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“I should have told you sooner, but how could I? Few situations have hurt me as much as taking the life of a good, honest, hard-working man like your father.” He rushed on, “But he was deranged with grief. My squad had cornered him because he was threatening the lives of a troll family thought to be part of The Society. They weren’t, of course, but he wanted revenge. I tried to talk him down, but he held a knife to the troll’s throat. I only used my battle frequency at the very last moment, a killing shot to the head. As it was, the troll almost died.”
There, he’d said the ugly truth about what had happened.
Willow covered her face with her hands, resting her elbows on the table once more. He saw tears slide down her chin from beneath her fingers. “I always knew the killing had been justified, but it really hurts that it was you.”
For a long moment, Malik stared at her, knowing he should do something to try to comfort her. But what rolled through his mind was that the time had come to step back from the whole blood rose situation.
He stood up and pushed his chair in, his chest aching for reasons he didn’t fully understand. He wanted to keep apologizing but what good would that do?
“If I could undo this, if there’d been any other way … ” He remembered seeing the blood spurt from the troll’s neck; he’d reacted instinctively when he’d killed her father.
Dropping her hands, she lifted her face to him, eyes watery. “I believe you. I do.” More tears, then once more she rubbed her forehead.
He sighed deeply. “I’m going to send two squads to serve as your private security detail.”
She just nodded. “I’m sure that would be best.”
The thought of Axton getting anywhere near her, though, had him shuddering.
He’d keep the detail on her until he and Zane had run Axton to ground. In an emergency, Willow could send for Malik and he’d do whatever was needed to continue protecting the wraith colony or to prevent Axton from getting his hands on her. Even if Axton approached her because he bore an invisible spell, Willow could still alert the guards.
Right now, however, he needed to get back to business.
He contacted Evan and made the arrangements.
Afterward, he carried his bowl to the sink and slowly cleaned it. He’d only taken a couple of bites. “Thank you for the oatmeal.” A strange kind of dullness filled his chest.
“Don’t worry about the dishes.” Her voice sounded empty.
He returned to the table, and glancing out the front window, he saw the squads had landed on the path in front of her house. “My men are here, and I have to go.”
But she wouldn’t look at him.
Guilt pummeled him once more. “Willow, I’m so sorry. I’ve had to live with this all these decades. If I’d had any other recourse –”
At that, she met his gaze and at the same time rose to her feet. “I … I was never comfortable with your warrior lifestyle, Malik, so maybe it’s best to have things end right now. This was never a viable arrangement.”
“Willow.” No words followed because he didn’t know what to say; he’d made his decision. Oddly, his chest started hurting in the worst way.
Part of him wanted to pull her into his arms, but once more he felt an incredible pressure to get back to his Guardsmen. “I’ll send someone to gather up my things.”
She nodded, wiping another stray tear from her cheek.
He left by way of the front door, and after issuing orders to the Guardsmen, he flew swiftly up above the canopy of the dense forest, then sped back to his house.
He contacted Zane mind-to-mind, asking about the black ops team, but they’d had no luck through the previous night locating Axton. Malik was disappointed, but not especially surprised.
A few minutes later, he landed on the front walk of his home, then opened the door. But the moment he crossed the threshold, a strange dizziness passed through his head that made him pause. Once the sensation drifted away, he tried to take a step forward, but couldn’t. In fact he couldn’t move at all. What the fuck?
He tried to call out to his housekeeper, but even his voice was frozen.
Mentally, he reached out for Zane, but he couldn’t path, not to Zane, not to anyone.
Panic set in so that for the next couple of minutes he did everything he could think of to either move his feet or to reach someone telepathically but nothing worked.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. Right now he was caught in a powerful fae spell. To his knowledge, not even Alexandra the Bad could create a stasis spell, which meant that Zane’s was right after all.
And Margetta had come for him.
