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But I’d seen the smears on the bioluminescent fungi Sloane had left, while stumbling out on her own. That fungi grew exceptionally slowly, and there was no way that Shiranak’s orcs could’ve managed to be in a firefight or rockfall without smudging it even once.
It was far too perfect in the footage to be believed—which meant that a large part, or even all of it, was faked.
And since it was Shiranak’s “team” who’d provided that footage to Arcus and the MSA...
“Was he not paying you enough?” I asked.
“There’s money, and then there’smoney, Nine,” he said, then settled himself, preparing to tackle me. “Does Daddy’s little princess know?” Shiranak asked, taunting me as we circled one another.
“Does it matter?” I asked him. If I said Sloane did, he’d kill her—if I said she didn’t, he’d only kidnap her again.
“Good answ—” he began, and I lunged, thundering forward.
I wanted to kill him.
With every piece of my soul.
And after what he’d done to Sloane and her friends—I knew he deserved to die.
But I needed him alive to confess.
So rather than meeting him head on, I left my net behind, sidestepped him, and tried to take him out with my side.
A thump from my abdomen would’ve sent a man, or smaller orc, sailing over the tower’s side, but all it did was catch him and make him groan—and then punch back, his closed fist crunching against my shell.
The violence of it reverberated through me, and I rolled with it enough to stop it from breaking me, sagging into the legs on my far side, while striking out to knock him back with my two closest limbs—but for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt true fear.
Not that I was going to die—but that I might be separated in any way shape or form from my mate.
That could not be allowed to stand.
Shiranak stumbled back, regained his footing and laughed. “All right, then. I’ve never fought an Arachnaea before. Let’s do this thing.”
Forty-Four
SLOANE
“Who the fuckgave you this number?” came an irritated male voice on the far end of the line.
“It’s Sloane!” I shouted, knowing that Westly would know exactly who I was.
“Sloane? Sloane! Babe!”
“Fucking FaceTime me at this number—now!” I demanded, and then hung up. Half a second later I got an incoming call.
“Did you escape from your mental institution?” he said, the instant his face flashed on the screen, and I wanted to punch it. I only had Westly’s direct line so I could sometimes pay him off, to keep the worst stories about me off of his site, or at least not on the front page. “Wait—where the fuck are you?”
“Dangling from Arcus Tower, because my spider boyfriend is fighting an orc for his life on the helipad.”
His jaw dropped, but then he recovered, impossibly quickly.
“Would you be willing to go on the record with that?”
“I’ll do you one better—I’ll say it fucking live, as long as you get a helicopter up in the sky and head over here!”
“One second,” he said to me, and then I saw him shouting to other people off screen. When he returned his attention he hit a button. A red button on my side flashed as he set his phone down.
I hit my button, and a robotic voice that sounded a lot like Nia’n’an’s translation device said, “Recording in progress.”
