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twenty-eight

They put us on a horse. They didn’t let us sit, but put us over the saddle on our stomachs, and Rune was big, so his arm and half his torso was basically over mine. His face was right there next to mine, too.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whispered as soon as the horse started walking, and the others were talking among one another, joking, playing, but I didn’t even hear them. All I cared about was Rune.

“It’s okay,” he told me, his eyes around us, trying to see our surroundings better. I didn’t even bother.

“No, it’s not okay. This is my fault. My mess. Listen to me, Rune—you need to run, okay? You need to save yourself. Break the chains with your magic and then run. They won’t come after you.” At least I hoped so with all my being.

Rune then let his head fall to the side of the black horse and looked at me. “Stop talking.”

“Just listen to me—you can get away. You don’t need to?—”

“I am not going anywhere without you,” he cut me off. “Now, stop talking.”

Except if he knew what it was like in my head, he wouldn’t have asked for such an impossible thing.

“I can push you. You can jump off the horse and break free.”

“Stop t ? —”

“This is my mess, damn it! I am not going to watch you go down with me!”

I’d done that my whole life. I’d seen the people I cared about getting fucked over because of me again and again. I wasn’t going to let him do this to himself, too.

“Nobody is going down here, Wildcat,’” Rune said, then looked at my cheeks. “Have you cried?”

“I-I- No, ” I stuttered, suddenly self-conscious about what my face must have looked like.

Fuck—I’d put on mascara at Miriam’s. My eyes probably looked like a raccoon’s.

“We’re going to be okay. We’re in the Enclave right now, but we’re by the edge. Blackwater isn’t far,” he told me and leaned closer, those unblinking eyes on me. “I will not see another tear in your eyes because of this.”

Goddamn, man…

“I wasn’t crying,” I muttered.

He acted like he didn’t even hear me. “We’re going to be okay.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know yet, but we will figure it out.” And he leaned his head to the other side to look at whatever he was looking at.

“Can’t you just use your magic?”

“Not against these. These chains are made by fae, what we call Ice magic. I can’t break them,” Rune said.

“Why not? You broke Miriam’s trap.”

“That was sorcery—this isn’t,” he said.

“What did that guy mean when he said seal , though?”

Rune fell in place again, his face so close to mine. “It’s a seal on my magic. Most of it—not all.”

“But why ?” And how in the world did that even work?

“Because I was banished, Wildcat,” he told me.

Fuck, I was really starting to hate that word— banished. It made him sound like a bad guy when he wasn’t. He might have looked the part, but he wasn’t bad. I believed that with all my heart.

“I’m sorry, Rune. I thought…I was just trying to help.”

“Don’t apologize,” he told me without batting an eye. “What did you do to him? To the imp?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “He was cursing this little guy—a gnome, I think. He was being really mean, telling him he wanted to skin him alive and stuff. And the little guy looked so afraid, so I went and talked to him. Told him he didn’t need to be rude.” Now that I thought about it, I wanted to slap myself in the face. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have. I should have kept my mouth shut. I didn’t know he was an imp, and I didn’t know that imps could do this !”

“Imps are worse than children. They hold grudges for centuries, and some of them have the power to transport objects or subjects to wherever they can see,” he explained.

I sighed. “I thought he was running away from me when he climbed that tree.” Meanwhile, he’d just gone to see the farthest place he could see so he could fucking transport me there. Ugh.

“It’s fine. We’ll be okay, but you have to do everything I say from now on, Wildcat.”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation—and I meant it. For once in my life, I was going to shut the hell up and do exactly as I was told.

“Yes?” Rune said, suspicious. Surprised.

“Yes. Just say the word and I’ll do it.”

He really didn’t look like he believed me. “For now, just let me do the talking. Don’t say anything to anyone no matter what they ask you—or how.”

“Got it.”

The next moment, the horse stopped walking.

* * *

A party. They took us to a party.

Music in the air, a kind that sounded an awful lot like country, but different, too. We were both grabbed and put on our feet at the same time, and the entire world tilted in front of my eyes before my surroundings began to make any sense.

The horse that had brought us here was bigger than any I had seen so far, black, and with a mane that touched his front hooves as he moved. One of the incubi took him away, while the others, led by the tattooed guy with the leather vest on, led us forward—toward the lights and the music.

