Page 552 of Shadowblood Souls
Rollick shakes his head. “She hasn’t reported any progress so far.”
Dominic frowns. “We could reach out to them telling them directly that we believe he’s allied with the shadowkind and is looking to take them out. But I don’t know how we’d convince them to believe us. We can’t tell them who we actually are.”
“I can.” Toni strides up to us from farther down the hall, where she must have been watching the confrontation. “They knew me at least a little. They know how closely I worked with Balthazar, and they should have no reason to believeI’veswitched my loyalties. A warning that he’s gone off the rails and is going against everything he used to stand for would make sense coming from me.”
My heart leaps, but I hesitate at the same time. “Are you sure? He can’t know yet just how far you’ve turned against him. If you speak to them, he could find out…”
Toni gazes back at me steadily. “I said I’d try to make up for all the damage he’s done while I stood by, and I meant it. The risk is nothing compared to what the rest of you have been through—it’s nothing compared to what Pearl is facing right now.”
I hadn’t realized Pearl had filled Toni in on her mission. Apparently they’ve gotten even friendlier than I guessed from the snippet of a conversation I overheard.
“That sounds like a good plan to me,” Zian puts in. “You’d know how to talk to people like them better than we would anyway.”
The corner of her mouth curls upward. “I certainly hope I do. But we need to be coordinated. What exactly should I be nudging them toward doing?”
Rollick rubs his jaw thoughtfully. “Once they believe Balthazar is a threat to them and needs to be stopped… We decided that our best opportunity would be if they can manage to draw him away from his own territory, at least briefly. Somewhere he’ll have the benefit of fewer protections and preparation.”
Andreas nods. “Since it’s the guardians, I’m sure they’ll still make sure there are wards against the shadowkind, but it’ll give us shadowbloods a better chance at getting to him.”
“The tricky part was that Balthazar won’t want to go anywhere that’s outside his plans,” I say, knitting my brow. “But with all the information the Guardianship must have on him… We’re hoping they could convince him that he needs to speak to them face to face, or they’ll expose something to the governments he’s trying to manipulate that would undermine his true intentions. A little blackmail.”
Jacob lets out a rough guffaw. “Knowing that psycho, he’d probably show up just so he could wipe them all out and never have to worry about it again.”
A small smile crosses my lips. “That’s fine. It doesn’t even matter if he succeeds. Two birds with one stone. All we need is to get him someplace where he doesn’t control everything around us.”
Toni absorbs all that and squares her shoulders. “I’ll do whatever I can to direct them toward that outcome.” She turns to Rollick. “I assume you have some method for me tocommunicate with the current leaders of the guardians. We might as well get it over with.”
“Might as well,” he agrees with a chuckle. “Come on—I’ll get you set up.”
He lifts his gaze to the rest of us. “And you all should start preparing for the most crucial battle of your lives.”
Fifteen
Dominic
I’m just adjusting my tentacles around the collar of a fresh long-sleeved tee when a knock rattles against my door. I open it expecting to see one of my friends, not paying enough attention to my sense of our talents to realize that’s unlikely.
Instead, I find myself looking at the wild-haired, viciously clawed shadowkind man who’s one of Rollick’s closer companions. I dredge his name up from my memory: Lance.
“The boss thinks you should do some practice before the big day,” the unnerving guy announces with a wide grin.
I hesitate, my fingers curling around the doorknob. “Practice what?”
Lance twitches his claws toward my tentacles. “You suck the life out of things, right? Getting better at it? We want to see how good.”
A trickle of nausea winds through my gut. I guess I should have expected this development. Rollick insisted on Riva testing her killing power, after all.
I just do my best to forget I even have a killing power when there’s no desperate need for it. I’d rather think of myself as only a healer.
We’re not likely to have a more desperate need than taking down Balthazar ASAP, though.
I peel my hand off the doorknob and ease out of the room. “All right. Where’s Rollick?”
Lance beckons me to follow him. “He thought outside would be good for this. Lots of plants for you to work with.”
Plants? Okay, I can deal with that. I don’t love destroying them either—something inside me always shrivels a little watching the leaves curl and the stems crumple—but it’s a much lesser guilt. No big deal.
The clawed shadowkind leads me out the front door and across the grounds to a stretch of trees. In a clearing up ahead, the sunlight shines off Rollick’s tawny hair.
