Page 46

Njáll

I cannot believe he is doing this. Giving himself up—giving the Hunt up—and for what?

“What are you doing?” I hiss, though I think we all know.

Maurice comes back down the stairs and crouches beside me again. My lips tingle from our earlier kiss. I don’t want it to be the last one we share.

“I’m getting you out of here.”

“What? I—You’ll get the Hunt killed.”

“I won’t,” Maurice says patiently, eyes trained on the stairs, “because you will tell them what I’ve done. You’ll get them to come here and free whoever’s left. You’ll stop Augustine and prevent a war. Won’t you?”

My temper flares at the sheer arrogance of him, again, like the first night we met, but I can’t hold onto it for long. He’s going to—

“You’ll die.”

“Yes. I think so.”

He won’t look at me. “Maurice, you’ll—you won’t…” I shake my head. “I can’t leave you here.”

His gaze snaps from the stairs to me. “You can, and you will . We have our responsibilities, don’t we? We have our duty.”

“And yours is to serve the Hunt!”

The door creaks open above. Footsteps sound at the top of the stairs.

“It’s to serve you ,” Maurice murmurs. “That’s what I lost my magic for, after all.”

He says nothing else. The fae are already here, four of them, none of whom I’ve seen before. Maurice gets warily to his feet, but then one of them, big and burly, waves a hand in my direction.

“Him, too.”

Maurice growls. “I said I wanted to speak to Meilyr.”

“And Meilyr wants to speak with him,” the fae replies, unimpressed and not at all intimidated. “Get him up. Now.”

Two of the fae move towards me, but Maurice growls and turns his back on them, helping me to my feet. My arm is still broken, the ache pulsing whenever I move, but it healed a little while I slept.

I’m glad they’re taking me up with him, even if he’s clearly furious about it, coiled anger making his shoulders tense. One fae takes hold of my left side, but when another moves in towards where I’m injured, Maurice growls again.

“No,” he snarls, and the fae casts a doubtful look at the largest one who spoke before.

“Just get them both upstairs,” he says.

Maurice stays close to me as we move, and the fae surround us on the way up the stairs and into the kitchen. As we reach the top step, Maurice trips, falling into the largest fae up front.

“Keep hold of him,” the fae snaps.

Maurice growls quietly, and he’s directly ahead of me, so I can’t see the look on his face.

It doesn’t matter. We’re led into the living room, and the fae pushes Maurice into the same chair he sat in last night. I stand by his side. Meilyr is already waiting, eyes glittering in the low light. His lips curve up when he takes in the way I’m holding my arm, still wrapped as it is.

The fae move back once we’re in position, lining the walls. The big one is in front of the door, so the only way out now would be through the bay window, which Meilyr is sitting directly in front of.

“I trust you are not in too much pain,” Meilyr says to me, his voice mild. He reminds me of a snake or something like it, curled up and vigilant and waiting to strike.

Maurice stiffens in the chair even as I shake my head. “It will heal.”

“Given time, of course,” Meilyr replies. His gaze moves lazily over to Maurice. “But that time is limited, unless your hunter friend has something to tell me.”

Maurice stares at him for the length of three heartbeats. “I have conditions.”

Meilyr’s eyebrows rise. I think Maurice has genuinely surprised him. “You believe you are in a position to bargain?”

“Yes.” His voice is cold and steady in a way I’ve never heard from him, and I know why. This is a gamble, and we both know who will pay for it first. I find I don’t mind that so much, beyond the obvious—I’d rather not die, and I’d rather not leave Maurice alone to face this.

“All right. Let me indulge you for a moment. What is it you want?”

“I want these cuffs off,” Maurice says, “and I want you to set Njáll free.”

“He won’t have time to save the wolf.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything at all.”

The fae around the room are tense, too, though I can’t imagine why. They all have to be powerful in their own right, and Maurice and I are hardly threats to them.

