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He was disgusted by Hordly’s careless gluttony. A true warrior would be working on a solution to his problem. Maybe his little Fios was correct, and this Dark Prince was all about play …?
However, he immediately realized he had made a tactical mistake.
He had assumed the Dark Prince was too busy, too engrossed with the women, to bother looking around the tavern.
He assumed the Unseelie was careless. He had underestimated him.
He should have been prepared for this, and as dawning came over him, he felt a moment of sudden, sickening emotion, felt fury at himself ride hard through his mind. He turned and witnessed it all with a dread he had not thought possible to feel. He witnessed it all but was unable to stop it.
Suddenly, where Hordly had been were only two women groping one another while some of the men in the tavern inched closer to them.
And Trevor knew.
Hordly had shifted to the back of the open room. He was Fae fast, and he took Trevor’s little Fios up in his strong arms and shifted off, disguised in a scent that would be nearly impossible to track immediately. By the time Trevor got there, Hordly could kill his little Fios. The thought made Trevor rail with agony.
He would never underestimate Hordly again.
Not only had the Dark Prince seen him in the tavern, but he had planned and executed his attack.
Trevor had promised her he would keep her safe.
This couldn’t be happening. Hordly could snap her neck without a thought, and her lovely life would be over. No … no … he could not allow it. He would find Hordly.
Something ferocious welled up inside Trevor. He clenched his fists as he raised his eyes heavenward and declared, “I am going to find you, Hordly, mark me on this!”
The notion that the little Fios was in the hands of something like this Dark Prince, who was without empathy, without a shred of compassion, made him mentally and almost physically ill, a thing that Fae rarely experienced.
Jazmine Decker mattered to him, but he had not realized the extent of protectiveness he felt on her behalf. She shouldn’t matter to him, he told himself sternly. Only his mission should matter.
In the past, he had never bothered with humans. He had believed they as individuals were of no consequence. However, watching Hordly abuse the little woman at the inn, leaving her to suffer, hurt something deep inside him. This new feeling was what his friend Red had tried to tell him about when he’d argued with her that, if a human were lost during a battle, he would be sorry for it, but he would simply chalk it up as an unfortunate casualty. It should not matter, and yet it suddenly did matter. What was more to the point was the undeniable fact that, in particular, the little Fios mattered. She mattered a great deal, though why, he could not say.
Perhaps it was that ‘look’ in her lovely human eyes always so brightly infused with honesty, concern, and courageousness. And she was courageous. Look at how she had handled herself from the moment they met, after all she had witnessed and experienced. He had seen only recently during Gaiscioch’s war that most humans ran for cover when presented with insurmountable dangers.
He had one hope, that Hordly would want to keep her alive as a hostage.
He felt desperate. He could not allow the Dark One to hurt her. He had so little time. Odd that his hope was Hordly would want to use her for negotiations.
Again, he chastised himself for the sick concern he was experiencing on her behalf. His opinion of humans had always been very poor. He thought them an infant race without purpose, but this one—was different.
He excused himself, telling himself that, for one thing, she wasn’t quite human. Besides, she might be useful as a seer. He reminded himself that his queen prized all Fios as ‘special’.
Plus, this was his fault.
He had left her alone. She had put a certain amount of trust in him, and he had failed her. This absolutely grated at his nerve endings.
He felt a fool—tricked by an Unseelie.
He went into tracking mode and centered all his magic on one thing: finding and following the Dark Prince’s specific scent.
He knew the Dark Prince would expect to be followed and would try to redesign his scent to blend in with his surroundings as he shifted. However, that would delay the Unseelie, so time, in this case, was on Trevor’s side.
He meant to make good use of that.
He reminded himself that no Unseelie alive could measure up to a Seelie Royal.
He discovered almost at once that the Dark Prince Hordly was jump shifting. He had used the scent of pine and earth but appeared to have forgotten his dark and hellish sorcery left a trace amount of putrid scent behind. Trevor centered his tracking on that.
Surprised, Trevor used caution when he realized the Dark Prince wasn’t going long distances. This was both wearisome and useless. Why would Hordly use this mode of travel? It certainly would not help Hordly elude him, so the question was why? Why jump shift?
