Page 4 of Royal Ransom (Princess Procedural #4)

Maverick

I woke up in a hotel bathroom, naked, with my discarded clothes covered in blood.

The day had only gotten worse from there.

When I came to a stop outside the coven house, I must have looked too pathetic to yell at; Tally stayed silent as she climbed into the passenger seat of my car. I’d braced myself for a lecture. The profound silence that engulfed us both hurt a hell of a lot more than if she’d shouted obscenities at me. I deserved that. Morgana had forced a deadly curse past my wards—one that could have killed Tally and her entire family. I’d failed her. From her perspective, I’d also bolted right after sex. I expected shouting. My mother was good at that. So was Tally, when she got going. But she just sat still and said nothing.

“Talk to me, please,” I said.

My voice came out small and raspy from disuse. I wasn’t sure I’d spoken aloud in the past seven days. Or maybe the burn in my throat had a more sinister cause. I couldn’t remember what I’d done to put it there—or rather, what Knox had done. Though I’d been active, I hadn’t been the guiding consciousness in my body for a week. I’d only granted him access for two days. What had he done with the other five? Had I bargained them away, or had he stolen them? I didn’t know, and that scared the hell out of me.

The temperature in the car dropped noticeably in response. Frost fractals didn’t actually spread across the windshield, but it was close. Rime coated the tips of Tally’s fingers until she could resist the urge to plunge us into a deep freeze. The ice left little wet spots on her slacks when she regained control and let it drift through her fingers. She was angry with me—as she should be.

“What the hell do you want me to say, Mav?”

The soft, sad lilt of her voice almost broke me. I wanted her to seethe at me. The disappointment made my bones ache. I would do almost anything, be almost anything, to wipe the expression off her face.

“Something. Anything.”

“Fine.” She turned to look at me. “Where the fuck have you been for the last week?”

There was more heat in her question. I winced. Of course, she’d asked the one question I didn’t have an answer to.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

I turned in my seat, pinning her with a look. She dodged it nimbly, reaching for the coffee that Astrid had pushed on her before she left the house. I could have kissed my little sister for that consideration. Tally looked exhausted. Even her immortal faerie form showed the strain, with dark hollows forming under her eyes from the sleepless nights she’d spent wondering where I’d gone.

“I mean, I literally don’t know. I wasn’t exactly in the room, so to speak. I think I was possessed.”

Even admitting the words aloud made me want to shrink into my seat. Under duress, I’d made a Faustian bargain, but that didn’t change the fact. I felt sore, as though the inroad Knox had carved in me was more physical than magical. I wanted to etch wards into the back of my skull with a rusty drill bit to keep him out of me. I wasn’t sure what he’d done with my body for a week, and I never wanted to find out. It would give me more nightmares than I knew how to deal with. The ones already in my head didn’t need company.

Taliyah absorbed that for a beat, sipping her coffee. The silence dragged my sanity over a bed of nails. Finally, she said, “I thought that was impossible. Lydia says that witches aren’t possessible. At least, not like that. I know Wanda was influenced by Dev, but she was at least semi-conscious. You have natural immunity to some of what they can do through your magic.”

What demons could do, perhaps, but not what Knox was capable of. I had no memory of the time I’d been gone. I could only gather it had been bad from the context clues: blood embedded so deep under my nails that even picking until I bled couldn’t get it out, a stain in the back of my car, the exhaustion that came with a really intensive spell. I’d done something unforgivable. I just wasn’t sure what that something was.

“You knew about this Knox guy,” she said, her voice tight as she struggled to rein in the blizzard howling inside her head. “And you didn’t tell me. What kind of boneheaded delusion were you under that this was best kept under wraps?”

“Tally—”

“Don’t deny it!” she raged, twisting so hard that she strained the seatbelt. She hadn’t quite lunged at me, but it was close. Suddenly, she was nose-to-nose with me, close enough to mingle our breath. It was distracting as hell. “You asked Astrid about a vampire god not long before you went missing. You knew about him and you didn’t tell me!”

I’d expected her to be angry, but the direction of that anger was frankly baffling. “I don’t know jack, Tally. I didn’t know he existed until I almost blew my top at the station. I had some kind of fever dream and then we had...”

She lashed herself to my floundering boat and anchored me solidly in reality again. In the storm my life had become, she was a pillar of cold, calm strength. She cared enough about me to accept a little pain to keep me alive and myself. It was the same promise I’d made her when we got married.

Color rose in her cheeks, and she hid a sheepish smile behind the lid of the to-go cup. Something in my chest relaxed at the sight. She couldn’t be too angry if she was blushing at the thought of what we’d done together.

Tally cleared her throat. “What do you remember? Astrid said you helped her escape Morgana. What happened after that? Where did you go?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “I can’t tell you, Tally. I messed up. I made a deal with him—with Knox. If I hadn’t...”

She’d be gone. Her kids would have died too. Did I bring that up as justification for what I’d done? Would it matter? I was sure I’d killed someone. The question was, who and why?

“Terms,” Tally said in a clipped, businesslike tone.

