Shadowfever

I looked up at Ryodan.

The owner of Chester’s nodded.

“Nobody killed Fiona.”

“She was a doormat.”

I pushed the arm away from my neck. “Get out of my way.”

“I would suggest you cure him of his little problem if you want to survive,” Lor said.

“Oh, I’ll survive.”

“The farther away from him you get, the safer you are.”

“Do you want me to find the Book or not?”

Ryodan answered. “We don’t give a fuck if the Book is out there. Or that the walls are down. Times change, we go on.”

“Then why are you helping with the ritual? V’lane said Barrons asked you and Lor to handle the other stones.”

“For Barrons. But if he breathes one word about himself, you’re dead.”

“I thought he was the boss of you guys.”

“He is. He made the rules we live by. We’ll still take you from him.”

Take you from him. Sometimes I was so dense. “And he knows that.”

“We’ve had to do it before,” Lor said. “Kasteo hasn’t said a word to us since. I say get over it already. It’s been a thousand fucking years. What’s a woman worth?”

I inhaled slow and deep as the full ramifications of what they’d just told me sunk in. This was why Barrons never answered any of my questions and never would. He knew what they would do to me if he told me—whatever they’d done to Kasteo’s woman a thousand years ago. “You don’t need to worry about it. He hasn’t told me anything.”

“Yet,” Lor said.

“But more importantly,” I said, looking up at Ryodan, “I won’t ask. I don’t need to know.” I realized it was true. I was no longer obsessed with having a name and an explanation for Jericho Barrons. He was what he was. No name, no reasons, would alter anything about him. Or how I felt.

“So every woman has said at some point. Are you familiar with the tale of Bluebeard?”

Sure. He’d asked only one thing of his wives: that they never look in the forbidden room upstairs—where he kept the bodies of all the wives before them, whom he’d killed for looking in the forbidden room upstairs. “Bluebeard’s wives didn’t have a life.” I studied him. They were all so controlled, so hard and ruthless. “How many have you taken from one another? So many that you hate the sight of one another? Has the merry band of brothers become a walking, talking, immortal Cold War?”

His face hardened. “Strip if you’re coming up.”

I gave him a look. “I have on skintight clothes.”

“Non-negotiable. All of it. Nothing but skin.”

Lor folded his arms, leaned back against the staircase, and laughed. “She’s got a great ass. If we’re lucky, she’s wearing a thong.”

The white-haired man rumbled with laughter.

“You’ve never made anyone strip before,” I said.

“New rules.” Ryodan smiled.

“I’m not—”

“Seeing your parents if you don’t,” he cut me off.

“I don’t want to see them if I have to be naked. My mother would never recover.”

He held up a short robe.

“You planned this.” The prick.

“Told you. New rules. Can’t be too careful with the queen here.”

He didn’t think I’d do it. He was wrong.

Bristling, I kicked off my shoes, tugged my shirt over my head, skinned off my jeans, popped my bra, and stripped off my thong. Then I put my shoulder holster back on, tucked my spear into it, and walked up the stairs naked. I put a little jiggle in my walk and held his gaze the whole time.

At the top, Ryodan practically accosted me with the short robe. I looked back at Lor and the other guard. They were both staring at me. Neither of them was laughing anymore.

The second floor of Chester’s smelled good. I cocked my head, sniffing. Perfume and … cooking? Was there a kitchen up here?

Three women popped out of a wall, talking and laughing, carrying covered dishes, then vanished behind another hissing panel. I was piqued. They knew how to open and close the doors and I didn’t.

Ryodan thrust my clothes at me. “The Keltar women are out of control. They cook. They chatter. They laugh. Idiots.”

I looked at him. He was already stalking away. It was all I could do not to laugh. I stepped to the side of the hall and dressed as I watched him disappear into one of the glass-paneled rooms.

When I began walking again, Lor moved into step beside me. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me—with the hot, fixed gaze of an intensely sexual man who’d seen me naked and jiggling and wasn’t about to forget it soon.

“Jack and Rainey are down here.” He turned left in the honeycomb of glass and chrome, down a hallway I hadn’t even realized was there. The reflective glass walls created a hall-of-mirrors illusion. Chester’s was even larger on the second floor than I’d thought.

“You moved them.”

“Needed a place we could ward better, with the queen here.”

Ahead, Drustan and Dageus were standing in the hallway, talking to a—I stared. Fae? I wasn’t getting a Fae read off him. What was he? Long black hair, gold-dust skin, loads of charisma. Fae but not Fae.

As we approached, I heard Dageus say impatiently, “All we’re asking is that you confirm she’s truly Aoibheal. You were her favorite for five thousand years, Adam. You know her better than any of us. She’s wasted and weak and, though we’re fair certain it’s her, we’d be resting easier if we heard it from one who was once her right hand.”

“I’m mortal, Gab’s pregnant, and I’m not dying in a bloody Fae war. This isn’t my battle. This isn’t my life anymore.”

“We’re only asking you confirm it’s her. We’ll have V’lane sift you out of here—”

“You tell that fuck I’m here, you won’t get a thing from me. No one is to know I’m in Ireland. Not a single Fae. Got it?”

“You believe they’d still hunt you?”

“They have long memories, the queen is weak, and I was never their favorite. Some of them don’t drink from the cauldron as often as I’d like. One look. I’ll confirm it for you, but then I’m out of here. Don’t come looking for me again.”