The Danger of Destiny (36 page)

The prison's grimness was further enhanced by the shadow of the mother jinx. She hovered high above the Raha'ells' stockade, a voluminous storm cloud whose interior sparkled with hints of pink, and purple, and red.

That was scary because every single one of the Raha'ells had a touch of
l'eau de lupine
about them, and yet it still wasn't the thing that had rendered me nearly speechless.

I sagged against a beech. “Why are there so many people? I thought the castle was supposed to be quiet today! What happened to everyone preparing for tomorrow's Spectacle?”

There had to be hundreds of Fae—the visible portion of the L-shaped span that linked the island to the mainland was completely clogged with a mob of people. Considering our twofold plan to destroy the status quo at Castle Fae was highly dependent on stealth, a big fiery diversion, and the willingness to take out anyone who got in our way, those numbers amounted to a hell of a stumbling block. Goddess, we'd need a machine gun to mow them down.

“I don't know. I've never seen this many gathered before.” Mouse nervously knuckled his nose. “Every village for ten leagues must be on the bridge.”

“More important, the entire Royal Court's gathered on the postern,” said Lexi grimly.

“What's the postern?” I asked.

“The middle tower.”

Geez Louse. How'd I miss
that?

Part of the castle's back wall boasted a square tower. A story higher than the top of the palisade, it loomed over the place where the Raha'ells were imprisoned, which made it a great observation lookout for the assemblage of brightly dressed Fae clustered there. I squinted, trying to pinpoint the Black Mage by his somber dress. It took nary an instant to find him.
There.
His back was turned to us and the mother jinx; he faced the members of his court.

My gut clenched, and my wolf rumbled.

How could anyone saunter into the Spectacle grounds unobserved? The tower overlooked the palisade; Trowbridge would be in full view of the gathered Fae when the rescue attempt was mounted.

My fingers crept to my mouth.

Just then, the bridge crowd issued a collective gasp. Arms were lifted, fingers pointed, to the jinx that scudded toward the castle. The wolf-hunting menace moved at breakneck speed, and its hue was a rosy creamy blush, not a stormy gray.

I held my breath because I was sure that the terror would find us. It would catch wind of Brutus's scent, or Trowbridge's, or even my brother's—for I could swear I could detect the faintest essence of wolf wafting from Lexi.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi …

The miniature jinx zipped cheerfully across the lake and never changed course or speed as it approached dear old Mom. It plowed straight into the heart of her, and then it was gone, egg whites folded into the cake mix with a twist of the spoon.

The Fae erupted into a cheer.

It went on and on, that rah-rah of happiness. It was wilder than the crowd's roar as the glitter ball fell in Times Square and louder than any football celebration I'd ever witnessed. It was joy; it was relief; it was the end of bad times and the beginning of good ones.

Trowbridge grabbed Mouse. “Where's the tunnel's entrance?”

*   *   *

The boy couldn't find it. Mouse advanced the gap between a clump of birches again, arm held rigid, clearly expecting to push upon some invisible obstacle. Instead, he kept walking, step by hesitant step, all the way through the space between tree one and tree two, and nothing happened. No sparkles of fairy light, no trumpet of horns.

Nothing.

“The terror's going to discover us!” said Lily. “Brutus, stop sweating! The mud's come clean off the back of your neck!”

Sweat dotted the tall dude's upper lip. The rest of his face was red, and the skin on his throat glistened. “I sweat a lot,” he said. “I always do!”

While Mouse blundered blindly, a jinx struggled to detach from the huge cloud hovering over the palisade. It was a presence, merely a bubble of gray. But if it detached—no,
when
it broke apart—it would find us within a heartbeat. Brutus was seven out of ten on the stink-o-meter. Lily a five. Danen only a two.

But my mate … He wasn't sweating, but his perfume was that of an Alpha. The more impossible the odds, the more dominant his personal signature became. His scent trail beckoned, a mixture of man, wolf, and leader. But to me? All Trowbridge. Woods. Wild. Sex.

Mouse threw a frantic look at us over his shoulder. “I swear on my mother's soul that it was here!” he cried. “I marked the tree. See the nick in the bark? This is it! It's here!” He slapped the tree in frustration. “I know it is!”

