We moved on to talk about the photographs I’d sent before Arabesque tried to turn me into charcoal.
Ko brought up the first photo on the big screen that took up most of a wall, the image slightly blurry from where my hands had been shaking, but the text was still legible.
If you read Ancient Egyptian.
“Kemetic,” Casimir informed us all. “Queen Kaori has agreed to translate it for us. Strangely enough, King Julian Hemming also contacted her to ask if she’d be so kind.”
All eyes went to me, and I shrugged.
“What? You knew I was spying for him, too. Sent the pics to both of my employers.”
“Regardless, she’s made this a priority,” Cas went on, “so hopefully we’ll know what this is soon. For now, we have to consider that the Harrow bitch set this up to trap you for a reason, Foster.”
“This next page has an intriguing element.” Koa’s fingers flew over the keyboard and the second photo appeared.
Once more, my eyes went right to the little handwritten note taped in the bottom right corner.
“Couldn’t be clearer,” Zane muttered, no sarcasm for once. “She’s either gonna aim something at the werewolf king or do something to her own rogue army.”
“Question is, what?” I rumbled. “And which is the target?”
“Making guesses now is fruitless without knowing what these two pages say.” Cas crossed his arms, squinting at the picture language as if willing it to betray its secrets to him. “Once we have a translation, we can make better inferences. Until then, we know she’s up to something and she either wanted an excuse to kill Foster or was testing to see how loyal he was before she implemented something.”
As the brothers continued spitballing, Seri stayed silent, chewing her bottom lip, and I watched as Brumous nudged her hand.The dire’s mental voice brushed against mine, not directed at me, just spilling over in his anxiety.
Protect Seri. Bad Hurt Witch not get Seri. MYSeri.
The little wolf had imprinted on her hard. She was Brums’ personal Moon Goddess, and he worshipped her like a zealot. It was a little freaky in a way, such single-minded devotion. Then again, who was I to judge? We all picked our brand of crazy and ran with it. She’d saved him multiple times over and never gave up on him, loved him despite his scars and his scrambled brain and his mangled speech.
To him, she was his miracle of miracles, the light in a darkness he’d never thought would end. I kept getting glimpses of his memories: Arabesque’s cold eyes, the searing pain, the crushing loneliness of a pack animal denied any connection, and then Seri. Finding him, feeding him scraps, whispering kind words even as she herself was being drained and abused.
It was the same damned look I saw in the Cimmerians’ eyes when they stared at her. Like she was the moon and the stars and everything in between. Like they would gladly bleed themselves dry if she so much as hinted that it would make her happy. Three of the most dangerous supernatural beings I’d ever encountered, men who had built their reputation on blood, rendered soft-eyed and gentle by a fragile-looking witchling.
Almost made a man want to eat a silver bullet.
Protect them.
The voice that spoke in my head wasn’t Brums. It was deeper, rougher, achingly familiar despite years of silence.
Greisen?
Greisen. My wolf. My other half. My brother in soul who’d been nearly comatose since the night…
After more than a decade of silence, of an absence so complete it was like missing a limb, my wolf had spoken. Two words, raspy with disuse, but undeniably real. The hollowness that had lived inside me for so long suddenly had an echo in it, a whisper of what once was and what might be again.
Protect them.
Just two words, but Moon Mother have mercy, it brought fucking tears to my eyes. I ducked my head, trying to hide the sudden moisture, but I couldn’t contain the small, choked sound that escaped my throat.
“Foster?” Seri’s voice cut through my shock. “What is it? Are you okay? Did that fire flare up again somewhere?”
I shook my head and roughly rubbed my knuckles under my eyes, trying to hide the emotion that had to be plain on my face. Twelve years. Twelve years of silence, of half-living, of being broken in the most fundamental way a werewolf could be broken. And now, with two simple words, a crack in that wall of silence.
“ ’M fine,” I managed. “Just processing.”
She wasn’t buying it, though.
“What happened?” she asked as Brums came over and pressed against her so tightly, it was hard to tell where she ended and he began. “You looked like you’re in pain.”
