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“I’m going to have to restyle it completely!” I groaned.
Arven, still fighting two elven men at once, had enough time to throw me an unamused look. It made me laugh. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with me. The events of the past few days had my sanity coming apart at the seams.
I was just grateful that I was no longer trapped in that nightmare back at the Eveningwind court. Here, I had power and speed. When I opened my hand, I could materialize my crossbow and aim it at the kelpie glaring at me with its phantom green eyes.
My first shot sliced through its seaweed mane and accomplished nothing. The hole in the seaweed started to turn black, but it sloughed off the creature before the poison could spread.
“Damn plant,” I muttered as I notched another bolt.
Arven hissed and arched his back. His red eyes lit the ceiling. I spared a glance over to see that one of the elven men had stabbed him in the side with a dagger. There was a chance that it’d hit a vital organ—most likely a kidney. If we stuck around much longer, I was going to get stuck to a kelpie and Arven would bleed out from a critical hit.
We needed to escape.
I dropped and twisted, my crossbow aimed at the elven man who’d stabbed Arven. This time, my shot didn’t miss. It hit the man in the throat. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as my poison quickly spread through his body. That gave Arven the space he needed to backhand the other elven man across the room.
Meanwhile, the kelpie released another haunting roar and thundered towards me. Hooves and claws made the room shake uncontrollably. The thing bore down on me before I could launch myself out of the way.
Arven dove towards me. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me from the floor. I knew where this was going. The crossbow vanished from my grasp, back to the pocket realm I hid it in. I had just enough time to snatch my stuffed cat from the pile of blankets on the floor before we crashed through the single window.
We hit the fire escape and rolled over the edge.
Arven
That studio apartmenthad been too cramped for a proper fight. My side burned, a fire spreading through my torso, starting from the stab wound. As a beast, I could feed arcana into the wound and heal it the same way a shifter might, but that took energy and effort. I had neither while we tumbled towards the ground far below.
I had barely a moment to decide where we would go as we fell. The moment between falling and landing was a powerful tool to harness when travelling in-between, but my first instinct was to go home, back to the castle in the elven realms.
Without a doubt, I knew that Delphine would have my heart on a platter if I brought her anywhere near that. So, I brought her to the only other place I could recall.
We landed in the sand of the beach from earlier. The ground wasn’t quite soft enough to cushion our impact, so I twisted to make sure that Delphine landed on top of me instead of the other way around.
She pulled back and stared down at me with her star-studded eyes. The sight of her would have made any other man go wild with lust. I had to admit that a bit of desire stirred within me from the way she straddled my body, her hands on my chest. Then those eyes pinched with rage before she flung herself away from me.
I wanted to ask her where she thought she was going, but then I noticed the stuffed cat toy still dangling from her grasp. It flopped at her side like a faithful pet. The sight gave me pause. It made her seem small and vulnerable. I almost wished that I’d brought her back to the castle.
Then again, I’d watched that woman face off against a stampeding kelpie without flinching. She’d, as the mortals might say,played chickenwith that beast and won. Watching her stare it down while it rushed towards her had changed my view of her all over again.
I didn’t think she was fearless. I’d heard her whimpering in her dreams, fear spilling out of her from all directions. The boldness that she captured in the midst of a fight was something else. It was the adrenaline of life that made her weightless.
I picked myself up out of the sand and brushed off my pants. At least, we weren’t in that awful studio apartment anymore. It’d been too cramped for my beast. In there, my senses had been overwhelmed by Delphine. All I’d wanted was to curl up on that awful mattress alongside her so that I could feel her warmth and savor her scent.
Damn woman was intoxicating in ways I never expected.
Truth be told, as I walked along behind her, I thought of all the ways she’d defied my expectations. It was really the defining trait that lured me in towards her. I wanted to uncover the mystery that she’d become. When I went in search of Delphine, I’d been so confident in what I would find. I’d assumed so much only to have it all blown out of the water.
I’d yet to decide if it was in the best way or the worst way.
It always seemed to lean in the worst, especially when she stopped in her tracks, spun around, and folded her arms over her chest.
6
DELPHINE
“Why are they hunting you? Are you not versed in covering your tracks? That’s beginner shit, and you know it.” I wanted to jab my finger into his chest, but I wasn’t going to put myself in range of his grasp right about now.
Arven stopped and reeled back. His lips parted in outrage.
It had to be his fault. Either they tracked his location, or he’d been so annoying that I’d forgotten to cover my tracks. The man had been standing in full view of Locke’s warehouse earlier. They could have seen him then.
