Chapter Twenty-Seven
Robin
Robin’s boss took one look at his face, read between the lines when he said, “I have a family thing—” and told him that he was about to hit his PTO cap.
“Do you need the EAP number?” the man asked, followed by, “Seriously, get your away notifications up, email your team and me your current projects, and get out of my office.”
Isobel found him while he was putting together the required email, ass perched on his desk. Like a professional.
“Big bossman said I can snag you for the next couple weeks,” he told her. “I’m adding you to this, and the team will snag you tomorrow morning to show you the system. It’s mostly pulling the reports, you won’t be asked to like, do them. Okay?”
“You’ve never taken two weeks off in one go,” Isobel replied, frowning. “Is your brother okay?”
“Bo’s fine. Just some stuff and people I need to take care of, and it can’t wait.” Click-click-click, his eyes on the screen, and it wasn’t as if he had to rush. He didn’t. Talia would be at Jan’s around five to take him back, and it was barely half-past twelve. He just...
He would really like not to be in the office if he didn’t have to be, was all. Tedious work would give his mind the chance to wander, and he was having enough issues not fixating on what if.
“Uncle Robin!” Talia’s voice rang through the office. And there she was, all small, round hoodie and no smile to be seen, no matter how chirpy her voice.
Heads had turned, Isobel’s included, but Robin didn’t care. Not with Talia looking at him, her eyes wide and scared.
He hit send on the email and closed his laptop. “Talia? What are you doing here?”
“Something happened,” she said, chewing at her lip. “Dad said if you still want to come back, it should be now.”
“Faerie got gut punched by something,” Bo said, as soon as Robin got to Banyan. “Ever’s putting up wards around the place until we know more. Stay in the allotment.”
“I told Zyr I’d stay with him tonight.”
“Tough shit. He lives in enemy territory.”
Fuck you, Robin didn’t say. He crossed his arms over his chest, meeting Bo’s mulish look with a scowl.
“Fine,” Robin said, every inch the pissy little brother. “I left my extra meds in my allotment. Can I at least go there? Or do I need to be chained to the wall?”
Bo really should’ve known better than to trust that Robin wasn’t being a sneaky fucker, but he’d always had blinders when it came to him.
“Yes, fuck. Of course,” Bo said, rolling his eyes. “We can adjust the wards so you can get through to your allotment. But just there.”
“Everything I am is his.”
Like hell was Robin going to leave Zyr in ‘enemy territory’ when Faerie’s magic roiled and shuddered, all nauseating unease. Somehow, somehow, Robin knew the heirs were behind it.
“I’m back!”
Robin pushed open the door to Zyr’s home—on their allotment, sorry, Bo—toeing it shut behind him. Outside, the sun shone in a clear blue sky. Robin even thought he heard birds, singing. It was weird.
The silence inside the house was worse. No beithir appeared to be intense and pleased or worried at him, to call him Treasure or Raven-Robin while they figured out what was going on and what the hell to do about it.
“Zyr?” he called out, moving deeper into the living room, then pushing open the doors to the library. Silence still, and no pull of lightning or chocolate when Robin worked the bond-blocking ring off his finger. “Zyr!”
If Zyr was anywhere on the allotment, he would have felt Robin pass through the wards and come to find him. That wasn’t arrogance. Something was wrong with Faerie. Zyr would want to be where he was.
Count. Breathe. Maybe Zyr was held up somewhere.
The beithir had been in the library since Robin left. There was a fresh stack of books and notes at Zyr’s favorite table, his inkwell uncapped. Wherever he was, he had meant to be back.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Robin muttered, scanning the notes as he breathed. He made himself breathe. Focus. Read, for fuck’s sake.
True names. Zyr had been studying true names.
A neat list of their uses, about the same as those he’d rattled off to Robin.
Oaths. Summons. Set magics, and beneath that, an equally tidy sublist. Mostly shit Robin had never heard of, like whatever a ‘silence stone’ was.
At least he was familiar with Hollow charms.
Scrawled quickly, on the bottom of the page: The Monarchs predate the convergence.
Weird thing for Zyr to write, especially like that, hurried and emphatic.
“Births. Deaths. Bondings. Oaths. Pledges made with words of power. Tucked between children’s trinkets and kinnara is where you find the minutia of running a kingdom.”
“You should burn the records. Destroy them. Heed my warnings the way the Winter Court didn’t.”
That snake of a lidérc had hidden the Monarch’s true names in the wealth of a beithir’s hoard the way a kingdom’s minutia had trinkets and kinnara.
No, no, no no.
