Page 12 of White Little Lies (Four Ways to Fate #3)

12

Gabriel

The devil buttoned up his shirt with sharp, irritated movements. “Wait here. I’ll find her.”

I clenched my hands into fists, wanting nothing more than to throw him out the window. “She told me you’re calling card doesn’t work beyond boundaries.” If this blasted devil disappeared on me, leaving me no way to find Eva—

And he did just that, leaving nothing but a cloud of darkness behind.

Elena took a step back as I turned my glare toward her. She lifted her hands. “I’m sorry! I was just coming to complain about the nobility. I didn’t think you would all be jumping realms already!”

“We don’t know that they jumped realms.” I snatched my T-shirt from the table then tugged it back on.

This had been such a bad idea. I thought if I came here with her, I could watch over her. But I seemed to only get her into more trouble and not less.

I pointed a finger at the elf. “We are going to search for her. You’ll stay with me and make sure no one tries to bar my way.”

Her green eyes were so large I thought they might pop out of her head. “Of course! This is nothing new, I assure you. She usually doesn’t get far. We’ll find her in no time.”

“She was drawing magic from three of us this time.” I strode past her toward the door. I had no gods damned way of finding her, but I had to try.

I flung open the door and walked out, hearing Elena’s harried footsteps behind me as I descended the stairs.

“It’s usually Sebastian who finds her!” she called after me. “His calling card doesn’t work here, but he seems able to sense her. I don’t know how he does it.”

Wretched devil. He had probably been right to go off on his own, but I couldn’t just stand idly by. If she ended up in trouble like she had in the Bogs, she might need me. Of course, when the merrows had pulled her under, she had found me , and not the other way around. If she hadn’t come to me on her own, she would have died that night.

Instead, she had appeared before me, shivering, her clothing soaking wet. I had wanted to kiss her right then and there, pressing our bodies together, taking what she so willingly gave to Mistral—

I cut off my thoughts as I strode down a long hall lined with windows. I had attempted to locate the merrows after that day, but they knew better than to reveal themselves to me. Once I found them, they were dead.

“Just where do you think you’re going with my daughter?”

I hesitated at the sound of an authoritative voice.

“Crap,” Elena hissed, catching up to my side. “It’s my father. Trust me when I say running would be a bad idea.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned, my shoulders stiff. Though the king had granted me passage into his lands, I had not expected to meet him in person. I forced myself to appear calm, though everything inside me begged to continue on.

King Francis stood in an embroidered blue coat, his arms crossed, his long red hair draped across his shoulders. “I’ll ask again, just where do you think you are going with my daughter?”

Ev a

We had found a narrow deer path to walk on. It was a small blessing, because Crispin still had no idea where we were.

“You could try jumping us back,” he said from behind me. “It would be a good lesson. Just envision my tower, and I’m sure you’ll get us there.”

“Or end up somewhere worse.” I glared at a purple butterfly fluttering past my face. It had been haunting me, wanting to lick the sweat from my skin.

“You could think of Gabriel. That has worked for you before, has it not?”

I ignored him. I had shared a lot of details in the past week that I would have rather kept quiet. But if we were going to figure things out, Crispin needed to know everything. Well, mostly everything. Some things I was certainly not about to share, especially in front of Sebastian.

“Eva?”

“That only worked when I was drawing on someone else’s magic, apparently. I was pretty charged up when I found Gabriel before.”

Charged up by having sex with Mistral in an open field, but that was one of the details I wasn’t sharing with anyone else. Especially not since the state of the Bogs was supposed to remain a secret. Sebastian knew the magic there was unstable—he had been the one to bind Mistral to the land in an attempt to control it—but the elves and other factions had no idea.

Crispin jogged to catch up to my side, a smooth smile on his lips. “You can use my magic to bring us back.”

“Nope.” I walked faster. That was what had gotten us into this predicament to begin with. I had been picturing trees near the palace, not some place out in the woods I had never been before.

He caught up again, matching my pace as we continued walking. The purple butterfly was back, trying to land on my forehead. “It does not always have to be sexual. You have been using Sebastian and I to jump all over the castle for weeks.”

“Unknowingly, and usually just once Sebastian pisses me off enough.”

