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I narrowed my eyes, modifying my assessment. Beyond the Fae, seven black beasts began to prowl silently forward from the perimeter of the room.
Yes! It took immense effort to resist my urge to fist-pump the air.
The Nine were here. Thank you, Ryodan.
Had been all along, perhaps melted into a trellised column, camouflaged as a piece of furniture. Or, more precisely, blended chameleonlike with concrete walls and LED screens.
Fae can sense their own hallows, the spear and sword, if they get close enough, which, Mac says, has to be within a dozen feet or less. But they can’t sense the Nine, which makes them Fae enemy number one. One of the Nine can sneak up right behind them and kill them before they even know a threat is in their vicinity.
As far as I know, nothing can pick up on the Nine’s presence. I once asked Kat what she felt when she was around them and she’d said, Not a bloody thing. Complete and utter silence. They don’t exist at all. I’d thought at the time, what a gift that must be to a woman who never escaped the vast, combustible, and often terrible emotions of the world. Talk about a “ground zero.” Hers was a gift I’d never wished to have. I pick up way too much of the world’s terribleness without enhanced empathy.
A wintry Fae female draped in an ermine-trimmed snowy cloak, and a throng of obsequious courtiers, sliced imperiously through the cluster at the bottom of the staircase and moved to join the male. I committed every detail of them both to memory. Marked them as mine.
Savagery blazed from her ancient eyes, in a face so bloodless it was tinged blue. A sneer bared sharp white teeth and the flicker of a pale, restless tongue. Long lashes were dusted with glittering crystals. Her hair was so colorless, frosted with tiny, translucent diamonds, it reflected whatever shade she stood near. Her nails had been sharpened to cruel points, ten incessantly tapping ice picks.
“She’s becoming a princess,” I murmured to Ryodan. As she wasn’t yet fully transformed, she lacked the deadly burn of the Sidhbha-jai, the killing sexuality endemic to royalty of the Light Court.
“Already got that,” Ryodan growled.
“The only reason we did not transform into royalty before, the only reason sniveling humans assumed our rightful places was—”
“Time on our world diminished you,” I cut her off. “Making us more powerful.”
“But no more,” she spat, delicate nostrils flaring. “The courts are once again strong and I am Winter-born.” When she stomped her foot, a thin layer of ice gushed forth, coating the floor between us. When she stabbed me with a gaze of storm and frost, my breath painted tiny ice crystals on the air. “Give me the sword, human, and I will not make you suffer.” Her eyes narrowed to slits of fiery ice and she purred, “Much. At first.”
Objective two: she wanted the sword, Mac was alive. But where? Every Fae in the club was glancing beyond my shoulder, staring hungrily at my weapon.
The Nine moved stealthily nearer, melting through the sea of Fae in that nearly invisible way of theirs, seeming to morph from one Fae to the next and, although inhuman heads were swiveling, alien eyes scanning, they remained just beyond Fae vision, causing a stir with no concrete point of focus. “Where’s your queen?”
“She is not our queen and will never be. The pretender is worse than dead,” she said, with a hard rime smile.
“In other words,” I said, smiling icily back, “you have no bloody idea where she is. And it’s chafing your fairy ass, isn’t it, honey?”
Ryodan made a sound of choked amusement beside me.
Amusement vanished and she spun in a whirl of ermine-trimmed cloak, snarling, “Take the sword from her. Shave the bastard to pieces no larger than a newt and bring her to me. Mostly intact.”
As she stalked away, she left a thick layer of ice in her wake and all I could think was, That’s going to be a bitch to fight on, envisioning us slipping and sliding around, trying to kill each other.
We were too closely surrounded for me to kick up into the slipstream but I didn’t need to. Ryodan grabbed my arm and yanked me up into his.
Straight up.
Bloody hell, I have never once managed to achieve a perfectly vertical ascent. Yet another challenge to work on. As we went, I kicked off my heels, in anticipation of battle.
A vast black tunnel stained with crimson blossomed around me. Then we were slamming down hard on the opposite side of the dance floor.
Winter-born spun, snarling from the far side of the club. “I said bring her to me!” she screamed. “What is wrong with you imbeciles? Must I do everything myself?” She reared back and flung two long, slender, icy white hands at us, releasing dozens of glittering, deadly ice picks.
“Slipstream. Now,” Ryodan snarled.
“I don’t think so,” I snarled back.
He shoved me up so hard and fast, I went tumbling head over heels down his black and blood tunnel, where I wasted precious seconds trying to figure out how to shift out of his mode of travel and into my own. I finally regained my balance and kicked into my long starry passageway then shifted abruptly down into freeze-frame, stripping off my left glove and yanking my sword from my back with my right as I went.
I thrust my sword into the first Fae I saw, with a long-overdue roar of satisfaction.
One down, a thousand to go, I thought fiercely.
