Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
By the time afternoon arrives, I’m so stressed out that I have to actively suppress the urge to crawl up the walls. I just want to get this over with, but we can’t begin until Diana starts her distraction. Pacing back and forth in the shadows of a deserted alley, I try to calm my pounding heart.
“It’s time.”
I jump as Draven comes running into the alley. Since we can’t cluster together without drawing attention, we’ve had to spread out across several streets so that we just look like individual people loitering about instead of a group of traitors who are planning for a heist.
“It’s time,” Draven repeats as he comes to a halt in front of me. “Diana sent word that the distraction has begun. Bane and Jessina should receive word of it within the hour. And they should fly off straight away once they do.”
Should.
Worry twists inside my stomach like cold snakes.
They should hear about it within the hour.
They should fly off. Our entire plan is based on a whole lot of shoulds.
Specific people need to react in specific ways to specific events, and all of it needs to happen in a very specific order.
If even one of those things goes wrong, half of my friends could end up dead.
Draven slides his strong hands along my cheeks, tilting my head back so that I meet his gaze. “Be careful. If anything goes wrong, send up the signal immediately. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. Because no matter where you are, I will find you and I will get you out.”
My heart squeezes tight, and I reach up to grip his wrist as worry crashes through me again. “You be careful. The three of you have the most dangerous job.”
“Just promise me.” He holds my gaze. Insistent. Urgent.
I swallow at the intensity in his eyes. “I promise.”
“Good.” Leaning down, he presses his lips against mine in a desperate kiss. With his eyes still closed, he rests his forehead against mine for a second. Then he lets out a shuddering breath. “Let’s go get everything.”
A short laugh full of desperation and hope and worry rips from my lungs. “Yes, let’s go get fucking everything.”
He steals one last kiss from my lips before tearing himself away and running back down the street the way he came.
I watch his perfect body until it disappears around the corner.
Nausea rolls through me the moment he’s gone.
I don’t want to let him out of my sight.
I don’t want to lose him again. We’ve lost so much time already, and there are so many things that could go wrong with this plan.
I try to swallow down that sense of dread. I suddenly have a really bad feeling about this.
Trying to block it out, I give my head a hard shake and spin on my heel. I don’t have time to worry right now. I need to get Alistair and then we need to get going. Sprinting around the corner, I hurry onto the next street.
“It’s time,” I call.
Alistair, who was lounging casually against the wall, jerks up straight and snaps his gaze to me. “Now?”
“Now.” Running up to him, I continue past and down the street. “Let’s go.”
He scrambles to catch up and then falls in beside me as we make our way towards our target.
People on the streets blink in surprise and frown at us.
Keeping my head slightly bowed, I make sure that my eyes aren’t visible as I latch on to those yellow-green sparks of suspicion with my magic and decrease them until everyone just shrugs and continues going about their day.
Anger courses through me like crackling lightning.
Anger at myself. At the pathetic person I used to be.
I was born to do this. Alistair and I can run through a dragon shifter city in very conspicuous cloaks without people even thinking twice about it because I can manipulate them into not feeling suspicious.
I possess incredibly powerful magic, and I’m incredibly skilled at using it.
I should never have let the fae resistance keep me stuck as a lookout.
Instead of being so concerned with other people’s opinions, with wanting them to like me, I should have just marched into our leaders’ meeting and demanded my place among them. Demanded respect and responsibility.
So much wasted time. So many wasted opportunities. Just because I wanted to be liked. Just because I wanted people to approve of me and accept me.
But growing up the way I did, it was impossible not to seek that approval. In school, our teachers taught me that everything bad that has ever happened in the history of this continent was my fault. That I was wicked and cruel and that I needed to atone.
And on top of that, my parents also—
Pain and regret slam into me with such force that I feel like my chest caved in.
Stumbling a step to the side, I have to throw out my arm and push off against the wall to straighten myself as I continue to run.
I can feel Alistair glance at me in silent question where he is running next to me, but I can’t concentrate enough to even look at him.
The street around me blurs as I try to focus through the agony-filled regret that tears at my chest like vicious claws.
