23. Callum
CALLUM
Blood splattered across my boots, and I shook my head in annoyance. The stars-damned guards had attempted to trail us for the past four blocks, thinking that we hadn’t picked up on our tail. It was my fault we were in this situation.
I knew it. Axel knew it.
And he sure as fuck wasn’t going to let me forget it anytime soon.
We’d gotten all the information we needed for Elion to move to the next phase of this mission. We’d sent the data files late last night after scouring the top levels of the Solis Court one last time. We had every piece of evidence we needed to end Lucanus’s reign of terror over the Solis Quarter.
It had been my idea to return to the temples one final time. And it had been my idea to follow Raelyna’s sister into the temples when Lucanus’s guards had collected her on the streets outside the temple district, which is how we’d discovered that Lucanus was on our trail.
I should never have danced with her. It had been too exposed . . . too out in the open. There had been far too many surveillance drones around. And yet, my mind flashed back to that night. To the feel of her in my arms as we danced across the room. To how right it had felt in that moment.
Never in the centuries that I’d been running missions as the head of the elite Shade for the Aurelian Guild had I ever let a female distract me during a mission—a scouting mission, nonetheless.
Any initiate could run a scouting mission .
. . I’d been doing these since Elion had first picked me up off the streets of Aurum. And yet—
And yet, one choice. One decision to dance with the stars-damned female whose eyes sparkled like starlight, and our cover had been compromised.
A surveillance drone of all things had gotten too close and flagged us in the systems as intruders.
And now, not only had we been discovered, but they had stars-damned footage of us.
Centuries of work building my cover. All for it to be blown by one stars-damned dance.
We needed to leave the Quarter. Elion had already sent the demand for us to return. Everything had been in motion—plans set into place.
And yet, I’d fucked it up.
Worse yet, I knew without a shadow of doubt that I’d do it again, just to have her in my arms. A low growl of frustration at the mess I’d found myself in slipped from my lips.
“A little help here, Blackwood.” Axel’s disgruntled command snapped me back to attention, just in time to see another guard rushing toward me. I ducked to the left, spinning as I rounded a kick to his side that had the guard grunting and clutching at his ribs.
With jerky motions, the male grabbed a blade from his waist. His wings flared wide on either side of him, and he charged through the air toward me.
Shit.
My gaze darted around us in a flash. Satisfied, I tugged on the muscles on my back, my own wings emerging in a hue of shimmering golden feathers. My wings expanded wide, nearly stretching the distance of the alleyway we stood in as power flooded my body.
Onyx wings flapped toward me as the guard roared his rage.
I stood, wings outstretched, fists raised as I watched the moment that the guard’s eyes widened in shock. Realization flashed through him, then terror, as he realized who he was facing and perhaps that he’d just signed his life away.
The Shade of the Aurelian Guild.
My wings flapped instantaneously, lifting me above him as he charged toward me. He threw his blade before drawing another, but I was quicker, my wings pushing me high above the weapon as I flipped through the air before landing behind him, pulling two knives of my own.
In a rapid procession, I launched the blades through the air, the tips embedding in his wings on either side as they pinned him against the wall, and I stalked forward.
The guard whimpered as he tried to remove the blades to no avail, before I reached him.
I didn’t give him time to react to my approach, to defend himself, before I pummeled his face with a series of blows.
His head snapped back, hitting the wall from the force of my blows and then cracking forward at an unfortunate angle.
His body hung limp, the same as the guard before him.
“Fucking—” Axel’s words bit out in a clipped rush as he fought the man before him.
“Didn’t realize we were going there. A bit of a heads-up—” He ducked another blow as I landed on the ground behind him.
“Would have been . . . appreciated,” he said as he finished the male with a series of stabs in the abdomen.
“What was I supposed to do?” I bit out as I looked down toward my boots, now coated in crimson, with annoyance. “He had a death wish.”
“So much for maiming not killing,” he stated as we stared at the four bodies littering the ground before us, blood running through the sandy street.
“Well,” I said. “What other option did we have?”
“Going by your logic,” he answered, “I’d say not revealing golden wings would have been an option. You know . . . maybe not broadcasting to the enemy that we’re from Aurum Quarter.”
I shrugged as I began to haul one of the bodies to the dark corner of the back of the alleyway, tossing it there.
“It was unavoidable. They already know of our presence.”
“Snap out of it,” Axel huffed as he moved to help me.
“There’s nothing to snap out of,” I bit back as we made sure the alleyway looked untouched—well, mostly untouched, seeing as the sand was now stained crimson.
“Sure, whatever you say, bossman,” Pierce grumbled as he hauled another body over to the same location.
Shouts sounded in the distance, and I cursed this mission for the hundredth time in the past twenty-four hours as my muscles tightened, preparing for yet another fight, seeing as the blood-stained street would be an automatic indicator something was amiss.
“If I knew backup would come this quickly, bullets would have been a better option,” Axel complained from beside me, the last body now out of sight.
“We just need to get out of here before we’re spotted.”
“Spotted again, you mean?” his voice rang out in the night air.
“You know what—” I didn’t finish the statement as my second huffed a laugh from beside me, giving me a sharp jab in the ribs.