Warm lights, not the kind we’d seen everywhere so far. Not fae magic trapped in glass balls, but actual flames dancing in lanterns. They looked almost exactly like gas lamps except they were bigger, and they were spread out everywhere around the front of a two-story building made out of grey bricks.

“What the hell…” I whispered to myself, not entirely sure what I was even looking at yet. Rune walked beside me, analyzing the building, the darkness at the sides. This place could be the only thing awake and alive in at least a mile radius. There were more buildings behind us, and we couldn’t see the trees that marked Cloakwood from here though they hadn’t brought us far, but everything except this place was dark. Silent.

Suddenly I found myself surrounded by possibly fifty succubi and incubi, and the air that went through my nostrils smelled of sex.

My knees grew weak. I remembered exactly what I’d felt when I first saw an incubus—the cowboy smoking his cigar in the Neutral Lands. I remembered the woman, too, and how easily I’d lost control of myself, had succumbed to lust afterward.

And, no, I couldn’t even be sure if all this weakness in my limbs was coming from arousal, or if it was just fear, and my emotional compass was completely broken. All I knew was that we were walking ahead right into the party, and the people all turned to look at us.

They had these long cocktail tables full of empty glasses and bottles on them spread about the open area. They had a band that was playing music—no, not a band. It was one man playing an instrument that looked like all instruments combined into one. The guy moved his hands so fast I literally couldn’t see them. He had buttons and piano keys and all kinds of strings, as well as a place to blow from near his mouth—but that wasn’t even the strangest thing here.

The first floor of the building had no wall on this side, and the party turned to a goddamn orgy inside. There were tables and beds, mirrors on the golden walls and those lanterns were everywhere, big and small, illuminating everything they touched so that I could see in perfect detail how many people were having sex out here in the open.

They weren’t all incubi. Fae with pointy ears, fomorians with glowing eyes, vampires, and even a Twinborn on the other side of the wide room.

Everything was golden—the metal that held up the tables, the legs of the leather couches and recliners, the chandeliers in the ceiling that held these tiny candles that didn’t make much light but looked incredibly beautiful anyway.

My God, it really smelled like sex here—sex and smoke and leather. I tried not to breathe in through my nose because I had the feeling the smell was going to intensify my arousal, too, not just whatever magic hung in the air here.

“Try to keep your eyes ahead,” Rune whispered at some point, but his words fell on deaf ears.

Or ears that were already full of voices and laughter and moans of pleasure. Because the deeper into the room we went, the more aware of everything I was, and it was impossible not to look.

Men and women sprawled over couches—the same couches where others were just sitting and drinking, talking like they couldn’t see what was happening right in front of their faces. Naked men and women, all of them being pleased by succubi and incubi.

One woman with glowing eyes was sitting on the back of a leather couch, head back and mouth wide open as she moaned. Because kneeling on the couch and with his face on her pussy was a sexy-as-hell incubus taking his time with her in front of everyone.

And then there were two fae men, both with blond hair and golden eyes, golden complexions like they’d taken the bronze and highlight game to the next level, were being pleased by two succubi with long black hair that covered their bodies like blankets, icy blue eyes, and bite marks all over their big, naked breasts while they rode them slowly.

There were more—two vampire men with extended fangs sat on the sides of a succubus with bright red hair, who was jerking them off at the same speed while she smiled and spoke to them. Too far and too loud to hear what she was saying, but I could have sworn she was praising them.

Her arms were full of blood, her skin marked with puncture wounds.

Shivers washed down my back.

“Wildcat,” Rune said, forcing my eyes off the incubus and her arms and those huge dicks she could barely wrap her fingers around as she jerked the men off— fuck!

“Look ahead. That must be Lorei. Focus on him.”

I looked ahead, thankful to have an object for my attention to focus on other than all the sex that was happening around me. My eyes landed on who had to be Lorei—an incubus with long ash-blond hair tied behind his head, green eyes and a smile that promised you a kind of death you would fucking enjoy.

