“What’s wrong?” I asked, catching her as she stumbled up to me outside the Gates of Angeldust, a frantic edge to her expression.
Cupping her cheek, I tilted her face up, exploring those magenta eyes. There was something new there, a heated and haunted light igniting her entire expression.
“We found it,” she gasped over her rapid breaths. “We—we got all the answers.”
Ophelia’s eyes dragged over me, where my leathers were unbuckled and my undershirt gone. “Where’s your shirt? And why are you soaking wet?” She ran a hand through my hair.
Then, Ophelia glanced over my shoulder to Santorina—cradling her now-wrapped wrist—and the Engrossians guarding the fae prisoner. To my sister and the others, on alert with weapons in hand. To Mila draped across Malakai’s lap, still not awake.
And she jolted into action.
“What happened?” she asked, ducking from my arms and rushing to their side. Jezebel and Erista followed, our entire group gathering around Mila as Lancaster worked, with Santorina and Celissia watching over his tending. We’d had no choice but to move her. We needed the fae healing magic to stitch up her head wound.
We recounted what happened in the flooded chamber after Ophelia disappeared into the Hall of Wandering Souls with Jezebel and Erista. The dam breaking, the water sweeping us all in, how Mila hit her head on the way down.
“Shouldn’t it be easy to heal with your magic?” Ophelia asked Lancaster.
“It will be.” He gritted his teeth. “But given what lurks in the water, I have to separate anything that could infect her bloodstream.”
Malakai spoke for the first time since the fae began working, his voice as dark as the khrysaor’s scales. “What do you mean?”
“Those waters are tainted by spirits,” Lancaster ground out.
“They’re not tainted,” Erista snapped. “They’re blessed by the Angels and Artale.”
“Same thing,” Lancaster muttered, his lethal hands braced tenderly on Mila’s head.
“You’ll be able to get it out?” Malakai asked, focused solely on the woman in his arms. “She’ll be okay?”
Lancaster nodded. “She’ll live.”
I didn’t point out that wasn’t what Malakai had asked, but I met CK’s eyes over the group. Based on his stony stare, he’d noticed, too.
“There’s something else,” Cyph said. He dragged Brystin forward a step, demanding, “Tell them.”
Brystin pursed his lips, but Ophelia stormed toward the fae, that light in her eyes slipping across her skin and gathering in her palms. “Tell us what?”
She was a threat brought to life. I stepped up behind her, hand on the hilt of my sword, and glowered at Brystin.
But the male remained quiet. Cypherion looped the rope tighter around his hand and tugged, Brystin’s blood pouring from that wound.
“He’s been toying with us,” Cypherion grumbled. “He hinted at afacadein the bargain with Ritalia.”
The sand swarmed around our ankles as Ophelia’s light flared, my own stomach knotting. She clenched her fists against the power, and I braced my hand at her back, her shoulders dropping an inch at the touch.
“How can we know that’s true?” I said. “Could be a twist to his words.”
Based on the glimmer in Brystin’s eye, he was having a damn good time with this.
“Because Ritalia would have been a fool to not have a loophole,” Ophelia muttered. Angellight dimming, she looked up at me, and that stare could burn a thousand corpses to ash. “We knew there was a catch. This…facadeis it.”
“We think it has to do with a glamour,” Dax growled, arms crossed as he glared at the fae.
“He’s been quite secretive,” Barrett said. Under his breath, he added as if in a personal challenge, “Persistent, too.”
“Glamour,” Ophelia repeated, her mask of Revered fully slammed up and voice harsh. “Keep an eye on him. Do whatever you must to get answers, but don’t trigger whatever Ritalia swore him to.”
A fine line to walk, but Barrett and Dax looked positively gleeful at the permission, shoving the fae down to the sand and questioning him under Cypherion’s watch.
