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Oh, gods. Mom. Abbey. Rowe.
I didn’t want them involved. Sure, my plan to run away may have been half-cocked, but it hadn’t involved them. It hadn’t involved anyone except Adora, who’d insisted on coming with. “What do you think Mathis will do?”
“To them?” she asked. I nodded. “Depends. I can’t imagine life can get much worse for Rowe. She’s human and beneath his notice, for the most part. I’d be more worried about our moms. If Mathis thinks we’re dead, he probably won’t do anything. When he realizes we’re not, though . . .” The look she gave me was grim.
“Elias can find them. He can put together a team to extract them from Fire and Fluorite?—”
“That’s all well and good, but we need to find out how Mathis knew I was going to meet you,” Adora said. “If he could figure that out, he can be ready for any team Elias might send.”
Ah, crap. She was right.
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, mulling over that fact. “Okay, let’s work through this. If you didn’t slip up, but he was waiting for you, someone would have had to have tipped him off before I left. From the time we got on the phone to me getting in the truck, it would have only been ten minutes.”
Adora nodded, pacing the length of the room, lips pursed in thought. “I was out the door in the same amount of time. Even if someone here saw you leave and told him, he shouldn’t have been able to intercept me.”
True. “Could someone have foreseen this?” I asked. “Elias said a witch foresaw he’d find his mate as a vampire in Blood and Beryl. Maybe one foresaw me leaving?”
Adora squinted, clearly not convinced. “You’re ignoring the fact that very, very few witches have the power of foresight—and the ones who do are unreliable. Look at Elias’s. You were a shifter. In another House.”
“And now I’m a vampire in Blood and Beryl,” I pointed out. “It’s not impossible.”
“Foresight doesn’t come with a time stamp. I don’t care who the witch is or how powerful. It could be the crone herself—they can’t predict the exact minute something like that will happen.” She looked out the window, shaking her head. “Someone had to have known.”
I rubbed my fists into my eyes while I thought. “I don’t see how. I hadn’t even decided to leave until I went to find Elias and ran into—” I stopped dead in my tracks. My lips parted.
Adora tilted her head and lifted an eyebrow, prompting me to continue.
“I know how he found out.”
CHAPTER 32
Elias
“Elias, it’s her word against the Alpha Supreme’s. Vesperus and Asbesta would undoubtedly vote in our favor, but do we have enough proof to sway the other Houses?”
Ysa and I had gone back and forth for hours. Notecards and papers were strewn about the room, and we were both at our wits’ end. I wanted nothing more than to call an emergency meeting of the Council. Call out Mathis and what he had done. Demand he pay for his crimes with blood. But we were lacking the one thing we needed. Iron-clad, irrefutable evidence.
“And nothing has come back from The Salty Siren?” I asked. Ysa shook her head. We’d sent teams to scour the alleys, looking for any kind of clue. Searching for any witnesses who may have been there that evening. Any cameras. The best we had was that two people had given a description of Danni walking the streets that night, and one person had seen a man with a giant silver wolf. No one had seen her sister, no one had seen Mathis, and no one had seen Andreas. “So all we have is Adora: A witness, as well as a victim.”
Ysabeau sighed, tilting her head back and slumping in the chair. “And I can poke holes in that story left and right.” Waving her hand aimlessly, she changed her voice as she continued. “Why would anyone believe the word of a woman who ran away from her House? Or believe the words of a woman who got kicked out of her House? Did either of them truly see their attackers? Adora could be lying in retaliation for when Mathis slapped her in public at the commemoration. Adora is just lying for her sister; of course they would be on the same side, telling the same lies.”
I hit my desk with a closed fist. “He attacked my mate, Ysa. My queen. He can’t get away with this.”
She shook her head. “She isn’t queen yet, and you know that’ll get thrown in our faces. Even if she is made queen today, she wasn’t the queen when it happened. Someone attacked her. That much is known, and no one can refute it. We have the witnesses to prove her injuries. But Mathis will claim to have never touched your mate, and he will have alibis. They’ll all be fake, but he’ll cover his tracks and you know this. Jordan is dead, Vesperus’s mole is dead. We went after two spies Jordan named, and they were already dead. We have three spies we captured that are still alive, and they gave up information, but Mathis was never directly named. They always answer to someone else, and as we follow those tracks, it either leads to dead ends or that person ends up dead too. As it stands, our case is minimal at best.”
“I know.” I groaned, dropping my head to my desk and banging it lightly. “And we’re left with the word of Dannika and Adora, two shifters originally from Fire and Fluorite, speaking out against the Alpha Supreme,” I muttered, my words muffled as I was angled downward.
“If you were on the panel, would it be enough for you to vote against a House?” she asked, peering over her sunglasses.
The reality of my answer was disheartening. “No.” It was an admission I loathed as I tasted it on my tongue.
“So, what would it take to sway you?” It was a good follow-up, but it required the one thing we didn’t have.
“Proof.”
“We’re going in circles.” Ysa pressed her lips together, reaching beneath her shades to rub her eyes. “And we still have to figure out what the hell that nonsense was with Katie as well.”
“I haven’t addressed it with her yet. I’m afraid I’m going to rip her head from her body.” My limbs shook as I tried to contain the rage I felt at her name.
