The shifter bucked. He pulled his hand from hers, widened his eyes, and shook his head violently.
“I can’t… I don’t… Please.” He gripped the mattress with white-knuckled hands, and his breaths were battered. “She’ll make me wish I were dead if she knows I talked. I can’t.”
Terror leaked from the shifter, tasting bitter in the back of Ryker’s mouth. The fae pulled on his magic, ready to use it in a heartbeat if necessary.
Brynleigh placed her hand on the shifter’s leg.
“Breathe, Z,” she commanded softly. “We won’t tell anyone the information came from you. We just need some help.”
The shifter’s ragged breaths were the only sounds Ryker could hear, and his heart raced from the fear in the man’s eyes.
Who was Jelisette that she inspired such emotion from a once-strong shifter?
The broken man raised his gaze.
He didn’t look at Brynleigh but at Ryker. “Do you love her?”
Despite the strangeness of the question, the fae captain didn’t hesitate to answer. “I haven’t stopped.”
Truth. Even when he hated her, he still loved her.
The prisoner’s eyes sharpened. For a moment, he appeared lucid.
“Take care of your love,” he instructed. “Don’t letherget her claws into it. Don’t let her infect what you have. Owen and me… she destroyed us. Twisted us into something… Don’t allow her to do that to you.”
Ryker dipped his head. “I understand.”
Zanri’s gaze was intense and piercing as he studied Ryker for a long moment before he nodded. He turned his attention back to Brynleigh, who’d begun washing his left arm. “What do you need?”
Without divulging the confidential information about Ryker’s deal, Brynleigh told Zanri about the book she’d found and its coded letters.
“You’re searching for the cipher?” Zanri’s voice wavered, and he slumped. “I… I shouldn’t. The rules…”
“Please, Z. The rebels attacked aschool.” Brynleigh squeezed his hand. “They need to be stopped. Do you know where we can find it?”
The shifter’s chest heaved as though he’d just run a race. His gaze swung like a pendulum between the couple before landing on Ryker’s.
“I think I know where it is, but you won’t like this, Captain.”
And as the shifter explained what he knew, a hole yawned in Ryker’s stomach. By the Obsidian Sands, things were getting worse and worse.
Why couldn’t anything ever be easy?
CHAPTER 23
Goodnight Kisses and Important Meetings
Several days had passed since Moonwater Prison, but Brynleigh couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Her stomach had twisted into knots the moment they stepped foot inside that awful place, and it had yet to unravel. She’d barely eaten, barely slept.
She and Ryker were at the kitchen table in the apartment. The remnants of his late dinner sat on a plate before him, and she nursed her second glass of blood-wine.
“There has to be another way.” Ryker dragged his hand through his hair, looking more exhausted than she’d ever seen him. “Maybe the shifter was wrong.”
“Maybe.” Swirling her wine, Brynleigh gazed into the crimson depths.
After a long moment, she released her wings. The black appendages draped over her back.