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FOUR

Thorn

“You went where ?” Omen said. His voice had become even flatter and colder than it’d been for most of the past two days, but I’d known him long enough to recognize the crackling undercurrent of heat that ran through it. To say that he and our mortal lady were not getting along would be putting it very mildly.

Sorsha set her hands on her hips. She was always rather striking to behold, now that I’d allowed myself to acknowledge it, but I enjoyed watching her most when circumstances brought out the ferocity in her temperament. Unfortunately, recently those “circumstances” had mostly been our commander.

“They’re the leaders of the local branch of the Shadowkind Defense Fund,” she said. “If anyone can give us a hand with our investigations, it’s them. We are dealing with mortal enemies, after all. Who better than mortals to figure out what they’re up to?”

Omen rolled his eyes skyward. It wasn’t the most awe-inspiring view, standing where we’d gathered in a laneway between a glossy office building and the slightly taller residential tower beside it. A rich but bitter scent wafted from the coffee shop on the office building’s ground floor. The clientele exited through the front, though, and the tower had no balconies below the tenth floor, leaving the laneway quiet.

Which meant Omen didn’t need to raise his voice even slightly for it to cut crisply through the silence. “It’s bad enough having any mortals entangled in our affairs. I’m not interested in shepherding a whole flock of them.”

“You don’t have to see them or talk to them,” Sorsha said. “I’m the go-between; I’ll handle everything. You never asked me not to try to bring them on board.”

His eyes narrowed. “I assumed you were sharp enough to realize that without my saying it. Apparently not.”

“We got some useful tips from Sorsha’s Fund friends before,” Ruse put in. “They led us to the hacker. Why not see what they come up with?”

“Yes,” Omen said with a sarcastic edge, “why not find out how quickly they can turn our efforts into a total clusterfuck?” He turned back to Sorsha. “You want to do things your way? I’m still not convinced even you can keep up with us. Do you think you’re up to another challenge, or will you run away again?”

“I didn’t run away .” Sorsha sighed. “Lay it on me, Luce. What death-defying stunt have you got for me now?”

Omen’s eyes narrowed at the nickname, and I restrained a wince. Of course the incubus with all his teasing would have brought that up—but our lady couldn’t know just how charged that reference to our commander’s long-ago exploits was for him. Omen had been quite a trickster himself when I’d first known him, but everything about his demeanor since he’d recruited me to his current cause showed how utterly he’d erased that past from his being. If he could have erased it from all memory as well, I expected he would have.

As he cast his gaze upward again, I braced myself. It seemed he had gotten something out of the view after all, because a moment later, he pointed toward the top of the residential tower. “There’s a flower pot with an orange blossom on the highest balcony, by the far corner. Do you see it?”

Sorsha peered upward. “Yep. What about it?”

“I’d like to see you steal that … without taking advantage of the building’s elevator or stairs. Without going into the building at all.”

My defensive instincts sprang to the forefront with an inner clang of alarm. Sorsha might be able to scale the outside of the building—once she reached the lower balconies, it wouldn’t require too much of a jump between them—but with each floor she climbed, she’d be tempting a fall. And by the time she made it to the twentieth or so floor, that fall would almost certainly be fatal.

Omen was smiling. It didn’t matter to him whether she lived or died. I was starting to think he’d prefer her dead.

It’d become clear that arguing with him about Sorsha’s worthiness wouldn’t convince him. From the determined clenching of Sorsha’s jaw, I knew she wouldn’t refuse the trial. I was hardly going to stand here and watch her throw caution—and perhaps herself—to the wind without a care, though.

The thought of what I was about to offer sent a constricting sensation through my chest, but I could handle it discreetly. I stepped forward. “I’d like to confer with the mortal one for a minute.”

Omen frowned at me, but I caught a flicker of curiosity in his eyes too. He knew I didn’t bestow my loyalty liberally.

“Talk her out of the attempt for her own good,” he said.

I ushered Sorsha farther down the laneway to where the others wouldn’t hear what I had to say.

“You’re not going to talk me out of it,” she said before I could begin my appeal.

I let out a dismissive grunt. “Do you think after everything I’ve seen of you, I’d be witless enough to even try to? You’ll retrieve that flower pot for Omen, m’lady. I’ll see that you do. You only have to send Ruse and Snap off on some errand first.”

Her brow furrowed. “Why? What are you talking about?”

“Omen wanted you to find a way to get to that balcony without entering the building. He didn’t put any other limitations on the task. I can be your way. It would only require a matter of seconds—I’ll fly quickly enough that no mortals catch more than a glimpse they’ll believe they imagined.”

Sorsha stared at me. “You’re offering to show your true shadowkind form and fly me up to the top of the building, just to get a flower pot?”

