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Conor’s eyes locked on her. Lit with an amber glow, they reminded her of a wild animal’s. Deadly. Ruthless. Without pity. She looked away, unable to face him.
“Yes,” he said, “someone broke the seals. Asher was set free and escaped, but I kept the other two contained and maintained hold of the reliquary.” So much said in that one simple sentence. Ellery remembered the blood and the carnage in that Spanish chapel. She couldn’t see how anyone had survived that battle. He continued, “I was wounded. I lost the reliquary. I couldn’t follow.”
She knew exactly what it had cost him to stay alive. He bore the scars of that struggle in the dark emptiness of his eyes, the loss of his humanity in return for the power of the fey.
“But you did follow. You followed me. The reliquary was among my father’s things.”
He nodded once. “It was.” He left the obvious assumption hanging unspoken. “But just as I followed your trail, Asher followed mine. He knew I’d stop at nothing to get the reliquary back. And where I can travel easily in the mortal world, he cannot. He’s not of this time or this place. It constrains his hunt. His power. He hopes I’ll lead the Keun Marow to it.”
Her father. Her father had brought all this about. Had he known what it was when he found the ancient casket among the treasures abandoned by the French? Or had it been simple curiosity that started such a cascading chain of disaster? The air seemed colder, the room’s familiarity suddenly unreal. Her lungs worked to expand as she fought for breath. “And then what happens?”
“Either I send Asher back to his prison,” Conor’s head snapped up, his body tense and on the alert, “or he destroys us all.”
In the silence after his words, she heard the sounds outside the cottage. In the garden. In the lane. A shuffling of bodies and a chink of weaponry. She didn’t need to hear their cry to know the creatures were there—and waiting. The Keun Marow had found him.
Conor heard the hunters almost the same instant Ellery’s thought seared his brain. His muscles tightened. His lips curled back from his teeth as he growled low in his throat. They wouldn’t take him. He wouldn’t be dinner for Asher’s army. He thought of his sister. Nor sport for his sadistic pleasure.
He thrust his hand deep in his pocket before he remembered her ring wasn’t there. Instead, his fingers curled on a stone the size of a hen’s egg. The pearl. He’d wanted to present it to Ellery and watch her reaction. But the time for that had passed—if it had ever been.
A low keening wail shivered the air, echoing down the high hills, curling up from the deep coombes closer to the sea. More took up the call as the fey hunters encircled Carnebwen.
An anger grew inside him, a hatred born into him with his fey inheritance and sharpened to a loathing over years of watching people he cared for and loved taken from him one by one. His blood burned, his muscles thickened and warped in preparation for a renewal of the battle on the tor. He pushed the urge away, restraining the shift before Ellery noticed. She’d accepted his explanations this far. He didn’t want to test her limits yet.
He swung around, pinning her with a sharp stare. “Do you trust me?”
She froze, scared but defiant. “Do I have a choice?” Reassured that she wasn’t about to panic, he slid his sword free, testing its balance as he sized up his options. Now that they’d been discovered by Asher’s pack, subtlety and subterfuge were no longer needed. But magic was out of the question as well. Any spells he might wield would only increase their strength. Make his task harder. He gripped his sword. “Stay out of the way, but follow my orders.”
Smashing glass and splintering wood sounded from the kitchen as a pack of hounds stormed the back. Others hammered against the sturdier main entrance. “We’ll force our way out.”
“Through them?” she shouted.
His eyes flicked to a window, overlooking the west side of the cottage. “Only if we have to. Can you manage the drop?”
She followed the track of his gaze before offering him a grim smile. “I’ll manage.”
The hammer blows grew vicious. Howls split the air as the first Keun Marow crashed through the back kitchen.
Conor smashed the window as the lead hound pushed his way into the room. Then another behind him. They slid to a stop. Their gazes narrowed, their nose slits widened as they scented the power he was giving off. He hoped they choked on it.
The first creature drew a knife from his belt. “You?” he hissed. “Here?”
Conor pulled Ellery behind him. “I’m overjoyed to see you too.” He whipped a dagger out, releasing it before he’d finished speaking. It sliced through the air, embedding itself in the first hound. The creature howled and crumpled dead to the floor.
The second Keun Marow paused as if surprised to find resistance. Then he stepped over his dead comrade just as the main door smashed back on its hinges. “We’ll feed well for this night’s work.” His lips drew back over long yellow teeth.
Conor heard the scuffled footsteps as the pack entered the cottage, felt their presence in his mind as a nauseating stench. But he waited. The more of them bottled up inside, the longer he might have to use his power to aid his escape. He had to time it well. The magic would give him an initial edge, but he couldn’t draw on it for long. They’d track it—and him. Once he was away from the cottage, it was up to his natural abilities to keep him and Ellery safe.
He held his sword at the ready. The fey hunter kicked aside a table as he slashed down with his weapon, aiming for Conor’s head. He deflected the blow, then slipping beneath the hound’s guard, Conor’s sword bit deep into its side. The Keun Marow shrieked and fell.
Conor shouted, “Now. Go.”
Ellery scrambled toward the window, as two more Keun Marow pressed the attack. One lunged for Ellery. Conor stepped between them, cutting down and through, feeling the satisfying crunch of muscle and bone under his blade.
The second attacker leapt for his throat. To keep the beast’s claws from impaling him, Conor twisted away, but fell over a table. The hound struck him in the shoulder, the glancing blow sending a sudden pain knifing through Conor’s body. Dark mage energy tore through him, the cold excruciating, the numbing pain dulling his sword arm.
Conor staggered for the window, but stumbled to a halt, seeing Ellery still perched on the ledge, watching the battle with wide frightened eyes. “Jump!” he ordered.
“I can’t leave you.”
