Fury scorched my insides. Whatever the seelie saw on my face made him shudder, and he took a step back.
“We surrender,” he yelled, and I angled my head.
“Weapons down,”I ordered all demons in the vicinity.
A few of them kept fighting, because a few of the seelie hadn’t heard their order.
Vas gutted a seelie who’d attempted to lunge at Bael’s unprotected back, and Bael nodded his thanks, beheading another attacker with a swing of his sword.
“Surrender,” the seelie screamed, his gaze on the seelie who’d just fallen to the ground, dead.
Slowly, the remaining seelie raised their arms.
“You know, white is a real poor choice for battle,” Vas said conversationally as we watched the seelie drop their weapons, blood staining their light-weight white armor.
“Your king ordered you here as a sacrifice,” my voice rang out. “To slow us down, even by a few hours.”
Because even a few hours in this part of the seelie realm was days for my witchling. Dread knotted in my stomach at the thought.
Several of the seelie shifted on their feet, the realization hitting them. These were young soldiers, low on power and skill. Soldiers whom Taraghlan had decided were disposable, thanks to his new alliance with Lucifer.
The seelie king was obviously planning for Lucifer to kill us and then join him to slaughter Finvarra’s people. He was going to be disappointed.
“On your knees,” Ag ordered.
It didn’t take long to strip them of their weapons. They were quiet, most of them resolved, ready to meet their deaths.
Vas stepped toward me, his expression hard. “We can’t leave them tied up and defenseless here.”
Lilith shot him an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”
“Taraghlan will probably kill them for their failure. If not for their failure, then because they know they were left to die. And information like that tends to spread through an army. Bad for morale.”
“Not our problem,” Lilith snapped.
Vas’s expression darkened, his brow lowering in a way that told me he wasn’t going to let this go. He turned his attention to me. “What would Danica do?”
Lilith let out a sound like an angry cat. “Danica isn’t here, and the longer we spend in this place deliberating their worthless lives, the greater the chance she’ll end up dead.”
Vas ignored her, and Lilith’s expression turned cold. I gave her a look that told her she wasn’t allowed to kill Vas, and she stalked away.
All of us were fracturing at the edges.
Vas was waiting for my decision. I surveyed the group of seelie.
“Let them live. They’ll get word back to Taraghlan’s army.” I enjoyed the thought of that army slowly losing morale when they learned their king had sacrificed some of his people.
The closest seelie, the one who had surrendered, met my eyes. “If we make it to the middleground or the human realm, do we have your word your people won’t kill us?”
“Tell me where the bubaks went and I’ll consider it.”
I knew, but I wanted it confirmed, wanted to be sure they hadn’t taken a different route.
The seelie pointed west. “Through the forest. They separated into groups to make it more difficult for you to find the one with the artifact. Myking,” he spat the word, “has allowed them to hunt and eat any humans who find themselves lost and alone in this part of our realm.”
“How will we know which group has the artifact?”
“They wear the clothes of their victims. The leader has a bright orange shirt with a black checkmark on it.”
