Chapter Eight
THE TRAIL MARKER HAD said two miles.
That was three hours ago.
Carrie Dela Cruz was not, by any reasonable definition, an outdoorsy person.
She was a paralegal from Hartford who'd let her sister convince her that hiking would be "good for her soul.
" What her sister had failed to mention was that soul-healing required a basic sense of direction, which Carrie did not possess.
Her phone had died an hour ago. The protein bar in her pocket was long gone. And the trees—the endless, identical, mocking trees—had stopped looking majestic and started looking like a very green prison.
"This is fine," she muttered, pushing through another wall of undergrowth. "This is totally fine. People survive in the wilderness all the time. I'll just—"
She stopped.
Blinked.
Squinted.
Rubbed her eyes.
There was a clearing ahead. That wasn't unusual—she'd passed a dozen clearings in the past hour. What was unusual was what was IN the clearing.
Four men.
Four men she recognized.
Everyone in New England knew about the four kings.
It was an open secret, the same way everyone in certain parts of Mexico knew about the cartels.
The difference was that these kings weren't villains—they were protectors.
Ruthless, yes. Dangerous, absolutely. But they kept order.
They kept people safe. And they were, according to every society page and whispered rumor, absolutely loaded.
Carrie had seen their pictures in magazines. At charity galas. On the news, always in the background of important events, never quite the focus but somehow impossible to ignore.
But pictures didn't do them justice.
The first one—Quinn Haydraugh, the King of the North—was tall and lean, with silver-blond hair and features so perfectly symmetrical they almost hurt to look at.
He stood with his arms crossed, impossibly still, like the air had frozen around him.
He looked like winter given human form. Like he'd never raised his voice in his life because he'd never needed to.
The second was Wolfe Sideris, King of the East, and Carrie's heart nearly stopped.
She'd heard the rumors about him. Everyone had.
Borderline sociopath, they whispered. Unpredictable.
Dangerous in a way that went beyond normal mafia dangerous.
He was broader than the others, darker, with a scar cutting through one eyebrow and a feral edge to his stance—weight forward, shoulders loose, like a predator waiting for an excuse.
His eyes scanned the clearing constantly, tracking movement, and even from this distance Carrie could feel the violence coiled inside him, waiting.
The third was Skye Wyndham, King of the West, and he was.
.. different. Where the others radiated danger, he radiated ease.
Relaxed smile. Open posture. The kind of man who looked like he'd help you change a tire and then invite you to dinner at his estate.
Carrie knew better, of course—you didn't become a mafia king by being nice—but looking at him, it was hard to remember that. He seemed so genuinely friendly.
And the fourth—
Devyn Chaleur. King of the South. The one they called the Dark Prince in certain circles, though never to his face.
He had dark hair pushed back from a face all sharp angles and barely contained intensity.
His eyes were wrong—too gold, too bright, catching the light in a way that made Carrie's breath stutter.
He was speaking to the others in a low voice, and even from this distance, every line of him said I'm in charge and you already know it.
The impatience. This was a man who solved problems with money or violence, and if you were smart, you took the money and disappeared. If you weren't smart—
Well. People who weren't smart around the King of the South didn't tend to stay problems for long.
He was so—
Thwip.
Something stung her neck.
Carrie had exactly one second to think oh no before her legs stopped working and the world tilted sideways. She was falling, the forest spinning around her, and then—
Arms caught her. Strong arms. A face swam into view above her—young, professional, blank.
"Tango Four neutralized," the soldier said into his radio. "Requesting extraction for processing."
The radio crackled. "Copy that. Extraction team inbound."
The soldier shifted her weight easily and carried her toward the tree line. As consciousness faded, Carrie saw him pause and bow—actually bow—toward the four men in the clearing.
Devyn flicked his hand in dismissal without looking.
Then everything went dark.
THE KINGS WAITED UNTIL the extraction team had disappeared into the trees before resuming their conversation.
Quinn watched the forest swallow the soldiers, his expression revealing nothing.
Fourth civilian this month who'd wandered too close to a convergence point.
The security protocols were handling it—memory modification, safe return to a hiking trail, a vague recollection of getting lost and being found by a kind park ranger.
No harm done. Just an inconvenience.
"The dreams," Quinn said, his voice low and flat. It wasn't a question.
The four of them had shared many things over the past decade—territory, secrets, the weight of crowns none of them had been born to wear. But this was different. This was something none of them could explain.
For the past three nights, all four of them had dreamed of Abigail Briones.
The same dream. Her face pale and still. Her honey-blonde hair matted with blood. Her eyes open, staring at nothing. Dead.
"Clearer each time," Skye said. "There's a door. Old, rusted. And behind it—"
"We know what's behind it." Wolfe's voice was a low growl, his fingers flexing at his sides like he wanted to hit something. The beast in him was closer to the surface today. "The question is what we're going to do about it."
"The question," Quinn corrected quietly, "is whether Hewhay's is showing us what will happen or what already has."
All eyes turned to Devyn.
