“Suck it up, buttercup, and talk,” I growled.
“I was trained differently than you guys were. So you need to tell me, Enforcer, which makes me more of a traitor, getting Alden out of the way or giving Guild history and secrets to a Demon?” she asked bitterly. “I should have known better, so many lies and I shouldn’t have trusted—do you seriously think the Guild would care if I was tricked? No—God, I feel so stupid!” she mumbled. “As far as what I did to Alden, Elder Cyrus told me that Alden had betrayed the Guild, and that none of the Enforcers could be trusted. I…you wouldn’t understand, I did what I had to, or they—” she rambled pitifully.
“Of course he would say that you couldn’t trust the Enforcers, Alden’s trained them all,” I interrupted; too disgusted with the lies she had been told. I took a step backwards as I felt Ryder’s electrical pulse as he sifted in.
Olivia looked up horrified, and screamed in shock. Her face turned even whiter, if at all possible. She was terrified and I couldn’t blame her. I’d felt the same way when I’d first seen him as the Horde King. I watched her; she watched him as if Satan himself had joined our little interrogation. I rolled my eyes as she started to stammer her words and tripped over them.
“Really, Ryder?”
“Really, what?” he asked as his hands pulled me against him as he took Olivia in. “Are you intentionally overstepping what Ristan requested?” he questioned, smoothly changing the subject. He could have come in his Fae form, which wouldn’t have scared the girl senseless.
“Pretty much,” I whispered and looked back at Olivia, who had turned as white as a sheet which made her dark blue eyes striking against her paleness. “Continue,” I said.
“No-no, that’s the Horde King,” she stuttered. “I’ve seen sketches in the archives, but this is impossible, he’s…this is impossible! You ran away with the Dark Prince, not the Horde King!”
“Wow, you do have a way with the ladies, Ryder,” Adam said as he smiled.
“Worthless; she’s not going to talk,” he said. “You’d have never cowered in my presence.”
“I did, if you recall. I just did it with more grace. I was trained to accept fear; she wasn’t. She’s a fucking librarian. She didn’t have the same training as we did,” I whispered as I watched her eyes take in Ryder’s entire seven foot frame and his wings. She was coming around, and I knew the shock. It was the same as I’d felt as I took on my first Fae.
“You didn’t show fear,” Ryder said. “Not until I tied you to my bed.”
“Wow, hey guys. Don’t need the kinky details, unless you have pictures?” Adam offered.
“Perverts,” I said as I felt certain sadness for Olivia at what would happen to her when Ristan got back to full health.
I could see myself in her, in the fear she displayed, and the stout hatred of everything Fae. I’d been that girl, and I remembered the level of devotion that I’d blindly handed the Guild.
“Olivia, we can help you. You have to give us details though; can you do it?” I tried again.
Nothing. She stared in horror at Ryder, as if the devil himself had come to take her soul and drag it to Hell for her crimes. “She’s not built for this, and I’m not even sure she believes the words coming out of her own mouth right now,” I said as I shook my head.
~~*
I found Ristan in the nursery, and noted his skin was back to its normal color, and his face had almost healed. He looked somewhat calmer.
“She likes you,” I said as I moved closer.
“You’ve been to see her,” he growled.
“I have; she helped the Mages get to you and Alden, and she knows what happened inside the Guild when it fell, as well as who was involved. I didn’t help her or offer her hope that you’d give her mercy.”
“Good, because that’s not something I’ll have with her.”
Kahleena cooed and wrapped her tiny little fingers around his hand and he watched her. Her big golden eyes looked up at him as if he’d hung the moon in her honor. “I need to know some of the details.” I watched him as he lifted his eyes to mine.
“What do you want to know, Syn? That I believed you and Alden and let my guard down? Or do you want to know that I was chasing her * when she lured me into the trap?”
Ouch.