Seventeen plus the remainder of the Murphys, plus Cladhaire and Baoth. They could be looking at as many as thirty dragons, maybe more. Not the best odds, but he didn’t care.
“We get him back. We get all of them back.” Gregor looked around the room, at Rhene, steady and sure; at Erwan, radiating fury barely contained by honor; at Jermon, Blair, and Zack, each ready to jump into action. “We know where they are. We know who’s holding them. Now we plan, and then we move.”
He reached into his pocket and touched the wire frames of Fergal’s reading glasses. The metal was warm from his body heat, and the familiar shape grounded him the way holding Fergal’s hand once had.
His hands were shaking again. Fifth time in his life. Not from rage, not from grief, but from the missing mate bond, his body demanding proximity to the man who was the other half of his soul.
He would get to him. He would tear down every ward, fight through every Murphy alpha, break every lock between him and Fergal. And when he found him—when, not if—he would open every door. Every single one.
“Let’s plan,” Gregor said, and the room came alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The wall between their cells was thin enough to talk through but thick enough to make every word feel like an effort, like pushing sound through water. Duff sat on the floor with his back against the plaster, his knees drawn up, his head resting against the wall where he could feel the faint vibration of Fergal’s voice when the king spoke.
King. A dragon king. And Duff was sitting here talking to him like they were mates at a pub, sharing war stories over a pint. His father would’ve had a stroke.
Then again, his father had believed the lies just as completely as Duff had, and look where that had gotten all of them.
“Tell me about the email,” Duff said. They’d been talking for what he estimated was an hour, trading pieces of the puzzle back and forth through the wall, each revelation slotting into place with the sickening precision of a mechanism that had been running for decades without either of them seeing the gears.
“It arrived three days after the assassination,” Fergal said. His voice was steady, but Duff had learned enough about the man in the past few hours to recognize the control it took to keep it that way. “Sent to the clan’s official diplomatic address.It claimed responsibility for the murders and promised more attacks. And it was signed with your name.”
Duff closed his eyes. Gregor had told him about the email during their meeting at the pack’s land weeks ago. But hearing it from Fergal, from the son who had received the message, who had read those words while still reeling from his father’s death, was different. That made it personal in a way Gregor’s measured briefing hadn’t. “What did it say exactly?”
Fergal recited it from memory—of course he did, the man was a lawyer with a mind like a steel trap, Duff had discovered—and Duff listened to his own name being used to taunt a grieving son about his murdered father, and something inside him that had been cracking for two years finally shattered.
“By the way, you’re welcome for killing your uncle as well,’” Fergal quoted, his voice flat like someone reciting something they’d read too many times. “‘We’re pretty sure he would’ve taken the throne otherwise instead of you.’”
“Fuck, that’s cruel.” Duff’s voice came out rougher than he intended.
Silence from the other side. Then, carefully, “I’m not telling you this to hurt you.”
“I know. And I needed to hear it. I just—” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, a gesture that did nothing to stop the burning. “That’s not how I write. That’s not how any of us write. The tone is wrong, the language is wrong, the whole thing reads like someone performing the role of dragon slayer rather than being one.”
“That’s exactly what Gregor said.”
“Your commander is a smart man.”
“He is.” Something shifted in Fergal’s voice—a warmth that crept in despite the circumstances, involuntary and immediate, like a reflex. The warmth of a man talking about someone heloved. “He’s also the one who figured out the Murphy connection to your funding.”
“I know. He told me.” Duff lowered his hands and stared at the ceiling of his cell. Water-stained plaster, a single bare bulb that buzzed faintly, faded wallpaper peeling at the seams. “I sat across from him at a table in the sunshine, and he looked me in the eye and told me that the people who funded my organization were the same people who destroyed it. And I believed him because—” He stopped.
“Because?”
“Because he reminded me of someone. The way he holds himself. The way he tells you the truth, even when it’s the last thing you want to hear.” Duff swallowed. “I had someone like that. Her name was Maeve. She ran one of our safe houses. She was the one who first made me question everything—the money, the anonymous donors, the operations that went wrong too often to be bad luck.”
“What happened to her?”
“They took her. The same way they took all the others—one by one, quietly, until I was the only one left.” His jaw clenched. “I found her kitchen cold. Her tea had mold growing on it. Her boots were still by the door.”
The silence from Fergal’s side lasted longer this time. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry for her.” Duff pressed his palm flat against the wall between them. “She deserved better. They all did. And the men who killed them are on the other side of that door, walking around like they own the world.”
“They think they do.”
“Then it’s time someone taught them otherwise.”
