Francine’s eyes flicked to his. “Yes. Whatever she’s got herself involved in—it’s not the auction for the shadow dragons’ location. There’s something else. Something she’s not telling me.” She laughed, low and hollow. “But she thinks I already know! We keep circling around it, havingso much funnot saying what it is we’re talking about. And I’m worried.”
“I’m surprised to hear you admit that.”
She glared at him. “This affects both of us. If there’s something I’ve missed—some other danger—” She closed her eyes and took a slow, controlled breath. When she openedthem again, her gaze slid away from him. “At first I thought she was talking about using your family’s invisibility magic to assassinate people. Other shifters, specifically. But now … it’s as though she’s not after the dragons at all. When she saidimaginary creatures, I think she was talking about dragons.As though she doesn’t even believe they exist. But—if your family isn’t her target, then what is?”
There was only one possible answer to that.
Eloise Fairchild was after the Soul-Eater.
Julian had hoped he was hearing things, when Eloise spoke ofimaginary creatures.Not imaginary because they didn’t exist—imaginary because they were already dead.
But how could she know about the Soul-Eater?
Nobody knew. The Soul-Eater had been imprisoned beneath the ice for centuries. Trapped in a magical stasis that prevented him from dying and being reborn to wreak devastation on the shifter world again. The only shifters who knew of his existence were dead. The shadow dragons who guarded the fortress in the ice, and—
The kraken.
Julian’s blood ran cold. Two families carried the duty of guarding the Soul-Eater in his prison. The shadow dragons, and the lineage bonded to the kraken. A single line of descent from the first kraken shifter, duty-bound to prevent the Soul-Eater from ever escaping the ice. Whenever the previous kraken shifter died, the power was transferred to another shifter in the family, and they took up their post beneath the waves.
It was a long, lonely existence. Ice and stars, Julian himself had grabbed the first chance of seeing the outside world after growing up in the fortress—what might someone cursed to spend their life in a sea monster’s form do?
Had the kraken betrayed them?
And how much did Eloise know?
“I don’t want to believe—” Francine’s face twisted, and she looked away.
“Believe what?” Julian’s jaw clenched. He couldn’t afford to lose himself in his own thoughts right now.
“She’s my friend. She sounds so sure about this, but … it doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “We need to find out what she knows.”
“I agree.” He sat at the far end of the sofa. For a moment, her eyes met his, surprise softening their strange intensity. She was still play-acting relaxation, a statue carved by an artist who’d aimed for heavy-lidded bored seduction and landed in the uncanny valley. “I think you should admit to her that you’re out of your depth.”
“What?No.” Francine bolted upright. “I can’t let her know I came on board without knowing what she’s planning. She’ll think—”
She cut herself off, white spots appearing on her cheeks.
“She’ll think you’re weak,” Julian said softly. Francine flinched. “And underestimate you. Do you think no one has noticed the way you spar with each other?”
“We’re friends,” Francine protested.
“And yet you behave as though you’d like nothing better than to see the other groveling in the dirt.”
Francine blanched. “That’s the way we are.”
“As friends?” He waited a beat, then twisted the knife. “Are you here to help my family or not?”
Her jaw worked. “Yes,” she hissed at last and looked away. “You’re right. If I let her win—she’ll trust me more.”
“She’ll still be your friend?”
“She’ll think it’s the best friends we’ve ever been, if she’s won.”
“Good,” he said quietly. Because once she realized he was lying to her, she would need all the friends here she could get.
18
Francine
