My Nexus hears their heartbeats first. The guards who watched me get beaten and sometimes joined in. I can feel her happiness surging through her blood long before we step into the light by the door. The guards open their mouths to shout, turning to grab the door, but they are already trapped. My Nexus doesn’t use her powers. She shifts between her human and wolf forms to rip them apart, leaving bones and blood and other disgusting body parts smeared against the walls of the blown-out doors and the corridor.
My Nexus turns around to see Feyre’s hands over her face as she waits for the silence before walking forward through theblood now dripping from all of my body and, unfortunately, hers too. “Come.”
Feyre only shakily nods, slipping in blood as she takes a step forward. My Nexus kills the guards on the other side with her powers, leaving their orbs of life hovering in the air as she storms down the corridor and comes to a stop. There is a dark-hooded man wearing a strange mask standing in the middle, his hands in the air. The mask is old-fashioned, lacy, and black, covering all of his upper face. Spikes—dangerously sharp spikes—poke out from the edges of the frilly mask. “I am no threat, Nexus. Your mates sent me. I am an ally of Prince Severi, and you need a Vian to get out of this place.”
The walls shake with an explosion somewhere nearby as my Nexus considers whether she should trust him. “Trust him,” I suggest, knowing we don’t have much choice. If he betrays us, he dies anyway. One Vian in a mask is not going to stop us escaping now. She seems to agree with me. Feyre makes it two steps at our side before she collapses on the ground. My Nexus makes no move to help her, and I can feel her thoughts—she is not going to aid Feyre anymore. Dammit. “Ask the masked man to carry her. Please.”
“Carry her, and we will come with you.” My Nexus huffs, looking at the ceiling.
He nods, walking over, his cloak billowing behind him. He’s tall, well over seven feet, and easily scoops Feyre up and throws her over his shoulder. She looks just as thin as I do, just as concerning, but she is breathing. In this place, breathing is all that matters. We were both there when her father died. They beat him to death outside the cage to make us talk, to make both of us reveal where any of the hideouts were, where the city was. Neither of us spoke. I don’t ever want to tell Finn how his dad died. In pain, crying out for his dead wife and children. Feyre didn’t say a word, but it broke her.
This masked man takes us from room to room. Each one is laden with dead bodies. My Nexus is beginning to get annoyed that he took all the fun out of escaping this place. The closer we get to the door on the other side of the room, the more I feel that pang in my chest. One of my mates is nearby.
Another explosion shakes the walls, leaving my ears ringing, but the masked man does not stop. It has to be part of the plan. He opens the door to a balcony, and I suck in a deep breath of the cold night air. The stars are beautiful, twinkling and shining above us as my Nexus stares up for a long moment.
The masked man drops Feyre at my feet. “We are not alone,” he warns. I step over her and look down at the twenty Vian guards waiting. One of them I know—one who used to torture me, and he really enjoyed it. “Stand back while I?—”
“No mortal tells me what to do. Get in my way and you are dead,” my Nexus snarls at him. “Mine.”
My Nexus throws herself over the railing and explodes in grey magic, darkness and power. Twenty men are soon turned into nothing but dust. Her grey magic waves through them, killing all but one within seconds as they scream, the sound fading like an echo.
The commander steps back when he sees he is left alone. She takes a step forward, only for the commander’s head to fall off his shoulders, dropping to the ground with a thud. Severi stands behind him, two daggers embedded in his stomach, blood pouring down his face, over his chest, his clothes tattered to pieces. Even then, he is stunning. His black hair is a mess around his forehead, and his dark brown eyes lock onto mine. I take him in like a craving—a desperation I feel deep in my chest. Severi came for me. Severi saved me. His eyes shatter as he looks at me, at whatever he is seeing. “We failed you. Gods above, Tulip, what has he done to you?”
My Nexus lets go, bringing me back. I don’t have time to warn her that I’m not strong enough. The minute I shift back, I feel myself falling forward, straight into my mate’s bloodied hands.
Chapter
Three
RHODES
Ican feel her getting closer. It killed me to walk past her in the ballroom at court, to pretend to be a guard for a rich Vian family of nobles who had just got invited. No one looks twice at the guards, and it makes it easy to walk around the mansion, taking in all the rooms and mapping out a path to the most guarded area—where my mate was kept. I could smell her everywhere, her blood singing in the air, and when I finally saw her after so many months, I nearly collapsed to my knees in relief. She is alive, and they had not taken her from me.
