Page 207 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Griffin perks up, his gaze traveling across the grounds before coming back to us. He slips his fingers around my still-damp braid and squeezes a few drops of water from it, pointing it out emphatically to the other guys.

My heart lifts. Yes, if we were in the pool, the water would protect us from the flames. Other than we’d still need to breathe. Our heads could end up scalded by the wafting heat.

Dominic’s expression has gone even more solemn. He takes the paper again, flipping it over for more room.

What if I borrowed Jake’s power? If I drew strength from the plants nearby, I could make an even more effective shield and hold it for a long time.

And with my healing energy working in combination, I could keep burns at bay even if too much heat seeps through.

If we were mostly protected by the pool, I think I could handle it.

He motions toward the nearby garden. There’s plenty of vegetation he could siphon energy from around the pool.

Jacob’s mouth tightens, but he dips his head in acceptance. It makes more sense for him to pass one of his powers to Dominic than for Dominic to give up both of his.

Andreas takes the paper again. Griffin and I can confuse Balthazar’s people. Maybe Griffin could make him panic, keep him focused on his own life rather than doing anything to us, so he doesn’t have a chance to suspect that the attack is meant to help us?

Griffin smiles, and my own lips curl hesitantly. The fire will provide plenty of chaos, and the two of them can add even more.

I can contribute to keeping everyone’s attention off us too. In the confusion Rollick’s fire causes, I could use my mental scream to take down Balthazar’s people as need be without it being obvious that I caught them rather than the flames. That’d give us an additional layer of protection.

From the outside, it’d look like we ran to the pool to save our lives, a totally natural instinct and not at all mutinous. If anything goes even more wrong than we’re anticipating, we can hope that a swift exchange of powers could tip the odds in our favor.

And when the place is ashes and Balthazar hopefully charbroiled too, there’ll be no one and no equipment left to set off the worst effects of the manacles. We’ll have time to figure out whether the knock-out boundary is still in effect and how to destroy that too.

I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I do our current captor, but somehow the thought of him being gone sends a twinge of loss through me too. Balthazar might not be my family in any way that matters, but he is a connection to a part of me I didn’t know.

I don’t want anything to do with him , but I’d have liked to know more about the woman who’s technically my mother. What I might have gotten from her.

She didn’t look horrifying in the photos I saw of her. The love she had for her son was obvious.

Maybe even Balthazar wasn’t so horrifying until he lost them.

But if I have to pick between understanding my history better and saving myself and the guys I love, it isn’t even a question. The way he’s treated us is forcing me to destroy him, even the bits of his existence I might have wanted him to share.

I fish the stone Rollick left for us out of my pocket, where I’ve been carrying it with me ever since. The guys go still with anticipation, other than Griffin taking the paper.

We’ll need them to give some kind of warning that the fire is coming, so we have time to get to the pool.

And I need to convey our entire message to the stone in my hands without Balthazar realizing what we’re really talking about.

I inhale slowly. I can’t talk to Rollick about the future openly, so all that’s left is the past. The pieces of our history he was a part of.

Andreas motions to catch my attention. He meets my gaze and sends a memory flitting through my head.

The underground parking garage—the guardians attacking, the shadowkind tearing through them after my plea for help.

It isn’t a happy memory. That was the first time we saw the full violence the shadowkind are capable of, and one of the younger shadowbloods got caught up in it.

We don’t have to worry about that part this time, though. There’s no one left here that we’d want to protect except ourselves.

I cup the stone between my hands and tap it with my thumb. Then I start talking as if I’m simply having a conversation with the guys.

“You remember that time we got ambushed in the parking garage? I was just thinking it was a good thing the light fixture fell when it did, so we knew to get out of the way before the attack really got started.”

Zian’s lips twitch with a hesitant smile as he plays along. “The guardians might have hurt us pretty bad if we hadn’t had the chance to get to shelter, for sure.”

“I was all worried about who else might get hurt,” I go on, aiming for a casual tone. “But I guess sometimes you’ve got to fight fire with fire. Now I’d say, ‘Just take them all out, whatever you have to do. We’ll look after ourselves.’”

Griffin leans closer to me so his voice can reach the stone too. “Priorities shift, huh? Like the shadowkind man Balthazar has working for him—hard to figure that. And who’d have thought Balthazar would build this place with a secret route for the ‘monsters’ to get up here.”

“He’s an interesting guy,” Andreas says dryly.

I scan the others to confirm no one else has anything they feel we need to pass on to Rollick. Then I tap the stone again, hoping whatever magic it contains was able to catch everything we said.

We all get up. Dominic brushes Zian’s arm and points to the paper he left on a patio stone.

As Zian crouches down to burn it into cinders with his searing sight, I amble over to the wall. There’s a section nearby where the cliff is totally sheer beneath it.

I lean my arms onto the top of the wall as if I’m admiring the view and roll the stone between fingers, concealing it from the house with my body. After a moment, I fling it down the mountainside with a swift flick of my hand.

Now all we have to do is wait for Rollick’s warning… and hope we’re ready for what’s to come.

We meander through the gardens for a while before heading back to the house, to fully sell the story that we simply wanted to stretch our legs in the fresh air. As we come up on the side door, it opens for us.

Toni stops on the threshold, and we jar to a halt too. For a long moment, we simply eye each other.

I expect her to summon us to another conversation with Balthazar. Oh, God, what if he insists on sending us off on another job and Rollick strikes while we’re away?

No, that might actually be even better. Whoever’s away from the villa will be safe. And he isn’t likely to send Dominic if it’s only some of us—he saw Dom as so unnecessary to his plans that he left him unconscious for ages.

Whoever’s still here will be protected.

As all that runs through my head, I brace myself. I’m not prepared for Toni to swipe her hand across her mouth in an uncharacteristically anxious gesture and hold up her phone in front of her chest for us to see the screen.

The typed words show starkly against the white background of the Notes app. I’m sorry. He isn’t the one I should have been helping. She wouldn’t have wanted this.

My gaze jerks to Toni’s face. She offers me a pained smile that matches her apology, the whiff of pheromones she gives off tasting of fear… and sadness.

My stomach knots as I think of the instructions I just sent to Rollick. I can’t tell her about our plan—even if I trusted her enough to want to.

I just told our shadowkind allies to kill her along with everyone else.

But if she means it, if she does help us, we could protect her too. There is one thing she might be able to do that we couldn’t figure out for sure.

I lift my arms and touch one of my manacles. Toni’s mouth twists tighter, but she swivels her phone to tap on it before showing us her answer.

I’ll see what I can do.