Hollow charms and binding oaths and—
When had he sunk to his knees? Zyr wouldn’t have written this and left. He would have–
“Robin!” The yell dragged Robin’s mind away from the spiral it threatened to wander down, his name said in a nerve-gratingly familiar voice punctuated by a fist pounding hard at the house door. “I must speak with you!”
How had the fucking cat gotten past Zyr’s wards? Did that mean–
No. Zyr was alive. He had to be. Probably, Faerie going weird had messed with the wards, too. Especially with Zyr not around to fix them. But he wasn’t dead.
(And Robin wasn’t going to think about the fact that if they were bonded, he’d know exactly where the beithir was and whether he was hurt.)
Robin’s feet carried him to the door without his permission, his hand tight at the door knob, jerking it open to glare at Dinam with every drop of venom in his heart.
Robin knew the look in those wide eyes too well. Guilt. Defensiveness. Shame.
“What did she do?” Robin spat out. Dinam wouldn’t have come if he was guilty over something he’d done. No, it had to be his bond.
Taibe, who played messenger for the heroes.
“I don’t know,” the cat-sith replied, voice ragged. “The beithir— She didn’t know what— The heirs. They forced her hand. I don’t know what happened.”
No, no, fuck no.
They had Zyr. He knew they had Zyr. Unseelie blood was used in sacrifices. In rituals that needed extra punch.
Maybe ones that killed Monarchs and Gates.
“Where?” Robin hissed, taking a step toward Dinam, who had the sense to back away. “Where is he?”
“The palace,” Dinam answered in a rush. “We’ll need muscle, but I can get you in. For a price.”
It turned out all it took to hire Faerie’s most notorious killers was a promise of dibs on any bodies they made.
“Pretty sure the heirs are going to take the thrones and are using Zyr to do it,” he said, and watched Teddai’s face light up with a bloodthirsty, sweet smile. Abrhail didn’t smile, exactly. They just looked hungry. “I need people who can fuck things up and won’t snitch to my family first.”
“Don’t fancy getting my body parts waterlogged any time soon,” the redcap said, all pink teeth and cherub cheeks. “Like the idea of Abrhail’s pretty face gone blue even less. Time to snip quick and start shit.”
“Finder’s keepers,” Abrhail added, their sandsilk-voice whisper soft. “Deal. We make the bodies, we keep what’s on ‘em.”
Dangerous, Declan had told him. Hard to miss, once they reached the palace.
Teddai hummed quietly, and Abrhail, with a not-quite smile at the corner of their eyes, tapped out the beat of the song on their thigh with each step.
The curved tip of their tail shone with something dark and viscous, and Teddai left thick, red footprints in their wake, garish against the polished white palace floors.
Taibe paused at a crossroad of corridors, eyebrows furrowed. Robin bit back a snarl at the delay.
This was her fault.
“I thought you knew this place,” Robin snipped. “You knew enough to get him fucking taken.”
“No one goes to the ascension room anymore,” she replied, small voice going smaller and brittle, shying away from Robin’s anger. “No one needs to. Rooms like that hide.”
If they’d just fucking bonded.
He couldn’t feel the bastard. Maybe they’d been wrong. Maybe this was another trap.
No. Taibe would die, if she’d taken them somewhere wrong on purpose. The murdertwins were determined to kill someone, and they didn’t strike Robin as picky. Even if they let her live, Everil wouldn’t.
Dinam shot Robin a nervous look, stepping forward to wrap his arm around her shoulders and speak low and quick against her ear. Whatever he said, she looked at him in alarm.
Robin hoped she choked on it.
“I smell blood,” Teddai said, sing-song words carrying through the hallway. “Death red and slow to dry, poked a bit to make them cry. Stone and screams.”
If they’d just fucking bonded.
Taibe shuddered, twisting to stare at the manticore and redcap both. Teddai, beaming beatifically at Abrhail while their eyes dripped crimson, didn’t seem to notice.
“Whose blood?” Robin snarled.
“Sparkling summertime seelie. Need to sniff a bitty bit closer to tell anything else.”
“Fine,” Robin said, running a hand through his hair. “Can you follow it? Find it. Whatever.”
“The beautiful cruelty of survival and bloodshed,” was the creepy as hell reply. “Think we can find ourselves a little bit of splatter and slash, Abrhail? Some pretties on silver.”
“Think we can find ourselves an angry as fuck beithir,” Abrhail answered, tail raised and eyes gleaming. They glanced at Robin, then. “Put money on your boy still being alive. I can taste him.”
Abrhail could lick the air for rage all they wanted. They could lick Zyr, so long as they found him.
They would find him. He was fine. He would be fine.
“You say he’s alive, I believe you. Let’s do it.”
Dinam pushed Taibe gently away, nodding down the hallway. Robin glared at her again, met her sharp, shooting looks over her own shoulder as she bustled off.