“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“What’s wrong? While you’ve been holed up here with the fiancée of the Order’s second-in-command, I’ve been putting out all the fires you’ve caused.”
“Fires? What fires?”
“Everyone’s pissed. Ellison is having a total meltdown over what this means for the accord, and Remus hasn’t said a word since he found out you took that woman. Every time I try to talk to him, he just growls and that vein in his neck throbs like he’s going to blow. Be thankful he’s not here because I think he’s saving up all his words for you.”
“Fuck them.” I lift my chin in his direction. “We all agreed I should go. They can’t get mad now that it didn’t work out the way they expected.”
Seb gives a frustrated grimace and runs his hand through his hair. “We gave you the okay to go to the wedding and read Stefan’s mind. You abducted the bride of the grandmaster’s son from the altar in front of witnesses.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Stefan wasn’t there. I adapted the plan. It’s called thinking on my feet.”
“It’s called potentially starting a war.”
Now I’m pissed. I point at the floor between us and try to keep my voice down to keep from waking Fiona. “Theystarted the war the night they killed Lucy.”
“You shouldn’t have taken a hostage, Connor. That’s not how the brotherhood works.”
“The wheel is in Aries, my friend. It’s my prerogative.”
Seb gets in my face. “Go fuck yourself. You’re the brotherhood’s leader for a month, not our king. I have half a mind to return her to Roman myself.”
Pure fire blazes in my blood, and I cross to the window to distract Seb from seeing it on my face. I’m sure my eyes are glowing green, reflecting the dragon within. It’s all I can do to stay in control. I take a deep, calming breath before I speak again. “Look, what’s done is done,” I say. “This is going to work. Stefan will be forced to meet with us to address the Lucy situation. Did you get the message to him that we have her and if he wants her back, he needs to meet with us?”
Seb rolls his eyes. “Couldn’t.”
“Huh?”
“It seems Stefan isn’t just missing from his son’s wedding—his secretary hasn’t been able to reach him in days and says he wasn’t planning on coming back to work for another week or so. Also, no one seems a bit concerned about it. Roman is running the company in his place and presumably the Order too. We’ve left a message with him as well, but he’s not returning his secretary’s calls or ours either, and when we hired a human messenger to deliver the ultimatum to him at the Château de la Rosalie, there was no response to that either. The messenger confirmed Roman got it. Roman is deliberately not responding to us. Oh, and no one knows Fiona’s been abducted either. There’s no word of it on social or in the papers. As far as the world is concerned, all the party guests are still celebrating at the château. Of course all the party guests were Order members. It follows that if Roman wanted to keep this quiet it would stay quiet. He hasn’t even reported it to the police.”
“Because he knows what this is all about. He knows it’s in retaliation for Lucy and he doesn’t want to involve humans.”
“He isn’t returning our calls. And we haven’t been able to reach Donovan either. Something is very, very wrong about all this.”
“Do you think they went into hiding?”
“I don’t know. I can’t begin to guess what’s going on. None of us could have foreseen this turn of events because none of us thought we werekidnappinga womanthree days ago.”
I smooth my eyebrow with the pad of my thumb,wondering how much I should reveal to Seb about why I actually took Fiona. One look at the fire in his eyes and I decide to keep it to myself. “Uh, right. What’s done is done. I did what I thought was right.”
“You acted impulsively and broke the rules.”
I shrug, turning back to him and spreading my hands. “What would you suggest I do? She’s here and she’s sick. I can’t just return her where I found her.”
“Sick? What kind of sick?”
“Apparently she has fibromyalgia and all the stress brought on a flare. She can hardly move.”
“Fuck.”
“Morwyn was here and checked her out. I’m keeping her comfortable. He says being near me will help her recover faster, but I’m not going to move her until she’s better.”
Seb plants his hands on his hips and shakes his head slowly. “You really screwed the pooch this time.”
“I get it, okay? My dragon may have been running a little hot, and we acted without thinking first. I’ll go see the Oracle. I’ll do whatever she recommends.”
A harsh laugh bursts from Seb’s throat. “If only it were that easy, my friend.”
