Not blades this time. Stakes.
Shot from crossbows.
Wielded by none other than our favorite purple-haired traitor.
Flanked by six guards, Gem stepped out of the shadows with a grin.
“Hello, boys. Miss me?”
I was on her in a flash, my hands wrapped around her throat. But before I could properly crush her windpipe, a painful electrical current surged through my body, dropping my ass to the ground.
Gem only laughed. “What about you, demon?” she said to Jax. “Want to give it a go?”
Glaring at her, Jax crouched down to help me back to my feet. My muscles were still twitching with whatever dark magick shielding I’d hit.
Fucking Midnighters.
“What thefuckare you doing here, Gem?” Jax ground out.
“Apparently, Commander Keradoc doesn’t trust Elian not to steal the product,” she said, “or you not to flee. So I’ve been assigned to supervise.”
Hurt, rage, betrayal… all of it collided inside me, sending my heart into overdrive.
“Why?” I asked, my voice a broken whisper, and she knew damn well I wasn’t asking about why she’d been put on babysitter duty.
Something dark and sad flashed in her eyes, but before I could make sense of it, she turned away from me and dismissed her entourage.
When she looked at us again, I saw that same sadness in her eyes and for a second I thought she might actually talk.
Instead, she shoved that crossbow into my chest and said, “No more questions,Elian. Now, considering you two already know your way around a drug processing facility, we’re going to skip your orientation and get right down to business.”
“That right?” I asked. “And what do you know about our business here, you fucking traitor?”
“I know I told you to stop asking questions. And I know if you two don’t get to work, we’re going to have a serious problem involvingmyboot upyourass. So move.”
She shoved us ahead, steering us to a section at the back of the cavernous space where several tables had been set up for us, some of them holding trays of dried corpsevine flower, others covered with various pieces of lab equipment—beakers, test tubes, scales, burners, goggles.
There were other tables too—manned by fae and demons and vampires alike, all of them working on various stages of the production line: crushing the dried flowers into powders, preparing it to be pressed into pills, counting out and bottling the final product.
My mouth watered at the sight of so much Dream, but my infatuation was short-lived. There, on the far side of the space, were the testers.
Dozens and dozens of people of every supernatural race, all crowded together on the floor, all in various stages of delirium. Some of them scratched at invisible bugs crawling beneath their skin, others moaned through the pain of withdrawal, others trembled and twitched, desperate for their next dose. A few were stretched out on cots with IVs hooked up to their arms, concentrated black liquid dripping into their veins, their eyes glassy, their mouths open in a perpetual, blissful grin.
Several testers had already become corpses. No one had bothered to remove the bodies.
“I’ll leave you to it, boys,” Gem said. “But remember—I’m watching you.”
Jax and I exchanged a look, then bent our heads to the work, rearranging the equipment until we had it optimized.
“Just like old times,” I said.
“Yeah, except in the old times, our closest ally wasn’t a fucking sellout.”
I nodded, ready to let loose a barrage of curses about the bitch I’d once considered a friend, but something held me back.
The events of that night still didn’t add up for me. If Gem had truly wanted to betray us, why did she wait until the feast? Why did she go to the trouble of getting us the apartment, the tickets to the feast, the formalwear, all of it? She knew we were heading back to Midnight, so why didn’t she just have an ambush waiting for us on arrival?
And what was that look in her eyes all about just now?