He sat in a golden armchair with peach-colored velvet cushions, and he was turned all the way to his left, one leg over the other as he spoke to a couple who looked ordinary enough. Ordinary gorgeous people, both the man and the woman, but they weren’t his kind. Easy to tell because their pupils weren’t vertical.

They were looking at Lorei without much of an expression on their faces, and though their teeth were square right now, I was pretty sure they were vampires. Other than the incubi and fae, they were the only species so far who were beautiful—physically speaking. Fomorians and sorcerers and every other kind I’d seen in Verenthia had all looked ordinary.

For a magical realm, that is.

The three of them sat on a platform higher than everyone else in the room, with two vases as big as me full of black and red flowers, and a gold-framed mirror on the wall behind the man who was supposed to be Lorei. Two incubi stood on either side of the platform, looking ahead, as still as the peach-colored walls behind them. The long golden table in front of Lorei’s throne-like chair was set with all kinds of foods and desserts, grapes and watermelon slices and other things I had never seen before, but they did look kind of like fruits.

Then there were the glasses filled with red liquid, which I first thought might be blood, but the incibus was drinking the same thing, so maybe wine?

“Pardon me, Lorei,” the guy in the leather vest said when he stopped in front of the platform. I squeezed my fists tightly, took in a deep breath and held it as Lorei slowly turned his head toward us while holding up a finger at the couple he’d been talking to.

His eyes fell on Rune first, then me.

My knees shook more violently than before. I could feel the energy of him coming at me in waves, awakening every ounce of desire my body held, burning me with some kind of an invisible fire.

I bit my tongue hard to keep that moan inside me, then looked up at the mirror behind him. From down here I only saw the reflection of the chandeliers hanging on the ceiling, but it was enough. Anything worked as long as I didn’t have to look at him.

“What’s this, Rogue?” the man said, and his voice was sweet as fucking honey.

The guy in the vest stepped aside to show us to him. “Intruders. They were transported into our borders by an imp, they say.”

“ Oh .” Impossible not to look. “Is that so?” Lorei straightened in his chair and fixed his black pants, and his shimmery peach-colored shirt that matched his seat.

Fuck, he looked even more striking when he was curious.

“We found them behind the abandoned shops and brought them straight here,” the guy named Rogue said.

“In chains, I see,” Lorei said, looking down at our bodies. He couldn’t see the chains behind us, but I supposed it was a guess.

“They weren’t very cooperative,” said Rogue.

Then Lorei looked at Rune. “What is your name, Midnight?”

“I am Orian Belec,” Rune said without batting a lash.

“He’s got the traitor’s mark, and apparently it’s also a seal on his magic. He can’t break the chains,” Rogue so eagerly explained, but the man raised a finger toward him and his mouth clamped shut instantly.

Lorei’s green eyes were on Rune’s neck, and I had this overwhelming urge to step in front of him so that he kept his attention on me instead. Like I could handle him better than Rune could.

“You know, I don’t really mind a traitor’s mark—I have great relations with my fae friends from all Courts, and with all kinds of pasts,” Lorei said, and suddenly he seemed to have forgotten about the couple he was speaking to until now. All his attention—and his curiosity, was on Rune. “They are all welcome to my little slice of heaven in the Enclave—they are. But there are rules that I insist be followed.” Slowly, the corners of his lips turned up into a terrifying smile. “Do you, by any chance, know what those rules are, Orian Belec?”

Rune spoke as if he was in this very situation daily and he wasn’t afraid in the least. “Of course. Your reputation precedes you, Lorei. You require a formal announcement of arrival three days prior.”

Lorei smiled brighter. My heart all but soared out of me. I was throbbing between my legs, so aroused I was afraid I was going to start begging Rune to fuck me any second now—and I really couldn’t do that.

So, in an attempt to distract myself again, I looked around Lorei—because that heat, that desire for sex, was coming from him the most—and I found the woman sitting nearest him was looking at me.

Uptilted eyes, the wing of her eyeliner so sharp I thought it might be magic. Dark hair falling in thick waves to frame her heart-shaped face. Pale skin and juicy red lips— fuck, she was gorgeous. And in this aroused state I was in, I appreciated her beauty in a way I never had before Verenthia.

