His eyes flickered to mine, narrowed. “We’re all pieces on a larger board being moved by the Goddess herself,” he said, looking between me, Maeve, Elias, and Rhadamanthus. “I’m not the only one who went undercover searching for the enemy. We’ve all been playing our parts. Some better than others.” Those last words were directed at Elias, who stiffened. “I’m sorry.”
Wolfy pushed off the wall he leaned against and growled. “Don’t be sorry,” he hissed. “Tell us what we want to know and help me rescue my fucking mate.”
Shame and something else flickered in the dark eyes of the bear shifter. “I’ve been keeping tabs of the organisation’s workings. Their entire base is hidden in the Luna Court, which I suspect you already know.”
“Why didn’t you just…come to us?” I asked, stepping forward. “If you wanted to help so badly, you could have reached out.”
Cyrus his head. “It wasn’t that simple. Wouldn’t be until I got rid of the glamours and his hold on me.”
“If you were working for the Goddess, like you claim, then how did he have control over you?” Maeve pointed out. “Why not have protections against that?”
A sigh left his lips, the guilty air around him thickening. “Because I wasn’t always her agent,” he admitted. “For the first few years, I was a willing participant in his schemes. There was a small sector of us who were sick of the way the world worked. At first, it had nothing to do with Queen Greer. It was just a system that seemed unwilling to bend or be reformed. Wewanted to see change, but then Hyperion Black became High Lord of the Luna Court, and we thought we had a voice on the council. That voice was quickly manipulated by another, hidden in the shadows.”
A chill rolled down my spine. “Dante,” I said, stomach clenching. “He was that voice.”
Cyrus nodded. “Never saw him. Didn’t know who he was. But when he crawled out of the darkness, so did others. And what started as a need for change shifted into something else.” Cyrus stopped, clearing his throat as he dropped his eyes to the stained ground. “I was a weak man, and I let him get in my head. So did the others.”
“Do you know who is on his High Council?” Maeve asked, crossing her arms. “Or where his compound is?”
Cyrus looked up. “Yeah. But if you want your girl back, then you better have a place to hide her once she’s out. He’ll know to come here, and you have too many civilians to worry about. He’ll throw everything he has into getting her back.”
“We have to be smart,” I said stiffly, crossing my arms. “We also need to get the others, too. She won’t leave her other mates behind.”
“The boy is right,” Cyrus said, his eyes on Elias. “A mission like that requires someone on the inside. Lots of pieces need to be manoeuvred at the same time for it to work, and you need to be prepared for what you’ll find when she comes back to you.”
Elias shook his head in disbelief, cracks finally appearing in the strong facade he threw up when he returned. The male who had tried to assume a leadership role was crumbling, revealing the broken wolf within.
I scrubbed a hand down my face as Elias turned away from his mentor. “We can’t do shit if we don’t know how to neutralise the God Runes Dante is using against her.” I glanced at the demon, then the bear shifter. “You know anything about those? How he even found out about Nyx’s skull?”
The bear shifter blinked up at us, as if we were speaking an entirely different language. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked, looking between us. There was no way hewas faking his confusion; it played out clearly in his dark eyes, in the tone of his voice.
“You’re telling me you don’t know about Dante’s secret weapon?” Wolfy stepped towards Cyrus. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. What the hell are God Runes?” Cyrus directed that question at me, but I shared a look with Maeve.
Even though I thought he didn’t know anything, that didn’t mean he wasn’t lying. Between her and Elias, they could easily tell when someone wasn’t telling the truth. But you’d think someone as old and well trained as Cyrus could tell a convincing lie.
“That’s a need-to-know basis,” Maeve replied after a long moment, keeping her voice even. “You not knowing about them tells me you weren’t as high up in his little council as you thought.”
For the first time since dragging him down here, he looked angry. “I never claimed to be in his council,” he snapped, the chains holding him straining as he leaned forward. “My job was to build his army. And I only knew those in the ranks around me. Dante liked to hold a lot of things close to the chest. Including whatever you’re talking about. I guarantee his soldiers know nothing about it. You want to get your hands on a council member. They’ll have answers.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, glancing over at Maeve. I had a feeling we would find out where Dante got any of this from him and him alone. I doubted he’d share that kind of thing even with his most trusted.
“I already have one of his council members,” Maeve said with a shrug. “The High Lord of Luna is in a cell with the flesh being carved from his bones as we speak. And he won’t talk, because I have a feeling he knows about as much as you do.”
There was a cruelness in Maeve’s tone that made a shiver roll down my spine. She was usually very careful with the way she treated prisoners, but with Hyperion…
She’d lost all of her ability to remain calm.
And I couldn’t blame her, not when I felt the vile need to do worse to him for answers.
Cyrus bowed his head, but he said nothing at her response.
“Let’s take a moment,” I said, motioning to the door. “We need to figure out our next move.”
“We know our next move,” Elias snapped. “We need to go after Ivy.”
I gritted my teeth. “Let’s go.”
