Lord Tomas’s gaze falls to Clara’s belly, and I spot it there, a faint but important detail. The swell of her abdomen. She is with child.
I take a step forward. Dominik’s eyes slide to me, a smile creeping along his thin lips. The monster took the time to lick his wounds, and now he is unleashed.
“Oh, little faerie,” he says. “You haven’t seen the best part yet.”
The last guard enters, a gruff, burly male whose large hands hold a faerie. Briar.
Kassandra stiffens at the same time I do. Neither of us moves as the guard raises a blade under Briar’s chin. She squeezes her eyes shut, lips moving in an unheard prayer. A knife also appears at the advisor’s throat, another poking at the pregnancy of his wife.
“Please,” the mother, Clara, whimpers.
“Please what?” Dominik says.
“Don’t hurt the baby. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything but stay loyal to your husband and the head of your House.”
A flash of movement, a gurgling sound. Kassandra jumps to her feet, but it’s too late.
The advisor collapses to his knees, clutching his neck, blood spurting between his fingers. He drops prostrate on the marble, a pool of crimson teeming beneath him.
Horror descends as the buzzing in the plane intensifies.
Dominik just executed the third most powerful fae in the Illusion House. Tonight, he’s not just merely stalking us. He is hunting.
My fingers tighten around the glass, its edges biting into my flesh. I could throw it at Dominik, but it would need to hit the target directly, or else there’s no going back. Even if I do succeed, there is no guarantee that his guards won’t let the arrows loose. The act wouldn’t save anyone, not even Benji.
“A shame, really.” Dominik clicks his tongue. “He was so good with numbers. He even noticed the little inconsistencies in the reports as of late—the little debts forgiven here and there. He just wasn’t smart enough to realize that it was his wife’s doing. And yours.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Are you truly that foolish, Kass? Money is my domain, not yours.”
The advisor’s body twitches one last time, his skin clearing. Then four rings of debt snatch across the pregnant fae’s arms, like black shackles that weigh her down. She cries out in pain. Briar jerks forward, but the guard yanks her back. He slaps her hard across the face.
“Don’t move,” Kassandra says.
Still, Briar hisses with her canines and the guard slaps her again. The other guards shift on their feet, their arrows quivering.
“Briar!” Kassandra barks.
Briar flashes her teeth, cheek red. This is sliding sideways faster than I can blink. My best bet is to pick one path and pursue it: getting the guard off Briar and the pregnant fae.
“Dom,” Kass utters. “We can discuss this, just you and I.”
“Ah, did you forget, sister? A war is fought with bodies,” he says. “So you must be willing to sacrifice some.”
Shifting, I catch it—a translucent shimmering that surrounds me—and only me. A protective wall of hardened air, or the beginnings of an Illusion? I’m unsure. Yet with the way Dominik squints in my direction, head cocked, he’s deciding, too.
“Run, little faerie,” he grins. “This is your chance.”
A falter in the shimmering air despite Kassandra’s impassive face. She extends magic toward Briar and the pregnant fae, but it’snot enough—ten arrows are trained on her, and Dominik hasn’t even touched his magic yet. She cannot battle and protect us all and herself, and he knows this. We need to fight together, she and I.
Suddenly the hardened air falls away from my back, giving me an exit to the servants’ door but maintaining a shield before me. Now is the chance to run.
I turn inward for the pulsing pride she accuses me of—my insolence. It tastes bitter and sharp. Instead of letting it spill onto the plane in a poor attempt to ignore it, I embrace that bitterness and focus it down my arm and into the piece of glass in my hand. Wrap it with my obstinance, my pride in her. Then I press that broken shard of glass against the shimmering air to my right, willing my message to transpire through the plane.
I am here,I think.I will fight with you.
