KDBookOnline
Share Us
Titania scowled as I joined them, but I smiled and the sneer faltered. “Someone from your court was looking for you.” I pointed over my shoulder, trying to look as innocent as possible so she wouldn’t sense the lie.
“Who?”
“No clue.” I shrugged. “Brown hair.” Since that could be half of the Hallow Court retinue, it would buy me plenty of time to talk to the others before she gave up.
She groaned as she sauntered away. I waited until she was out of earshot before turning to the others.
Ciara’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you look like you’re plotting something?”
Because I was. I was taking a chance by involving them. “I think I have a solution to all of our problems, but I need your help.” I glanced at Sirius. “Yours, too.”
His violet eyes widened with surprise, and he looked to Ciara for instructions. She crossed her arms but finally nodded. “We’re listening.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Haley had hesitated to let us work in the underutilized private laboratory reserved for the personal use of Gage associates until she saw Sirius. Apparently, the true gift of the fae was the ability to charm any human with a single smile. I couldn’t blame her. I was hardly immune.
So, the three of us had spent the last week feigning shopping trips and lunches while Ciara ferried Sirius to the hospital every available hour and we worked on getting as many samples of clover for him to test as possible. She had even sacrificed her personal, century-old stash to the cause, ensuring we had a base specimen to compare the newer strains against, including the tainted product Lach had seized. I had no idea who she had sweet-talked into giving it to her against her brother’s wishes, but I’m sure it was the result of that irresistible fae charm and her resolution to find a way out of her betrothal to Bain.
The morning of her handfasting ceremony—something she willfully refused to talk about—we were no closer to an answer. Sirius had stayed at the hospital, working overnight in a desperate attempt to find something useful. All of us were keenly aware that time was running out when we arrived to deliver coffee. No one stopped us as we cruised past the reception desk, but my heart sped up. I hoisted my new Gucci purse onto my shoulder, grateful no one had asked to look inside it. It was the least flashy option that had arrived at my room a few days earlier, along with a box containing my own 9-millimeter and a very convincing note from Lach. After the redcap attack, I’d decided he was right, but I didn’t like it.
But even with the gun weighing down my handbag, I was more worried about Ciara. I stole glances at her every few steps.
“I’m not going to snap,” she hissed as I scanned us through the rear security doors that opened into the emergency room.
I schooled my features into mild surprise. “I never said you were.”
She huffed. “I know when I’m being watched. I have everything under control.”
In fairness, Ciara’s yellow Porsche was parked haphazardly in the ambulance bay, so close to the entrance that someone was likely to give it emergency resuscitation. I’d bitten my tongue, knowing no one would tow a vehicle registered in her name. Still, her erratic behavior worried me. The fact that she wouldn’t talk about it only deepened my anxiety.
But she paused a few feet from the lab. “I’m sorry. I have a temper sometimes.”
“It’s cool.” I had tried to shoot Lach when he tricked me into a bargain. I had no idea how she was keeping herself this calm in the face of marrying a man she didn’t love. In fact, it was increasingly clear that she loathed him.
She let out a rough snort. “Fae all have tempers. Luckily, mine cools off the fastest. My mother used to say I was a firecracker and Shaw was a pistol and Fiona was a blizzard.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “And Lach?”
“Lach is a bomb.” Her mouth twisted into a grim line. “That’s why he stays away from the rest of us. He’s afraid he’ll go off.”
A wet, dark alley flashed to mind. The only time I’d truly seen him lose control. That night, he’d slipped that delicate—but always dangerous—leash he kept on himself.
“You know he loves you, right? All of you?” I wasn’t sure why I said it. Maybe because as someone who’d never had her own family, I couldn’t bear to see the strained relationship between them all.
“Oh, I know that. I just wish he trusted us more.” Her eyes darted to me as we continued toward the lab. “After our parents died, it was his job to protect us. He’s so worried that he’ll lose one of us, too, that he’s forgotten how to do anything else.”
And the result was crazy ideas, like marrying his sister to another court and telling himself it was a solution when I suspected that the situation in his city made him believe he would eventually fail her, too. I still didn’t know how their parents had died. Only what Sirius had told me about the war. None of them talked about their deaths. It had been decades ago, but I suspected that wasn’t very long to immortals.
We found Sirius hunched over a microscope, but Haley stopped us before we made it past the lab’s threshold. “I would advise you to come back later.” She collected the cup of coffee we’d brought him. “I’ll give this to him. Later.”
“Is something wrong?” I squinted over her shoulder, trying to see what he was working on.
“He bit my head off fifteen minutes ago for saying good morning.”
The three of us shared a look. It was impossible to imagine him doing that.
“He’s tired,” Haley explained. “I know this is important, but he needs a break before he actually breaks.” We’d shared enough of what we were doing to secure her support. As far as she knew, he was looking into trinity in an attempt to find a better treatment for overdoses, working to isolate whatever had tainted the strain. None of us had let the word “magic” slip, so Haley thought Sirius was a genius scientist visiting from Prague.