For the first time, the general’s gaze slid to the Breed warrior in their midst. His eyes registered both alarm and animus. “What the fuck is one of their kind doing here?”
Selene intervened. “It’s all right, General. This is Darion Thorne. He is . . .”Faith, what was he to her now?No longer just her prisoner, regardless of the circumstances that brought him into her world and kept him there.
In that short time he’d gone from her adversary to her lover. If her heart wasn’t so reluctant to let anyone in, she might even be tempted to call him something deeper than that. All she knew was that the man she had tried so hard to despise and mistrust was becoming someone she believed in. Someone she had begun to care for, regardless of the circumstances that had brought them together.
“Darion is here with my approval,” she finished. “You may speak freely in front of him.”
Taebris practically seethed with suspicion. “He’s with the Order, for fuck’s sake.”
“Yes, he is,” Selene replied tersely. “And your queen has just informed you that you have no reason to fear him.”
“Fear him? He’s a filthy blood drinker. I should cleave his head from his shoulders before he turns on all of us like the evil that spawned him.”
Darion took a step forward, his body vibrating with menace. “And you’re a general who abandoned his men to save his own ass.”
Sebathiel cleared his throat, casting a glower between the other two men.
“Enough,” Selene said. She pivoted to face Darion, placing her hand on his chest and giving him an infinitesimal shake of her head. His dislike of Taebris was instant, and even she had to admit she found it markedly disappointing that her general had admitted to letting himself get drawn away from the rest of his unit in the heat of battle.
“Tell them what you told me a few minutes ago.”
Darion glanced at her, a note of hesitancy in his hard expression. Then he nodded. Selene turned back to Seb and Taebris, watching their faces go from astonished to dread-filled as Darion explained about the Order’s discovery of the alien craft and their failed efforts to recover the pair of crystals from the lethal predator who’d been awakened after long centuries of sleep.
“If I had known all of this,” Selene told Taebris, “I never would’ve sent you and your men into that kind of danger unprepared.”
His scowl remained as he glanced from Darion to her. “We’ll need a goddamned army to go after him, if we have any hope of winning those crystals.”
Seb nodded grimly. “Even with all of the realm’s legion behind us, we still have but one crystal. We’ll be no match for the power of two wielded against us. You know this, Your Grace.”
She did know. Her entire being was filled with the dread of that knowledge. The hopelessness of it.
“We need to find the colony,” Taebris said. “We need their crystal. I have spies who can find someone willing to talk. If unwilling, I have other soldiers specialized in more persuasive methods.”
Sebathiel looked pointedly at Selene. Taebris had been gone before she’d ventured to the colony to take Jordana a few days ago. But Seb knew where she had gone. Selene had never told him she’d been aware of the colony’s hidden, protected location from the day the exiles fled with their crystal, but after her abduction of Jordana there had been no reason to tell him. Seb knew the truth: She could have taken the colony’s crystal that day, but she hadn’t.
She waited for him to betray her secret to the general, but Seb held his tongue.
“No,” she said. “The colony needs their crystal as much as we need ours. I will not leave them unprotected just to save the rest of us.”
“Even if we did have a second crystal, the best outcome we could hope for is a stalemate,” Sebathiel warned. “The worst being mutual destruction.”
“Then we need three.” Darion’s deep voice drew everyone’s attention. He looked only at Selene, his brown eyes solemn and intent. “If we ally together--the realm, the colony, and the Order--can we combat the power of the Ancient’s two crystals?”
“Yes.” She nodded, unable to curb her surprise, or the hope that bloomed to life inside her. “With three crystals in our control, he can’t touch us. But you said yourself, the Order would never agree to part with theirs.”
“Let me worry about that. Do you think you can convince the colony?”
Before she could answer, Taebris scoffed. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing, what I’m seeing. Your Grace, has the world turned upside down in the short time I’ve been fighting your battles in the Deadlands?” He barked a caustic laugh. “Tell me you’re not actually considering an alliance with the Order.”
“Careful, General,” Sebathiel urged in a low voice. “You are speaking to your Queen.”
Another scoff, this time with more venom. “This wouldn’t be the first time our Queen has allowed a snake into her bed. Need I remind anyone that thousands of Atlantean lives were washed away and our entire settlement lost because of her misplaced faith in another man?”
Darion’s growl rumbled like thunder. Selene felt him coiled with hard menace, about to spring on Taebris. But her own fury erupted before he had the chance.
Light arced from the center of her glowing palm, slamming into the general and lifting him off his feet. He struggled, face turning red, then purple, as her light twisted around his thick neck. It took more strength than she truly had, but she held him there, her entire body shaking with the ferocity of her outrage.
When she finally let him drop, the big soldier wheezed and sputtered on the floor, moaning from the powerful blast.
