Page 6 of Royal Ransom

Though settling things was a hell of a lot easier said than done. How was I supposed to spring Fox without getting myself killed? He was nestled at the very heart of winter and more jealously guarded than a dragon’s horde. Charging in to rescue him was suicide. But what else could I do? Arrange to meet Janara like she’d asked? That was just inviting trouble. For Janara to rule, I had to die. I wasn’t going to make it that easy for her.

My phone rang, startling me in the silence. I reached for it without thought, swiping to answer. I raised the phone to my ear and replied tersely, “Chief Morgan speaking.”

There was a pause on the other end, then a man’s voice, speaking quietly as though afraid to wake a sleeper. I felt anything but lethargic when he said my name. Just one word.

“Tally.”

I sucked in a breath and found I couldn’t force it back out. I felt dizzy. He was alive! He was still alive!

“Maverick.”

Chapter Four

Maverick

I woke up in a hotel bathroom, naked, with my discarded clothes covered in blood.

The day had only gotten worse from there.

When I came to a stop outside the coven house, I must have looked too pathetic to yell at; Tally stayed silent as she climbed into the passenger seat of my car. I’d braced myself for a lecture. The profound silence that engulfed us both hurt a hell of a lot more than if she’d shouted obscenities at me. I deserved that. Morgana had forced a deadly curse past my wards—one that could have killed Tally and her entire family. I’d failed her. From her perspective, I’d also bolted right after sex. I expected shouting. My mother was good at that. So was Tally, when she got going. But she just sat still and said nothing.

“Talk to me, please,” I said.

My voice came out small and raspy from disuse. I wasn’t sure I’d spoken aloud in the past seven days. Or maybe the burn in my throat had a more sinister cause. I couldn’t remember what I’d done to put it there—or rather, what Knox had done. Though I’d been active, I hadn’t been the guiding consciousness in my body for a week. I’d only granted him access for two days. What had he done with the other five? Had I bargained them away, or had he stolen them? I didn’t know, and that scared the hell out of me.

The temperature in the car dropped noticeably in response. Frost fractals didn’t actually spread across the windshield, but it was close. Rime coated the tips of Tally’s fingers until she could resist the urge to plunge us into a deep freeze. The ice left little wet spots on her slacks when she regained control and let it drift through her fingers. She was angry with me—as she should be.

“What the hell do you want me to say, Mav?”

The soft, sad lilt of her voice almost broke me. I wanted her to seethe at me. The disappointment made my bones ache. I would do almost anything, be almost anything, to wipe the expression off her face.

“Something. Anything.”

“Fine.” She turned to look at me. “Where the fuck have you been for the last week?”

There was more heat in her question. I winced. Of course, she’d asked the one question I didn’t have an answer to.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

I turned in my seat, pinning her with a look. She dodged it nimbly, reaching for the coffee that Astrid had pushed on her before she left the house. I could have kissed my little sister for that consideration. Tally looked exhausted. Even her immortal faerie form showed the strain, with dark hollows forming under her eyes from the sleepless nights she’d spent wondering where I’d gone.

“I mean, I literally don’t know. I wasn’t exactly in the room, so to speak. I think I was possessed.”

Even admitting the words aloud made me want to shrink into my seat. Under duress, I’d made a Faustian bargain, but that didn’t change the fact. I felt sore, as though the inroad Knox had carved in me was more physical than magical. I wanted to etch wards into the back of my skull with a rusty drill bit to keep him out of me. I wasn’t sure what he’d done with my body for a week, and I never wanted to find out. It would give me more nightmares than I knew how to deal with. The ones already in my head didn’t need company.

Taliyah absorbed that for a beat, sipping her coffee. The silence dragged my sanity over a bed of nails. Finally, she said, “I thought that was impossible. Lydia says that witches aren’t possessible. At least, not like that. I know Wanda was influencedby Dev, but she was at least semi-conscious. You have natural immunity to some of what they can do through your magic.”

What demons could do, perhaps, but not what Knox was capable of. I had no memory of the time I’d been gone. I could only gather it had been bad from the context clues: blood embedded so deep under my nails that even picking until I bled couldn’t get it out, a stain in the back of my car, the exhaustion that came with a really intensive spell. I’d done something unforgivable. I just wasn’t sure what that something was.

“You knew about this Knox guy,” she said, her voice tight as she struggled to rein in the blizzard howling inside her head. “And you didn’t tell me. What kind of boneheaded delusion were you under that this was best kept under wraps?”

“Tally—”

“Don’t deny it!” she raged, twisting so hard that she strained the seatbelt. She hadn’t quite lunged at me, but it was close. Suddenly, she was nose-to-nose with me, close enough to mingle our breath. It was distracting as hell. “You asked Astrid about a vampire god not long before you went missing. You knew about him and you didn’t tell me!”

I’d expected her to be angry, but the direction of that anger was frankly baffling. “I don’t know jack, Tally. I didn’t know he existed until I almost blew my top at the station. I had some kind of fever dream and then we had...”

---