Page 497 of Shadowblood Souls
Andreas motions to catch my attention. He meets my gaze and sends a memory flitting through my head.
The underground parking garage—the guardians attacking, the shadowkind tearing through them after my plea for help.
It isn’t a happy memory. That was the first time we saw the full violence the shadowkind are capable of, and one of the younger shadowbloods got caught up in it.
We don’t have to worry about that part this time, though. There’s no one left here that we’d want to protect except ourselves.
I cup the stone between my hands and tap it with my thumb. Then I start talking as if I’m simply having a conversation with the guys.
“You remember that time we got ambushed in the parking garage? I was just thinking it was a good thing the light fixture fell when it did, so we knew to get out of the way before the attack really got started.”
Zian’s lips twitch with a hesitant smile as he plays along. “The guardians might have hurt us pretty bad if we hadn’t had the chance to get to shelter, for sure.”
“I was all worried about who else might get hurt,” I go on, aiming for a casual tone. “But I guess sometimes you’ve got to fight fire with fire. Now I’d say, ‘Just take them all out, whatever you have to do. We’ll look after ourselves.’”
Griffin leans closer to me so his voice can reach the stone too. “Priorities shift, huh? Like the shadowkind man Balthazar has working for him—hard to figure that. And who’d have thought Balthazar would build this place with a secret route for the ‘monsters’ to get up here.”
“He’s an interesting guy,” Andreas says dryly.
I scan the others to confirm no one else has anything they feel we need to pass on to Rollick. Then I tap the stone again, hoping whatever magic it contains was able to catch everything we said.
We all get up. Dominic brushes Zian’s arm and points to the paper he left on a patio stone.
As Zian crouches down to burn it into cinders with his searing sight, I amble over to the wall. There’s a section nearby where the cliff is totally sheer beneath it.
I lean my arms onto the top of the wall as if I’m admiring the view and roll the stone between fingers, concealing it from the house with my body. After a moment, I fling it down the mountainside with a swift flick of my hand.
Now all we have to do is wait for Rollick’s warning… and hope we’re ready for what’s to come.
We meander through the gardens for a while before heading back to the house, to fully sell the story that we simply wanted to stretch our legs in the fresh air. As we come up on the side door, it opens for us.
Toni stops on the threshold, and we jar to a halt too. For a long moment, we simply eye each other.
I expect her to summon us to another conversation with Balthazar. Oh, God, what if he insists on sending us off on another job and Rollick strikes while we’re away?
No, that might actually be even better. Whoever’s away from the villa will be safe. And he isn’t likely to send Dominic if it’s only some of us—he saw Dom as so unnecessary to his plans that he left him unconscious for ages.
Whoever’s still here will be protected.
As all that runs through my head, I brace myself. I’m not prepared for Toni to swipe her hand across her mouth in an uncharacteristically anxious gesture and hold up her phone in front of her chest for us to see the screen.
The typed words show starkly against the white background of the Notes app.I’m sorry. He isn’t the one I should have been helping. She wouldn’t have wanted this.
My gaze jerks to Toni’s face. She offers me a pained smile that matches her apology, the whiff of pheromones she gives off tasting of fear… and sadness.
My stomach knots as I think of the instructions I just sent to Rollick. I can’t tell her about our plan—even if I trusted her enough to want to.
I just told our shadowkind allies to kill her along with everyone else.
But if she means it, if she does help us, we could protect her too. There is one thing she might be able to do that we couldn’t figure out for sure.
I lift my arms and touch one of my manacles. Toni’s mouth twists tighter, but she swivels her phone to tap on it before showing us her answer.
I’ll see what I can do.
Thirty-One
Dominic
