66. Angélique
66
Angélique
I know now why I felt like Brice and Elhyor were hiding something.
I can smell it in the air. Something is burning and even if we can’t see any smoke yet, the air has a distinctive taste that gives it away.
But wait, if I can taste it in the air, we need to hurry.
We’ve already passed the entrance. I sweat like hell under the blond wig they made me wear paired with brown contacts. I’m not used to those, and I’ve been itching to get rid of them ever since I put them on.
I’m not the only one.
Elhyor seems restless under the silicon mask he has to wear. I’m lucky the traits I’m recognizable for are my lack of hair and bright blue eyes, because it was easy to hide. Elhyor wasn’t as easy to hide. If you make an abstraction of the way he’s built—muscles upon muscles—and his tattoos, he is also known in all of Paris for the sharpness of his traits, the slope of his lips and those golden eyes of his.
Covering clothes and eye contacts might have done the job for the tattoos and the eyes, but he was still way too recognizable.
So, he ended up needing to wear a face mask of one of the delivery guys in addition to the green contacts that would identify him as Sven—the viking-like delivery guy he is impersonating in this instant—through the eye scanner at the entrance.
No one has dared to remove their mask or wig so far and it’s a testament to the dedication of these men and women.
Harry, our driver for today, stops at the entrance of the castle’s restaurant, and we all get out of the truck. It’s weird going on a mission dressed in light green shirts and cream pants of “bunnies’ delight” uniforms, even if I kept my technical clothes underneath. I doubt the uniform is bulletproof, so I’m not about to take that chance. From the dark pieces of fabric that I see poking out from almost everyone’s outfit, I’m not the only one who thought this way.
Only Elhyor seems unbothered. He probably only wears a chest piece, and even that, I’m not sure because he’s cocky like that… and well, no one knows how to kill him, anyway.
False, he trusted me with that knowledge.
My own thoughts send a thrill through my body, and I have to shake the feeling away. This is neither the time nor the place to start feeling things about the big bad dragon.
I look straight in front of me and help the team navigate the corridors of Versailles’s castle. This is not an easy feat.
Try to make twenty something people discreet in corridors that echo any noise tenfold and you’re bound to attract attention.
And trouble.
I have to give it to Brice; he managed to cross the distance to the power room quite fast, knowing he had ten people with him, and it’s a surprise that he encountered only one team of guards.
This is already the third pair of guards we dispatched, and we had to go back on our track to lock them with the previous two in a closet.
It sounds sketchy.
Too sketchy.
This sounds like a trap.
A goddamn trap.
This is the only reason my father delayed his attack on the power room when Brice and his team were inside.
I see it now, and it freezes my blood.
We turn the corner and arrive in the corridor leading to the power room. It’s crowded with guards, and they all have their guns pointed toward us.
Elhyor stops me in my tracks, the fire inside of him burning any remnant of the mask and contacts he had been wearing and making his golden eyes shine in the darkness of the corridor.
“Go, I’ll take care of this,” he tells me.
I’m not one to flee, but I have the suspicion that even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to.
I know my father and sure as hell, when I turn my head in the direction we came in, there are more of his troops.
The troops in front of us aren’t even bothering facing the power room from which smoke started to leak out.
Micha?l doesn’t even consider the people inside as a threat.
And that’s when I see him. In the middle of his men, walking toward us.
All dressed in white and with his wings out.
Wearing the proudest—and scariest—smile I’ve ever seen.
Micha?l.