“What?”

“Give me the terms of the deal, Mav. I can’t bail your ass out unless I know what went down. Tell me what happened after we, uh...”

The pink dusting of her cheeks deepened to a lovely shade of rose. She batted my hand away when I tried to stroke a finger along one sweeping cheekbone.

“Don’t distract me,” she muttered. “And I’m still pissed as hell at you! You have no idea what kind of shitshow I’ve been dealing with since you’ve been gone. Abraham and Aurea are both in the slammer, which puts Blood Rose’s future in Astrid’s hands.”

“Astrid?” I echoed. “You have to be joking.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, I wish I was joking. But Astrid was the closest royal from a faerie court. In the event both heads of school were killed or incapacitated, the responsibility fell to the nearest royal who could mediate. That’s Astrid.”

“Why couldn’t Dickhead Reynard do it?” I protested. “She’s just a kid. He’s supposed to be teaching her. This seems like a good way to start prepping her for the role.”

I still didn’t like the idea of my sister putting herself directly in the crosshairs of so many would-be usurpers, but she was determined. I couldn’t argue with her motives. She wanted to help Tally’s loyalists, which meant Autumn needed an heir. If not Reynard’s, then Fennec’s.

Normally, the nickname would have made Tally’s lips curl into a chilly little smile. She and I were of similar minds when it came to her ex-fiancé, Fox. He was a pompous, presumptuous bastard, and she was better off not being his promised bride. But the careful blankness she tried to present was more alarming than if she’d sworn at me.

“That’s the problem,” she said quietly. “He can’t.”

“What do you mean, he can’t?”

“Misty Hollow—where he was living?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it’s come alive and I guess the best way to describe it is that… it attacked its citizens. They had to flee through a portal into winter. Some of them survived and made it here, thanks to Fox, but...”

A leaden weight sank into my stomach. Oh, Goddess. It was here. The day I’d been dreading was here. Duty was going to outweigh the happy life Tally had forged in the Hollow. If Fox was dead or captured, it meant we were all in trouble.

“What happened?” I asked.

She told me.

***

The talk took over an hour, and by the end of it, I wanted to throttle Fox. I’d always known he would be a problem; I just never anticipated it playing out this way. He was supposed to be the expert who swaggered in and out of the Hollow, barking orders, then disappearing in a puff of leaves when the trouble was over. Poppy certainly seemed to regard him as some kind of storybook hero. But the idiot had decided to take a shortcut through winter?

Yes, I knew it wasn’t that simple, and no, I didn’t care. The lives of our newest guests felt abstract. I didn’t know them, and I didn’t care about them. I would save them if I could, but not at the cost of Tally’s life. Did that make me a selfish bastard? Yeah, probably. I didn’t care. Tally mattered more. Now, Dickhead Reynard had pulled his biggest dick move yet. He’d saddled her with the responsibility of rescuing him. She was going to try, at least. I could see the decision already firm in the line of her jaw. She would shout me down if I told her to stay in the Hollow, where it was safe. No, I couldn’t stop her.

That meant I had to accompany her to save my arrogant asshole of an uncle. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d argue for a more conservative approach: make them come to us, fortify Haven Hollow against all comers. They couldn’t keep us under siege forever. Tally would want to do something more direct. It was the cop in her. She wanted the simple solution—punch it, shoot it, or cuff it. But this problem required more finesse and patience than she had at this point.

As I walked down Main Street, I ran through possible safe houses and routes I’d need to secure before the following night. The winds were harsher tonight than they’d been in weeks, raking my hair from the short tail I’d tied it into. The crazy vampire who’d blooded me had chopped my braid off at shoulder length, leaving me with a ragged haircut. I’d cut it even shorter during the rescue attempt at Rupert’s mansion. I was finally getting back to a length I felt comfortable with, but it would take years to grow it back to where I preferred unless I availed myself of Imani’s services. I wasn’t sure if I was up for the ribbing she’d dish out when I was trapped in her chair.

I eyed the gray storm clouds pressing down on Haven Hollow. There was magic charging the air tonight, not all of it the neutral background hum of the Hollow’s protective enchantments. It looked like a blizzard might slam our town again, though that could have been Tally’s own stress leaking into the air around us. She certainly had enough to worry about. No one would blame her if an unseasonable storm hit. But somehow, I didn’t think this was her doing.

Roy Osbourne was waiting on the front stoop of the Half-Moon Bar and Grill, squinting into the dark, tracking me as I approached. His eyes were neutral, which I considered a compliment. There was a time in his history when he would have regarded me with contempt. I didn’t think we’d ever be bosom pals, but I trusted him to back me in a fight. Sometimes that was the only compliment you had to offer a fellow warrior.

The man could have been a stunt double in a Bane movie on short notice. He was so oversized it was hard not to find him at least a little intimidating. He outweighed me by several hundred pounds of pure muscle, could break the speed limit on foot in a school zone, and tear trees clean from the ground. His human form reminded me of a lumberjack—hairy and far too fond of flannel.

