The kelpie fighting Vlad yelps when he scratches down her side, but the one with Asher turns his head and digs sharp teeth into his arm. Asher hisses through his teeth and Quinn looks at me again.
“Ready for this?” He appears ready. After everything, this doesn’t seem to faze him at all—he’ll do whatever it takes to protect his mate.
I already protected Vlad once. I can go that far again. I know I can.
“Yeah,” I say, and he nods, and from one second to the next, there’s a wolf standing next to me, stepping out of Quinn’s clothes. I almost stumble over my own feet. He’s sobigand his fur looks sosoftand—
Quinn nudges me with his muzzle, letting out a gentle growl. I grin. “Sorry. Right.”
Asher has twisted away from his kelpie in the meantime, his blessing rising and falling as he seeks to corral it. Quinn bounds over to his side and when his teeth dig into the kelpie’s leg, the kelpie screams and tries to kick him away. Vlad pushes the kelpie he’s fighting away from him, hair all mussed, but when I take a step toward him, light flares in the corner of my vision.
That’s all the warning I have. Truly. Magic hits me like a train might, a dull hit to my side that sends me sprawling in the sand. I spit grains from my mouth and lift my head. Pain radiates from my ribs.
What thefuck?
There’s someone there—Eirian, if I have to guess—but I can’t see her. Can’t even sense her, really, because every time my power butts up against the weird shadow hanging nearby, it jerks back like it can’t get through.
I push up to my feet. Power rises again and I leap aside the moment before the second blast lands where I was standing. The darkness… High fae can summon that, of course, but why bother to weaken yourself when you can have others do it for you?
My power curls into my limbs when I call for it, more obedient than it’s ever been. I use it to tug at the shadow’s edge, dodging another blast of magic as I pull that darkness away.
No, not darkness. Another puca. It twists in my power’s grip and when I keep pulling, it shifts its shape, turning humanoid but not glamouring itself. Eirian stands just behind its left shoulder. Fury burns in her dark eyes. I’m not going with her. Iwon’t.
It’s a nice thought. It takes everything within me to raise wards when she fires at me again, and her power shudders against them, almost instantly bringing them down. I clench my teeth and try to hold on. My power is draining. If it were daylight, I think I’d have more hope, but then so would she.
I don’t dare look at Vlad. Asher and Quinn should have taken out their kelpie by now. They’ll help him. I don’t think they can help me.
“You’re going to come with me,” Eirian hisses, pushing the puca aside. Her steps barely shift the sand and I drop my stance, my fangs cutting into my lower lip. “You’ll serve bymyside. Serve me.”
Oh, absolutely fucking not. Power burns through me, bright as the sun yesterday, but when I strike at her, angry and desperate, a wave of her hand flings the magic aside. The puca snarls when they have to dodge, pointed ears twitching where they emerge from a thatch of dark hair.
“Stay still,” she says, and her next strike lands, knocking me on my arse again. I fight to stand. I can’t go down like this. Iwon’t.
Vlad lets out a cry and I don’t want to pull on our bond to see if it’s rage or pain or both. A dark blur of fur passes by, and Quinn takes out the puca, but it seems like he can’t get through Eirian’s wards, either.
“Hold on, Grant!” Asher shouts. I can feel the slipperiness of his blessing, desperate to get out of his grip. One of the kelpies is dead. I raise my wards again when I feel Eirian’s magic surge, but this hit is hard, and she shatters my wards, sending me to the ground again.
For a moment, I can’t catch my breath. Everything hurts, and my power rushes to heal, to soothe me, but my vision is swimming, too. Vlad. Where’s Vlad? I turn my head, but that just makes me want to throw up, and I can’t see him.
Are there other fae? There have to be. He wouldn’t leave me like this.
Asher shouts, and Quinn lets out a low, dangerous growl, but then Eirian is standing over me all the same. The energy that surrounds her—energy I suspect the others can’t see—makes her faintly glow in the moonlight.
She crouches and takes my chin in her hand. I struggle to keep my eyes open. Whatever she hit me with, it’s trying to burrow deep like her magic did last night. Not to take my power, no. She can’t do that. But she can inject hers alongside my own, overpower me that way.
“You will do perfectly,” she says, sounding oddly satisfied, and then she squeezes, nails digging into my skin. I clench my teeth.
I need to get up.Get up!But the more I try, the more her power wraps around mine, a vine strangling the shoots.
“Don’t fight it. Just close your eyes. It will all be done once you wake.”
I try to reach for Vlad’s and my bond. Horror grips me when I can’t. I just want to feel it, to feel him, to know—
Eirian’s magic surges, and the world goes dark.
Chapter Twenty
Vladimir
