She’d seen him many times at Chester’s. When she’d been younger, he and several of Ryodan’s men had managed to hem her in, despite her freeze-framing abilities, while Ryodan interrogated Mac. His name suited him. Despite standing a good four to five inches taller than Ryodan, with a heavier build, he was easy to overlook; one moment etched in stark relief against the moss-covered wall enclosing the abbey grounds, the next gone until he reemerged from a smudge of shadow.
“Fade,” Barrons said, and moved quickly away with him. As the two men spoke softly, Jada pricked up her ears, but they were speaking a language she didn’t know. After several moments Fade issued a series of commands to the black-skinned beasts and they fell on the blob, snarling and slurping noisily.
It took her a few seconds to realize they were eating the bloody skin off the thing in an effort to free what was inside. What were these dark, lethal beasts of Mac’s that she’d found in the Silvers that could imbibe such dangerous magic? Why were they obeying Fade? What language did they heed? More importantly, how might she gain control of them? Last night, when Mac had alerted her to their presence in battle, she’d watched them carefully, assessing friend or foe. Like the Nine, the beasts Mac had brought could kill the Fae—with no apparent weapon. That made them every bit as valuable as the sword and spear.
Speaking of the spear…Jada shouted across the lawn to Enyo Luna, the tough young half-French, half-Lebanese woman she’d found wandering Dublin, leading a cocky band of hardened, militaristic sidhe-seers. When the walls had fallen, Enyo and her women undertook the long dangerous journey to Ireland, adding to their numbers along the way, seeking their birthright and a place to call home. The natural born warrior had fought her way into the world, inside a military tank—the only safe haven her mother had been able to find—in a town in Syria under heavy fire. Enyo had drawn her first breath in the midst of war and maintained that was where she would also draw her last. Draped in rounds of ammo, face bruised and blood-spattered, dark eyes gleaming, she loped like a graceful dark panther across the battlefield toward them. In war, she was one hundred percent focused and committed, the best of the best, but in everything else she was unpredictable. War kept Enyo’s restlessness and wildness under control, yet Jada was uncertain what she would be like in a time of peace. It took one adrenaline junkie to know another.
When Jada tossed her the spear, Barrons watched it fly end over end through the air, measured Jada a long moment and nodded.
“So it’s ours again,” Enyo said, catching and sheathing it in her waistband in a fluid movement. “Does that mean we’ve lost Mac?”
“No,” Barrons said, dangerously soft. “I’ve lost many things. Mac will never be one of them.”
“In a manner of speaking, for now,” Jada told Enyo. “Has there been any sign of Cruce? Do we know if the prison holds?”
“We’ve no cause to believe he’s escaped but haven’t looked. I’ll send Shauna below to check.”
“If you see any Fae alive…” Jada didn’t finish the sentence. Enyo was already moving away, dark gaze shifting across the battlefield, watching for movement, spear at the ready.
Jada moved closer to the blob, ceding the beasts a respectful distance, and stared down at the thing that was being released from its crimson shroud. Now that part of the fleshy cocoon had been torn away, she could make out the individual runes from which it had been knitted, and realized she had seen them before. Mac once used a few to prevent the Gray Woman from sifting that night nearly six years ago when she’d saved Dani from a gruesome death at the Gray Woman’s hands. The night Jada’s world had bottomed out and she’d been exposed as Alina’s killer.
“It’s Fae. Has to be a prince. Looks like something hacked off its wings. Brutally,” Fade said.
“Pure rage,” Barrons murmured.
“You think it was Mac?” Jada clenched her fists, forced them to unclench, worrying that the prince lying facedown on the ground was Christian MacKeltar. He didn’t deserve this. He’d had enough misery already; first being turned Unseelie then getting captured by the Crimson Hag and killed over and over again, and finally losing his uncle to the Hag’s cruel javelin. Once he’d spared her from having to make a hellish decision by sacrificing himself. It was a debt she didn’t feel she’d fully repaid.
“I’ve seen her use these runes before. They’re from the Sinsar Dubh. She’s eliminating the princes. If you hadn’t taken the spear, this one would be dead.”
Jada glanced quickly at Fade. “Where’s Christian? Have you seen him lately?”
He shook his head. “Not for the past hour or so.”
Barrons spoke to Fade again, in the same unintelligible language.
Jada said tightly, “If you don’t trust me enough to speak English around me, I don’t trust you enough to work with you. Are we a country or are we islands? I make one hell of an island. Your call.”
“I told him to turn the thing over.”
“And you couldn’t say that in English?”
“I just did.”
Fade issued another series of guttural commands. The beasts rolled the Unseelie over on his back and resumed tearing off the runes.
When the face was cleared, Jada released a soft sigh of relief. She’d last seen this prince in a prison of ice, below the abbey. It was Cruce, not Christian. Then she stiffened. “We’ve got to lock him up again!”