She only came up with two reasons: either they didn’t trust him.
Or they had never intended to give him the time, anyway.
Her family would have realised the situation by now. They would be trying to find her.
But they’re safe, she reminded herself. They were safe and hidden and that was the only thing that mildly calmed her. That, and Kyan’s presence. She knew in her heart, in her soul, that as long as she was with him, she was safe.
She was blindfolded once they were back in London, but Kyan would know where they were going. That was a small mercy. Even still, she remained alert to any distinguishing sounds, or glaring scents.
Was this what the Wake would have done to her mother if she’d been taken alive? Dragged her in, only for her to never be seen again?
Don’t think like that,she chided herself, if only to try and stave off the rising anxiety.
Nicole didn’t know where she was being led, but shefeltthe difference when Kyan was stopped, like the bond between them was electric in the dark of the blindfold.
‘I’m going with her,’ he said.
‘No, you’re not. She’s getting briefed.’
‘I’m comingin,’ Kyan snarled. ‘She’s my charge, remember?’
‘It’s all right,’ Nicole said. She needed to get inside and find out what she was dealing with; get them a ticket out of here. If Kyan fought back too soon, she had no idea where they might lock him up.
He must have realised the same thing because he said, tightly, ‘I’ll wait here.’
Silence.
Nicole was nudged into walking again.
When her blindfold was ripped off, light stabbed her eyes, but her body was loose and ready. She was in the strangest calm-panic place of her life.
Just do the next thing, and the next.
Keep up the mask, because if you don’t, you’re dead.
And so is Kyan.
Nicole blinked, finding herself in an almost clinically white room with a frieze of marble along the back wall.
The gravity of being insidethe Wake hit her as she met the viper-cold eyes of a woman lounging on what could only be described as a throne. She twirled a knife’s tip against the pad of one of her fingers in a thoughtful motion.
Nicole remembered the Druid’s words. This must be the woman who helped run the Wake.
The moment that Nicole’s face had been revealed, a shocking flash of hunger with an undercurrent of pure malice went through the woman’s eyes. It was gone in an instant, like light bouncing off a blade’s edge, but it sat in Nicole’s stomach like a chunk of ice.
This woman knew who she was; knew who her mother was.
And she was not going to be easy to convince.
The stranger had a cold kind of beauty that matched her blonde hair and pale skin. But there was a wicked, almost sensual confidence in her, too.
Nicole’s alert senses rushed towards her, trying to note any scent or familiar energy and figure out what she was. But there was no well of divine power, nor anything in particular to give her away.
Did that mean this woman wasn’t a Fomóir? Perhaps the Demon Gods had found ways to smother themselves to go unnoticed this long.
‘Why, what a surprise,’ the woman purred.
Nicole knew immediately that she didn’t find this a surprise at all.
