Chapter 5
FIVE
When I finally made it to the doorway and peered out into the club, it appeared frozen in time—like a movie suddenly paused in the middle of an action scene.
Drinks hovered halfway to lips. Dancers stopped with arms raised, only one foot on the floor.
The only movement came from a figure standing in the center of the room—possibly the largest man I’d ever seen.
The guy’s back was towards me, but he was at least seven and a half feet tall and massively built.
Basically, a wall of muscle that was taller than anyone else in the bar except for the trolls.
He turned slowly, and I could have sworn the floor creaked underfoot. His face was broad, tanned, and scarred, amber eyes flashing beneath craggy dark brows that matched his long, dark ponytail.
“You miserable traitor,” Tairen hissed. “How dare you betray your king like this?”
Betray his king? He was clearly a shapeshifter. Presumably, he was the one who’d just slid the envelope under the door. Which meant Tairen was assuming Callum had nothing to do with the summons I’d just received.
Interesting.
Hopeful.
But I couldn’t explore that thought until after I convinced them to take this little disagreement outside.
“You are no longer queen,” the giant rumbled. “You cannot command me.”
“I can still make you regret your decisions,” Tairen responded, taking two more steps into the room.
The crowd, recognizing that the environment had suddenly grown a great deal less hospitable, split down the middle, leaving the dance floor empty and silent.
The only movement was Seamus behind the bar carefully setting down a glass, while Oliver—Faris’s bouncer—took a resolute stance between the giant and the door.
We were all holding our breath a little when Faris finally showed up, bursting in from the kitchen so forcefully that the swinging door ricocheted off the wall behind it and smacked into his shoulder on the rebound.
He didn’t even flinch—just took one look at the scene and swore, his tone sharp and vicious.
“The summons has been executed,” the giant said. “With witnesses. You cannot change it.”
“But I can change whether you ever betray your king again.” Tairen’s voice had gone deep and harsh.
What if he hadn’t betrayed his king? What if Callum knew about the summons and hadn’t had a chance to tell me?
What if…
No.
Callum had chosen me. Trusted me. Had my back when it counted. It was time to prove that I trusted him too.
“Can we discuss this outside?” I requested, trying to sound calm, confident, and completely in command of the situation. “There’s no need to ruin everyone’s evening.” Though if this turned into a fight, it wasn’t only the evening that would be ruined.
But the giant was clearly from out of town, because he didn’t seem to recognize the danger he was in.
Instead, he smirked at the former queen of the dragons.
I’d only met her five minutes ago, and I already knew that wasn’t going to turn out well.
“Tell me again what you’re going to make me regret, little dragon. Or are the rumors I’ve heard actually true, and you can do nothing but bluster?”
The entire room let out a collective gasp, and I saw Seamus’s eyes nearly goggle out of his head.
Faris’s jaw was beginning to take on the rough stone appearance of his elemental form, and all I could see was one more disaster.
One more chaotic mess with my name on it.
I had to stop this before it could even start, but how could I convince these two to…
“Outside!” Faris bellowed, the words echoing from a chest now even broader and harder than usual. I was pretty sure the entire building shook, which should have been the new guy’s first cue to shut up and leave.
He didn’t.
In fact, he actually began to shrink, collapsing inwards in a bizarre…
Oh. Oh no. He wasn’t shrinking—he was shifting.
His arms and legs seemed to disappear, melting into his sides as his entire body lengthened, stretching on and on before crashing to the floor… in the form of the freakiest and most enormous snake I had ever seen in my life.
A naga shifter. Solitary, rare, and insanely dangerous, with deadly venom that was feared by most Idrians but was particularly toxic to other shifters.
Coils upon coils formed a circle in the center of the dance floor, and when he reared up, his head towered over everyone in the room, surveying us through slitted reptilian eyes.
The center of his body was nearly as thick as my waist, and when his mouth opened, it displayed a pair of fangs the length of my forearm.
Then that freakishly huge head turned, looked straight at Tairen, and hissed.
The crowd lost its mind. Screaming chaos ensued as everyone scrambled for the nearest exit. Front door, back door, kitchen door… I wondered distantly whether Irene would ever recover from the invasion, but the thought vanished as my boss made a sound I’d never heard from him before.