I glanced at Crispin as his expression turned thoughtful. “True. Your sexual tension with him does seem to be tied to anger.”

I glared at him.

He quirked a brow in return, the soft sunlight making him look like some sort of mischievous forest god. Follow me down this path, my dear. Nothing bad will happen.

Yeah right. “If you’re trying to make me angry, it’s not going to work.”

He gave me a dazzling smile, his blue eyes twinkling. “Then I suppose we should just settle in and enjoy our walk.”

“If we’re even going the right way.”

He pointed at the sun. “It was well after noon when we jumped, so I do know roughly what direction we’re heading in. Plus the moss.” He ran his finger along a tree as he passed it. “It mostly grows on the north side because it enjoys the shade.”

I looked up at the sun, but I still wasn’t sure what direction we were going in. Of course I didn’t even know what direction I was heading when I was in the city. “Okay, so we know what direction we’re going in,” I conceded. “But how much farther do we have to go?”

“That is indeed the question.” Although it was a question he didn’t seem terribly concerned with. “The Elven lands are not quite as expansive as the Bogs, or so I’ve been told, but we may be walking well into the night.”

“Lovely,” I huffed, my legs already tired and my mouth longing for some water. I glanced at him. If we were going to be walking for a while, I may as well get some questions answered. “How long have you suspected that I’m a conduit?”

His shrug was just as graceful as any elf’s. It was hard to pinpoint exactly why, but their movements always seemed a little more fluid than anyone else’s. “For a while. Your proximity to others each time you have jumped was a big clue. I was not aware that you had slept with the goblin prince shortly before your first jump though.”

“You knew he,” I twirled my hand in the air searching for the right word, and got a butterfly on my finger instead, “ unlocked my magic though.” I lowered my hand in front of my face, giving in to the butterfly’s ministrations.

“Yes, but that’s not as uncommon as you might think. Magic is a funny thing. It can react to all sorts of circumstances. Many elves come into their gifts after an intensely emotional experience. A loss, a triumph, and quite often, sex for the first time.”

Having its fill, the butterfly took off and I lowered my hand. “It wasn’t my first time,” I grumbled. Sure, the other times had been with humans and once with a werewolf, and nothing that compared to being with Mistral and Gabriel… But once again, that was privileged information.

Our path faded away, and he took a moment to look at the sun and the moss, then pointed us in a new direction. “But it was your first time with an intensely magical being, as we have established. I thought that was simply the case for unlocking your magic, but with truly jumping for the first time so shortly afterward. You likely maintained some of the charge you took from Mistral.”

“He said he gained magic from me too.”

“Well of course,” he continued like it made perfect sense. “Conduits are also amplifiers. You take the magic of others and turn it into something more. Sometimes it spills back over. The point is, now that this process has been set in motion, it will likely increase.”

I thought about bringing up the odd connection I had felt, like invisible cords between us, but one of the cords had connected me to him. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. So a change of subject it was. “And how did you come into your magic? Did you sleep with a queen?”

He laughed. “Hardly.” He glanced at me, then turned his eyes back to the path ahead. “Do you recall the bit of my history I shared with you?”

“You mean how your mother sold you to a wizard?”

He nodded, his gaze still turned steadily ahead. “She did not sell me because I already showed magical promise. Had that been the case, she surely would have asked a higher price. I was to be little more than a servant, but the shock of such betrayal unlocked my true potential. The earth had swallowed up my family home before I knew it.”

My jaw dropped. I tried to stare at him as we walked, but tripped on a stone. He grabbed my arm before I could fall, and a spark of magic flared between us.

He released my arm as if he hadn’t felt it. “I didn’t kill them. They were all outside, watching me being dragged away. My sisters were crying, and I was terrified. It was quite the emotional affair.”

I shook my head at his words. “That’s awful.” He spoke as if it didn’t matter, but he wasn’t that old. It really hadn’t been all that long ago, and that type of wound tended to last. I should know.

He shrugged. “It all worked out well enough. Once my master knew my true potential, I became like a son to him rather than a servant. He was still a harsh and cruel teacher, but he valued me, at least. Eventually he sent me to court as his envoy, where I met Queen Soraya. It was she who encouraged my research into jumping realms. She knew nothing of what King Francis explained to us. The severing of the realms happened so abruptly. She wanted to know why, and to be reunited with her consort.”

