But the guard stood his ground. “None upstairs.”
Mathos waved a hand toward Tristan. “Show some respect to your captain.”
The guard widened his stance, his lip curling. “He’s no captain of mine.”
Tristan grunted. They had finally found a palace guard with backbone. Exactly at the worst time. “What’s your name, son?”
“My name is irrelevant, and I’m not your son. My orders are that no one goes upstairs. Therefore, no one goes upstairs.”
“When a superior officer asks your name, you fucking give it!” Mathos roared, a vein pulsing in his temple. Damn, when his second-in-command finally stopped joking, it was brutal.
The guard seemed to recognize the danger of antagonizing a squad of extremely angry, well-armed soldiers and decided to answer. “Lieutenant Dornar. But that doesn’t change my orders. No one goes up. Especially not men that haven’t been in the Blues for months. Go away, and next time come back with an order from the king.”
Tristan pinched the bridge of his nose. By the obstinate look on his face, Dornar was never going to let them pass.
Tor stepped forward, his massive bulk looming threateningly over Dornar, and opened his mouth to argue. But before he could start, a harsh trumpeting blared from the floor above.
Dornar didn’t flinch; he was too well trained. Instead he rested his hand on his sword and firmed his jaw. But he was clearly listening to the mayhem above them, his attention split for just a second as he waited for further orders from the rooms above.
Mathos gave Tor a nod, lifted his fingers to his lips, and let out a piercing blast of a whistle, the kind of noise you’d expect on the docks, not in an opulent palace. Dornar’s eyes flickered his way. It was all they needed.
Tor reached out, took hold of the soldier with one big hand, and, before Dornar could do more than slide his sword from its scabbard, threw him roughly into the wall, knocking him half unconscious.
Tristan hit him on the head once more, just to be sure. Then they grabbed the limp body and dragged it down the corridor and shoved it into one of the nearby studies as all hell broke loose above them. Trumpets blared, boots thudded, orders were shouted.
Gods. Nim. Fuck. Something had happened.
The stairs were a blur as they sprinted up, two at a time, and around a corner into the king’s wing to find Grendel and Ballanor in disarray as soldiers swarmed around them. Both men had wide, blown-out pupils, and there was a sickly-sweet, acrid smell in the smoky air.
“Find them!” Ballanor sputtered, coughing loudly as a soldier rushed up with a glass of wine, while another opened a window to the crisp night air.
Between the chaos and the guards’ frantic search, no one seemed to care about the strange arrival of the Hawks as they smoothly joined the other Blues in their hunt.
Palace guards flung open doors and tramped through rooms. They stripped beds, pulled luxurious gowns from wardrobes, threw dripping courtiers from their baths.
The king looked apoplectic with rage. And Nim was nowhere to be seen.
Tristan felt like laughing. And simultaneously howling in horror.
Nim had escaped. Of course she had. But now anyone could get their hands on her.
And when one of these men, fear and rage pumping through their systems, each one desperate to redeem themselves in the eyes of the king, got hold of her… what then?
He forced himself to slow down and consider what the options would have looked like to Nim. What would have been going through her mind as she looked down the long corridor filled with rooms and lots of little hiding places?
Would she have crept into one of those tempting dark spaces? No. She knew better than to cut herself off from an escape by hiding.
She would run.
A tendril of icy realization worked its way down his spine as he followed the thought. She would run. But she wouldn’t run away from danger, not Nim. Gods. He knew exactly where she would run to. The worst fucking place in the palace. His beast snarled within him as his scales closed over his skin.
“You!” A red-faced guard, most likely one of those that should have been guarding the door by the look of congealed horror on his face, pointed right at him. “Stop standing around and help! How far can two women go?”
Fuck, there were two of them. He remembered how Nim had moved her body protectively toward Keely. She would have taken the other woman with her. That made it exponentially harder to get her out. Get them out. Nim, Keely, and Val.
He kept his face blank and silently returned to his task as the Hawks ripped into the closest room and started pulling it apart. The destruction helped to soothe the crawling itch burning his skin from playing this game of charades when all he wanted to do was turn around and run after Nim.
But he couldn’t. Not without everyone noticing.
