CARLYLE

“Carlyle!”

Sol’s shout finally broke through my stupor, and I blinked up to see him and Killian rushing toward me. Behind them, Jai hissed and lashed out at his enemy. Something wet plopped onto the ground, and I twisted away from the girl’s body to vomit.

Sol knelt beside me, rubbing my back as I heaved. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head, wiping my mouth on the back of my sleeve. My body’s injuries would heal. My heart’s? That was undecided. If Jack had led us here for this ambush, we were all about to be hurt.

A flash of Dair’s magic lit up the edge of the campground, and my stomach heaved again at the carnage. So many bodies. Each of my guys must have put down three or four of these rogue Haretians.

“Why?” I whispered, staring up at Sol. His eyes grew sad, and I thought he understood what I was really asking.

Why were our own people fighting each other?

Jai darted over to us, scanning me quickly. “There are others. Friendlies - locked in trailers beyond this outer ring.”

Killian and Sol exchanged a glance that made me shiver. Tonight I’d seen just how deadly they all could be. It didn’t change the way I felt about them, but seeing them now was like looking past a glamor. They weren’t all smiles and games and playful taunts.

They were men who had been in battle long before I was alive.

They were men who had just killed a dozen or more of their own kind.

I swallowed hard. How could I make this worse by telling them their own brother might be a traitor?

Jai snapped his eyes to me, and I knew I’d fucked up just by thinking it. He knew.

The blackness in his eyes spread from corner to corner again as he rifled through my memories of what the girl had said. I felt him inside my mind, and I opened myself to him, giving him access to all my fears and doubts.

“We will manage,” he whispered to me, offering me a hand up. Tears pricked behind my eyes, and I scrubbed my palms across my face angrily. I refused to break down now. We weren’t leaving here without a win tonight.

I wasn’t leaving here without Jack.

“Over here,” Dair called. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Killian bending to take the girl’s pulse. He shook his head at Sol, and my chest squeezed like the whole world was pressing down on me.

I’d killed a girl. My body felt frozen, and I watched Jai sprint toward Dair, Sol running behind with a worried backward glance at me. I couldn’t move to follow. I didn’t care what they’d found. I’d just killed a girl.

Rough hands gripped my shoulders and spun me around, so my back was to the campground and all the bodies. All the dead bodies. My teeth clacked together in my head, and I realized I was being shaken, but I felt so empty. So detached from everything that was happening, like maybe I wasn’t really here.

Maybe I was stuck in a dreamscape, like with Jack.

Oh, god. Jack.

A wail reached my ears, and it only stopped when something warm and fierce pressed against my lips. Strong arms gathered me close, a rough hand wrapping my neck and tilting my head back so all I saw was stars. Gradually, I realized a hot mouth was kissing my throat, my jaw, my lips, my cheeks.

“Wake up, little Savage,” a gruff voice whispered in my ear before my mouth was claimed again. The raw kiss deepened, and my body began to thaw and heat. Tingles of magic spread like wildfire across my skin, and I moaned into the kiss.

My eyes focused on Killian’s liquid gold eyes, boring into me as he kissed me with so much force I felt like my lips would bleed.

“Donna ever go away like tha’ again,” he said as he broke off the kiss.

“Go away?” I mumbled.

He held me at arm’s length. “I know you regret tonight. Donna let tha’ divide us. Donna go away,” he repeated.

I nodded slowly, thinking I understood. I’d deal with my guilt and grief and rage, but I wouldn’t have to do it alone. I wouldn’t need to shut my feelings away forever or pretend like I hadn’t done this horrible thing.

I let my head fall forward onto his chest, and he stiffened, back to the old Killian. He ruffled my hair, which had mostly come unbraided by now. I must look like a maniac.

I let Killian lead me toward the guys, who had gathered a small group of people before them. My heart sank. Children. Weak, starved-looking. Haunted.

I sensed their magic floating on the air between us, and when I looked harder at a few of them, I saw that hazy double vision of a glamor hiding a potential shifted form. Killian’s kiss had given me enough magic to understand these were all Haretians, and the night had given me enough knowledge to guess they were all prisoners of the Ringmaster.

Fury began to stoke in my chest.

Who the fuck was that man, that he could control all of these people?

Where was the Council in all of this? Why hadn’t they intervened to rescue their people?

Hate was kindling in my heart - what sort of a world was I working to save, anyway?

“Their world,” Jai said, turning to pin me in his fierce gaze. “Save their world, so they can be free.”

“Carlyle?” A young voice piped up from the gathering crowd. My eyes scanned the group rapidly, and a short boy stepped forward. He had very pale skin, delicate features, and odd eyes. His scalp glinted in the moonlight with a short stubble of white-blond hair, like it was just growing in after being shaved.

He could have been my brother.

“I’m Austin,” he said, and the shock rattled through my bones, toppling me into Killian. “It’s time to burn.”