Zak swung his leg over the stallion’s neck and dropped to the ground. Turning, he reached up for me, and I let him pull me down. Ezra slid off the beast last.
Pushing his hood back, Zak swept his piercing green eyes across me.
Human eyes, I noted. His irises weren’t iridescent with Lallakai’s power.
Zak opened his mouth—and the stallion swung its head toward me, ears pinned. The druid grabbed a double handful of its mane and hauled back an instant before those big blocky teeth could bite down on my shoulder.
“Enough, Tilliag,” he snapped, putting his shoulder into the horse’s chest and pushing it back a step. “Get over it.”
Tossing its head, it snorted angrily.
“Uh,” I muttered. “Get over what?”
“Nothing. His grudges are his problem.”
My confusion deepened as I looked from the druid to the fae stallion. Why would the creature have a grudge against me? What had I ever done to upset a horse?
Wait … that steel-gray coat with a bluish tinge was familiar. Back during the battle to save Llyrlethiad the sea fae, the enemy witch had tried to escape on a fae horse—and, channeling Llyr’s power, I’d blasted the horse’s legs out from under it in mid-gallop.
“Is that the same fae horse that the Red Rum witch was riding?” I asked, narrowed eyes returning to Zak.
“Tilliag was injured, and I helped him.”
“You disappeared for, like, two days after that fight. You said you were busy.”
“Treating Tilliag’s injuries was one of the things I was busy with.” He rubbed the stallion’s forehead. It swished its tail, then lowered its head and nosed at the sparse winter grass.
“If you want to go, the street is that way.” He canted his head to the south. “Or we could … talk.”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I glanced at Ezra. It’d been a month since Zak had betrayed me, Ezra, and our entire guild so he could kill Varvara and recover his grimoire. Ezra had nearly died that night, and the memory was painfully fresh.
Ezra considered me, memories haunting his eyes too, then nodded.
Turning back to the druid, I assessed him, not sure what to make of his appearance. His hair was shaggy again, overdue for a trim, and a short beard darkened his jaw. Faint circles smudged the undersides of his eyes.
I had a hundred questions, but the most important first: “How did you find us?”
“Everyone in the city is talking about the demon mage from the Crow and Hammer.” He brushed his hair off his forehead. “The Pandora Knights are the best bounty hunters in the city. I tailed them until they found you.”
“Why?”
“To help you.”
I pressed my lips together. “Where’s Lallakai?”
“She’s not here.”
“I can see that much. Where, specifically, is ‘not here’?”
“I don’t know.” He ran a gloved hand over Tilliag’s shoulder. “We … had a falling out.”
My eyes widened.
He glanced at my expression, tightened his jaw, then faced the horse. “I wanted to … deal with some things. She wanted me to disappear into the wilderness where bounty hunters could never find me.” He tugged his fingers through the stallion’s tangled mane. “When I wouldn’t do what she wanted, she … left.”
“So you replaced her with Tilliag?”
The stallion’s head came up, ears pinned angrily, a poisonous green eye fixed on me.
Er … “no,” I was guessing.
“Tilliag owes me.” Zak leaned against the stallion’s side and looked between me and Ezra. “What happened?”
I drew in a deep breath. With Ezra flanking me in supportive silence, I pushed my shoulders back. “Zak, I appreciate that you got us away from the Pandora Knights, but you’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t do charity. Helping us—there’s nothing in it for you.”
He gazed at me for a long moment, and I couldn’t decipher the intensity in his sharp eyes.
“You asked me if it was worth it.” He exhaled roughly. “It wasn’t, and I’m sorry for taking advantage of your trust, for lying to you, and for putting the lives of people you care about in danger.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard Zak apologize—and it wasn’t nearly enough. “You betrayed me. Being nice now doesn’t change that.”
“I know.”
“Do you? This isn’t a fae exchange. You can’t just throw helpfulness dollars at me until I sell you my forgiveness.”
“I know.”
“Even if you save us, I’ll probably go right on hating your guts.”
His mouth thinned unhappily. “I can get you both out of the city—out of the country, if you need it. I know how to keep you under the radar, and I can help you start again with a new identity.”
Zak was a rogue who’d lived on the wrong side of the law his whole life. He knew how to evade the MPD, how to slip through the clutches of bounty hunters, and how to escape our seemingly inevitable fates. If anyone could get us out of this, it was the Ghost.
But that wasn’t the future I wanted.
I pinned him with a stare. “If you’re going to help us, Zak, then you better commit. No half measures, no bailing when it gets tough, no saving your own skin first.”
He frowned. “I’m here to help you, not sacrifice myself—but yes, I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Not good enough.”
I started in surprise. Ezra had been so quiet that I hadn’t expected him to speak at all.
His mismatched eyes were cold as ice. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself, but how much are you willing to risk? Time, money, inconvenience, injury? What about everything? Will you risk that? Because that’s what Tori risked for you.”
Zak’s expression darkened. “I’ve already risked—and lost—plenty.”
“For your own ambitions.” Ezra folded his arms. “We’ve seen what your ‘help’ looks like. It stops the moment you decide the potential gains aren’t worth it anymore.”
“What do you think I plan to gain from this?”
“From what I can see, nothing—which is why I’m wondering if that’s what your help will be worth. When the next guild comes down on us,