He stood slightly apart from the others, his gaze fixed on the mist curling between the ancient trees. The wild majesty of this place usually settled something in him—the raw power of nature, untamed and uncaring. Today it just made him think of locked doors and passages that led nowhere.
"She disappeared before my wedding," Devyn said. "Into a passage behind my chapel. No one has seen her since."
"And you've searched?" Skye asked.
"Every inch of the estate. Every passage, every hidden room." Devyn's jaw tightened. "Nothing."
"But you haven't searched where the dreams are pointing."
Silence.
The locked door in the passage. The one Devyn had sealed himself, years ago, when he first took the estate. The one that led to the old dungeons—chambers from a darker time, when the previous kings had dealt with enemies in ways that left no witnesses.
He'd never opened it. Never wanted to know what was down there.
Now he might not have a choice.
"We'll reach out to our contacts," Skye said. "If anyone in the other territories has heard anything—"
"There may be times," Devyn cut in, "when I'm not by my wife's side."
The words hung in the air.
Wolfe's eyes narrowed. "The new queen."
"She appeared at the exact moment Abigail disappeared. I don't believe in coincidences."
"You married her anyway."
"I did."
"And?"
"And now I need answers." Devyn's voice was flat. Final. "I can't get them if I'm watching her every moment."
A beat of silence.
Then Wolfe nodded. "We'll look after your queen."
Quinn inclined his head—the barest movement, but from him it was as good as a blood oath. He never wasted words. His silence spoke for him.
"Be careful," Skye said, his voice dropping, all friendliness stripped back. "If the dreams are true—if Abigail is dead—someone went to great lengths to make it look like she ran. That kind of planning takes patience. Resources. Someone with access."
"I know."
"And your wife—"
"I'll handle it."
They parted without ceremony—no handshakes, no farewells. Just four men who'd walked through the same impossible door a decade ago, bound by secrets that no one else could understand.
Devyn was halfway to the extraction point when his phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen. Mrs. Lyme.
His housekeeper never called during territory business. Never.
He answered. "What is it?"
"Your Majesty." Her voice was urgent. "I apologize for the interruption. It's the queen. She's been... unsettled this morning."
"Unsettled how?"
A pause. "She couldn't eat breakfast. She's been in the library for the past hour with a cup of coffee. Her hands are shaking, sir. And when I asked if she was feeling well, she just...looked at me. Like she'd seen something terrible."
Devyn's blood went cold.
"I'm sure it's nothing," Mrs. Lyme continued, "but after what happened with—" She stopped herself. "I thought you should know."
"You did right." His voice came out sharp. Hard. "I'm on my way."
He ended the call and changed direction, his stride eating up the ground. The helicopter pilot was running final checks when Devyn appeared, and the man took one look at his face and stopped asking questions.
"Home," Devyn said. "Now."
The pilot didn't argue.
THE HELICOPTER LIFTED off, banking hard over the forest canopy, and Devyn stared out the window without seeing any of it.
His mind was at the estate. In the library, where his wife sat with shaking hands and haunted eyes. Where something had frightened her badly enough that Mrs. Lyme—unflappable, professional Mrs. Lyme—had broken protocol to call him.
What had Bailey seen?
What had she found?
He thought about the dreams. Abigail's dead face, her bloody hair, her empty eyes. The locked door that all four kings had seen in their sleep, waiting in the darkness beneath his home.
And he thought about Bailey.
His wife.
His queen.
The woman who'd appeared from nowhere, who claimed to know nothing, who looked at him with those violet eyes like she was trying to decide if he was her salvation or her doom.
She was changing him.
He could feel it happening—the way his thoughts drifted to her during meetings, the way his chest tightened when she smiled, the way he'd carried her to bed last night like she was something precious instead of something suspicious.
She was working her way under his skin, into his blood, becoming necessary in a way that terrified him.
An obsession.
He'd had obsessions before. They always ended badly—for him or for someone else.
But this was different. This was worse. Because Bailey wasn't just an obsession. She was a weakness. A soft spot in armor he'd spent a decade making impenetrable. And in his world, weaknesses got exploited. Weaknesses got people killed.
The helicopter banked again, and Devyn closed his eyes.
If Abigail were to come back—
The thought surfaced unbidden, cold and sharp as a blade.
If Abigail were still alive. If she walked through his door tomorrow, whole and unharmed, with explanations for everything. If he could go back to the way things were supposed to be—the arranged marriage, the strategic alliance, the queen who made political sense instead of emotional chaos.
Could he give Bailey up?
Could he look at her—his wife, his obsession, the woman who'd somehow become necessary in a matter of days—and tell her it was over? Send her away? Watch her walk out of his life?
For the sake of eliminating weakness. Eliminating softness. Eliminating any vulnerability that enemies could exploit.
Could he do it?
The helicopter roared over the treetops, carrying him home to a wife with shaking hands and secrets she couldn't hide.
Devyn opened his eyes.
He didn't have an answer.
And that, perhaps, was the most terrifying thing of all.