Naomi stared back at Tyler, her eyes defiant. They held a glint of a challenge. “I carry this with me always. It never leaves my sight.” Naomi bent over and picked up the bag it belonged in off the forest floor and carefully wrapped the cross back up, placing it in her pocket.
“It’s pretty handy you had the only thing in the world that could’ve saved him,” Tyler egged, pushing for a fight. “Without it, he would’ve died.”
“I earned this healing cross with the blood of my servitude,” she retorted, a steel edge lacing her normally lithe accent. “Selene would take it back from me if she was given the chance, but it’s mine now. I won it from her fairly.”
“The cross was the Lunar Goddess’s trinket?” I asked. No wonder it worked on the devil venom. It had been made for a goddess.
Naomi nodded slowly. “It was… yes.”
“See,” Tyler accused, pointing at Naomi. “This proves my point exactly. Naomi and Selene know each other personally. Did you know that?” He turned to me, his eyes blazing. “We can’t keep trusting them blindly, Jess! If we do, we’ll all end up dead. The Queen gave us two vamps who have a connection to the very Goddess we’re trying to kill. This isn’t an even game; it’s rigged.”
I ignored Tyler’s tirade for the moment and instead narrowed my eyes on Naomi, assessing. There was pain and some guilt in her expression before she finally glanced away. I ventured a guess. “You said you earned that cross with the blood of your servitude.” I pointed to her pocket. “You served Selene?”
“Oui,” Naomi said thinly, turning back to face me.
“Willingly?”
She hesitated for a few beats. “Oui.”
“Your Queen is very shrewd. I’ll give her that.” Sending two of her best, knowing they knew the enemy better than we did put us in a challenging position. “Did your Queen order you not to divulge this connection to us?” I asked.
“We were to give you the minimum assistance, as always. It is so for any duty. She needn’t have ordered us to keep quiet specifically; it would be expected of us.”
“Now that we know you’re connected to Selene, what happens next?” I asked. “If you served the Goddess, you have inside information, things that will make defeating her easier. Now that we know, what are you going to do about it?”
Tyler stood next to me, silent, his anger vibrating around us in waves.
A slow smile spread across Naomi’s features, making her appear both sweet and gruesome at the same time. She was still covered in dried blood, the white of her cheekbones standing out in bright contrast against the red. “Now that this information is out it seems the rules have changed.”
There was a gust of air and Eamon dropped beside her. “Naomi, you must keep your mouth shut. Our Queen will not tolerate anything more. We are almost to the boundary. That was our only duty. We will see them to the edge and leave—nothing more.”
Naomi uttered a single word in response. “Non.”
11
“That is not what we are doing, brother.” Naomi put a hand on his arm, silencing him before he could form a rebuttal. He must have been lurking in the trees listening to us. My distaste for him heightened to new levels. “Have you forgotten what just happened here? Our duty was to take them to the entrance and to warn them of the dangers—all of the dangers. The winged devils were unexpected and much too far outside of her domain. Something is wrong here, different than it should be, and we will do our best to figure it out before it ends us all. The boundary lines have changed, and we will change accordingly.”
“That is not our job,” Eamon insisted. “Our duty is to fulfill the Queen’s orders, not to divulge unnecessary information or battle what waits for us inside those lines. The Queen will not suffer us if we do not follow her wishes.”
“You would choose to not repay a life debt?” Naomi quirked her head to the side. “You would choose instead to run with your tail between your legs yet again?”
“Of course we will repay the debt,” Eamon sputtered. “But we need to do it according to our laws. We report back to our Queen and await her wishes. She will decide who owes and how much we pay. That has always been our way.”
“My life was saved by one thing only: the blood of an immortal. To not repay such a gift immediately is unthinkable. We will repay the need, which means we will bring them to her door and give them the information they need to survive.”
“The Queen will be angry.”
“The Queen is diplomatic.” Naomi crossed her arms. “If I were to leave when the bearer of my debt is in need, we risk war with the wolves, do we not?” She shifted her gaze to me and raised an eyebrow.