Page 410 of Primal Bonds

Hurt twisted through her, followed by fury. She whirled away before he could see either.

“Get dressed. And Luc? You will eat, if I have to force-feed you myself.”

His voice was expressionless. “Yes, my lady.”

Chapter 37

Dion and Rui set up a temporary ops center along with Marjani and the Baltimore fada at the motel where Adric had taken a room.

Neither Langdon nor his guards had been seen since that first afternoon, but that didn’t mean their little group wasn’t being watched. Every single one of them had felt ice creep up their spine, sensed eyes and ears on them. To keep the night fae at bay, Cleia conjured up fae lights for each of their rooms. They left them on low all night, shedding light on the treacherous shadows.

Marjani and Jace spent the nights as their cats, and they all took turns at watch, aware that if the night fae attacked, it would be in the hours between midnight and dawn. But Langdon refrained from attacking, clearly believing he had the upper hand as long as he remained behind his wards.

He was right. As things stood, they couldn’t touch the man—or get to Rosana and Adric.

They all took a shot at breaking into the night fae compound. Cleia brought in her cousin Olivia to help shatter the wards. The two worked long hours, but each time they thought they’d done it, they hit a new barrier. At least Olivia had neutralized the look-away spell so they weren’t constantly fighting it.

But he worried about them both. It was winter, when the sun fae were weakest. Cleia and her cousin should be home, curled up under a shaft of sunlight, not pushing themselves to the limit in this dank, cold forest.

Meanwhile, the fada tried to sneak into New Moon as their animals. Rui and Tiago changed to fish to try to enter the court through a stream, but the night fae had strengthened their wards to keep out anything larger than a minnow. And while fada could adjust their body size to a certain extent, they simply couldn’t compress a man-size amount of matter into that tiny of a body.

Jace Jones didn’t even get that far. He spent hours as his black panther, sniffing around the court’s perimeter. But the wards repelled him with increasingly violent results. When he’d returned from his last foray with his fur singed, Marjani had drawn him aside and, after a heated argument, extracted his promise not to try again.

As for Marjani herself, she grew edgier with each day that passed. Dion kept a wary eye on her, afraid she’d slip off to exchange herself for Adric. It was what he’d do if he were her.

But where would that leave Rosana?

Sunday arrived with heavy clouds and snow flurries. They’d been in Virginia four days already. Five days until Friday and the new moon.

Dion spent the day prowling the forest around New Moon along with Tiago and Rui, daring the night fae to confront them. But the court remained maddeningly silent, concealed behind an opaque white fog.

Late that afternoon, he returned to the motel to find Marjani alone in the parking lot, gazing at the trees where they’d found her brother’s keycard.

He left Tiago and Rui to approach her. “Walk with me?”

She nodded and fell into step with him. “Something wrong, my lord?”

“Please. Call me Dion.”

She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her cargo pants. “Dion, then. What’s up?”

The sun was low in the sky, but it was still daylight. Still, he waited until they reached the center of the lot, far from any shadows where the night fae could lurk.

“I’m asking you to be patient. Give us a little more time to work this out.”

She bristled. “What do you mean?”

In the few days they’d been in Virginia, he’d learned Marjani was a Gifted strategist. Even afraid as she must be for her brother, she coolly examined a problem from all sides. Now he chose his words with care, knowing his only hope was to appeal to the strategist.

Because the sister knew that if she didn’t do something soon, her brother would be executed.

“As it stands, we’re even, more or less; the prince has Adric and Rosana, but we have you and Merry. So I’m asking you not to do anything on your own. We will bring them both home. That’s a promise.”

The cougar fada’s gaze slid sideways. So he’d guessed right—she was planning to barter herself to save Adric.

“If they capture you,” he added, “Merry will be our only bargaining chip, and I swore never to turn her over to the night fae.”

“So you’ll have nothing the prince wants bad enough to trade for Rosana.” Marjani stared up at the darkening sky. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but each night, the shadows took another bite out of it. “Even if he takes me in exchange for Adric, he’ll still have her. Gods, you don’t ask much, do you?”

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