Page 15 of Traitor Witch (The Deadwood #1)

Chapter Fifteen

RYSEN

I hate that I can’t hear a thing that’s going on inside the house Nilsa disappeared into. The building must be enchanted or spelled or something because the moment my mate disappears inside, I stop being able to hear her heartbeat.

The loss of that sound makes me restless. I pace for almost an hour, my expression scaring away the vagrants around us. Kier is silent, motionless, and outwardly calm, but it must be an act.

I found him following her, after all. Whatever stoic act he’s trying to pull off is exactly that, an act. And it’s hard to believe he doesn’t care when there’s a layer of shimmering frost on his clothes.

The first sniff of her blood makes my fangs descend. It’s coming from above us, probably from one of the roof gardens. That I can smell it while standing in an alley that reeks of piss and rot tells me she hasn’t accidentally gotten a paper cut .

No, that smell can only mean my mate is losing a lot of blood.

I want to roar. Whoever is hurting her will die, slowly.

The air turns icy, giving away Kier’s matching anger. The fae’s dark, dragonfly wings appear the instant he needs them and he wastes no time in taking off into the sky.

What I wouldn’t give for such a handy trick.

But vampires don’t need wings.

I push off from the ground using my immortal strength, soaring into the air. Only to smack straight into some kind of barrier. I growl at the stupid magical wall as I rebound back to the cobbles.

Kier manages to use his wings to follow the barrier around and onto a neighbouring rooftop and I aim my next jump so that I land beside him. The trellises of the garden block most of our view, but I can still make out the pile of clothes on the floor and the figure hunched over my mate.

My snarl is so loud I’m surprised Nilsa and her attacker don’t hear it. It takes my brain a while to realise the bubble must be soundproof.

I throw myself at it, ready to test vampiric strength against witch magic. But Kier gets in the way, snagging me around my waist and redirecting my force so I crash into a raised plant bed instead.

“That’s our mate!” I growl.

He shakes his head, takes my arm, and drags me further to the left.

Nilsa’s laying quiescent on her front. Her creamy skin marred by blood and… ink? I watch her lie, perfectly still, as the other witch—and the other woman is definitely a witch—smears her leg with some paste.

She’s getting a tattoo? I frown.

Do Solars normally have tattoos? Is that what’s hidden under those shapeless robes ?

“She’s still hurt,” I grumble, fangs impeding my words.

Kier looks pointedly at the exposed markings which circle my upper arm.

“Those weren’t my choice.”

He just rolls his eyes, jerks his head back at Nilsa, and moves to lean against the chimney of the roof.

I grumble, pace a little more, then settle on joining him.

“Why the heck is she getting a tattoo?” I ask, even as my vampire-enhanced sight notes some on her calves that look older. Whatever she’s having inked into her looks like the markings she gave Valorean.

Sigils, she called them.

Now that my mind isn't consumed with the need to protect my mate, the scent of her blood starts to tease me. My fangs drop, my mouth watering at just the memory of tasting her.

The other witch works over Nilsa for hours. The moon rises and sets, and dawn begins to break the horizon before she finally stands and stretches.

Nilsa moves much more slowly. I can read the pain in her every careful movement as she pushes herself to her feet and sways.

Kier clears his throat, grabs my arm again, and turns us around before I can see anymore of her nakedness. The vampire in me wants to rip his head from his shoulders, but I know he’s right. We shouldn’t be staring at her without her knowledge.

It’s an unexpectedly gentlemanly thing for the fae to consider, but I put it down to his life before he became a pirate.

We wait longer than we should, because when I turn around, Nilsa is gone. Only her cat remains, staring at us from the doorway with an intelligence that makes me question, for the hundredth time, whether that cat really is just a cat .

My eyes linger on the sheet she’d been laying on, still stained with Nilsa’s blood. My fangs, which have only just begun to recede, ache once again.

I turn away, disgusted with myself.

I’m better than that. I’ve worked hard to become better than that.

I don’t wait for Kier. I step off the roof and land heavily on the street below. We wait out of sight of the doorway, and it proves to be the right choice because Nilsa comes flying out of it soon after.

Our mate lands in a heap on the other side of the street, groaning softly in pain. I want to go straight to her side but Kier holds me back again.

Yeah, our stalking her might not go down too well.

She’s staggering as she moves, her weakness palpable in the sluggishness of her walk and the way her cat circles beneath her, mewling.

The vermin of the streets have noticed too. They haunt her steps, beady eyes shining from the darkness of every alley.

