I looked away. I had left a lot out. I had left out the part that explained that being with me meant being in danger, because my blood made me a target. Having sex with me meant sharing some of my magic. Being with a normal person made me selfish, because I couldn’t protect them if I was found. Hell, I couldn’t protect myself if that happened.
Being with a powerful person made me stupid, because as soon as they figured out what I was, they would either kill me or try to use me to their advantage. I distinctly remembered the first time I realized this. His name was Derin. He was a wizard. I was seventeen and wanting very badly to jump into somebody’s bed. His bed looked pretty good. Years later looking back at it, I had to admit Derin wasn’t all that, but for my first time, well, it could’ve been worse.
And Greg did what any good guardian would do: he sat down with me and very gently explained to me why I could never see Derin again. A one-night stand in another town was the safest option for me. Hide your blood. Bide your time until you’re strong enough. Trust no one. I had known all of that, I just failed to realize the complete implications of it. My guardian had enlightened me. I hated him so much for it, I had agreed to enter the Order’s Academy just to get away from him.
The magic splashed us, strong, intoxicating. Curran’s hair shifted and grew another inch.
I knew exactly what drew me to him: if we fought—really fought—I wasn’t sure I could win. No, scratch that, I was sure I couldn’t win. He’d kill me. Wouldn’t even blink. He scared me, and the more scared I got, the louder my mouth became.
“Your turn,” I told him.
“What?”
“Your turn. I told you why I wanted them together. Now you tell me why you want them apart.” Jealousy, pride, love, all good enough reasons for an egomaniac like you. Take your pick.
He sighed. “She’s weak and he’s a selfish asshole. He’ll use her. She’s making a mistake.”
I didn’t expect that. “But it’s her mistake to make.”
“I know. I keep waiting for her to recognize she’s making one.”
I shook my head. “Curran, she begged the ex-girlfriend of her fiancé to arrange her wedding. If she’s willing to humiliate herself in that manner, she’ll do anything for Crest’s sake. She doesn’t seem like a person who handles pressure well. If you keep delaying the wedding, you’ll just drive her to suicide again.”
“You saw the scars?”
I nodded. “People must make their own choices, no matter how wrong those choices are. Otherwise they can’t be free.”
A careful knock echoed through the room.
“Enter,” Curran called.
A young man stuck his head into the door. “It’s awake.”
Curran rose. “I have something to show you.”
Thank God it wasn’t a pickup line.
As we followed the shapeshifter down the hall, Curran asked softly. “How are those arms? Sore a bit?”
“No,” I lied. “How’s your knee?”
A few steps later I decided to put my worry to rest. “You were joking about the whole please and thank you thing, right?”
“Meant every word.” A little light danced in his eyes and he very deliberately said, “Baby.”
No.
He laughed. “You should see your face right now.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Would you prefer ‘darling’? Or maybe ‘cupcake’?” He winked.
I gritted my teeth.
We went down the spiraling stairs into the inner yard of the Keep. The Pack Keep had trouble deciding if it wanted to be a medieval castle or a twenty-first-century prison. Its main tower rose, looming, forbidding, a huge square building, utilitarian to the point of being crude. Jim once told me that it was built by hand with minimal technology and took almost ten years. It probably took a lot longer. The Keep went on for many stories underground.
A solid stone wall enclosed the main tower, carving a chunk from the clearing. I had never been inside the yard before. It was spacious and mostly empty. Some exercise equipment at the far wall. A large storage shed. A water tower. To the right a group of shapeshifers stood by a tall tank full of liquid. The last time I’d seen a tank like that, it contained dark green healing solution Doolittle had magicked, and Curran floated in it naked.
This tank contained clear water. Within the water sat a loup cage: bars as thick as my wrist, laced with silver. Something dark moved in the cage. The shapeshifters moved back and forth. Among them were three near seven-foot monstrosities in beast-form whose shaggy heads blocked the view.
“What is that?” I headed for the cage.
“You’ll see.” Curran looked smug, like a cat who stole the cream and thought he got away with it.
As we crossed the yard, a dark shape blotted out the stars. A dark outline of a long colossal body armed with huge membranous wings passed in silence high above us and vanished behind the tree line.
It couldn’t be. Even during a flare, the possibility of such a creature was too miniscule to contemplate.
The shapeshifters parted before Curran. A familiar glowing body shifted within the cage. A reeve. “How did you…?”
Curran shrugged. “She came sniffing your trail after you left. We had a mild disagreement and I tore her arms off. She didn’t die right away, so we stuck her into a loup cage and drove her over here.”
The reeve floated in the water, her eyes wide-open. Tiny slits of gills fluttered on her neck. Both arms were present and perfectly functional. She had regenerated.
The reeve’s hair clasped at the bars and drew back.
“Doesn’t like silver.” Jim congealed from the crowd as if by magic.
Curran nodded. “The loup cage was a good idea. Never would’ve thought of it myself. Good looking out.”
The next chance I got an extra gig from the Guild, I’d put the money into getting the bars for my apartment made from the same alloy. My current bars were supposed to have a decent silver percentage but apparently not enough to have prevented the reeve from grabbing them.
I pulled the monisto from my leather. The reeve snapped to the bars, her lavender eyes fastened on the necklace.
“You want this, yes?” I moved the monisto to the left. The reeve followed it.
I pried one of the numerous knots open, slid the first coin off the cord and tossed it into the grass a few feet away. The reeve remained focused on the necklace. I slid the second coin and flicked it next to the first. No reaction.
“Is one of those special?” Curran asked.
“Yep. Don’t know which one.”
Third coin. Fourth.
“Hey, mates!”
I’d know that voice anywhere. I wheeled around. Bran stood atop the wall a good twenty-five yards away. He waved the crossbow at us. “What a lovely party, and me without an invitation.”
“Get him down,” Curran said softly.
Two shapeshifters in beast-form detached themselves from the group and padded to the wall.
Bran grinned. “So you’re the big man, yea? I thought you would be taller.”
“Tall enough to break your back,” Curran said. His face snapped into the “pissed off Curran” mode: flat and about as expressive as a slab of granite. “Come down off the wall and we can visit.”
“No thanks.” Bran’s gaze snagged on the monisto in my hand and jumped to the shapeshifters surrounding me. He wanted the monisto very much, but the odds were against him.
He shrugged and saw the reeve. “What’s this then? Here, let me help you with that.”
The crossbow snapped up and two shafts punctured the back of the reeve’s head, the bolt heads emerging precisely through her eyes. The reeve went liquid.
The door leading to the tower burst open and a group of shapeshifters charged across the yard. Someone screamed, “He’s got the surveys!”
