Page 215 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

I’ve just dug out a hoodie that’s a size too big but otherwise looks appealingly cozy and a pair of jeans that I think should fit when Pearl makes a small, tight noise in her throat. I glance up to see her gazing toward the house.

Three figures have just emerged. Sorsha—the only human-shadowkind hybrid we know of who wasn’t created by the guardians, who has the fiery powers of a phoenix—and a roguish shadowkind man named Ruse flank a tall, wiry woman whose sleek black bob is unusually ruffled.

Toni. They’re finally letting her come talk to us again.

All thoughts of the new clothes flee my head. I have just enough self-control to walk around the table rather than leaping right over it.

Sorsha and Ruse escort Toni all the way to us. Sorsha tips her head with a swing of her bright red ponytail. “We’re confident that she’s being honest about her intentions. I think you can trust her.”

Rollick folds his arms over his chest. “Let’s hear what Balthazar’s minion has to say, then.”

Toni’s lips tighten in a faint grimace at being called a minion, but I don’t see any emotion in her dark eyes other than sadness.

She reaches into the pocket of her slacks.

“Before we get into anything else—when I snuck into Mr. Balthazar’s office to turn off your bracelets, I saw this. I think it’s yours, Riva?”

She holds out a silver chain dangling a charm of a cat curled around a ball of yarn. My pulse hiccups in surprise and relief.

I dart forward to take it from her. “Thank you. I didn’t know what he’d done with it.”

The necklace, given to me by Griffin years ago, has been missing since I first woke up in Balthazar’s villa.

As I fasten the chain around my neck, Jacob fixes his sky-blue eyes on Toni in an icy stare. “Are you going to tell us why the hell you worked for that psychopath at all?”

Toni ducks her head, her shoulders hunching slightly. “I’ll do my best to explain, but I don’t expect you to necessarily understand. I know I didn’t always make the best decisions. I’m trying to fix that now.”

“Go ahead,” Griffin says, his peaceful attitude as different from Jacob’s as their looks are similar. “We’ll listen.”

She drags in a breath and lifts her gaze to face us properly.

“I’ve been working for Otto Balthazar for fifteen years now.

When I was in college, studying business management, I had an unpleasant encounter with a—with one of the things you call shadowkind—and of course no one believed me when I tried to explain what happened.

But Mr. Balthazar heard about it and came to talk to me.

He was still working with the Guardianship then. ”

I raise my eyebrows. “And he decided to hire you?”

Toni gives a small shrug. “I was doing well with my education. He was starting to think about branching out more independently with his… unofficial business. And I can’t imagine that it’s easy to find people who both know about shadowkind and have the right skillset.

It made it easier for him, not having to hide what he was pursuing. ”

Dominic smooths his hands over a shirt he’s picked out from Pearl’s loot, his attention trained on Toni. “What exactly did he ask you to do for him?”

“I managed everything that wasn’t part of his public business ventures: his work with the Guardianship, his individual efforts against the shadowkind, various things to do with his personal life.

Mr. Balthazar had a lot going on. He needed someone to keep everything in order, to delegate what was needed, and to alert him to any problems.”

My hands tighten around the hoodie I’m still clutching. “And you did all that for him.”

“Yes,” Toni says. “For him and his family.”

For a moment, as she looks at me, a shimmer comes into her eyes that looks almost like tears. Her jaw works before she goes on.

“I was around a lot. I became close with his wife—Willa—and to some extent with his son. Peter was only seven when I met him, so it wasn’t like we had a lot in common, but he was a good kid.

Willa accepted me like I’d been there from the start.

She had this way about her… She just emanated warmth.

I’ve never met anyone else like her. Mr. Balthazar was steadier back then, but he had moments of frustration, and she could always talk him down. ”

Griffin is studying her intently. “And you loved her.”

The flare of a blush that colors Toni’s tan cheeks tells the answer even if she doesn’t admit it outright. “She loved her husband. I don’t think she was interested in women like that anyway. I just liked getting to be around her. That was enough.”

As she pauses to gather herself, I have to stop myself from gaping. It never occurred to me that this woman’s deepest loyalty might not be to her former employer but to his wife.

“She grounded Mr. Balthazar,” Toni continues, her voice getting a bit rough.

