Chapter 47
SAPHIRA
Iran up the steps from the dungeon as fast as my feet could carry me, my heart thundering as I pushed myself beyond my limit, almost tripping over several times as I stared up at that flare of light above me, straining to reach it.
Fading twilight engulfed me as I broke out into the courtyard, my breaths rushing from me as I stared upwards, blinking to clear my vision as the sudden shift between darkness and light made my sensitive eyes tear up.
“Where are you?” I whispered, chills chasing over my skin as I searched the skies for Malachi. “Where are you?”
Vengeance was coming on wings of jaded night.
I knew with perfect clarity it was my vengeance, not Kaeleron’s, that Neve had seen.
Danica and Everlee.
Lucas.
“Where are you?!” I howled, my voice echoing off the three sides of the castle that enclosed me.
Kaeleron appeared beside me in a swirl of shadows that snapped at the stones beneath my feet and punched back the light, obscuring my vision. “What is wrong?”
He seized my arm, drawing me close to him, into the sheltering embrace of those shadows.
“I’m fine.” I wrenched free of him and waved my hands through his shadows, trying to clear my view of the sky. I could barely breathe now, stumbled through the words as I said, “Neve. Neve saw vengeance. My vengeance. She saw Malachi coming.”
“He always enters my court in secret, never using the waygates. The way of a spymaster. He will be on wing.” His shadows disappeared in an instant, leaving my view of the sky clear, and he moved a step ahead of me, his sharp silver gaze scanning the jagged black mountains in the direction of Noainfir and the Forgotten Wastes.
His arm shot upward.
“There.”
I strained to see where he pointed, squinting to try to make out what his stronger vision had spotted.
A mere black dot.
One that was growing larger by the second.
I paced as Malachi flew towards us, unable to keep still, and wasn’t surprised when Chase and Morden jogged around the corner from the green, both of them barely dressed. Chase had at least had the modesty to throw a pair of dark grey sweatpants on backwards. Morden wore only his boxers.
“Wolves really do have no shame,” Kaeleron drawled. “Is this any way to show up to a war council?”
“You’re one to talk,” Chase muttered, nodding to Kael’s bare chest and feet.
“I was bathing,” he countered.
“We were training,” Chase countered right back at him.
Morden went deathly still. “War council? We heard Saphi’s howl. I thought something had happened to her. War council?”
His grey gaze shifted from Kaeleron to me, hope lacing it, together with fear.
Fear that I might not say what he desperately needed to hear.
“I don’t know.” I wanted to tell him that we had found his sister, but I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t. Not when I wasn’t sure. It would crush him. “Neve saw Malachi returning and spoke of vengeance. It has… it has to be them. Right?” I looked from him and Chase, to Kael. “Right?”
He gently laid his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it tenderly through my navy blouse. “Perhaps. You are sure it was not my vengeance she saw?”
I wasn’t.
The more I thought about it, the less certain I became.
“It has to be them.” I flexed my fingers at my sides, ready to curse when I checked Malachi’s position again and he was no closer. “Why the heck is he flying into the damned court? He can teleport!”
“It is his way. A habit of his.” Kaeleron gave me a look, a soft one filled with understanding, and dropped a kiss on my brow as he disappeared.
And reappeared a moment later in a tangle of shadows and wings, stumbling across the courtyard with Malachi and almost barrelling straight into me.
I swiftly leaped to one side, closer to Chase and Morden, avoiding the collision. The moment they had passed me, I was on their heels.
“Malachi.” I lunged for him as Kaeleron righted him and the big demon shook his head, the fading light glinting off his polished black and gold horns, his dark gaze wide and confused. I gripped his forearms and couldn’t stop myself from squeezing them so hard my fingers hurt. “Did you find them?”
I felt as if my whole world hinged on the next few seconds, as if the answer he gave me might slay or save me.
His eyes met mine, reddish-purple around his pupils, glowing in that way they did when he was angry.
And he uttered three words that stripped all my strength from me.
“I found them.”
My knees buckled, sending the ground at me fast, and Kaeleron caught me before I could hit it, wrapping me in his strong arms. Arms I gripped as I fought to take in what Malachi had said, as my ears rang and I battled my disbelief. He had found them.
It struck me that I had lost hope.
That I had believed I would never see them again.
That they were lost to me forever.
Tears threatened and I sniffed them back, because they weren’t safe yet.
They weren’t saved yet.
I lifted my gaze to Malachi. “Where?”
He growled, “A mansion quite some distance from the Vancouver area. It matches the image I was given. I visited there before, but I sensed no one.”
“How is that possible?” I snapped and used Kaeleron as a prop to push myself to my feet again. He didn’t protest. He merely helped me, his hands on my waist to push me up and hold me there, keeping me steady.
“It was before I was given the image at the Hunt Pack. I sensed no one, Saphira. The place was empty, so I moved on. And then when I received the image, I felt sure I had seen it before. I searched for it as quickly as I could.”
White fur swept over my skin, my wolf side pacing and snarling within me as I stared at Malachi, unable to believe what I was hearing. “How long ago did you first scout this mansion?”
He looked away from me. “Three days ago.”
