We shoved into our clothes and boots, and I did a quick inventory of the weapons we’d squeezed into the tent with us. I had three daggers. Lucien had two, as well as an elegant short sword. Better than nothing, but not much.
A glance from him communicated our plan well enough: play casual until we assessed the situation.
I had a heartbeat to realize that this was perhaps the first time he and I had worked in tandem. Hunting had never been a joint effort, and Under the Mountain had been one of us looking out for the other—never a team. A unit.
Lucien slid from the tent, limbs loose and ready to shift into a defensive position. He’d been trained, he once told me—at the Autumn Court and at this one. Like Rhys, he usually opted for words to win his battles, but I’d seen him and Tamlin in the practice ring. He knew how to handle a weapon. How to kill, if need be.
I pushed past him, devouring the details of my surroundings as if I were a starving man at a feast.
The forest was the same. Jurian was crouched before the fire, stirring the embers back to alertness, his face a hard, brooding mask. But the sentries—they were pale as Lucien stalked to them. I followed their shifting attention to the trees behind Jurian.
No sign of the royals.
The blood—
A coppery tang, yes. But laced with earth and marrow and—rot. Mortality.
I stormed for the trees and dense brush.
“You’re too late,” Jurian said as I passed him, still poking the embers. “They finished two hours ago.”
Lucien was on my heels as I shoved into the brambles, thorns tearing at my hands.
The Hybern royals hadn’t bothered to clean up their mess.
From what was left of the three bodies, their shredded pale robes like fallen ashes through the small clearing, Dagdan and Brannagh must have shut out their screams with some sort of shield.
Lucien swore. “They went through the wall last night. To hunt them down.”
Even with hours separating them, the royals were Fae—swift, immortal. The three Children of the Blessed would have tired after running, would have camped somewhere.
Blood was already drying on the grass, on the trunks of the surrounding trees.
Hybern’s brand of torture wasn’t very creative: Clare, the golden queen, and these three … A similar mutilating and torment.
I unfastened my cloak and carefully laid it over the biggest remains of them I could find: the torso of the young man, clawed up and bloodless. His face was still etched in pain.
Flame heated at my fingertips, begging me to burn them, to give them at least that sort of burial. But— “Do you think it was for sport, or to send us a message?”
Lucien laid his own cloak across the remains of the two young women. His face was as serious as I’d ever seen it. “I think they aren’t accustomed to being denied. I’d call this an immortal temper tantrum.”
I closed my eyes, trying to calm my roiling stomach.
“You aren’t to blame,” he added. “They could have killed them out in the mortal lands, but they brought them here. To make a statement about their power.”
He was right. The Children of the Blessed would have been dead even if I hadn’t interfered. “They’re threatened,” I mused. “And proud to a fault.” I toed the blood-soaked grass. “Do we bury them?”
Lucien considered. “It sends a message—that we’re willing to clean up their messes.”
I surveyed the clearing again. Considered everything at stake. “Then we send another sort of message.”
CHAPTER
8
Tamlin paced in front of the hearth in his study, every turn as sharp as a blade.
“They are our allies,” he growled at me, at Lucien, both of us seated in armchairs flanking the mantel.
“They’re monsters,” I countered. “They butchered three innocents.”
“And you should have left it alone for me to deal with.” Tamlin heaved a jagged breath. “Not retaliated like children.” He threw a glare in Lucien’s direction. “I expected better from you.”
“But not from me?” I asked quietly.
Tamlin’s green eyes were like frozen jade. “You have a personal connection to those people. He does not.”
“That’s the sort of thinking,” I snapped, clutching the armrests, “that has allowed for a wall to be the only solution between our two peoples; for the Fae to look at these sorts of murders and not care.” I knew the guards outside could hear. Knew anyone walking by could hear. “The loss of any life on either side is a personal connection. Or is it only High Fae lives that matter to you?”
Tamlin stopped short. And snarled at Lucien, “Get out. I’ll deal with you later.”
“Don’t you talk to him like that,” I hissed, shooting to my feet.
“You have jeopardized this alliance with that stunt you two pulled—”
“Good. They can burn in hell for all I care!” I shouted. Lucien flinched.
“You sent the Bogge after them!” Tamlin roared.
I didn’t so much as blink. And I knew the sentries had heard indeed by the cough of one outside—a sound of muffled shock.
And I made sure those sentries could still hear as I said, “They terrorized those humans—made them suffer. I figured the Bogge was one of the few creatures that could return the favor.”
Lucien had tracked it down—and we’d lured it, carefully, over hours, back to that camp. Right to where Dagdan and Brannagh had been gloating over their kill. They’d managed to get away—but only after what had sounded like a good bit of screaming and fighting. Their faces remained bloodless even hours later, their eyes still brimming with hate whenever they deigned to look at us.
Lucien cleared his throat. Stood as well. “Tam—those humans were barely more than children. Feyre gave the royals an order to stand down. They ignored it. If we let Hybern walk all over us, we stand to lose more than their alliance. The Bogge reminded them that we aren’t without our claws, too.”
Tamlin didn’t take his eyes off me as he said to Lucien, “Get. Out.”
There was enough violence in the words that neither Lucien nor I objected this time as he slipped from the room and shut the double doors behind him. I speared my power into the hall, sensing him sitting on the foot of the stairs. Listening. As the six sentries in the hall were listening.
I said to Tamlin, my back ramrod straight, “You don’t get to speak to me like that. You promised you wouldn’t act this way.”
“You have no idea what’s at risk—”
“Don’t you talk down to me. Not after what I went through to get back here, to you. To our people. You think any of us are happy to be working with Hybern? You think I don’t see it in their faces? The question of whether I am worth the dishonor of it?”
His breathing turned ragged again. Good, I wanted to urge him. Good.
“You sold us out to get me back,” I said, low and cold. “You whored us out to Hybern. Forgive me if I am now trying to regain some of what we lost.”
Claws slid free. A feral growl rippled out of him.
“They hunted down and butchered those humans for sport,” I went on. “You might be willing to get on your knees for Hybern, but I certainly am not.”
He exploded.