“Let’s get moving,” he replied, his own wings emerging as he flew to the rooftop of the closet building to get a better vantage point.
We sat in the corner of the Tilted Tavern, hidden from sight, as we kept our dunewraps high across our faces and our hoods low.
“So,” Axel drawled as he took a sip of his drink, careful to keep his face hidden in the shadows. “This wasn’t the plan.”
“Thanks for stating the obvious,” I replied as I glared at my second.
“Well,” he replied, matter-of-factly, “someone had to say it. I haven’t seen you this off in a mission since—well—honestly, since we started.”
“I’m aware,” I bit out, frustration at myself rising. “The sooner we get back to Aurum, the better,” I replied. “We only have three days to make it back.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” he answered, and I shot another glare his way.
The door to the Tilted Tavern burst open with a jarring slam, the clamor of voices dropping to a dull chatter as a formation of RSG members marched through the door, scanning the tavern before spotting who they were looking for.
The male leading the charge marched forward, citizens scrambling out of the sergeant’s way as he stalked straight toward the bar top.
My gaze flicked toward the female behind the bar, taking in unruly brown waves of hair, solid hazel eyes wrinkled with age, and a light dusting of freckles across powdered cheeks. She looked exactly like Raelyna—or better yet, Raelyna looked exactly like this female.
“May I help you?” I picked up her voice from across the tavern, watching carefully as she interacted with the members of the RSG towering over her.
“Mrs. Kingsley,” the sergeant stated in a monotone voice.
“Yes?” she questioned.
“We have orders from King Lucanus to search the tavern for two members of the Aurelian Guild who were spotted in Solis Quarter.”
The female gasped, clutching at her heart as terror and concern flashed in her eyes. Her head bobbed immediately. “Whatever you need to do,” she replied as she gestured around the space.
“We will station guards at the entrance. No one in or out until the building has been searched.”
Raelyna’s mother nodded in acquiescence as the RSG began to fan out by the door, taking their positions. My eyes narrowed as I watched the sergeant motion to his lieutenant, and the male scampered forward, taser in hand, motioning the workers to step out from behind the bar.
A brief flash of brown hair caught in my peripheral vision, and my head slowly turned to the side, catching sight of her.
Raelyna stood against the door near the kitchen of the tavern, her hair in a bun of loose curls as her head rested against the wooden structure. Her eyes stayed focused on her mother, never leaving as the sergeant spoke to her in hushed tones, his hands gesturing wildly.
It wasn’t hard to pick up on the words the male was saying, mentions of “spies,” and “escaping,” sharp on his lips.
My gaze flicked back toward Raelyna as she began to scan the crowd of citizens in clusters around the tavern’s space.
Her nose was scrunched, her brow furrowed in the center as she swept over every table, recognizing the citizens sitting at each spot in the tavern.
I caught the moment her sea-glass hazel eyes spotted us in the distance, her pupils widening a fraction before she continued looking across the tavern as though she had never spotted us before.
The guards began rummaging behind the counters at the bar. A brief flash of anger coursed through me as I watched the males so carelessly tossing things aside as they began to search for—well, for Axel and me.
Did they seriously think we would fit in a shelf under a bar top? How small did they believe us to be? Or . . . how idiotic were the guards Lucanus hired?
The scent of jasmine flooded the booth we were sitting in, every fiber of my being responding to the sweet scent floating off of her, even as I kept my muscles taut and my gaze fastened on the guards searching through the kitchen.
Her voice was a breathy hiss of a whisper against my hood as she bit, “You didn’t tell me you were spies.”
“It’s not like that,” I replied in a low voice, careful not to draw unwanted attention as the female behind me radiated unbridled fury.
“Ha. Sure, it’s not. You’re just like every other male, lying to get what you want.”
“I didn’t lie to you, starlight.”
“There you go again, lying to me once more,” she snarked.
“I’m being entirely serious right now. I didn’t lie to you.”
“I hate to interrupt, but now isn’t the best time to have this argument. Perhaps we could have it a bit later? Preferably, when the RSG isn’t hunting us?” Axel took that moment to chime in.
“See . . .” Raelyna replied. “I told you that you were lying.”
“Are you here to offer assistance in getting us out of here, or are you just picking a fight with me?” I questioned, my patience on the verge of snapping as the guards began moving closer toward our booth.
A harsh scoff sounded from the female behind me, her scent still lingering intoxicatingly on me. “Why in Aurelia would I help you?”
“Maybe because you know there’s more going on than what meets the eye?” I prompted. “Because there’s a part of you that knows that something bigger is happening and you want to help.”
I heard the sharp intake of air from behind me. I felt the moment she went rigid against my back, and I waited. Even as the guards drew closer. Even as Axel began to tap his fingers on the table, his hand shifting toward the pistol at his side. Even then, I waited.
Because she deserved this . . . she deserved this moment to choose. To pick her own path. To determine what she believed.
“This way,” Raelyna finally whispered, and a breath of air I hadn’t known I’d been holding released from my chest, a weight lifting off of me. “But hurry. We don’t have much time.”