Danen pulled an arrow out of his quiver. “What'll it be, Alpha? Retreat or forward?”

“There's no going back,” said Trowbridge. “We're not running from their dogs.” My mate shot me a burning look and my gut roiled because it was pretty much the same look he gave me before he left me at the damn waterfall. “Just one thing,” he said, shaking his head. “Can't one fucking thing work out for us?”

“You and I did,” I said. “That's a miracle I didn't see coming.”

“Hell,” said Lexi suddenly. “The coin you took from the Gatekeeper! Give it to me!”

Frantically I dug into my jeans pocket and brought it out. When Lexi snatched for it, I jerked my hand back. I saw hurt flash in my brother's eyes before he drowned it with anger.

“Then you hold the coin out!” he said.

I did, and immediately the space between the birches changed, as if there was gas in the air and it was evaporating into a wavering, heat-spawned shimmer. Wisps of myst began curling around the white bark-coated trunks, and then the gap in between them hazed over into dark gray film.

Hey, presto: A doorway revealed itself. It led to a chasm of darkness.

Gasps behind me and the definite sounds of three bows being strung with arrows again.

“I'll go first,” said Trowbridge.

“She has to go first,” said Lexi. “She has the coin.”

“Not on your life,” countered my mate. “She's not walking into that.”

Oh, screw this
. My twin and mate were fully capable of bickering their way right up to the moment the prince of the underworld waved “Hell-o.” I sucked in a breath and held it, because Goddess knows what that milk white haze would do to my lungs, and then stepped through the veil.

I'd feared water, expected earth, and was surprised to discover that the tunnel was more like a mine shaft than anything else. The ground beneath my feet was solid and the space dark. A hand came to rest on my hip and Trowbridge's scent wrapped around my waist. He pushed me forward. Lexi came next, shoved through by Danen.

On their hurried entrance, a long string of fireballs popped up, one after the other, as if someone with a torch ran ahead of us down the tunnel lighting each one.

The tunnel was long and low. I could not see the end of it.

“Do you hear singing?” Brutus asked.

*   *   *

Trowbridge's back is large and his shoulders wide. I doubt the Raha'ells could see past them, and thus the first quick glimpse of the room of riches was initially mine, then his. It was a square room, filled with display cabinets. Some were glass fronted, some not. Behind the panes, jewels shone, silver sang, and gold hummed.

Yes, hummed.

We were rushed; we were hurried. Danger behind us and the unknown was in front of us. Still, my eyes went right for the source of that strange music.

It beckoned.

Inside a large glass case set on the flagstone floor was a living pyramid of the raw precious metal.
Fae gold's alive
: I'd known this since childhood. Put like that, it's the sort of comment that has a “sky is blue” association. A fact, neither good nor bad.

But when you witness it, when your wolf-sensitive ears are assaulted by the precious metal's low and sorrowful dirge, when you see its magical spires restlessly trying to reshape itself to freedom, it's not a neutral statement; it's the preface to a crime.

Ralph issued a burst of white light, and the articulated tips of Merry's leaves flattened. Trowbridge moved past me, Lexi followed, and then as Lily and the others pushed their way into the room, I heard it over the low hum.

A female's gasp of horror.

I spun on my heels. A servant girl cowered in the corner to the left of the door, her spine pressed so hard against the joint between one wall and the other that her shoulders were protectively hunched together. She'd pressed the back of her hand hard against her open mouth, likely in hopes of smothering another betraying sound. But as they say, the cat was out of the bag, whereupon Brutus proved himself to be remarkably fast for a very tall dude. He surged past me, diving for the girl.

She had enough time to screech blue murder, but she didn't. And in the end, her choice of silence saved her life. If she had cried out, she would have died instantly. If she'd put up a struggle, I think the same would have happened.

I saw, you see. I saw Brutus spring at her like a wolf, not a man.

Trowbridge barely paid them heed. He slid past them to place his ear to the hallway door. There he listened, his brows pulled together, before carefully easing it open a crack. Sound poured into the small room, many voices blurred into an indecipherable babble of goodwill. My mate studied the world outside the room, then very gently closed the door.

