“Eilee, Treycore is here to help us,” Kinzer said.
Finally, someone was stepping up to his defense.
She looked to Kinzer, but then her gaze shifted right back to Treycore. She winced ever so slightly, just enough that he could tell she was thinking about something. Outside of that, judging by the smile on her face, she looked as she would have on her happiest days in Heaven.
“Well, of course he is, as am I,” she said before starting for him again.
He stepped back onto the cushions of a couch behind him, claiming higher ground as they exchanged a few more hits.
“Is that the mortal I helped you reach?” she asked, looking back to Kid. “There were certainly more pleasant scents I could have enjoyed, but you’ve never had the greatest of tastes since you left me, have you?”
“Is that what this is about, Eilee? We’re on the same side. There’s no reason for this.”
“Oh, I’m still on your side, Treycore. Are you mistaking my little game for something more? I just want to play.”
Her words said one thing, but her actions another. He detected something far more sinister in her expression. Given the chance, he feared she would lash out and stab him in his gut, leave him for dead, the way she left her fellow committee members after her madness set in.
She sprung at him, and he jumped over the back of the couch, walking backward toward Hayde and Kinzer. He noticed someone else heading down the stairs—a blond in glasses, wearing slacks and a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Someone he didn’t recognize, he assumed Aerysn’s accomplice.
“I think we’ve had enough of games,” Treycore told Eilee as he continued past Hayde and Kinzer, toward a door that appeared to be to a kitchen. “Certainly, there are more important things we have to take care of. The end of all the realms being the primary concern.”
“There’s always time for games,” she insisted. As their swords clinked together once again, she ran hers down swiftly but then looped it around his and stabbed forward, jabbing him in his chest.
“Fuck!” he screamed. She withdrew her sword rapidly and turned around to her audience, as though she were standing in the Colosseum of Parasonia during the golden days of Heaven.
“I have bested him,” she announced to a room of horrified gazes, no one knowing quite what to make of what had just happened, surely Treycore more than any of them.
A clap came from the other side of the room, and Treycore noticed Hayde was the one offering the praise. His expression suggested he was as dumbfounded as the rest of her audience, that he was trying to do what he needed to calm her.
As Kinzer noticed Hayde’s act, he followed after, and soon the room was filled with the soft applause of Eilee’s limited audience.
She waved to everyone and bowed before putting her sword in a sheath affixed to the side of the dress she wore. She reached her hand out. “Come now,” she said to Treycore. “Let’s shake on it as we would in the days of old.”
He grabbed her hand, but as she took it, she rushed forward quickly, taking a wide bite near his cheek before pulling back sharply. “Do I scare you still, Treycore?” She winked.
“I would be lying if I said you didn’t.”
She giggled. “I’m only teasing you. It seems you have lost your sense of humor. Now, we must stop playing. We have important matters to tend to, don’t we? Firstly, we have a room full of immortals, and I am likely the only one they all know. I feel introductions must be made.”
She approached Treycore’s companions, eagerly greeting the members of the Winged Justice first, displaying that charm and grace she could flip right on. But considering the scene she had just made, the members of Yorro’s gang seemed on edge, like they were waiting for her to snap again and turn her sword on one of them.
The blond immortal whom Trey hadn’t recognized, in glasses, with a short goatee, approached Treycore and reached his hand out.
“Treycore,” Aerysn said, “this is my emissary, Quintz.”
Treycore shook his hand.
“Good to meet you, Treycore,” Quintz said. “I’m glad you all made such good time. We must proceed as quickly as possible. I apologize for the rather rude welcoming party. She really wasn’t like that before you got here.”
“It’s fine. I can handle it. Nice to meet you. If you can give me a minute while I make sure she doesn’t lose her temper on my boyfriend, we can chitchat later.”
He excused himself and wedged himself between Aerysn and Kid as Eilee continued her way around the room. If she planned to hurt Kid, he wasn’t going to hold back his attack the way he had when she had assaulted him after his entry into the cabin.
“And my, my, my,” she said when she finally reached Kid.
Treycore slung his arm around him, keeping him as close as he could.
“Oh, I feel we should hug,” she said to Kid.
