mark right now. ”

Sweat glistened on the king’s unlined forehead. “It is done. I swear it.”

Vadim dropped his father and went over to where Ella had fallen. His mother had disentangled her from Adam, and she lay on her back, her eyes closed, her battered backpack supporting her head.

“Will she be all right?”

“With your father’s influence now removed, I believe she will.” The queen hesitated. “She is a fine mate for you, my son.”

He sank down onto his haunches beside them and reached out a shaking hand to touch her unnaturally dark hair. His mother had already used magic to clean her obvious wounds and remove Adam’s blood. “I know. Even though I didn’t appreciate it at the time, you and grandmother picked well for me.”

“We knew our disapproval of the match would make you want it more fiercely.” She smiled and briefly patted his arm. “You must both come and visit us, often.”

“If that is your wish, and if Ella agrees.” He hesitated. “You no longer require my presence here in Otherworld?”

“I think you deserve a better life, don’t you?”

Ella muttered something, and Vadim’s gaze shot back to her. “Mother, look. ”

As he watched, her face started to dissolve, the black hair and pale skin receding to reveal her usual fair hair and disgruntled features.

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Adam is dead. Perhaps his powers died with him.”

“I bloody hope so, after all that effort.” Ella mumbled.

“Soul Sucker.” Vadim took her in his arms and sat her in his lap. She leaned against his chest as if she belonged there. “You are alive.”

“Of course I am. I told you that you needed me, didn’t I?”

He drew her even closer against him. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“What, killed that monster?”

“You didn’t even know if he could die.”

“I was pretty sure that if the knife would work on you, it would work on anyone.”

“But it was my responsibility, not yours.”

“You aren’t just Death Bringer anymore, remember?” She put her hand on his cheek. “Don’t you think you’ve suffered enough?”

He swallowed hard as she held his gaze. Had anyone ever done that for him before? Taken on his burden? Killed for him? He didn’t think so.

He slowly exhaled. “I do not have the words to thank you.”

“That’s okay. I have that problem a lot.” She kissed his mouth. “How about we call it even?”

He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her neck and breathed in the strangely reassuring scents of Pop-Tarts and bubblegum.

“What’s going to happen now?”

She was already wriggling to get free and move on. With a sigh he released her.

“My mother is still insisting that my father hang for his part in this matter. So far, she hasn’t asked me to administer the final blow, but I’m sure it’s coming.”

“Can we leave?”

“Soon, hopefully. There are a few things I need to take care of here.” He hesitated. “Although obviously, you can leave whenever you want.”

She rubbed her left shoulder and looked away from him. “I’m okay to tag along with you for a while. This is still an open SBLE investigation, you know.”

He let her scramble out of his lap and went to stand himself.

“Hey, what about your arm? You’re bleeding.”

In his concern for her he’d totally forgotten about the wounds he’d suffered during the fight. “I’m fine. I should be able to fix it myself, now all the sect members are dead.”

“I could do it for you.”

“It’s okay, I think I can handle it.”

“You’re just worried I’ll blow your arm off.”

“Having seen the way you use my power, it had crossed my mind.” He let his palm hover over the wound and said the necessary words. Once the head of the arrow came free, the pain quickly eased. He wished it were that easy to control the pain in his heart.

“Your magic is extremely hard to manage. I completely blew up a troll the first time I used it.”

“That was probably quite messy.” He glanced over to where the arena had been and saw that someone had already tidied everything away. The room looked perfect and far removed from the violence that had erupted earlier and taken four lives…

“What’s wrong?”

“I was wondering where they’d put the bodies.”

“Let’s go and find out.”

She headed for the huge doors, and he followed her as meekly as a lamb.

* * *

Ella tried not to look up as Vadim walked alongside her, but he was being rather too quiet for her liking. Had she really offended him by stepping up and slaying Adam instead of letting him do it?

“Are you still mad at me for killing Adam?”