It was a gut punch that almost took me to my knees again.
Danica and Everlee had been there for three days, trapped with Lucas and his wolves who might have done the gods only knew what to them in that time.
Morden launched at Malachi on a feral snarl.
Only to be collared by Chase, who threw an arm around the front of his neck and hooked his hand over his shoulder, holding it tightly and keeping him from unleashing all the rage and pain that shone in his beta’s eyes on the demon.
“Calm down. Malachi isn’t the enemy,” Chase hissed in his ear as Morden struggled, trying to throw my cousin off him, and then his tone softened, his voice falling to a whisper.
“We’ll find her. We’ll find them. But getting into a fight now is a waste of time we badly need on our side. Look at him.”
I looked at Malachi at the same time Morden did.
The graveness of the demon’s expression, the anger that blazed in his eyes and showed in his curling horns, and the regret he wore like a tangible thing told me everything I needed to know.
We needed to move fast.
“The magical barrier cast upon the house is subtle but strong, almost invisible even if you are looking for it. It is a skilled spell, one cast by someone with great power and knowledge. It is not the spell of a witch. I scouted that house and sensed no one within it. No one. Not a trace of life,” Malachi snarled with disgust aimed at himself.
“I should have been able to sense them. It is my purpose—”
Kaeleron clapped a hand down on his shoulder. “Such magic makes it impossible. Do not blame yourself. Had I given you more time to study each location, you might have caught them sooner. Had I gone with you, I might have sensed that barrier. If anyone is to blame for this, it is me, Malachi.”
The big demon looked at him, a whirlwind of emotions still clouding his eyes.
“Not the spell of a witch?” I closed ranks with them, needing answers.
Malachi shifted his gaze down to me.
“It is fae in origin and cast by someone powerful. I fear now they have been there all along. I was lucky this time… but it is not good news, Saphira. Steel yourself. Guards were patrolling the grounds, while others prepared crates for transport. I sensed they were fae and was about to return to inform Kaeleron I had a possible location to check out when one of them said something.” His rough features gentled and that regret in his eyes made me want to snap at him, made me want to tell him not to be sorry, not yet.
Please not yet. “One spoke of an impending move to the Summer Court.”
I shook my head. “No. We need to go there now. If he crosses into those lands…”
“We will lose them.” Kaeleron’s grave tone wasn’t helping my nerves. “I cannot risk my court or the wrath of the high king to follow them into the Summer Court. I could send Malachi, but—”
“Do we even know they’re there?” Morden put in, cutting Kael off as Chase finally, reluctantly released him.
Malachi shook his head. “The barrier prevents me from sensing them, but I sensed wolves among the guards. The alpha and his men are there.”
My protector growled, “But they could be gone already?”
“Or they might not be,” I countered. “Standing here arguing about it certainly isn’t going to help us find out, and the longer we delay, the more likely we are to lose them if they haven’t been moved yet.”
I sent a prayer to my ancestors that they hadn’t been moved yet, and that they were still alive.
And that my mate hadn’t run to a place where I couldn’t easily reach him.
“I will send word to Jenavyr and Riordan, and have them gather men.” Kaeleron glanced from me to Malachi. “How many were present?”
He shook his head. “I am not sure. Only five guards in the grounds.”
“Lucas had several wolves with him when he escaped, and others fled too. It’s possible he has nine, maybe ten with him. A fae looking to negotiate with that many wouldn’t come alone, would he?” I glanced at Kaeleron, who shook his head.
“He would have an entourage. Guards. Fae lords do not walk into unknown territory without the numbers being on their side. Only kings do that, and the Summer Court has no king.”
“How large is the building?” I looked between them. “Maybe we could guess how many might be staying there?”
It was all we could do and I knew it.
“Twelve windows along its facade, and five windows on the side. Three levels, including a basement. Possibly fifteen or twenty rooms. I cannot be sure.” Malachi scrubbed a hand over his midnight hair, preening the wild ribbons of it back, and then lowered it to grip the heavy deep gold and purple-black metal torc he wore around his neck to show he was a widower and had lost his fated one.
“There could be anywhere from twenty to forty seelie in such a building, allowing for the other rooms to be allocated to Lucas’s wolves.
” Kaeleron worried his lower lip with his thumb as he glared at the stones beneath his bare feet and then he looked at me and nodded.
“Riordan’s squad is thirty strong, more than enough to deal with these seelie.
Jenavyr’s will remain here to guard Falkyr.
It is settled. We shall meet back here.”
He disappeared in a swirl of ashy shadow.
“I’ll tell the pack we have a lead and meet you back here as soon as possible.” Chase touched my arm, his pale blue eyes as grim as Morden’s grey ones as he nodded at me.
They moved off together, leaving me alone with Malachi.
“I’ll go get ready.” I went to leave and he caught my arm, halting me.
He looked down at my chest, at the sheath of daggers that sat snugly against my ribs.
Mal’s swirling dark eyes lifted to my face. “Harness whatever fury you felt in that moment in the great hall, young wolf.”
He turned from me, dropping into a dark abyss that spread across the stones, his parting words echoing around me to rattle my courage.
“You will need it.”