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Sure enough, he’d found two more chests, each filled with roughly half a million in gold. And each one he carefully reburied somewhere else in the woods.
Killian hadn’t told anyone about the gold, not even Manny. He saw no reason to. And perhaps a small part of him felt bad for taking some of it. Stealing was stealing, even if it was from a wanted criminal.
Yet Killian felt no qualms about using that money to pay the Bastards for her bounty. No, that was just poetic justice.
“Are you all right?” Manny asked, breaking Killian from his daze.
Killian shook his head clear of thoughts of gold and bounties. “I’m great actually,” he said, allowing a tiny smile to sneak through. “I’ll go to the tavern another night—soon. I promise.”
Manny nodded, smiling weakly, but Killian didn’t miss the skepticism in his friend’s gaze.
Chapter 6
- Elyse -
Elyse’s fingers thrummed on the table like a tiny quartet. She slouched in the oversized dining chair, her thoughts a universe away from the finery surrounding her.
It’d been three days since her picnic with Jaime. Since he’d abandoned her.
Not abandoned, she corrected, though the word plucked a resonant chord in her chest.
She’d told herself she would be fine, that she would take up some activities and that the weeks of his absence would be over before she knew it. She believed her trip outdoors had been enough to satiate her for a while, and another visit from Jaime would give her something to look forward to.
That was, of course, naivety.
Approximately nineteen hours later, she’d become thoroughly agitated. She paraded the halls of the house, scrambling from room to room, desperate for something to appease her. Nothing had. She missed the days when she had been lethargic, content to languish in bed all day. Now she had an unexplainable, ravenous energy that hummed through her veins.
She’d finally calmed down enough to sit at the dining room table and attempt to simply think. A simple plan was all she needed. A long-term solution to her problems. Yet her mind kept doling out the same ill-conceived advice again and again.
Leave, demanded the voice in her head. Jaime will never know. Just get out for a few hours.
But even if she did leave—which of course, she would never do—where would she go?
Killian’s face appeared in her mind again and again, sometimes smiling, sometimes brooding, sometimes with that painful look of betrayal and agony. Seeing him, though, was utterly out of the question.
But what about someone else? What about Sera?
Elyse perked up at the idea, sitting a little straighter in her chair, her fingers ceasing their thrumming, before uncertainty bled into her thoughts.
Would Sera even want to see me?
Did I ruin things between her and Manny?
The notion that her oldest and most beloved friend might betray her made Elyse sick, her palms sweating as a knot solidified in her stomach. Yet the most nauseating thing about it was that she wouldn’t blame her friend for it; it was what she deserved after lying for so many years and reeling her into chaos.
Still, something nagged at Elyse, ensuring her that Sera was a loyal friend. Certainty overpowered doubt, and Elyse stood abruptly, her decision made.
By the time she gathered a few vials of transportation potion, traveled outside the wards of the country home, and magicked herself to Sera’s apartment building, her confidence waned. She stood on the thirteenth-floor landing, facing the strands of iridescent beads that served as Sera’s front door, one hand raised in a fist, ready to knock on the door jamb. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she couldn’t bring herself to knock. Just as she was about to turn and bolt down the twelve flights of steps, she heard a stirring in the apartment.
“Please, come in,” Sera called in her endearing lilt. Elyse didn’t know if Sera had heard her in the hallway, or if she had simply known someone was present, but she didn’t care. That voice, so welcoming and pure, was her undoing. She strode into the apartment, sending beads clattering into one another, and stopped just inside the threshold.
Sera sat on a ledge by the open window, a book in her hand. Her vibrant purple eyes lifted to Elyse, and the entire room seemed to still, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
“Elyse,” she uttered, her expression unreadable.
Elyse’s mind turned to mush, incapable of coherence, yet she managed a feeble “Hi.”
And then Sera was tossing the book to the floor and running toward Elyse, her silken dress flowing behind her. She wrapped her arms around Elyse in a fierce embrace that was inexplicable for someone so thin, and Elyse hugged her back. Hell’s fire, Elyse didn’t even mind that she had a face full of Sera’s long hair or that she was fairly certain Sera was bruising her ribs—there was nowhere else she would rather be.
