I pitched the mutilated corpses back into the cave, then took off at a sprint, leaping out into the cool Midnight air as my wings fully unfurled behind me.
I was on the western side of the realm—some cave system in the Razorback range. The flicker of campfires dotted the mountainside, and I was pretty damn sure I could find Marco and the boys if I looked hard enough. Pretty damn sure I could catch them by surprise and tear off their fucking wings—a fate far worse than death for a gargoyle.
I could practically smell the foul blood spilling from their backs. Hear their pathetic cries. It made my cock hard just to imagine it…
But vengeance would have to wait.
Haley was still in trouble—I could feel it now, stronger than ever.
So I took all that rage—centuries and centuries of it—and chained it back up in the basement.
Then I banked north toward Amaranth City.
Toward the woman who’d saved my life in more ways than one, more than ready to repay the favor.
Hold on, babygirl. Your Gargs is on his way…
13
JAX
Get back,” I whispered urgently, pulling Haley into the shadows of another corridor, shielding her from view of the guards.
Don’t look,I muttered silently as they marched down the passageway perpendicular to ours.Keep right on walking. Donotlook this way…
Haley gripped my hand and nodded toward the other end of our corridor, but that was a no-go. It opened back up into the main parlor where Keradoc’s servants had been trying to corral the lingering party guests. The crowd had thinned substantially; our chances of being spotted were much greater now.
I shook my head. All we could do was wait for the guards to pass.
Only it wasn’t just a few guards, we quickly realized. They were transporting prisoners—three dozen or so, as far as I could count, made up of every race imaginable. Demons with glowing red eyes. Vampires, their mouths bloodied from a fresh feed. Wasted humans already well on their way to the afterlife. Shifters and gargoyles in chains, Hudson thankfully not among them. And fae, battle-worn and weary, their innate magick dim.
All of them wore armbands with the same black-and-gold insignia.
“Darkwinter,” Haley whispered, and I nodded. Her heart beat so hard I could see the pulse of it in her neck, throbbing with every thunk of the guards’ boots. “They’re all wearing it. Even the non-fae.”
It made no sense. Darkwinter fae were an exclusive bunch. Why the hell had they allowed the others to wear their colors? Their symbols?
“Where are they taking them?” she whispered.
I couldn’t answer her. Not until I’d made damn sure Saint and Oona weren’t among them.
Fuck.
Call it instinct, call it some twisted, misplaced sense of history. Call it fucking crazy, because I shouldn’t have given a shit what happened to either of them.
But I did.
A red-hot bolt of guilt seared my gut, but then the last of the guards passed through without incident, and I smothered it.
Certain we were in the clear again, I blew out a breath and we slipped back into the passageway, continuing on in the opposite direction of the prisoners. If memory served, there was an exit at the end that led into the Sanctuary—a walled garden that hid a secret, underground entrance to the dungeons. The prison guards used it to sneak away during their shifts to score drugs and sex with the castle servants.
Saint, Hudson, and I had brokered many a Devil’s Dream deal inside that garden.
I just hoped the entrance to the dungeons was still intact, and that any wandering guards and servants would be more interested in the party tonight than a clandestine roll in the garden.
“They’re new captives,” I explained, finally able to answer her question. “Keradoc and his men will probably interrogate them.”
“And then what?”
