Chapter 1
Chapter One
WARWICK
It was cold as fuck.
We had been out here so long my balls resembled ice cubes, clanking like bells every time the bitter wind snapped off the river. I hunkered down against the wall; my breath billowed in condensation, steaming up my binoculars.
“This is not good,” Ash muttered next to me, peering through his own.
Frowning, I rubbed the blurry glass over the fabric of my coat and pressed them up to my eyes again.
Lights glared off the Danube from across the river, and the entire fae palace was lit up.
Hundreds and hundreds of figures moved around the citadel.
Furniture was being carried indoors; servants and guards, terrified of their new patron, bustled in and out like there was a ticking time bomb under their feet.
Dragging my view over, I took in the quick construction on the far wing of the palace, already half rebuilt.
The section that was blown up by the very same people moving in.
Chance and quick thinking were the only reasons my sister and nephew lived.
And they were most of the reason I stayed, why I hadn’t fully gone over the edge.
“Fuck that bitch,” I snarled.
“Think Killian will fight you to kill her first.” Ash huffed out a thick cloud of breath, tucking his chin farther into his collar. It had to be past midnight, and the temperatures in the first week of December were already dipping below thirty degrees. “She’s going old school with those uniforms.”
Through the eyeglass, I could pick up the general details of the guards’ uniforms. Black leather-like pants and shirts with long sleeves and an embroidered emblem on the front, which I couldn’t make out from here, but I got the gist of who she was copying.
“Very similar to Queen Aneira’s military.” He shivered. Not sure from saying her name or from the bitter temperatures.
“Well, Sonya is a product of that time,” I replied.
“She idolized that psycho bitch.” I scanned the area, taking in everything I saw.
The armored cars, military trucks, servants, guards.
Sonya was making herself at home in Killian’s palace.
Taking over the empty seat before he could come back.
Majority of the people still thought he was dead anyway, so they welcomed their new leader without any fuss.
Budapest was in a strange limbo. Like a cartoon I saw once of a coyote hanging in the sky after running off a cliff until he realized he was standing on air, and then he fell. We were like him, hanging in the air. Waiting. Soon we’d realized we, too, were standing on nothing.
People in Savage Lands went along with their day, trying to simply survive, while rumors of General Markos’s disappearance grew louder.
Lieutenant Henrik Andor, his second in command, was trying to act like nothing was wrong and it was business as usual, but you could feel it in the air.
The holding of breath before everything was about to crumble.
When you merely survived day to day, escaping gangs and death, starvation, and people willing to kill for a coin in your pocket, your senses became honed.
You could feel a slight shift in the air. Something was off.
Wrong.
This city was all sorts of wrong.
Or maybe it was me.
Nothing had been right with me for weeks now as if I were on the precipice of falling.
“We better get back before I freeze my nutsack off out here.” Ash got to his feet, grumbling at his stiff muscles.
“I’m sure you’ll find someone to warm them up later.” I shot at him, my eyes still on the palace.
“Who said it would be just one?” He smirked.
I wagged my head, dropping the binoculars and climbing to my feet. “Are you actually admitting there are two?”
“You mean my two hands?” Ash couldn’t fight the grin hitching the side of his mouth as we strolled to our motorcycles.
We both knew it wasn’t his hands that were getting him off almost every night.
You’d never know by how they acted during the day, but two people were slipping into his room at night, and shit got loud.
It only grated my nerves and added to the anger and venom swimming in my blood, deteriorating the slight barrier I tried to keep up between me and the Wolf.
It had been just a little over two weeks since the night she left—since everything went to hell, and the Wolf was being held back by a thin thread. He wanted to hunt her down. Claim his vengeance. Exhibit his wrath. Devour his prey.
Violently. Brutally.
Make her pay.
Swinging our legs over the motorcycle, Ash and I tore off through the quiet streets. The only people out now were deadly and dangerous.
But most feared me.
The roar of our bikes recoiled off the buildings, the frigid air snapping even harder at my frozen skin.
We zigzagged through the Savage Lands, making sure we weren’t followed and stopping far enough away from where we had secured our new base, Vajdahunyad Castle, which wasn’t a real castle in the technical sense.