“And if I take my time? Break every bone in your vampire’s body?” Meilyr tilts his head, sending his wave of hair tumbling to one side. “There are a lot of them. You would not endure it.”

Maurice leans forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. “And you don’t know all that I do, or I would not be here. You don’t know the scope of it. You won’t be able to tell if I’m lying because you aren’t capable of it.”

“Then I cannot trust you even if I let him go.”

Maurice hesitates. He licks his lips. “There’s a spell. Magic. You can’t compel me to tell the truth, but you can verify it.”

Meilyr blinks. Perhaps it is something that has not even occurred to him. He has been wherever it is the fae live until a few weeks ago, and if no one there can lie…

Why would he have use for a spell like that?

The silence holds, tension stretching to breaking point, until Meilyr finally sits back in his seat and waves a careless hand. “Unfasten his cuffs.”

The large fae by the door strides over and unfastens Maurice’s cuffs with short, sharp movements. Maurice rubs each wrist—they are red and chafed—and sits back in the chair. He does not look at me.

“And the other condition?”

Meilyr looks between us both. “I suppose if you do save the wolf, it matters not,” he says, sounding almost weary. “It will not be that difficult to deal with you all.” He looks at the large fae again. “Take him outside. Let him go.”

Is he actually…? I can hardly believe it, and I believe even less the way Maurice does not look at me as the fae grabs me by my left arm and drags me over towards the door.

I want to call out to him. I want him to look at me, to see that I will come back for him—I’ll find the Hunt, whoever I can, and I’ll do my best to save Quinn, but Maurice… Maurice is…

The fae drags me into the hallway, and several things happen all at once. A fae standing by the front door opens it, and the fae with me yanks me to a halt because—

Asher.

Asher is standing on the other side, and before the fae holding me can make a sound, a knife flies through the air and embeds itself in his throat. He kills the fae by the door as I stagger back into the wall, and a dark shape blurs past me—Vlad?—and into the living room.

Asher spares me a single glance as he strides past. I turn, looking into the living room.

Maurice may not have his blessing, but he is holding his own against two of the fae.

Meilyr and Vlad grapple on the other side of the room, and Maurice shoves one fae away, punches the other in the throat before he races over—

Meilyr snarls, shoving Vlad back, but Maurice is faster than he’s expecting. His knife—and, oh, he must have stolen it back earlier, when he tripped—plunges into Meilyr’s side, and Meilyr cries out, letting go of Vlad before he falls back against the wall.

Maurice tugs his knife free and leaps away when Meilyr lunges at him.

“You—” Meilyr growls. “How did you…?”

There were screams throughout the house a moment ago, but now it all falls silent, and I draw in a ragged breath. Was that… Was that all Asher? Meilyr seems to hear it too; he pales, though his expression remains defiant.

“I will have this world yet,” he says, and the air goes heavy, pressure squeezing my head until I have to close my eyes, and when I open them again, he’s gone.

“Well, fuck,” Maurice says.

I rest my forehead against the doorjamb, my arm throbbing in time with my pulse. He just—They—

We’re safe. Well, sort of. Not about to die this moment, at least.

“Are you all right?” Vlad asks, but I don’t think he’s talking to me, so I say nothing. I need to stop resting. Stand, get out of here, get to Deacon’s pack house…

Hands touch my face ever so gently. I open my eyes, and Maurice is so close I could count every eyelash should I want to.

“Still with me?”

“You—This was a bad plan.”

“Not my best,” Maurice agrees, his laugh the faintest puff of breath. “We’re lucky they got here.” He frowns, looking back at Vlad. “How did you get here?”

As if on cue, a voice calls from the hall. “Vlad? Asher? I can come in now, right?”

I look back to see another vampire standing in the doorway to the house. He’s a young man, wearing a sunshine yellow shirt open to his midriff, long white shorts, and boat shoes. Vlad moves past us quickly, crowding him up against the wall.

“I told you to wait outside until it was safe.”