It took me months to figure out where the fuck they had taken her, and I did not expect the south of Mexico to be the answer. This horrid place is hidden, extremely well hidden, and under strict invite-only. Not even Severi knew about it, and neither did Hollis. Every time we thought we got close to finding her, we were wrong. We split up, all of us, searching different places across the world to find her and only checking in once every week with updates. There were never any updates other than when she was in the cities, and all that was left was death. There wasn’t time to tell Finnegan, Hollis or Alek about this place and the chance she could be here. I sent word thismorning, and I know they will be on their way to our hideout, if they are not there now.
I pace in front of the car, watching in the direction of the orange stone mansion, the clock tower which has fallen to the left side of the building. The rest is blown up and on fire. Everyone inside is dead. I killed so many tonight I’ve lost count, but it doesn’t matter as long as she gets out. The king escaped, the tricky fucker that he is, and he will no doubt go to his city to hide. The fucker is dead. Hiding won’t stop me from getting to him anymore. I didn’t manage to find Georgina either. She must have left with the king.
I finally see Severi running up the hill towards us, the thick heat of Mexico making him sweat the blood off his face. His friend—the one who gave us the information in the first place about an invitation to this place—walks alongside him, holding a bundle over his shoulder. It’s not my mate he carries. No. My mate is in Severi’s arms, curled up against his chest but completely unconscious. Breathing. She’s definitely breathing.
Fuck.
My heart pounds so fast I worry I might throw up as I run over, nearly tripping over my own feet, stopping in front of her and Severi. He lets me have this moment to just breathe her in, touch her cold cheek and brush damp hair away from her face, her dark locks falling down in messy clumps. Every inch of her face is bruised, and parts of it are swollen. Her jaw looks broken, along with her nose, as it is crooked. Like someone broke it and let it heal like that. Her arms are covered in different coloured bruises, blood and deep scars. “She is too thin. What the fuck did they do to her?”
It’s a pain like I’ve never felt to see her like this—to know someone did this to her. I am going to hunt down every fucker who ever laid a finger on my mate. The way Severi looks at me, the brokenness in his eyes, I know he is planning the same. Thegrim line on his face doesn’t falter. I can’t even say another word. Her red dress is ripped, covered in blood, but most of it isn’t hers. Her Nexus killed to escape tonight.
Severi clears his throat. “All that matters now is getting her to safety and a damn good healer.” He turns to the masked man. “Dante, we need to move.”
Dante nods once. “There is a healer, a friend of mine, whom we can trust. Once we get to the hideout.”
I’m thankful for the information and help as I tug the car doors open. Dante bundles Feyre into the back seat, clipping a seatbelt on her, and she doesn’t move. I climb into the back and hold my arms out. Severi stares at me and then at her. “I don’t want to let her go,” he tells me.
“You can trust her with me. You know I’d die for her a thousand times over, and you are injured,” I murmur. I need to hold her. I don’t tell him that, despite the fact I have grown to trust Severi over the years I’ve known him. He is an asshole through and through, but his loyalty to Gwenieve is unquestionable.
Severi reluctantly hands her over, and only then do I see the two daggers pressed into his stomach, another one in his shoulder. “I smelt your blood, but what the fuck happened to you? Are you alright?”
He just grunts, pulling the two daggers out and throwing them on the floor before climbing into the front seat of the car. Dante’s off within seconds, turning into the mud lanes behind the main road and quickly making sure no one sees us leaving. I pull a thick coat over Gwen, covering her up as much as possible, then stroke her damp hair away from her face. My Nexus rolls in my chest. Angry. So fucking angry. I don’t blame him; I feel the same, but I am more concerned for her right now. I can’t lose her, and there is every chance the wild, reckless and sarcastic woman I fell in love with might have been broken in these lastfew months. I need her to wake up, to call me all the names under the sun and smirk at me.
I need Gwenieve. My mate. I want her angry at me. I want her hate, because it’s better than her feeling nothing but pain. They’ve used her time and again to destroy city after city. Every time we got rare footage, anything, any hint of her, it was never enough to save her. It was too late, too little, and we failed her.