Chapter 7
Tenebrys slid the bolt shut on the old laboratory and took his first deep breath of the night.
Fucking Narcisse. He almost had him in his claws, but the coward was still smart enough not to get within arm's reach of the forest borders that trapped Tenebrys.
He had been so close…
Tenebrys stared at the locked door. The night hadn't been a total loss, but gods only knew what he was meant to do with the woman. He had been using dream magic to connect with her for years, wanting to use her to get to Narcisse, but none of it had been as clear as the previous evening.
Dark goddess, he had barely started the spell, and she was there waiting for him. She had given herself up to him so willingly.
Tenebrys hadn't felt any kind of sexual drive for decades, and now he was like a horny cub. The fact that she was his enemy's daughter only made him more ashamed of himself.
He had intended to use the dream to pry their location from her. He hadn't expected her to change the nature of the magic and then to melt in his embrace.
Tenebrys ran a clawed hand over his face. Her scent was in his nose, cloyingly deadly and feminine like the flower she was named after.
"That's the expression of a male whose night didn't go as intended," Felix said, walking up the stairs.
The plague and Narcisse's subsequent experiments had left his second in command stuck between his wolf form and his human one.
All that remained of Tenebrys's warriors was a handful of bodies trapped in the same distorted state, caught between their natural shifter forms and their human ones with twisted extras like horns they had never had before.
The exposed bone plating that jutted from their flesh in different places was the result of Narcisse's so-called cure gone wrong, and they wore that cursed magic carved directly into bone.
One of the advantages of the bone plating was that it acted like armor when they fought incursions of fae. And by the dark gods, did they need the extra protection.
There were only seven of them left, and the fae kept coming.
Felix crossed his thick arms, exposing the plating of bone and sigils, and waited for Tenebrys to reach him.
"I almost had Narcisse, Felix. He was so close, I could smell the fucker," Tenebrys growled, his hands going in front of him to strangle the air.
"He looks old and much diminished. Killing him would be a mercy at this point," Felix replied. He nodded toward the locked door. "What is your plan there, Ten? She is innocent of her father's crimes."
"Hopefully, she will make good bait," Tenebrys said unconvincingly.
Felix's still-human blue eyes filled with amusement.
"I highly doubt that. Narcisse had the chance to be a good father and give himself up for her, but he didn't seize it.
That skinny lordling wants her, too, but I doubt it would be for anything good.
If it were, she wouldn't have been climbing out windows and running for her life into the forest."
Tenebrys had been thinking about that all night. Narcisse would never have passed up an opportunity to hustle a lord out of his money and connections, but Delphi had been trying to get away from both of them. He had smelled her fear right before she crashed into him.
"Maybe I took her because I needed to take something from them. I don't know, Felix. I wasn't thinking straight," Tenebrys admitted with a sigh.
Felix's fangs flashed in a smile. "She is very pretty, my king. If nothing else, she will give us all something shiny and new to look at."
Hot, possessive fury rushed through Tenebrys like a fever. "Anyone touches her, I'll bite their hands off."
"I said, look, Ten. Not touch," Felix replied with a soft chuckle. "You don't think we all saw that mark on her neck and knew whose fangs put it there?"
"It was a dream! It shouldn't have been possible," Tenebrys snarled in self-defense. That fang graze was a riddle he needed to solve.
"A mark is a mark, whether it was intentional or not. You couldn't leave her with the other males. Your lion wouldn't allow it," Felix said, shrugging. "Goddess only knows what you're going to do with her now. You can't keep her locked in there."
Tenebrys scowled. "The fuck I can't. She is a prisoner."
"Where would she go that we couldn't find her? She didn't know who we were, so Narcisse and Cassia obviously didn't tell her anything about their time here."
Tenebrys ran a hand through his mane. "She said she didn't know alchemy, but I can feel the magic vibrating off her. I don't understand any of this."
"Cassia always had stronger magic than Narcisse, so she probably got it from her.
Leave her for the night and figure out what to do with her tomorrow," Felix advised.
He was always the more level-headed of the two of them, which was why he had been Tenebrys's best friend for their entire lives.
He nodded and followed Felix back down to the main hall.
A small furry creature fluttered through the doors and landed on his shoulder. Luna had been a house cat that had been caught up in Narcisse's magic and now had raven wings.
She was also Tenebrys's spy in the woods and could follow magic trails better than a bloodhound when she wanted to.
She had been the one to find Delphi, where Narcisse had hidden her in that pockmark of a village.
The bright flare of her magic during the dream the night before had given her exact location away.
Narcisse really should have trained Delphi to hide her magic and protect herself from any wandering sorcerer who happened to see her.
Tenebrys frowned, not liking the thought of Delphi being exposed and in danger without her realizing.
Fucking Narcisse.
If one of the fae had found her in the forest before Tenebrys had…he really didn't want to think about it.
With a sigh, he placed Luna on the ground. The night was almost gone, and he still needed to hunt. He had another mouth to feed now, and he had no one to blame but himself.