“Come, my dear Rad. You of all people should understand why I’m wary of tricks.” His mouth was in shadow, but I could hear the slick smile in his voice. “You may enjoy sneaking up on a man in the shadows, but I much prefer a more open conversation.”
I stepped over to the trunk of the tree and leaned against it, my finger sliding along the edge of my blade. My stance was casual, but every muscle within me was taut, ready to strike.
“I suppose you consider firing upon an innocent town while you’re hiding up here in the woods to be an open conversation?” I drawled, my voice dripping with venom. “If you wanted to talk to me or my brothers, Mordren, all you had to do was ask.”
“I’ve missed our conversations, believe me,” he replied. “But for once, this isn’t about you or your so-called brothers.”
My muscles tensed.
“This is about that lovely girl the three of you found,” Mordren went on. “I would so love to meet her.”
Marigold. Innocent, naïve Marigold, who tasted like nectar and was as delicate as a butterfly.
Pluck off the petals
Slice off the wing
The blood was starting to boil beneath my skin. There were rumors about Mordren’s sexual proclivities—rumors that the Circle had tried to suppress for years but were still whispered along certain channels if you knew where to listen. Rumors that made me want to slice off certain pieces of Mordren extra slowly.
But I kept my tone light as I said, “I’m perplexed as to why you believe blowing up Ring-Around-the-Hill will accomplish that.”
Again, I could sense his smile, even though I couldn’t see it. “It broughtyouto me, didn’t it?”
There was another flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, only this time, something was wrong.
I didn’t hesitate. With a twist of my fingers, I sent my dagger flying into the darkness to my right.
A yowl echoed through the woods at the same time my blade hit a tree with a hollowthunk.
A cat leaped out of the shadows. It darted straight toward me, and as it passed through a beam of moonlight I recognized its coloring—milky white with a large black patch on its left rump. Its yellow-green eyes flashed as it launched itself at me.
With a curse, I twisted out of the way. It landed on the tree trunk behind me, its claws digging into the bark, and it scrabbled up the tree toward its master, who was clucking his tongue.
“And what has my poor Cyllene done to you?” he demanded of me as the cat clawed her way up his clothes until she was perched on his shoulder. She wasn’t an especially large cat, and the long, angular shoulders on his robe offered a natural place for her to sit, with her tail coiling around his neck almost like they were one being.
“I’m surprised that thing is still alive,” I muttered, slipping a fresh dagger out of my sleeve. “Shouldn’t those nine lives have run out years ago?” I didn’t admit that I was secretly glad I hadn’t hit her in the dark—I would happily pluck out the bastard’s bones one by one, but I drew the line at hurting animals. Even ones who were essentially extensions of irredeemable shitheads like Mordren.
Peel off the skin
From the pitiful thing
Two pairs of yellow-green eyes stared down at me. Apparently Mordren was losing his patience with me, because there was an edge to his voice as he demanded, “Enough games. Where’s the girl?”
I shrugged, silently calculating my chances of hitting him where I needed to from this angle. I had to incapacitate him without killing him. “How am I supposed to know?”
“Because I can smell her essence all over you,” he snarled. His head twisted to the right. “And your brothers.”
There was no reason for Alastor and Oak to stay hidden anymore. Mordren knew exactly where they were.
My brothers emerged from the trees nearby, swords in hand. Oak in particular looked ready to leap up into the wild oak and cut down Mordren where he stood, but he managed to maintain control over himself. If he still had access to that beast inside him, though, it would have been a different story.
Alastor, by contrast, was rigid, calculating, and that actually made him the more dangerous of the two.
“You know how this works, boys,” Mordren said from above. “She belongs to the Circle.”
“She belongs tono one,” Oak growled, stepping forward.
Mordren didn’t even flinch. “I hear she’s a soft, pretty little thing. It shouldn’t surprise me she’s inspired your…baserpassions. Some of you were always more beast than man.”