“No.”

He kept walking. It bugged her that she had to take the occasional skip to keep up.

“That’s it?”

“You did what was necessary, and for that you have my gratitude.”

“Oh. That’s okay, then.”

Maybe her emotional attachment to him had misled her into thinking he was more vulnerable than he truly was.

He might only want to see the bodies to make sure his brother really was dead this time.

She paused at the door to the trophy room, which stood open, the guards dismissed.

Hopefully there were no black dragons lurking around either.

“Can we go and look in here?”

“Of course.”

He waited for her to walk past him into the vast room.

“I thought most of this stuff would’ve disappeared with the death of the sect.”

Vadim turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “I suspect there are still other members. We just don’t know about them yet.”

“Good point.” She carried on through the room, heading for the back wall.

“What are you looking for?”

“My face.” She sighed. “I’m going to kind of miss it, and then there’s all that hassle of getting a new driver’s license, passport…”

“Ella—”

“Hey!” She spotted Brad Dailey’s face. “It worked!” She looked over her shoulder at Vadim. “Was Ciaran a blond version of you?”

“Yes.”

“I hoped so.” She whistled. “It was a bit of a risk, but I’m so glad I went for it.”

“For what?”

There was a hint of impatience back in his voice, which made her feel much happier. She moved out of the way so that he could see the three faces on the gold plinths.

“Adam’s replaced you.” Vadim said slowly. “Did you expect that to happen?”

“Well, I thought it might work. The only thing is, what happened to my face? I hope I didn’t end up on your brother. We definitely do need to check out those bodies.”

He caught her hand. “You chose to kill him because you hoped you’d exchange faces?”

“Yeah, I guessed there needed to be a group of three to spring the spell, and as the Fae Royal thing wasn’t going to happen and Brad and Ms. Phelps were already dead, I reckoned Adam needed one more victim.

I still didn’t get my face back, but it did stop him adding me to his list of trophies.

” She shrugged. “I bet he didn’t think he’d be the one doing the dying this time. ”

“Why didn’t you share this theory with me?”

He was towering over her now, his beautiful blue eyes narrowed.

“I wasn’t quite sure which configuration was going to work. Originally I thought he wanted you, Nia and your father, but when that all changed, I substituted my own plan.”

“And didn’t tell me.”

Each word was spaced out and radiated fury. She gazed up at him and tried a smile. “You were rather stressed at the time. I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Stressed… And when, exactly did you come up with this idea that Adam was attempting to complete a hat trick of Fae royalty?”

“Dude, I told you that ages ago. When we were in that protected glen. When Adam had me up in the air back there, my theories kind of coalesced.”

“You mentioned only that you believed Adam wished to rule Otherworld.”

“Well, how was he going to achieve that unless he got rid of you and your father, who are both more powerful than he was?” She rolled her eyes. “Men are so dumb sometimes.”

His hand shot out and he pinned her to the wall. “So you were not trying to save me from having to kill Adam. You were merely carrying out your half-baked theory to get your face back? ”

His tone was withering. She smiled into his storm-filled eyes. “Oh, no, I was trying to save you all right. The theory part was just a bonus.”

She held her breath, but instead of kissing her, he dropped his hand and turned away from her. She frowned at his broad back. Why wouldn’t he kiss her?

“We should go and check out the bodies.”

She pushed away from the wall. “Sure.”

He didn’t say a word as they walked down the endless hallways; his mind was closed to her as well, which was starting to tick her off. In the main hall, she spied Rossa in conversation with one of the gatekeepers.

“Hey!” She waved at him and he strolled over.

“You’re both alive! You look great now, Ella.” He grinned at the unsmiling Vadim. “It’s awesome that you beat all those guys. I knew you could do it.”

“What are you doing here?” Vadim’s question was distinctly uninviting.

“Your mother called me in to keep an eye on the place while everything’s up in the air.”

“She called you?”