“You told all of this to Elena, didn’t you?”

He gave me a sheepish smile. “Yes, her involvement in this whole affair is my fault. She never even met Queen Soraya, but she is very young in her thinking, and simply wants her father to be happy.”

“How is that young in thinking?”

He lifted one shoulder in a partial shrug. “To not consider the consequences, of course.”

“But you don’t consider the consequences.”

His eyes were back to sparkling. “Well I’m not that much older than her, after all.”

We both stopped abruptly as a cloud of darkness appeared before us. Sebastian formed from that darkness, looking entirely pissed off. “ There you are. How in the hells did you make it all the way out here?”

For once, I was actually happy to see him. “Please tell me we are not that far.”

He picked invisible lint off his white shirt, then crossed his arms. “You’re far. And I searched your usual spots before venturing further. There was a messenger for you. ”

I glanced at Crispin, then back at Sebastian. “A messenger?”

“Yes, apparently your roommate left a message at the gates. Something about an angry nymph storming your apartment demanding to know what happened to her sister.”

I winced. “Seraphina?”

“I would assume so.”

I glanced around us. What a nightmare. I was doing my best to keep Braxton out of things, but I had once again brought trouble right into our living room. “Where is Gabriel? We need to get out of here.”

“He and Elena were detained by the king.”

Oh great, I had a feeling Gabriel was not going to be happy with that at all. “How long will it take us to make it back?”

“Long enough to have your nymph friend do something stupid.”

I narrowed my eyes at the devil looking entirely out of place in the lush forest around us. “You don’t care about Seraphina. You’re just trying to get me to jump again.”

He tilted his head. “Well as you know, I cannot carry you.” He smiled.

I crossed my arms, mirroring him. “But you can give me the boost to carry myself? Is that it?”

“I could.” He lifted one hand to examine his nail beds. “But I imagine Crispin would not like to be left behind. I suggest you take your boost from him. ”

My cheeks flushed at the very thought. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Crispin gave me his most charming smile and pressed his palms together in a silent prayer to not be left behind.

I looked back and forth between them. “This is ridiculous.”

“Progress takes effort, Eva,” Sebastian chided.

I furrowed my brow at Crispin, still hesitant to try. We had traveled together before—I knew it was possible—but why was Sebastian pushing for it? What did he hope to learn?

Crispin turned away at the sound of approaching hooves.

All tension left me as I followed his gaze, spotting Gabriel atop a mighty buck, another one tagging along behind him.

I ran to him as he slid down, throwing myself into his arms before I could think better of it. “How did you find me?”

His eyes darkened. “I will explain later.”

Okay, whatever. I glanced back at Sebastian and Crispin as they approached, though my words were for Gabriel. “We need to go. Seraphina is at my apartment bullying Braxton.”

Gabriel kept a protective arm around me. “She heard of her sister? How?”

“Apparently so, and I don’t know.” I looked back at the other two guys again. “Are you coming? ”

Something shifted slightly in Crispin’s expression, but he bowed his head and approached the second buck.

Sebastian just looked irritated. “I will find you later.” He lowered his chin, silently reminding me that I now had to always keep the card on me. But did the card really matter? He had found me out here too. Just like Gabriel. Finding me in the castle was one thing. We were in the middle of nowhere now. Before I could ask, he poofed away.

Frowning, I turned to the remaining two guys.

“Who is Seraphina?” Crispin asked, his expression back to normal.

“It’s a long story. We’ll tell you on the way.”

Gabriel gripped my waist, helping me onto the larger buck before vaulting up behind me.

We had ridden together plenty of times now in the Bogs, but something felt different in the way he wrapped his arm around my waist. Something had changed today.

But what?

Gabriel

Truly, even as king Francis agreed to lend me mounts, and even as I rode into the forest, I didn’t believe I could find her .

But something tugged at me, guiding the way, like an invisible cord between us. Like we were connected by more than just mutual care.

And if I was a part of this, then so were the others. And so was Eva. Only she was being pulled in four different directions.

And there was no saying which path she would ultimately choose.