It was almost a yelp, and coming from anyone else, I would have assumed it was a sign of abject terror. But Faris didn’t run. He moved forward, knocking aside a chair as he headed straight for the intruder.
The snake swiveled, saw him coming, and struck—lashing out with a speed that defied his enormous bulk.
He was trying to kill Faris.
The interloper had finally realized who was the most dangerous person in the room, and a part of me sort of sat back and smirked as I waited for Faris to end the fight.
All he had to do was open up the floor and let the earth do the rest of the work.
I’d seen him do it before, and it had never failed to be effective.
But for whatever reason, he just kept moving forward—closer to the enemy. The giant naga lashed out again, his fangs striking Faris’s arm before bouncing off the granite-hard surface of his elemental form.
My boss let out a bellow of rage and hammered a punch into the snake’s neck, but the naga barely seemed to notice, twisting out of the way in a writhing heap of powerful coils, knocking over tables and splintering chairs with every twist of his massive body.
Why wasn’t Faris using his elemental magic?
And why would a Shapeshifter Court emissary be stupid enough to attack the Shadow Court?
Not that I should be wasting time looking for answers when we were all now in mortal danger as a result.
“Raine, get out!” Faris growled, his eyes glowing so brightly they turned his entire face an unearthly green. “All of you, get out of here. If he bites you, you’re as good as dead.”
“Absolutely not,” I snapped. “I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone.
The snake hissed in anger and began to weave back and forth.
“He can’t hurt me,” Faris insisted, but his face told a different story. He almost looked scared, and I’d never seen Faris Lansgrave be afraid of anything. “Now get out, and I will deal with it.”
Part of me wanted to obey his command and run, but I wasn’t as ignorant as I’d been only a few months before.
No matter how much I wished I could deny it, this was a representative of the Shapeshifter Court—an official envoy—and his interactions with Faris would be interpreted as court business.
Handing me a summons on Shadow Court territory without first consulting Faris was an enormous breach of etiquette, but the situation would only escalate further if Faris caused him significant harm in retaliation.
I knew Faris didn’t care about the consequences.
He’d held power here for the last fifty years by refusing to bow to outside threats—backing up his authority with violence when necessary—and for that reason the courts tended to leave him alone.
But with tensions between humans and Idrians being what they were, the last thing any of us wanted was infighting.
Which meant I needed to keep my boss from killing the stupid snake-man.
Who was now circling the club, eyes on Faris, his scales making a dry rustling sound as they rasped over the floor.
He appeared to be ignoring the rest of us, but as he continued to circle, his head made the tiniest jerking motion, and my siren magic latched on with a vengeance.
The naga was a fool, and he’d been chosen for his foolishness.
Who else would dare deliver such a summons behind their king’s back, on another court’s territory?
And now he saw an opportunity. Sensed weakness.
The dragons would not risk interference, not here, and the old queen was weak.
If he could kill Faris, he would have power.
Respect. No need to serve as a petty mercenary or messenger boy. He could take over this territory and…
Good grief, where did they find this idiot? Who exactly had sent him?
And why did he seem so convinced that Tairen was weak?
Didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to stand back and allow any of this idiocy to happen.
Faris might be hesitating to use his earth magic, but he also could not permit this kind of trespass to go unanswered.
We might not be able to kill the shapeshifter representative, but neither could we just let him escape.
That would damage Faris’s reputation, and his reputation was what kept all of us in the Shadow Court safe.
Not to mention, a giant snake loose on the streets of Oklahoma City was exactly what we didn’t need, given the existing tension with our human neighbors.
So the job was—don’t kill it, don’t let it kill anyone else, don’t let it get away.
Right.
If only we had more help, but all our customers had scattered, and even after Tairen’s threats, the dragons were just standing there watching.
Presumably because they didn’t want to step on Faris’s toes, but right that second I didn’t much care about their reasons.
All of this political posturing and tiptoeing was what had separated me from Callum in the first place, and now I was well and truly pissed off.
And in my rage I reached for the closest magic at hand…
Fae.