“Excellent!” A clap of hands and my eyes moved to Lorei again. “That is excellent, my friend. And if only you’d have stuck to the rules?—”

“We didn’t choose nor plan to be here with you tonight, Lorei,” Rune cut him off. “An imp transported us against our will.”

Ashy blond brows shot up to the middle of his forehead as he slowly leaned back in his chair and crossed a leg over the other. He wore golden hoop earrings on both ears, and I couldn’t even understand how they looked so good on him.

“Why would he do that?”

“Because I pissed him off.”

I looked at Rune. He hadn’t even met the imp— I had pissed him off.

And it was probably the arousal that the air and all these creatures here seemed to emit from their bodies, but I wanted to stick my tongue in his throat until he couldn’t breathe because of it.

God, I was in so much trouble…

“Not very hard to do,” Lorei said. “Which you should have known.”

“I didn’t think he’d be so dramatic,” Rune continued calmly.

“You didn’t think an imp would be dramatic?” Lorei laughed. Everyone else joined him, and for a moment there it felt like the entire room was laughing.

Rune was smiling, too. “Maybe I just wanted to see how dramatic he could be.”

I absolutely adored his confidence in this situation, but something told me that this guy wouldn’t.

“And now you’re here,” he said, his smile slowly fading.

“And in chains. Which seems a bit of overkill. I’m not going to hurt anyone. I couldn’t if I tried,” Rune continued.

“You’re absolutely right,” said Lorei, and he waved two fingers to nobody in particular, and then the incubi who were behind us were working on the chains wrapped around our wrists.

Holy shit, it had worked.

Hope fell on me like a warm, fuzzy blanket—until I looked up at Lorei and found his eyes on me.

“Is she your slave?” he asked.

Any other day I’d have flipped him the bird. But I’d ended up here because I’d picked a fight with someone I wasn’t prepared to fight against, so…

“Yes,” Rune said.

My heart shook my entire body when it tripped all over herself.

“You’ve got a good eye,” Lorei said. “For a face like that, I would be willing to spend a lot, too.”

Oh, God…

“You’re a businessman from what I heard, Lorei,” Rune said. “Can we come to an agreement before the night is over? I have somewhere I need to be.”

Lorei ignored him. “What is she?” he asked instead.

“Noxin,” said Rune—again, without the slightest hesitation.

And the incubus leaned forward again, rested his elbows on his knees, grabbed a grape and popped it in his mouth as he looked at me from under his lashes.

So, so hot in here…

“I don’t think I’ve ever fucked a noxin before—have I?” He then looked at Rogue, the tattooed guy standing to my side.

“I don’t think so, no,” he said.

“Hmm.” Lorei thought about it for a second. “Would she be able to tell if I’m honest if I said her pussy was sweet while I was between her legs?”

STOP!

Since my hands were now free—and I had hardly even noticed those chains were gone, I swear—I held onto the fabric of the cloak with all my strength, begging my body not to let go.

A few people laughed.

“Yes,” Rune said, so completely unaffected it could have been funny if I wasn’t imagining his face between my legs, telling me that my pussy was sweet.

My God, what had I done?! If I could go back in time and stay away from that imp, I would have. I’d have gone all the way into the forest even if there were wolves in there—anything at all not to end up here .

Then…

“Lorei.”

All eyes turned to the vampire sitting on Lorei’s left, who’d been silently watching together with his lady friend until now.

He was equally as beautiful as her, with big dark eyes that made him look both terrifying and alluring at the same time. He was big, shoulders wide, muscles perfectly visible through his tight navy shirt. And he was thankfully looking at Lorei. Right now, I really couldn’t handle being looked at by more hot guys.

“We are here for business,” he said, and my eyes closed for a moment—he sounded like sex, too.

“Of course, my friend. Please forgive me,” Lorei said, and suddenly he pretended to be mortified. “Rogue, please escort our guests for a drink while I wrap things up with Cer and Lilith, will you? Go now, go.”

And he waved us off, just like that.

I looked at Rune—was this a good thing or a bad thing? I couldn’t really tell from his expression, but then Rogue was in front of us, smiling, and he said, “Looks like you get a couple hours, after all.”

Like he knew exactly what Lorei was going to do to us, and it wasn’t anything good.

I swallowed hard and said nothing, only turned and followed together with Rune.