Lorack stumbled … right onto the sword of another Escala.
Ruby-red blood dribbled from between his lips, the blade sticking out from his chest like some demented optical illusion.
He didn’t cry out, blinking in shock and gripping the sword between his fingers. “Help. Me.”
But Heath couldn’t. It was too late. Much too late.
“I’m sorry, Lorack.”
The Escala smirked. “Not as sorry as you’re going to be when we’re finished with you.”
Heath jerked awake next to a pile of wood, once more in front of the house where he’d first touched Ash. She hovered over him, her wide eyes sad as she stroked his cheek.
“You lost your freedom for trying to save your friend.”
Oh gods. He could remember. The trial—or farce—that it was. His charges of rebelling against social order and harming a member of a higher caste. The way he’d been dragged from court and put in shackles to be shipped to the Seelie for service.
All because he’d tried to save Lorack.
Someone he’d forgotten.
A smile he hadn’t seen for nearly sixty years.
A man who looked so much like Lorenzo in Unseelie form, Heath wondered how he’d ever forgotten him.
“You are kind.”
No, he wasn’t. He was a fucking asshole who was always too late. Always making mistakes. He should have told Lorack to wait. Should have said he didn’t feel right. Heath knew better.
“You could see the memory.”
Ash nodded. “I lived it along with you, turning this place into it. While you relived it, I watched. You fought so hard to protect him.”
“I never should have let him go.”
Ash cocked her head to one side. “It is not your fault. You could not have saved him.”
“Yes, I could have. But I didn’t. And what’s worse? I didn’t even fucking remember him.”
She ran a cool hand across his forehead, leaning over him until her eyes filled his vision. “And perhaps it was good you did not. This remembered pain can break the heart anew, but it also makes you stronger. Reminds you of who you are, Foraltin.”
“And who is that?”
“The Fae who will save my life. Perhaps you have always failed so you know you never want to taste defeat again.”
Chapter Seven
“Tesoro, you are free to attack any of my men who displease you.”
Carlo swallowed his exasperation at Arturo’s statement to Isadora. Arturo had long ago lost his wife and the child she would have bore him. Carlo knew, perhaps better than anyone, how Arturo had craved family.
The Alpha may have been death on wheels, but family meant a lot to him.
So much so that he’d invited his granddaughter and heir to spend time among his pack for the weekend. Men and women who shot first and asked questions later, the Moretti Pack was still mafia, through and through. It didn’t matter if they sometimes sported claws and could kill with their teeth.
The Code was one they still chose to live by.
Something Isadora, if her devilish smile was anything to go by, relished.
