Page 46 of A Warrior's Fate

The guard didn’t have an immediate response. Neither did anyone else. But it was only moments before the glow left the burly man’s eyes, and he lifted his foot off Lukas’s neck.

Lukas choked down air in gasps, clawing for his throat.

Isla hesitated rather than run for him, a keen eye on Kai in her periphery.

The group retreated from Adrien, stepping further away from Lukas and lowering their heads. Then, they obeyed. Two of them hauled Lukas to his feet, his head limp and armor rattling before they trudged him up the field. Isla watched as they went, flinching every time they wrenched Lukas’s body the wrong way—on purpose, of course—making him whimper. She scowled but stayed in her place.

Later. She’d get to him later.

Spinning back to face the Wall, she scanned who remained, preparing to ask Adrien what the plan was. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that her friend had gone straight to Kai.

They were locked in discussion, and like he felt her staring, Kai looked over. Quick but enough to show he was aware.

She narrowed her eyes, remembering, feeling the ghostly caresses of whatever he’d done to her mind.

Now, the smart thing would’ve been to walk away. To leave him and the connection and whatever he’d just pulled forgotten within the darkness of this horrible, horrible night and never look back.

But she couldn’t.

Because there was a part of her, somewhere buried deep, deep down, that enjoyed the phantoms. That liked that he’d been there, pulling her back. That wished she’d heard him say something.

She growled under her breath and folded her arms, her fingers constricting and tugging at the fabric of her sleeves.

And here she thought he couldn’t aggravate her more.

CHAPTER 13

A small piece of Isla couldn’t help but thrum with pride as she stood, maintaining her distance, and observed Adrien and Kai while they carried on with their conference. Their voices were so quiet, she couldn’t pick up a single word, and she knew exactly why.

Her best friend and her mate, essentially strangers—one more privy to those titles they bore to her personally than the other—and yet they both had been burned enough by her eavesdropping in the past that they knew to keep things to the faintest of whispers in her presence. That, and to angle in a way that she couldn’t glimpse even their faces, take note of any expressions, leaving her view simply of Adrien’s back and the dark waves of Kai’s hair over the top of the Imperial Heir’s head.

Her lips jutted in a pout.

What the hell could they have been talking about?

Minutes had passed—minutes that ticked along like hours—and they remained, jabbering like the sunrise frequenters of the Imperial City’s Market Square. On and on like they had all the time in the world. It was all she could do to keep her foot from tapping impatiently. To seem relaxed and eased.

She knew if Kai peered over again and saw the action, her perturbation, he’d enjoy it all too much, and the last thing she wanted was to give him any type of satisfaction.

With a heaved sigh, she turned away, forcing herself not to care, not to question, not to speculate, even if it fought against every inkling of her nature. She needed to be done with him. She had to be done with him. So, she pushed down that piece of her that hoped they’d use her wandering eye as a false sense of safety to let their guards down, and instead, used the moments of limbo to scan the terrain, view the few spectators that had begun to fall away, pick some dust off her coat, check the ends of her hair, and then plot.

She couldn’t wallow in guilt anymore. She needed to act. Lukas would likely be kept away from everyone, possibly brought up to one of the upper floors of the infirmary that had been abandoned. She wasn’t sure if she could find a way to jog his memories, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try. All she had to do was get herself inside his room.

“I’ll let you know.”

For the first time, Kai’s voice sounded heavenly.

Snapping back to attention, Isla found, to her bliss, that the two men had broken away from each other. She’d picked up on the timbre of Kai’s voice, the assertion of it. It tipped her off enough that whatever they’d been speaking of was serious.

But she didn’t care. Nope. She wasn’t curious at all.

“Finally,” she’d muttered involuntarily, folding her arms.

Like they’d heard it, they both turned her way.

She stiffened, and as if she hadn’t already been caught, cocked her head, deciding to inspect the flecks glittering in the midnight ink above.

“The queen of subtlety,” she heard Adrien jeer as he encroached on her.

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