They’re so focused on the prey that they don’t expect to meet their death at the hands of a vampire.

No one looks at her like that.

Nilsa wanders away from the main street. Further from the safety of the salty sea air and into the slums. The scent of her blood lures me after her as much as my desire to keep her safe.

This is not good.

The desperate are more deadly than the villainous when they see an opportunity. Nilsa is a walking target to everyone, despite her plain clothes. She doesn’t even seem to notice how much danger she’s in.

When one has the audacity to step in front of her, knife drawn, she just laughs.

I go to intervene, but a flick of her wrist has already disarmed him. In seconds, he’s pinned to the wall with his own weapon.

What. The. Fuck.

“That wasn’t nice,” she whispers. “Now piss off.”

Even injured as she is, she hasn’t broken a sweat. I’d expected a Solar to scream, run… do anything except… that.

She just shrugs the whole incident off and heads further into the slums.

Only to stop as three more block her path.

But these aren’t humans or slum dwellers. They stand in a line, loaded with weapons. All three of them are shifters—if I had to guess from the smell, I would say some kind of small predator—foxes, maybe? They wear a matching mercenary insignia on their cloaks, and their expressions are carefully neutral.

“Nilsa of Coveton?”

My mate nods once.

“Surrender and face judgement or fight and die. The reward doesn’t change.”

Nilsa draws her own blade this time.

Why hasn’t she used her magic? She must have some basic defensive spells if she can disarm a man so easily, yet she doesn’t draw from the rising sun.

Is she too weak?

She’s still swaying slightly, exhaustion evident in the line of her spine.

The mercenaries see it too. They smirk, anticipating an easy kill.

This time, there’s no holding me back.

My growl shakes the street.

With one arm, I scoop the drained witch off her feet. With the other, I rip out the throat of the shifter who dared to threaten her. My claws drip with blood, and I hesitate, waiting for the inevitable urge to lick it up. Shifter blood isn’t anywhere near as compelling as human, but when my emotions are riding me, the bloodlust normally doesn't care.

But it holds almost no appeal now. Not compared to Nilsa’s blood.

My witch lets out a tiny pained gasp. The sound tells me—too late—that my actions have pressed her new tattoos against my body. When her head falls back her eyes are closed, her breathing even.

She’s passed out.

Beside me, Kier draws his sword and turns his focus on the others who decided to approach. There are more than the original three, and the fae becomes a blur as he shifts between them, his blows flashing. He doesn’t use his frost magic, and I wonder if that’s him making a point or if his mate bond with Nilsa is messing with his power.

I keep hold of Nilsa as I take on the next attacker, cradling her even as my fangs rip into the neck of another. The blood drips from me, but I don’t let any get on her, using my speed to dodge the spurt of red liquid.

The next few have shifted, proving me right as I’m pounced on by three foxes.

I grab one before it can reach us, tossing it into a wall so hard that it doesn’t get up again. The second sinks its teeth into my arm and scrabbles, trying to get its claws in so it can reach my mate. I rip it away, uncaring of the way its teeth shred my flesh. I’ve had worse from better. It joins its buddy, slamming into the wall and forming a heap.

The third is clawing its way up my leg, snapping at Nilsa’s exposed back. I grab it by the throat and roar straight into its tiny, vulpine face before sinking my fangs into its neck.

Ugh. Fur in my teeth.

I grimace and throw the shifter away, only to tense when the cat hisses and leaps at me.

She grazes my side as she soars, landing behind me .

When I turn around, she’s grown from the size of a house-cat to a tiger. Her claws and teeth are buried in the chest of the scum who was creeping up behind us. She lifts her red-stained muzzle and roars her satisfaction in the kill.

There were over a dozen mercs in all, and now their corpses litter the ground.

Why send so many for one Solar witch? Who is our mate to warrant such caution?

A wisp of uncertainty tugs at my mind, Val’s words from earlier coming back to haunt me. I ignore them, shifting her weight in my arms.

It doesn’t matter who she was. Not when she’s mine now.

Our fight has drawn spectators, but another roar from the tiger-cat ensures the onlookers disappear as swiftly as they arrived. I check they really are gone before turning my attention to Kier, who’s wiping his blade down on his sleeve. The cat shrinks in on herself, going from tiger to tabby in five seconds, and leaps onto Kier’s shoulders the moment she’s returned to her normal size.

“We need to get our mate back to the ship,” I say, stroking a lock of hair away from her face. “She needs rest.”

