She should have known—should have guessed from the way Raziel had been so confident about tonight, so certain that they’d find an opening.
“You contacted him,” she breathed. “Without telling me?”
“I wasn’t certain he’d come. There was more to our deal.” Raziel’s tone was matter-of-fact, as if arranging a coordinated assault with a man who hated him was simply another item on his to-do list. “And I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” He smirked.
She couldn’t decide if she was furious or grateful. If they wound up surviving this, she was going to havewordswith them both. “Whatever. We can sort this out later.”
Raziel shrugged. “We have a common enemy now. Kalo may hate me, but he hates Mael and Lana more. The enemy of my enemy, and all that. Besides, I believe this makes us even for the fact that we handed him control of the fae on a silver platter.”
The gunfire was intensifying now, spreading across the grounds like wildfire. Nadi could hear shouts in the old fae tongue mixed with shouts from the vampiric guards, the sounds of a battle that had erupted without warning.
“Move.” Raziel grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the now-unguarded gate. “We have maybe ten minutes before someone realizes what’s happening and doubles security on the main house. Less if Mael is as paranoid as I think he is.”
They slipped through the gates and into the grounds, moving fast but not running—her in her assumed shape of a guard andhim in his stolen uniform. They were just two guards responding to an emergency, nothing to see. The carefully re-tamed and iron-bound gardens blurred past as they cut across the lawn toward a service entrance on the eastern side of the main house.
The door was unlocked. Of course it was—in the chaos of the attack, someone had forgotten to secure it. Or perhaps Kalo’s forces had done more than just create noise. Perhaps there were already fae inside, working their own angles.
The thought should have comforted her. Instead, it made her nervous. Kalo was many things—brave, cunning, infuriating—but he was also unpredictable. Whatever game he was playing tonight, she couldn’t be certain it aligned with theirs.
“This way.” Raziel led her through a maze of service corridors, past kitchens still warm from the evening’s preparations, past storage rooms and staff quarters that were in far rougher shape than the rest of the building. No one had bothered to fix up the spaces that the important people wouldn’t see.
He moved with the certainty of someone who had been here before many, many times.
“Where are we going?”
“The grand ballroom. That’s where Mael and Lana will be. Holding court. Playing their parts.” His voice dripped with contempt. “My brother does so love to beadmired.”
They passed a cluster of servants huddled in a doorway, their faces pale with fear. None of them looked up—too focused on the distant sounds of battle to notice two guards moving through corridors where guards had no business being.
They ascended a narrow staircase, emerging into a richly appointed hallway lined with cleaned oil paintings and scrubbed crystal sconces. Only the barest hints of the former state of the building remained—a section of fresh plaster in the ceilingthat didn’t quite match the rest. A post on the stairway whose carvings were just a little too crisp to be as old as all the others.
The sounds of the party were louder here—music and laughter and the clink of glasses, overlaid now with worried murmurs about the disturbance outside.
“The security breach has been contained,” someone was saying as they passed an open doorway. “Just a minor incident. Fae vermin trying to spoil the party. Nothing to concern yourselves with.”
Minor incident.Nadi almost laughed. Kalo was out there with what sounded like half the remaining fae clans, turning the Nostrom’s perfectly manicured grounds into a warzone, and they were calling it aminor incident.
Vampire arrogance. It never changed.
Raziel stopped at a corner, peering around it toward the grand double doors at the end of the corridor. Beyond them, Nadi could hear the music more clearly now—a waltz, slow and elegant, played by what sounded like a full orchestra.
“The ballroom,” he murmured. “Fifty feet. We can?—”
“Oh, you’re not goingthere.”
The voice came from behind them. High and sweet, like a child’s—but with something wrong underneath it. Something that made Nadi’s skin crawl. She knew that voice.
They spun.
The hallway behind them was no longer empty. A dozen guards in Rosov garb had materialized as if from thin air, their weapons drawn and aimed. And standing at the front of them, bouncing slightly on her heels like an excited child, was a vampire Nadi had hoped never to see again.
Asha Rosov had been done up like a porcelain doll. Small and delicate, with dark hair curled short around a heart-shaped face and eyes that were just a little too wide, a little too glassy. She wore a dress of pale pink silk that belonged at a debutante ball,not a military ambush, and she was smiling—a dreamy, absent smile that didn’t match the violence in her gaze.
“Iknewyou’d come,” Asha said, clapping her hands together in delight. “I told Nabrisi. I told her and told her, but she didn’t believe me. She said you were too smart to try something so stupid.” A giggle escaped her, high and tinkling and utterly unhinged. “But I knew. Ialwaysknow.”
“Nabrisi is dead, Asha.” Raziel grimaced. “I killed her.”
“I told her that she was dead too!” Asha laughed. “But she doesn’t listen to me!”