“There’s a storm coming,” he said, never taking his eyes off the horizon.

“Tally?” I checked. “She’s under a lot of stress right now with the refugee situation.”

Refugees. That was a word I’d never thought would be relevant in the sleepy little town of Haven Hollow. It was technically in the fine print of every Hollow charter that we had to lend aid to monsters in crisis and protect them to the best of our abilities. It was an emergency measure I’d never thought we’d have to uphold. Now there were dozens of new monsters on our turf, and we knew next to nothing about their backgrounds. It was probably one of Tally’s greatest nightmares. She wouldn’t relax until she’d cataloged every single one of them for future reference.

Roy shook his head. “I’ve gotten used to those. It’s hard to explain, but I can feel a difference. It’s winter magic, but not Tally’s. I think they’re close.”

My stomach felt like a lump of solid ice. The last few battles had been closer than I liked. Now, with so many new people in the mix, the probability of casualties increased, both mundane and monstrous. The question was, how willing was Janara to expose us all to the public? If her pattern held, it would be a guerrilla attack. There were equal odds of that succeeding. I hated equal odds. We needed an edge.

“You just have to ask, dear boy,” Knox supplied easily, responding to my thoughts as if I’d shouted them aloud. “There are spells I can teach you that Janara would not survive.”

Yeah, and I’d pay for them with bits of my soul. I had to wonder if that was his game—to tempt me into frittering away what remained of my life. He wanted to pour his essence into my living body. The more I leaned on him, the more I stood to lose.

“How many people would have to die?” I thought back sourly. “And on that note, I know you killed someone. Who? And why?”

I hadn’t wanted the answers, but the questions came anyway. I felt like I’d burst if I didn’t voice them. Someone’s blood was under my nails. Whose? Was it Aunt Celestine’s? He’d threatened her life not too long ago. Someone else’s?

“Calm down. You won’t go down in the annals of history as a serial murderer. I needed raw materials, and I knew you’d find the harvesting process distasteful. I selected someone you would approve of. No one will miss the incubus. And to answer your other burning question, I overstayed my welcome to address the difficult family problems you’ve been having. Believe me, you’ll thank me once the end product arrives on Wanda’s doorstep.”

Jonathan. He’d killed Tally’s two-timing incubus ex. Or he’d killed Angelo—the only other Incubus.

“I don’t bloody well know who the hell Angelo is,” Knox responded.

Okay, Jonathan it was. I... wasn’t sure how I felt about that. On one hand, I’d promised to kill him after learning what he’d done to my wife. On the other... I couldn’t imagine Knox’s ‘harvest’ was anything less than brutal. I wanted Jonathan gone, but did I want to torture him? Maybe a little, in my more wrathful moments. But I’d left that part of my life behind when I joined Scapegrace. I had to be better than that. Tally wouldn’t accept anything less.

“What did you do?”

Knox’s chuckle rolled through my head, making my scalp itch. “Now that would ruin the surprise. I want to see your reaction when you realize what I’ve given you. I’m spoiling you rotten, dear boy. I made Morgana beg me for some of the more obscure spells.”

I just bet he had. He seemed to take perverse pleasure in backing his victims into corners. Morgana had been blooded against her will and held captive. She’d have done anything if she thought it would get her out. She’d leap at something far less extreme from a physical perspective. I understood her motives. I still couldn’t forgive her for what she’d done, though.

I dropped the conversation with Knox. I wasn’t desperate enough to deal with the devil on my shoulder. That might change if Janara’s people attacked us, but I had enough confidence in my abilities to resist the temptation for a few more hours, at least.

“Do we have anyone scouting the edge of town?” I asked.

Roy nodded. “Louisa and her husband are covering the highways. Stanley and Shelby are covering the wooded areas near Poppy’s. A few others volunteered to monitor any other routes in or out. Everyone has a walkie-talkie. We’ll have at least ten minutes to prepare if they send troops our way.”

Troops. Goddess. Janara was willing to unleash her entire army on Tally. She hated her that much. It made being away from Taliyah that much harder. I understood why she’d asked for some space. Darla and Cain had taken the boys to Poppy’s, putting them to bed on a communal mattress where they could talk or game with Finn. It was one of Tally’s strategies to keep the boys calm when things were going off the rails. She’d wait up for Darla before attending the council meeting with me. We’d discuss my idiotic deal and its ramifications for my life later, when things had blown over.

If they blew over. That seemed less likely with every passing hour. The winds were changing in every sense. The storm was coming, and it wouldn’t leave my life unscathed. Cold reality would seep in somehow.

Roy made a vague gesture behind him. “Get inside. Their representatives are getting antsy. Go rescue them from Angelo, I beg you. I’m sure they’re ready to slap him for the outrageous remarks he’s making.”

I didn’t want to break things up. In my current mood, I was just as likely to punch Angelo as to steer him clear of our guests. My anger and worry were seeking a target, and I thought he’d do nicely.

“I’ll do my best,” I said dryly, stepping past the sasquatch and into the bar and grill beyond.