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Fey had to find Alice.
The faint patter of tiny feet made Fey look up.
“Hey, Merle,” she greeted him, coughing. His favorite armchair was still on fire, a causality of Lilith’s anger, and Fey sent a silent thanks to the Goddess that Merle hadn’t been anywhere near it at the time. Calling her own power, pulling air from the flames until they died out, Fey brought the fires in the room to an end. “Sorry about your chair, buddy.”
She held her hand out toward him, and Merle pattered closer, pushing his soft head into her palm and nuzzling against her.
“It’s not safe here anymore,” she told him, not bothering to question why she was talking to a cat in the first place. He was family, after all. “Go find Joy, okay? You gotta get out of here, bud, just in case.”
Merle yawned, stretching and arching his back. Then with one final look at her, he loped away, disappearing in the direction of their quarters. Fey wasn’t too worried. He’d found them once, hadn’t he?
He’d find them again.
With one last glance at Lilith, her face forever frozen in a look of horror, Fey whispered a quick prayer to the Goddess, got to her feet, and left.
Chapter 58
ALICE
Alice scraped the tip of her blade along the wall as she walked through the palace halls. It left a satisfyingly deep mark in its wake, ruining the white stone.
“Edelin,” she called down the darkened hallway in a sing-song voice. “Edelin, where are you?”
The fire Fey had started had done its job. The army had flocked to Solare, fighting against an unstoppable inferno to try to salvage the building. Then, in horror, back to Lunairea moments later when Alice had started a fire of her own. Caught trying to quell two massive fires, every available soldier and guard had been called to help. Leaving the palace woefully under manned, if only for a few minutes.
Ripe for the picking.
She’d stayed at Lunairea long enough to keep the flames burning, her power eclipsing that of the other Fire Witches that had come to calm the blaze so much that their attempts to smother the fire barely made a difference.
Let them focus on the fires now, Alice thought. Let them salvage whatever of the buildings they could. It didn’t matter, not anymore.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Alice called down the long, empty hallway. Nothing answered but her echo.
The few guards who had remained behind were little match for her and the Shifters she had brought. That had been Rex’s doing. Sam—sweet gentle Sam—believed wholeheartedly in a bloodless coup. Sam believed they could win this revolution off the strength of their convictions alone.
Sam was an idealist. And, in this, he was wrong.
Alice was no stranger to violence and death, and she knew there was no such thing as a bloodless exchange of power. No. Winning meant wiping out your enemy completely. Winning required death.
If not theirs, then yours.
Rex understood this. But more importantly, the group of Shifters he had sent with her tonight also understood it.
None of the guards left in the palace were a match for her, and they certainly weren’t a match for the pack of Lionesses that now prowled the halls on silent, deadly paws. Alice had already found enough partially eaten guards in the hall to know just how effective these particular hunters were.
As she walked the halls, a Lioness stalked towards her, coming from the opposite direction. Four hundred pounds of muscle and death, moving with barely a sound.
“Throne room,” the Lioness growled as she passed, the words garbled and guttural coming from jaws not made for speech. Alice bowed her head to the Shifter in acknowledgment and thanks, and the cat stalked away, a sand-colored specter of death to any who crossed her path.
Alice should have figured the throne room was where Edelin would head to. It was the heart of the palace—a place the Queen’s guard would likely know to congregate in an emergency.
But it was a poor choice, all those entrances making it difficult to defend. Alice smiled as she walked, dragging her knife along the walls as she went.
This might be even easier than she’d hoped.
Chapter 59
Fey followed the trail of bodies.