I had impressed on her rather emphatically that I didn’t want her revealing what she’d discovered about my nature to the others. The wingéd—what mortals tended to call “angels”—had a long-tarnished history, one I had no wish to open up to the incubus’s teasing jokes or the devourer’s unbridled curiosity. But I’d allowed my wings to come forth once before in the service of saving our lady’s life. This was no different.

“It’s more than retrieving a flower pot,” I said. “It’s proving to Omen that you belong with us. You’ve fought too hard by our sides for him to dismiss you now. If I can make the process easier—and less of a threat to your survival—then I won’t hesitate.”

The thought of the valor she’d shown throughout our time together outshone the irritation I’d once felt at her often flippant attitude. After everything we’d faced together, looking at her stirred a much deeper and more poignant emotion, one so unfamiliar I couldn’t put a name to it. I only knew it would be a near thing not attempting to sever Omen’s head from his body if she died because of his distrust.

That emotion gripped me even harder when Sorsha offered me her softest smile. A matching tenderness shone in her eyes. “I appreciate that, Thorn. I know you wouldn’t make an offer like that to most people. But I really can handle this myself—and it’ll prove much more to Omen if I do. Are you doubting my strength?”

She flexed her biceps and didn’t quite conceal a wince. I couldn’t hold back my protest. “You’re wounded .”

“But feeling better with every passing hour.” She patted her shoulder and then reached up to pat mine as well. Her touch brought back the quiver of sensation that had passed through me when she’d caressed my wings the other night, stirring a much more heated emotion I recognized perfectly well even if it hadn’t come to me often. Ah, yes, that was desire.

I allowed myself just a fragment of remembering what her lithe body had felt like against mine when I’d captured her mouth so briefly, of imagining what it might feel like if I claimed her completely—and then I yanked myself back to the present.

“I was listening closely to Omen’s requirements too,” Sorsha continued. “I’ve got this. And on the off-chance I’m wrong, I trust that you’ll catch me.”

She bobbed up to give me a quick peck on the lips that sent an unreasonably hot flush through the rest of my body and sauntered back to rejoin the others.

“Just to be clear,” she said to Omen, adjusting the straps of her backpack, “the only rule is that I can’t go inside this building, right?”

He gave her a narrow look. “And you bring me the pot and flower unbroken. Those are the terms.”

“Perfect. I accept. Now excuse me. I won’t go in this building, but I am going into that one.”

A delighted laugh escaped Snap as our lady sashayed over to the office building next door. Omen’s expression turned murderous for an instant before he steadied himself with that nearly impenetrable cool calm he’d held in front of him like a shield since we’d first spoken to him after his escape.

“It still won’t be easy for her,” he said.

Ruse leaned back against the wall and tilted his head up to watch the balconies. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“This wasn’t my idea,” I told our commander. “I didn’t know that’s what she’d planned. She rejected my suggestion entirely.” He didn’t need to know exactly what that suggestion had been.

Omen eyed me, but he knew I wouldn’t outright lie to him. He let out a huff. “Let’s see what she thinks she can get away with like this, then.”

Snap headed down the laneway where he could get a slightly closer look at the flower pot in question, and Ruse trailed after him. I glanced at Omen and judged it safe enough to say, keeping my voice low, “I can tell you that she’s as honorable as she is determined. She—It came about that she witnessed my full form. I asked her not to speak of it with the other two, and she’s kept her word.”

Omen betrayed a hint of surprise at that. He gestured up and down toward my body. “She’s seen you—wings and smoldering eyes and all?”

“Yes,” I said. And she’d appeared to like what she saw, where most mortals might have screamed. A flicker of the heat she’d provoked raced through me again.

“Hmm.” Omen went back to watching the upper reaches of the buildings, but I thought with a little less rancor.

It didn’t take terribly long for Sorsha to emerge. She appeared at the edge of the opposite rooftop, a gleam of sunlight in the red hair she’d pulled into a tight ponytail. After giving us a jaunty wave, she swung a grappling hook she must have been carrying in that pack of hers across the distance.

It caught on the requested balcony with a clatter. She paused, but no one emerged from the residence. Grasping the rope, she leapt off the roof.

My breath started to hitch, but before I even had to recover it, she’d already planted her feet on the railing of the balcony below. She climbed the rope in a swift scramble, pausing just briefly with a suppressed wince only my battle-trained eyes might have picked up on, tucked the flower pot under her arm, and tossed the hook back toward the roof she’d descended from.

Less than five minutes later, Sorsha pranced out of the office building and held out the flower to Omen. “As you ordered. Now are we done with these stupid games or what?”

Omen glared at her. “For the time being,” he said, as if he wasn’t quite finished with her, and I knew it was too early to be truly relieved. When Omen put his mind to something, he was as unshakeable as—well, as a hound.