No, if I’d just fallen in love with Avalon, that would have been fine. Instead, I’d developed feelings for my mortal enemy. My Line’s betrayers.
It was a grievous failure that I didn’t think my father could forgive.
That was a problem for another time, far into the future. First, we needed to secure the Ingmire kid, and with it, his brother’s support. Having Cyne and Hamor on our side was atactical move that could halve any war that eventuated. I knew it. Moran and Neho Ingmire both knew it.
Soon enough, the shining beacon of Yaron Vylan’s party boat came into sight, though calling it a boat was an understatement. It was a giant yacht with multiple levels, and I shuddered to think how many First Line lackeys it took to launch such a large vessel into the lake. The music was blaring so loudly, it was like a sonic boom across the water, along with the laughter of people who had no checks and balances in this world. Power, money, and magic meant the partiers on that boat were free of consequences.
Until now.
I would be there as judgment.
I cloaked our boat, gently deterring anyone aboard the ship from noticing us. It meant I had to touch the minds of everyone on that ship, and what I found made me want to throw up.
Looking at Vox, I clenched my teeth. “We should sink it on our way out.”
He shrugged. “You’ll get no arguments from me.”
Iker carefully pulled the boat up alongside the larger one. It was time. Avalon kissed Hayle roughly, all passion and promise. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Vox softly, whispering something against his lips that I couldn’t hear.
Then she stood in front of me. She crooked her finger, so I stooped down to her level. She kissed me sweetly, a gentle brush of her lips across mine. “Keep them safe, Lierick.” She pulled me closer, so we were nose to nose. “And keep yourself safe too. No heroics. I need you three to come back to me, okay?”
I kissed her hard then, imprinting the feel of my lips on hers. “In and out. We’ll be back before you know it.”
Fourteen
Lierick
Vox used his power to gently lift us all to the side of the boat, and we climbed the ladder slowly, staying in the shadows of the hull as much as possible. I doubted anyone would really notice, even if we climbed the rail and walked among them. They were drunk on alcohol and a sadistic kind of revelry.
I sifted through the thoughts of the people on the large boat, and the siren song of fear was below deck, as expected. Hayle was on high alert as we moved along the deck, staying close to the walls. Inhaling deeply, he pointed to a hatch in the bow of the ship, probably for the crew to descend rapidly between levels.
I sent my awareness down the small, narrow space, but there wasn’t anyone in the area just below. I nodded that it was safe, and Hayle opened the hatch, with Vox heading down first. Hayle tilted his chin, indicating I should go next, before he climbed in after me, silently lowering the hatch door behind us.
This was one of the sticking points, because right at this moment, we were fish in a barrel as we descended from the upper deck to the lower deck, but thankfully, we made it to the belly of the boat without alerting anyone. We moved further down into the bottom level, sticking to the edges of the space. Icould hear the laughter from a different room, could smell the fetid stench of terror.
Building up my psychic walls, I let my magic out. I allowed it to sift through the people down here, finding the innocents, the ones who turned a willful blind eye because they were powerless or greedy, and the villains.
Shining brightly above them all, far above my head on an upper deck, was Yaron Vylan. His mind was like oozing pus in a necrotizing wound. This man was what I’d expected Vox to be: a rotten waste of lifeforce. A drain on the magic of Ebrus. A spit in the eye of the Goddess.
Pushing my rage back down, I sought out the minds of those who were scared. There were three people down here who were here as entertainment. Two men and a woman. We’d put the other two on a lifeboat back toward Cyne, and Moran Ingmire had promised to help any other victims if they arrived, putting fishing trawlers out at first light to scoop them out of the lake.
I pointed down another narrow hall, and my stomach turned as we came across a man walking toward us, pushing his shirt back into his pants. His head snapped up when he saw us, and he opened his mouth to shout. I immediately whipped out with my magic, but Vox got there first. He sucked the air out of the guy’s lungs, and I wasn’t sure exactly what he did, but the man’s face went red, then an angry shade of puce, before it just… exploded. Chunks of bone and brain splattered across the walls and slid down Vox’s air shields around us.
“Thanks. Wouldn’t want to wear some fucker’s brains all the way home,” Hayle muttered. He kicked open the door, two large knives in his hands, and I followed behind him, my own weapons out.
It was pure training that stopped me from leaning to the side and vomiting. There was a lone figure standing there, jerking offas he carved his name into the back of a naked man, who was suspended from the ceiling by ropes of air.
A low growl bubbled up from Hayle’s throat, and he was a blur as leapt on the back of the First Line partygoer. The guy was hampered by his pants around his thighs, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Hayle slit his throat with so much force that he severed most of the muscles of his neck. The man’s head flipped back like an open tin can, blood spraying from his artery like a fountain.
The room was a horror house. The three other people in the room were all hanging from ropes of air, naked and battered. Tortured.
Vox stepped toward them, cutting the air restraints with his own power. It was hard to tell who was who beneath the dirt and dried blood. The man who was being carved up fell roughly to his knees as he was released, but he showed no pain. He showed no sign of life at all.
Fuck, I hoped this wasn’t Powell Ingmire.
“We are looking for Powell,” Hayle murmured gently. “Your brothers sent us.”
The boy on the other side raised his head. Goddess, he couldn’t have been more than eighteen. His hair was a dark brown, but stringy and patchy. He looked at us with hope in his expression, though he didn’t say anything. His eyes drifted to Vox, then to me. He was the one we needed.