Kier nods, his thin eyes tracing the motion of Nilsa’s chest. I can’t blame him, not when my ears are pricked for any sign of her heartbeat slowing or faltering.

She stirs in my arms as we get closer to the ship, her lashes fluttering against her too-pale cheekbones.

“Ry?” she whispers.

“I’m here.” Is it foolish that my new heartbeat skips at the nickname?

Probably.

Does it matter?

No.

“What are you doing here?”

“We came after you.” I see no reason to lie to her .

Her mouth parts prettily in shock. “Why?”

Everything in me wants to tell her she’s mine. Only Nos’s warning holds me back.

I glance back at Kier, but the fae just shrugs.

Oh right, fae can’t lie.

Nilsa’s brows are forming a cute little crease on her forehead, and the longer I take to answer her, the deeper it becomes.

“I want you on the Deadwood .” It’s the truth, if heavily edited.

That doesn’t stop her frowning, but it does stop her questions long enough for us to emerge onto the docks. This early in the morning, they’re already packed with activity, fishermen leaving to get their boats out on the open ocean. We draw plenty of stares as I lift my mate through the throng towards the pink-sailed nightmare that is the Deadwood .

Her petty revenge made me laugh when I first saw it, but seeing it now is sobering.

Valorean will still be mad and now is not the time for his pettiness.

The gangplank disappears the instant we get close.

“Let her on board,” I roar at the ship, knowing that Val is listening.

The figurehead, a skeleton with its arms shackled turns to regard us. The wooden cutlass clenched in its jaw disappears and the mouth opens.

“No.”

Nilsa shoves at my arm, but she’s still so weak from whatever happened to her in that house. She’s also ridiculously tiny compared to me. Even at full strength, I doubt she could make me move.

“I don’t want on his stupid boat, anyway,” she mutters. “I have a plan, remember? ”

“Lie.” Kier calls her out on it, and she cranes her neck to glare at him.

I press a finger to her lips, silencing her as I turn back to the figurehead. “She’s wounded.”

“Why should I care? My hair is pink because of her. And it’s a ship , witch!”

I look down at Nilsa. “Can you change his hair back?”

She shakes her head. “It’ll wear off… eventually.”

“I’m not lowering that plank or sailing out of this harbour until it does.”

“Nilsa?” Cas’s head pokes over the railings, his eyes travelling over our blood-covered group with alarm. “Val, let them on board! Can’t you smell she’s bleeding?”

“I’m a mage,” Val reminds us, dryly. “So, no. I can’t smell bleeding.”

Cas glowers, his eyes flickering. “Do you want this ship crushed and sunk to the bottom of the harbour?”

“Try it,” Val dares him.

Nilsa wiggles against me. “Let me down, Rysen. He doesn’t want me on there. I’m going back to Alletta’s.”

I don’t move. It frustrates her, if her cute little growl of anger is any indication.

“You were thrown out of Alletta’s,” I remind her.

I give up waiting for the plank that isn’t coming, bend my knees, and calculate the distance. With a single leap, we’re back on the deck.

Nilsa groans. Val curses. The twins swarm us.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Is she okay?”

“Do we need to get bandages?”

“Why is she still on my ship!”

I shrug, but the action makes her hiss.

“What do you need?” I ask, pushing past the others and heading for her cabin .

“To be put down,” she grumbles. “I’m fine. They’ll heal.”

“Tell that to the blood. They need cleaning.” I shove through the door, barely noticing that the room has been cleared out in our absence. The crates and barrels which were here before have been moved. An armchair, rugs, drawers, and all manner of other furniture has replaced them. All the things she should have had from the moment she first arrived.

Val wouldn’t have done it, so I know the twins must be responsible.

Nos knew she was coming back.

That thought makes me snarl. If he knew she’d be injured and would need to return, he should have stopped her from leaving.

The bed is made with pale cream sheets, but I bypass it and head for the bathroom.

“Let me down!” Nilsa is getting more and more insistent. “You’re not washing me.”

I stop, lean over the bath and use one hand to turn on the taps.

“Sorry, Lady Solar, but your health is more important than your modesty. You passed out once already.”

“Rysen,” Nos’s voice snaps me out of my determined quest. “I’ll do it.” Nilsa finally stills and the Seer continues, “I can’t see anything, but I can make sure you stay conscious.”

He makes sense, but I don’t want to release my witch. It takes a considerable amount of willpower to let her down. So much so that I just stand there, breathing, for a second before I can persuade myself to leave the room.

The door slams shut behind me.