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Lilith made no move to grab any pizza for herself, but when Fey took a paper plate and loaded it with everything that looked good, she shuffled herself just back enough on the couch so Fey could lean against her shoulder while she ate.
This was the closest Lilith would ever get to apologizing, Fey knew. And it was enough. Fey smiled, leaning back into the couch and resting her head against Lilith’s shoulder as she chewed a slice of pizza.
Apology accepted.
They spent the next hour eating pizza, flipping through the channels for mindless TV, and chatting. At some point Fey drifted off to sleep, still exhausted from the trauma her body had gone through, still healing.
Chapter 32
Fey awoke to the scream of an alarm.
Ordinarily, the sound of the perimeter alarm being triggered would have had her awake and armed within seconds. But her weakened state made her slow, and coming out of her deep sleep felt like fighting through mud.
Fey groaned, rolling to her side to speed her rise to consciousness. She was still partially wrapped in the blanket, and someone had placed a pillow under her head while she slept. The alarm screeched incessantly before abruptly going silent.
It was one of Joy’s additions, the alarm. She’d installed them in every one of their safe houses, even before Alice’s murder. But the alarm was never triggered on the night of Alice’s death. Just another mystery about that night that had never made sense.
In the sudden quiet the alarm’s absence left, Fey heard the apartment door open and slam.
“Joy?” Fey called out. “Willow?”
Nothing. Somewhere in the building a crash sounded, and the spike in adrenaline burned the last modicum of sleep from Fey’s body. She cursed, flinging the blanket off herself and getting to her feet.
Her uniform was nowhere to be found, but someone had left her blades next to the bed, and Fey retreated to her bedroom to grab them, comforted by the weight of her familiar weapons. She didn’t bother to put on pants, didn’t bother putting anything on over her loose T-shirt and panties. Nothing here would deflect much of a weapon, anyway, and getting dressed meant losing even more time.
The apartment was empty. In the time it had taken her to wake up enough to even realize the alarm was sounding, her sisters had managed to arm themselves and leave to assess the threat. They hadn’t bothered waking her, probably believing in her state that she was more likely to be a liability than a resource.
Fuck that.
After eating an entire pizza on her own and making a substantial dent in another, Fey was already feeling stronger. If they were in danger, she sure as fuck wasn’t staying here snuggled in a blanket cocoon. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Fey leaned against the apartment door to listen and quietly eased the door open.
The hallway was empty.
This particular apartment complex of theirs had three floors, and each floor housed four fully furnished units. The entire building was empty, though, save for them, and all their safe houses around the city—around the realm, really—were the same. The Crown owned and maintained these buildings to give the Queen’s Blades and royal family a place to lay low when necessary.
An alarm meant someone had entered the building by force. Only a handful of people knew the locations and door codes to their safe houses—Dameon, of course, and the Queen and the treasurer responsible for all the building payments and upkeep. Their safe houses were a closely guarded secret. That remained one of the biggest mysteries surrounding Alice’s death. She’d been at a safe house, should have been safe and protected. But someone had found her there, someone had known the location and set up the explosives that took her out without triggering any of their alarms.
Somewhere in the building, Fey could make out the faint sounds of fighting, followed by a very audible crash as something made of glass shattered. Sprinting to the stairwell, Fey leaped over the handrailing, calling on Air to slow her fall just before she landed on the first floor. The sound of fighting was clearer now, and Fey readied herself for violence as she flung the door open to the lobby.
Nothing, however, prepared her for what she saw there.
Willow and Lilith were in their fighting leathers, masked but with no cowls covering their hair. They, at least, must have reacted to the alarm immediately and had taken the time to outfit themselves for a fight.
The furniture around the lobby lay splintered and broken against the perimeter of the room, and it looked like a tornado had hit the interior of the building. Even the floor tiles were damaged, and scorch marks marred the ceiling. The floor-to-ceiling windows and glass front door had all been shattered, and though they remained in place, not a single piece of glass wasn’t covered in spiderweb fractures.
But it was the intruder who stopped Fey in her tracks, the intruder who almost made her knees buckle in shock.
“Alastair?” Fey whispered, stunned.
The Vampire had Lilith pinned to the wall with one massive hand crushing her throat, her feet dangling helplessly above the floor. Willow was clasped to his back, her legs wrapped around his midsection. One of her hands gripped his hair, pulling his head backward, and the other held her blade to his throat.
“Let my sister go!” Willow screamed. Lilith’s legs kicked ineffectually at the wall behind her, her eyes vaguely unfocused and panicked. She was suffocating, Fey realized.
“Tell me where she is!” Alastair roared, his persuasion rolling through the air in a wave of pure power.
“No one knows who the fuck you’re talking about, you absolute psycho!” Willow shouted back at him. “Let her go!”
Rage twisted in Fey’s chest, power swirling through her and rising.
