The heirs had shown me pictures. In the flesh he was more striking, almost brassy with it, and far younger than any thousand-year-old evil had a right to look. The moment his eyes found me, his power rolled out, whipping the air.
Then I felt Aelindor’s magic rise to meet it. Drawing a line: no outsider threw his weight around in the Fae heir’s house.
A breath later, Xander folded his power back down. Subtle, but not quite subtle enough. I’d caught the exchange without the aid of the demon, and that told me something about myself. My power had grown. Quietly, without my permission, it had been growing for a while.
Xander’s amber eyes locked on me, tiger-bright and hungry, and I fought down a shiver. Had the bastard already filed me away in that collection of his, somewhere between a warded relic and a caged song? He’d never have me. Not breathing. Not as a corpse.
I held his stare and didn’t flinch. He’d seen me. That was the whole point.
Ten seconds, and I’d slip out of the ballroom to meet the rest of the Nightingale team, and we’d ride for the Haven under cover of the dark. Caspian and Nikolai would peel away after me; Drakken would slide in to cover the gaps and keep the room from noticing who’d gone missing. That was the plan.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Three. Two?—
“Max! Max!”
A voice I knew in my bones. A voice that still haunted my dreams at night, hand in hand with Rogue’s—and Rogue was dead, devoured. The sound of it drove the air out of my lungs, and for one endless second, I couldn’t drag any back in.
Desta.
Chapter 36
Max
Desta was alive. Desta was here.
She’s been in his house too long. Things change in the dark,the demon warned.
I turned my head, and there she was, charging straight at me. Marco moved in the same instant, faster than sight—the vampire who’d ride with me to the Haven tonight cut into her path, took her down, and pinned her to the floor, all in one motion.
I was already moving. Not even the heels could slow me. Xander forgotten. The whole room forgotten.
“Let her up, Marco! That’s Desta, my friend.”
Marco’s eyes found mine and held them half a second, one hard question in them. Then he hauled Desta to her feet.
She came up sobbing and threw herself at me, and I caught her, her head against my chest. I’d have held her longer if half the continent’s brass hadn’t been watching. This was a reception for the top politicians and military of all three kingdoms, not a homecoming. I’d already made a scene. I wouldn’t make it worse and drag it out.
Duty shouldered my emotions aside the way it had been trained to, and I still had a job to do.
I peeled her off me, set my hands on her arms to steady her, and got my first real look at her.
She was different.
The rag-cloth I remembered was long gone. She wore silk now—a gown cut for a lady of some court, the kind of fabric that had never seen a day’s work. Her hair was clean and styled, her hands soft where they gripped mine. Life, it seemed, had been very good to her.
The old desperation was scrubbed clean off her face. But the hunger underneath it was still there. Desta had always been the hungriest of us for more, the most ambitious, the most calculating, and that hadn’t changed. It had only found better clothes. She’d filled out the way I had, healthier than me even, her skin smooth and flawless. And there was muscle on her now—not miner’s muscle, she’d always found a way to duck the worst of the digging and we’d all let her, but the lean, deliberate kind that came from training. One soldier knows another.
“Desta. You’re alive.”
“So are you.” She laughed through the tears. “I was sure you were dead, Max. Like all the rest.”
My heart dropped. I didn’t ask about Kaid. Didn’t ask how he’d died. I didn’t have to. I knew, the way I’d known about Rogue, the moment the words left her mouth. If I said his name out loud, the grief would take me, and I couldn’t come apart in this room. I locked it down. Kaid. The joy of seeing her. All of it, shoved somewhere deep.
I needed a clear head and I needed answers. I let my gaze move over the room to keep myself anchored, and I felt them out there—Marco, Frost, Bryn—close, but not too close. Watching my six while they left me room to work.
The trust in that settled something in my chest.