Page 23 of Hunted By Darkness

Lev rolled his eyes and folded his arms against his chest, not at all impressed. “Can’t help himself, the bastard.”

He hated his cousin more than most because of everything Zephyr had done to me over the years. Of course, he’d made his cousin’s life hell in the cleverest of ways, but in moments of candid hatred, Lev revealed how it was never enough. And maybe it was why he put Zephyr’s name on the top of the list. Maybe that was why that name was the one circled several times.

The Dark Fae around us cheered Zephyr’s words. I eyed the corridor to our right. It’d be risky to leave with so many peoplewatching, but if we didn’t, we’d risk not getting the book at all. Lev and I shared a look, thinking quick on our feet.

A distraction might be enough, but what? We didn’t have anything that would cause a big enough stir to slip away from this many Fae. I could move quickly, but Lev wasn’t as fast as I was. He couldn’t match my speed. Without him, I wouldn’t find the book. As I stood in a crowd of the people who’d spent their days making me their enemy, Zephyr went on.

“Meet the Council you’ve selected as your new leaders to march the Dark Fae Society into its new age,” he announced, several Dark Fae joining him on the platform. Orion, Agnus, Willow, Dela, and Locke. Of course. Every single name on Silas’s list was now neatly lined up at the front of every Dark Fae in this society.

“Guess I should’ve called that one,” Lev murmured in frustration. “But no one’s stupid enough to go after a whole new Council in front of every Fae in this place.”

My lips twitched. “Have you met Silas?”

“You’re right. He’s absolutely that stupid.” Lev tossed me a saucy wink and then sighed. “What now? We can’t get away with this many watching. What’s the play here, Niks?”

Sensation washed over me, and a glimmer of blue caught my eye. Behind Zephyr and the other five loomed a familiar figure. Silver eyes beamed from the shadows. His mask caught the light raining down on the platform before a murmur rose from the crowd. I heard several whisper to each other in confusion.

“Who’s that?”

“An additional leader?”

“Why’s he just standing there?”

“He doesn’t look like anyone I know.”

Lev finally caught sight of the same thing I had. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…”

I grabbed his hand and took several steps back, trying to get us out of the crowd. I’d just barely made it to the edge when blue spikes of magic entered the confused congregation, striking several recognizable Fae. Every one of them was a name on the list written in silver. They collapsed into the others standing around them.

Zephyr barely pivoted before he was grabbed around the throat and lifted into the air. Silas withdrew his sword so fast my eyes barely saw the movement. Cerulean magic whipped out and bound Zephyr, keeping him Silas’s prisoner.

Twisting, Silas moved like the wind, the metal sword he held a flash of light in the night. Only a second later, the line of newly appointed leaders lost their heads, blood splattering the Fae nearest the front.

No one had time to react. No one had the opportunity to conjure their magic. No one was fast enough for the beast assassinating their newly elected leaders.

The demon was back in front of Zephyr, his sword already impaling the Dark Fae. “You and I have business, yeah?”

Zephyr struggled, but every movement sent the blade deeper. He cried out and stopped moving. “Who the fuck are you?! What do you want, assassin?”

Silas clicked his tongue. His striking gaze found mine across the terrified crowd.

No one dared to move with their leader hostage to an enemy they didn’t know. Even the guards were too afraid to do anything. The Dark Fae never expected someone like him to show up, and their inexperience showed in all the inaction. It was no wonder Yuma hired the Brotherhood to come after me. The Dark Fae Society was nothing but a name.

“Let’s just say I’m the assassin revenge hires,” Silas mused behind his mask. “Think I quite like that. Poetic, it is.”

I used the distraction to push Lev toward the hallway we needed to take, all while keeping my eyes on Silas at the front. He had me in his periphery as he twisted the blade and made Zephyr cry out again.

“Revenge for whom?! I’ll give you whatever you want, just leave now and I’ll forget this ever happened,” Lev’s cousin bargained helplessly. His magic had been disabled by whatever Silas had done, and all he had left was to beseech his executioner.

I didn’t think I’d ever see him be more pathetic than the day I flattened him out, but here we were.

Chuckling, Silas moved the sword again, taking great pleasure in the agony that left Zephyr’s mouth. “For whom? My goddess, of course. If it were up to me, I’d torture you until you begged for death. But tragically, I have places to be, people to kill, so disemboweling you in front of your doting subjects will just have to do, yeah?”

A guard near me tried to summon his magic for an attack, but Silas, without so much as looking the guard’s direction, sent out several daggers. One sunk between his eyes, one in his neck, and the other into his heart. Any one of them could’ve been the dagger that killed him, but it was a message sent out to the rest—Silas would make sure they didn’t escape death.

The guard collapsed dead on the floor, and the room froze with fear. No one else moved as Zephyr tried to plead with the frightened mass to come to his defense. But if it was one thing these Fae exceled in, it was cowardice.

“We need to go,” I whispered to Lev, trying to get my friend to move, but he just stood there, watching his cousin bleed out on the stage he promised to coat in my blood.

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