That unfinished sentence echoes inside my skull.
And on top of that, my parents also hated me for ruining their marriage.
Or they didn’t.
I will never know.
Regret squeezes my lungs, strangling every drop of air from them. I try to suck in a desperate breath, but I can’t make my chest expand. It feels like my chest is trapped in a massive vise which just keeps tightening.
Releasing my grip on my magic, I stop lowering people’s suspicion and instead summon an emotion from nothing.
This time, I don’t choose a positive emotion such as joy.
No. This time, I summon a black flame of despair and slam it right into the closest dragon shifter’s chest while Alistair and I run past.
That warm sparkling pleasure immediately floods my entire body. I suck in a deep breath as that horrible strangling sensation finally disappears from my chest.
On the street behind me, the dragon shifter lets out a sob of despair.
I cast a glance at him over my shoulder as we continue down the road.
He crumples to the ground with another sob, pulling attention away from me and Alistair and instead drawing it to himself.
That wasn’t the reason I chose despair, though.
I did it because he deserved it. It’s high time that the Silver Clan feels what the rest of us have been forced to endure under their rule.
I continue increasing his despair for another few seconds before I manage to sever the connection. The more I create emotions from nothing, the harder it becomes to let them go.
“You okay?” Alistair asks in a casual voice that somehow holds absolutely no judgement at all.
Mabona’s tits, I really did misjudge Alistair when I first met him back in the Seelie Court.
“Yeah,” I reply as we round a corner. Then I nod towards a house halfway down the street. “This is it.”
“Alright. Same plan as we talked about?”
“Same plan.”
“I’ll wait two minutes.”
I nod and then take a sharp right into a narrow alley while he continues straight ahead. Darting between two tall stone houses, I slip around the row of buildings so that I’m instead approaching our target from the back.
My chest heaves from the long run and the temporary issues I had with breathing, so I slow to a walk once I get closer to the house up ahead so that I can properly scan the area for threats.
While drawing in deep breaths to calm my thrumming pulse, I study the buildings around me.
They look empty. I shift my gaze to my target building as it appears before me.
Ferver Osteria, the leader of the scouts, lives in a two-story house with a sizeable garden and a stone fence around it to give him privacy from his neighbors.
Though according to Draven, it’s not actually Ferver’s house.
It’s Papa Osteria’s house. Apparently, the powerful leader of the scouts has no interest in starting a family of his own, so he still lives with his parents and his younger sister, despite the fact that both he and his sister are over two hundred years old.
I flick a glance over the well-kept lawn and the immaculately trimmed bushes and artfully planted flowers as I edge open the back gate and sneak through the garden. Someone either loves gardening or has way too much time on their hands.
The back door is locked, but thanks to Draven’s earlier tutoring, I manage to get it open with a pair of lockpicks.
Cheerful voices drift out as I edge the back door open and slip inside.
“Can you hand me the bowl?” a woman’s voice calls.
I close the door softly behind me while clanging and clinking sounds echo from what I assume must be the kitchen.
“No, not that one,” the woman replies with a laugh. “Azaroth’s flame, honey, we’ve been married for four hundred years, and you still don’t know which bowl is the salad bowl?”
“It’s a bowl,” a man’s voice responds. “They all look the same.”
“Honestly, Dad,” another female voice says in a teasing tone. “You really are hopeless.”
He chuckles. “Says the daughter who refuses to move out.”
Anger streaks through me, and I have to squeeze my hand into a fist to stop myself from moving closer. Why do they get to have a happy family life when their clan has destroyed mine forever? By Mabona, I want to kill them all.
The front door is pulled open.
“Ferver?” Mama Osteria calls from the kitchen. “You’re early, darling. We weren’t expecting you for another half hour.”
Alistair strides in through the front door and closes it behind him.
I shift my gaze to him from where I’m standing at the other end of the hallway.
He gives me a nod. Moving on silent feet, I sneak closer to the doorway that all the voices are coming from while Alistair walks towards it with more determined steps.
“Dinner isn’t quite ready yet,” Ferver’s mother calls as we draw closer. “Do you need to get back early?”