“Because Lucas and I collected five last night, and we noticed something interesting.”
Lucas leans over and digs in his bag, withdrawing a wooden box. He opens it, and we all groan as the energy from the rings hits us. But as he turns the box to face me, I see the differences. At first glance, they’re all exactly the same: silver, with a Saint George’s cross on the face. But that is where the similarities end. The metal of one is brighter white and more substantial.
“Is it just me, or does one appear to be platinum and the others silver?”
“It’s not just you,” Ellison says. “You can see the lesser rings are already tarnishing. And?—”
“No inscription,” I say. I stand from the table. “We should check the ones Remus and I collected.”
I rush from the room to my bedroom and to the black bag of rings Zoe dropped in the corner of the bathroom that I moved to a wooden box for safety. Memories of that night come back to me like I’ve been fed into a shredder. The way she undressed me. Washed the blood off my skin. My eyes burn, but I can’t allow myself to feel this now. I grab the box and rush back to the dining room.
I drop it on the table between us and open it, then use a fork to tip the bag so that the rings roll out, along with a bloody chunk of finger. The stench is awful.
“Fuck, Seb! You didn’t have Patrick clean them?”
“Hadn’t thought of it.”
I push the bloody rings around in their filth with the tines of the fork until we can see their faces.
“Same story,” Lucus says. “Different metal. No inscription.”
I wrangle the rings back into the bag and drop them into the box. Once our respective boxes are closed, I promptly dispose of the fork I used to manipulate the rings in the nearest trash can. A collective sigh of relief rises up between us.
“Creator, I hate those things,” Ellison says, scratching his arms like he still has the creepy-crawlies.
“What we know for sure is that there are now two classes of rings, which explains the video of the bakery bomber. The Saint’s Order is recruiting members faster, which calls for creating rings faster.” I pull over the drawing of the ring. “This thing has five layers of enchantments, one of which is a potion made from dragon’s blood. Roman is using his store of Donovan’s blood to enchant as many rings as possible as quickly as possible, but why?”
Ellison’s gray eyes lock on me. “Isn’t it obvious? To kill us. He’s trying to outnumber us and hunt us down before we can recover from Donovan’s death and the loss of the accord. Let me be the first to admit you were right when you sent the dragons into hiding, and also right when you ordered us to go on the offensive. The code red was necessary, no matter what anyone says.”
“I’ve never been less excited about being right,” I say, taking another sip of coffee.
Ellison leans back in his chair. “So, the question is, what’s our strategy for fighting back?”
I take a moment to think. There’s a reason I’ve been able to grow Full Throttle Records to be one of the top music producers of this era. I’m decisive and I have great gut instincts. But this is no easy decision. Thousands of lives are in my hands. “We stay in hiding, for now. And we keep hunting rings. All twelve of us.”
“Fuck,” Lucas says.
“I know, but the faster we neutralize them, the safer everyone will be.”
Ellison shakes his head. “Shit. The dragon civilians are not going to like hearing that there’s no end date to this code red.”
“With any luck, that will change. Because I am personally going to hunt down Roman Cifarelli, and I’m going to cut the Saint’s Order off at the knees.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ZOE
Mate. Am I Sebastian’s mate? I stare at the ceiling, alone in my room, feeling cold and lonely. I miss Seb. I miss his warmth. I miss his steadiness.
It was just sex. Don’t mistake lust for love, the spider says. Her voice is so strong now, and the little sleep I’ve gotten since I left Seb’s side has been polluted with her dark presence.
“Shut up!” I yell. “It was never just sex!”
You’ve known him for eleven days. It couldn’t be anything more than that. He’s a dream. He’s a story you’ve made up in your mind.
“Maybe it is fast. And maybe it won’t be forever. But even if these feelings I’m having aren’t permanent, they’re real. He was never just a hookup. He’s brave and he’s good and he treats me like a queen. Even if it’s not forever, it could be the start of forever, and I’m willing to give it a shot.”
There is one way to tell. You could ascend to the Gold Room and use your power to look into the future. You would know in minutes whether or not your relationship works out. You could peek in on your future children. You could know if this seed of love for him might actually last.