“It is safe,” the new vampire—I assume this is Grant—says, just as Asher comes down from upstairs.

“He’s not wrong,” Asher says.

Maurice comes around me to stand in the hall as well, though he keeps in contact the entire time. “You tracked the fae?” he asks.

Grant snorts, then laughs when Maurice looks at him. “No. Your phone. Just took us a minute to get through the wards without him noticing.”

“My phone?”

“You don’t have it? It’s somewhere here then. I set it up so we could track it before you left. Remember? I thought you might get in trouble and not bother giving us a ring.”

“You…” Maurice’s brow furrows. “You can do that?”

“All your phones are set up to do that,” Grant says.

Asher scowls now. Spatters of blood colour his cheeks and throat. “Mine too?”

“Yep.”

“Turn it off.”

“Tell you what,” Grant says with a cheeky grin, “when you work out how to do it yourself, you can turn it off.”

“Grant,” Vlad says, his tone a warning, but Grant ignores him. His gaze is distant, face turned in the direction of the kitchen.

“There are still fae here.”

Asher growls, but I shake my head.

“Cellar,” I say. Oh, everything hurts now, and I’m hungry , which is definitely a problem. “They’re chained up.”

“With iron,” Maurice says, though his concerned gaze is on me again. “Did any of you think to…?”

Asher looks at Grant, who nods and slips out of Vlad’s grasp, running out of the house. He returns a moment later with a bag of blood, which I take from him gratefully. I ignore the curious look he gives me, and Maurice lets out a little growl.

“Go help Asher get them out,” he says. “They might not be as scared of you.”

It’s true, and though Vlad grumbles, he does nothing more than watch as Grant and Asher disappear into the kitchen. I hear the cellar door open and the thud of their feet as they descend.

Maurice draws me into the living room and pushes me into a chair. Vlad stands between us and the open door, and Maurice drops to his knees before me, resting his hands on my thighs.

“Drink, Njáll,” he says. “We’ll keep you safe.”

I have no doubt about that— he will keep me safe. I tear into the bag, drinking greedily, and it’s not enough to sate me, but it takes the edge off my hunger and I groan as the break in my arm finally heals.

Maurice tries to stop me as I unwrap my arm, but I shake my head and stretch it out. It still feels tender, but it will do.

The fae file past and out into the night. “We need to find Reijo’s coat,” Grant says somewhere in the distance, and then Vlad chases off after him.

“Grant, do not touch anything—”

“I know!”

Maurice doesn’t move any closer, but he doesn’t move away, either. I need to go to the pack house. I need to get up. But I tip my head up and let out a heavy breath, and Maurice’s fingers dig into my thighs like he knows I need to stay grounded.

“They’re out,” Asher says, and I’m certain it’s only a few minutes later, but it feels longer. I lift my head. Maurice doesn’t stand.

“You need to find that fae,” he says. “He’s out to take over this realm.”

“We will,” Vlad replies. Grant sidles into the room next to him, looking a little paler than he did before. “We did not come here for him tonight.”

“You came… for us?” Maurice asks.

“Well,” Grant says and offers me an apologetic smile, “we came for you , actually.”

“I’m no longer a member of the Wild Hunt, and even if I were—”

“You’re one of us,” Grant replies stubbornly. “Did you think we’d just leave you here?”

“You should have. He’ll be angry.”

“Yeah, and if he keeps revoking his blessing, he’ll be dead too,” Asher says, and from the way Maurice tenses, he’s surprised Asher’s the one speaking. “Whatever is happening with the fae, he needs our help.”

“Are you going to tell him that?” Maurice says. His hands relax, and I sit up straighter, drawing his attention back to me. His expression immediately sobers. “The challenge.”

“What—” Grant begins, but Asher interrupts.

“It’s happening in half an hour. We won’t make it.”

I shake my head. I’ve survived. So has Maurice. So have all those fae down in the cellar.

Quinn will survive, too. I’ll make sure of it.