He silently jerked his chin at Danen and Lily, then held up two fingers. They edged around a display shelf filled with silver daggers to join him by the door. Danen leaned his longbow against the wall. Lily followed suit.

The captured girl breathed noisily through her nose.

A scant few seconds after the door was quietly reopened, the two uniformed Fae who'd been standing in the hallway died relatively quiet deaths. Yes, there was some foot writhing before their necks were snapped—
oh Goddess
—and one guard dropped his weapon in surprise (
don't let anyone hear it!
), but over the babble of voices?

No one noticed the passing of two souls.

When they dragged the bodies in, the heavy crown the servant girl held slipped from her grasp. It fell, and Fae gold sang high during its brief flight of freedom until it landed with a metallic clatter on the flagstones.

“Strip them,” Trowbridge told Danen and Lily. “We'll need their uniforms.”

I stared at the bodies, feeling oddly detached. Dead Fae look exactly like dead humans or Weres. Nothing magical about them. Ugly, though. Seeing death so close up. They were people, who'd done us no wrong. Except they were the wrong
sort
of people and their kind have done mine wrong.

We're at war.

There will be deaths.

“What about this one?” Brutus held the terrified girl pressed to the wall, her head sharply tipped back by his hard grip on her hair. His blade rested on the long column of her vulnerable throat, a dull metal against the milk white of her skin.

“Don't kill her! She can help us,” Mouse said, his words tumbling over one another in his haste. “She has access to things you'll need. Clothing. Water. Cloaks like the one she wears. Don't hurt her!”

“Who is she?” Trowbridge asked softly.

“Gwennie,” Mouse answered. “She's a Kuskador—a personal servant for one of the king's daughters. And a friend.”

The girl was very slender, a year or two older than Mouse. Muted clothing, covered by a very thin gray cloak. Eyes a few shades lighter than the silk, alive with fright.

“She can help us,” said Mouse again.

Trowbridge shook his head very slightly. Brutus's blade eased, but not before a thin trickle of red ran down the girl's throat. When he stepped back, Gwennie very slowly straightened her head. She flattened herself against the wall. Her eyes darted to the door, to the dead guards, to Lexi and Trowbridge—her gaze lingered on the Son of Lukynae for a horrified tick—then the tunnel's doorway. It was a rectangle of black, mysterious and frightening, for those mysterious lights had self-extinguished.

“What have you done, Mouse?” she asked in a small whisper. “They're turning the castle upside down looking for you and your mistress.”

“It's all right, Gwennie,” Mouse soothed. “You'll see. No one's going to hurt you.”

I wasn't sure about that. We were all becoming expendable, one way or the other.

Lexi reached for the heavy crown. He tucked it under his arm and walked to an ornate display cabinet. Part of me was on Lexi alert—I wasn't a hundred percent sure how much my brother was in control of himself. I dimly noticed that he was moving slowly and that, once he'd splayed open the cabinet doors, he stared at the interior with a peculiarly fixed expression, as if it and it alone were important: the girl who cringed from him didn't matter; the dead bodies by the door were of no consequence. But I didn't earmark his preoccupation as vastly important. It was, after all, a near-empty cabinet. Inside it were three shelves. The first two were bare, save for a naked jewelry stand, and the third was lightly burdened by three simple crowns.

“The tunnel!” Brutus suddenly rasped.

And again, everybody spun around, pretty much in perfect unison, to stare in varying degrees of dismay at the wall from which we'd just emerged. Sure enough, the doorway to the tunnel was shrinking, the crisp, dark edges of it melting into the walls.

Typical.

“It's closing!” Lily, intent on stripping a corpse of its uniform, dropped the dead guard's arm and surged to her feet. With an inarticulate cry, she shoved her way past Mouse and barreled past me, all in the faint hope of reaching the melting doorway before all trace of the exit disappeared. It sealed itself before she'd finished rounding the Fae gold's glass container, leaving no visible trace of its existence. “No!” she hissed, pounding on the stone wall.