“She and Peter both did. But then—Peter fell in with a rowdy bunch of friends in high school. There was some kind of altercation, and he ended up shot. Mr. Balthazar always claimed a monster was involved, that they were attacking his family now. I’m not sure anymore if that’s true. ”

Zian frowns. “Is that when he got so crazy?”

Toni’s mouth twists. “He definitely ramped up his efforts—working more aggressively, branching off more from the Guardianship with plans they didn’t know about.

But it was really… He launched a major offensive against shadowkind in his home city.

Had silver and iron embedded around areas they liked to congregate, places where they’d feed in their various ways.

Figured out where a nearby portal was and messed with that too. ”

Rollick’s head comes up. “I heard something about that, a few years ago.”

“Yes.” Toni sighs. “He must have slipped up somewhere, though. Maybe with the shadowkind contacts he manipulates into giving up intel. A few of the… monsters… realized who was behind the offensive and tracked him down. When they got to his house, he was away, but Willa was there. So they tore her apart. Literally.”

Her voice has gone outright ragged with the last few words. I know without any mind-reading ability that she saw the results of that attack. And maybe I can understand a little why she would have found it hard to sympathize with anyone connected to the monsters who destroyed the woman she loved.

“It broke something in him,” Toni says. “Losing both of them. Knowing it was his mistake that put Willa in danger. He never admitted it—I heard him rant so many times about how incompetent everyone else was to let the monsters continue to threaten us—but he knew. He left the Guardianship and threw all his time, energy, and money into building up his economic influence and political power.”

“So he can take over the world,” I fill in, remembering what Balthazar told me. “He wants to convince or force all the major governments into launching assaults on the shadowkind.”

Toni inclines her head. “That was why he wanted all of you shadowbloods too. Especially after he found out the six of you had escaped and it’d taken the Guardianship so long to recapture you. He didn’t trust them to use you properly.”

Jacob takes a step toward her, his stance menacing. “You stood with him through all of that—through everything he did to us. After you knew how badly it went before.”

“I thought he was right,” Toni protests. “I hadn’t seen anything from the shadowkind except violence. It seemed like the lesser of two evils. And Willa always asked me to look after him for her when she couldn’t be there… She wouldn’t have wanted me to abandon him after he’d already lost so much.”

She stops and shakes her head. “At least, that’s what I thought for the last three years. But I didn’t know just how cruel he could be. I didn’t know how much she didn’t even matter to him anymore.”

Andreas knits his brow. “What do you mean?”

Toni looks at me rather than him. “You’re his daughter—but you’re hers too. The last piece of her still alive. And he was willing to torture you for not immediately doing everything his way. He put you through so much…”

The pieces click together in my head. Toni was there when Balthazar revealed my full genetic heritage to me. I’d thought she seemed shaken, but I hadn’t realized why.

I’d been too busy reeling from my own feelings on the subject.

It was soon after that meeting when she approached us and said she’d try to help us escape. Her loyalties didn’t really change, though. She just realized that the woman whose values she’d attempted to uphold would have been on our side rather than her employer’s.

On my side.

A wild giggle bubbles at the base of my throat. I spent all that time horrified and frightened of my connection to Balthazar, but the same connection was what won us our freedom in the end.

“I’m sorry,” Toni says. “It shouldn’t have taken that long for me to see the truth.

It shouldn’t have taken that much. I didn’t like a lot of what I saw him doing, and I knew he’d gotten dangerously obsessed with his quest, but after Willa died, I kind of shut off a lot of my mind.

I went on autopilot, being who I thought I was supposed to be. ”

When her voice peters out, the guys remain silent. I feel their attention shift to me, as if my response is the one that matters most.

Maybe it does. It’s because of me that she’s here.

I sort through the whirling emotions inside me and settle on one true thing I can say. “I’m glad you came to us. Even if it took a long time, it’s better now than never.”

A hesitant smile crosses Toni’s lips. “I’d like to think so.”

She glances around at all of us again. “But whatever we’re going to do to interfere with Mr. Balthazar’s plans, we can’t take our time with it.

Now that he’s confirmed his method for creating new adult shadowbloods, I don’t know how much havoc he’s going to wreak—but he’ll be working fast. And he won’t let anyone stand in his way. ”