Copied from Corvin Castle in Romania, it was part of a Millennial Exhibition, built in an old park to show off the mix of romantic architecture of the time: Romanesque, Gothic Renaissance, and Baroque styles were highlighted in the Romanesque cloisters, mock drawbridges, moats, gates, carved portals, and spires.
These were stunning back in the day, but the building had been left in ruins after the Fae War, ignored, neglected, and forgotten.
Wildlife grew around it, concealing the gem in foliage, decaying over time.
Ash and I hid our bikes in the brush behind an old outbuilding on the east side of the park, slinking through the darkness across the large, overgrown common grounds, our senses at the quick for wild animals and enemies.
The moment we got within viewing distance of our new base, guns clicked as a handful of guards stepped out, ready to fire.
Dozens of them, a mix of Povstat and Sarkis’s people, were camouflaged in black and green.
They looped all the way around the outskirts of the castle, guarding it against intruders twenty-four hours a day.
My sister was even part of the patrol, most likely out here tonight with horse-face.
“Just us.” Ash held up his arms.
“You’re only giving me more reason to shoot.” A man stepped out in front, pulling his balaclava up to his forehead. Tall and built, his blond hair hidden under a beanie, Lukas looked like that guy who should be out fighting crime and saving babies. The classic hero, where I’d be the villain.
A half smile curved up Lukas’s mouth, his gaze coyly trailing over Ash, both pretending it wasn’t their fault I was kept up half the night. Behind Lukas, I spotted the third member of the party that had me wishing for earplugs.
The demon’s braided blue hair was the only color against her all-black outfit.
Everyone had a job here. No one could float, so Kek picked guarding, thinking it would be the easiest job.
With Lukas as the chief adviser of all the guards, I think she was finding it a lot more work than she figured.
If they weren’t on guard, he had them working out or practicing at the underground gun range.
“See anything?” Lukas cleared his throat, forcing his gaze off Ash.
“Mommy has officially moved in.” Ash tucked into his jacket.
Lukas’s head dipped; a streak of pain flashed quickly over his face before it was gone. I couldn’t imagine having that heartless bitch for a mother. She cared more about power than her own flesh and blood.
“I’m actually surprised it took her this long.” Lukas’s eyes moved around, his head bobbing.
Sonya had soldiers on Killian’s property before the dust even settled after the incident at Věrh?za.
It only took her a few weeks to move all the old leader’s shit out and hers in.
She made sure everything represented her—not just a leader but as a queen.
Unmistakably stating her autocratic rule over Budapest was a certainty.
With Markos quiet, off licking his wounds somewhere, it was still odd there was no retaliation from HDF.
Sonya took that as a sign to take it all.
With Leon dead, the human force in Prague crumbled within a week.
But Sonya didn’t want Prague; it already had a fae leader.
An inept one, but she would not challenge him, not when she was handed an even bigger position in Budapest.
“Caden, Birdie, and Scorpion returned about ten minutes ago.” Lukas flicked his head back to the castle. “Also . . .” His cheek twitched. “You might want to check on your friend. She refused to eat again.”
Ash and I simultaneously jerked, knowing who he was talking about. Kitty. She had not bounced back from our time in Věrh?za. We’d been through worse things together, but something this time snapped her. Broke her so much she was giving up on living.
Ash nodded his head, his brow furrowing with worry. Whatever issue he had with her at one time evaporated when faced with life and death in the pit. In the end, we were family; the rest was just bullshit. Things were still tense, but his love for Kitty pushed that all to the side.
“Thanks.” Ash moved around Lukas and Kek.
“See you later?” Lukas asked evenly, like it held no meaning.
Ash’s gaze went from him to Kek, his head dipping again, before continuing toward the entrance.
“Do me a favor. Hang out in one of their rooms tonight. I’d like to get some fucking sleep.” I grumbled, striding by them. My dick was having enough issues being at constant attention, panting and eager, like a dog waiting for his master to come home.
“You could always join.” Kek taunted behind me with a laugh.