Nicole’s stomach pitched. ‘What?’
Aífe pressed her knife to the canvas beside her, right at Freya’s collarbone. ‘What other information do you have? What was her plan?’
‘That’s it,’ Nicole said, shifting, her eyes darting between the woman and the canvas.
Aífe pressed harder into the painting. ‘See, that’s not the way Freya worked. There’s always more.’
The knife punctured the canvas with apopand Aífe dragged it through her mother’s face with a razored slice.
‘No!’ Nicole gasped.
That was their only picture of her.
A shock of tears burned hotly at the back of eyes.
‘What more do you know?’ Aífe shouted as her mother’s painted face folded in on itself.
‘What more do youwant?’ Nicole demanded with just as much venom. ‘The world has no idea the gods exist!Ihad no idea! It would rewrite history!’
‘History?’ Aífe rasped, laughing.
‘Let me speak with Elatha,’ her father interrupted. ‘He’ll want to know I’m alive. I can craft something new for him. New ideas, new ways to keep the supernatural world under his thumb. Whatever he wants. I helped him once, I can do it again. Let him have me, just let them go.’
‘Dad, no,’ Nicole cried.
‘It’s all right, love.’ But he didn’t look at her, he kept his damning eyes on Aífe.
‘You think you’re that much of a prize?’ Aífe laughed.
‘I am and you know it,’ he said.
He had been their mastermind.
But if he became it again for their sakes, who knew what would happen?
Aífe’s eyes narrowed back on Nicole.
She scrambled to think.
Perhaps she could just mention a ‘goddess-blessed item’, but not what it was? Claim that’s what they’d been blindly searching for? Perhaps say her mother had hidden more clues in paintings but make up the clues. She could offer to search for them and lead the Wake on a chase that could buy Remi and the Druid and Callum, time.
But even then: the Wake might take over the search and realise the torc was one of the items. She prayed Callum had hidden it well.
Because if the Wake acquired more goddessblood, what would they do with it? No Empyreal would ever be able to defeat them, and more would be turned into mindless killers like Alexander.
Her eyes slid to the ruined goddessblood portrait.
To her mother’s slashed and shadowed face.
‘Perhaps you need more incentive,’ Aífe said, nodding to the Empyreal behind Nicole as Alexander forcibly lifted up her father and began to drag him to the opposite end of the pool.
‘Dad!’ she shouted, as Bells was taken by Aífe in the same direction.
‘Elatha won’t be happy,’ Nicole’s father said. ‘He thought he’d condemned me to death once; if anything, he’ll want to do it properly this time.’
They were forced to their knees on the other side of the pool, Aífe standing before them.
‘Wait,’ Nicole shouted, trying to rise, but the Empyreal behind her clamped a hand on her shoulder, pressing her so her knees dug harder into the stone.
