Reagan tilted his head, trying to read the distant darkness. A stir of movement caught his eye, but it resolved into nothing more than branches shifting.
He turned away without a word and padded toward another alley, forcing down the prowling rage that had roared in his ears for four relentless days.
Chapter 58
Jane
The glass panels of the ceiling cast the platform in a greyish light, barely doing anything to illuminate the weathered brick walls surrounding us.
My stomach churned at the sight of humans mingling near the tracks, their voices rising and falling in chatter. Too oblivious to who was around them. The departing train’s whistle cut through the half-crowded station, echoing in my strange ears.
My hand drifted to my chest, still feeling the ghost of a blade there, although there would be no scar now.
In the past days, I had woken with a spinning skull more times than I could count, checking my own skin for a blade that wasn’t there. I tried not to think of how many times they had drugged me unconscious.
Someone braver might not have felt their eyes stinging, might not have cried at all. But I knew I was slipping.
Cahir had stopped trusting humans to bring my meals or take me to the washroom, so when he said I was leaving the mansion with them, he’d brought the cobalt skirt and the heavy grey sweater I wore now.
It was safe to assume that it hadn’t been him or Madden who had compelled that servant, but another Scion in that mansion had wanted me dead.
Cahir ushered me toward a long stairway crowded with humans going about their cloudy afternoon. Their coats glistened with the sheen of a recent rainfall, and the bright rain jackets of children became the only lively colours in the entire station.
Little pockets and little shoes that filled me with more dread.
Madden’s boots squeaked on the cobblestones after we reached the upper levels and stepped out of the station. When I peered behind me, the other Scions accompanying us had vanished from sight.
They led me towards a three-storey apartment block with aged bricks and crooked windows, its ground floor home to a shopfront.
Human dwellings.
Cahir nudged me forward, and I dropped my gaze, peering down at the boots that weren’t mine. The darker skin on my hands was not mine. The ruby-red nails, glossy and perfect, belonged to a woman I had never met. Nothing on me belonged to me.
Through the glass door of the shopfront, I could see families at small tables, steam curling from their mugs, children climbing onto seats with their muddy shoes planted on the cushions.
Unaware. All of them so unaware.
Cahir held the door open, letting Madden walk in first and closing a hand around my elbow to guide me forward.
The warmth inside made the sweat beneath the choker on my neck itch, and I reached for it. The glamour relic.
“You won’t be able to remove it, milady,” Cahir murmured. When I instinctively reached for the clasp, a sharp shock pulsedthrough my fingers and forced my hand away. “I suggest you stop trying.”
When Cahir had fastened the clasp on my nape at first, I felt a surge of heat and ice flash through my body. When I’d noticed my hands were different, nausea had rolled inside me.
My face no longer resembled mine. A rounder shape, bigger nose, unfamiliar features staring back when I passed the reflective glass on the door.
The glamour was only one effect of the choker. The relic clamped down on my throat, and I couldn’t speak. Madden had said that relics never drew suspicion even in the most dutiful mageborn buildings, and certainly not here among humans.
Through the stranger’s eyes, I watched customers laugh and drink their coffee, watched them slice generous pieces of cake while their children tugged at sleeves.
They had no idea the men beside me planned to tear lives apart today. And not only here. Others had come with us and were already scattered throughout the town.
Perhaps the ones in this café were safe.
Pulling out a chair for me, Cahir commanded me to sit. Madden sat across from us at the worn wooden table, his tall frame draped in velvet and tailored finery that made my hands curl into fists. Cahir wore similar black clothes, the eye tattoo on his temple visible.
“Sit,” Cahir said.
