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“And how are we supposed to believe that?” Lilith asked.
Alastair shrugged. “Believe what you want. But I have no hate for the Crown or the Queen, and no one I’d sell this information to, even if I wanted to.”
“The Fallen King would pay dearly for it,” Joy said in a dangerously quiet voice, and Fey winced to think of what would happen if the Vampire Patriarch knew the names and identities of the Queen’s Blades. They wouldn’t be able to leave the palace, unmasked, for risk of being jumped.
Alastair laughed darkly. “Oh, I know he would. And he’s the last person I’d want to help, trust me. There isn’t enough money in the world he could give me to piss on him if he were on fire.”
“But that could change,” Joy challenged. “People change. Five years from now, you might not feel the same way and selling us out might sound very tempting.”
“And what will this information be worth in five years, when I’ll have no guarantee any of you are even alive?” Alastair asked. “I don’t know a lot about your Faction, but I know enough to imagine that the Queen’s Blades don’t live very long. In five years, you could all be dead, and knowing your names and what you look like wouldn’t be worth shit to anyone, not even him.”
Joy chewed her lip thoughtfully. Lilith snorted, something she only did when she was losing an argument.
“So…” Willow asked, hesitantly. “We’re not going to kill him?”
When they all turned to look at her, she snapped, “What? I’m just asking!”
“Do you…” Lilith sighed, exasperated. She sheathed her blades and crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you want to stay for pizza or something?”
Alastair’s mouth opened in shock, and Lilith huffed. “You’re Fey’s boyfriend now, right? And you’re already here, you fucking stalker.”
He laughed at that, and his golden eyes sparkled when he looked at Fey.
“Boyfriend, huh?” he asked, slipping his hands into his pockets.
“Fuck no,” she snapped.
“As tempting as that sounds, no,” Alastair said to Lilith, ignoring Fey’s quick protest. “No, I should go. And so should all of you. If I could find you, so could anyone,” he warned. “Especially with the, uh—mess we’ve made of this place.”
“He’s right,” Joy said, “We need to go. This site isn’t safe anymore. We should head back to the palace. Fey has healed enough to be moved, and it’ll be safer there.”
Fey sighed, letting her head fall back against the wall. She’d liked this place. The bath was big enough to stretch all the way out, and that was a luxury she wasn’t thrilled to give up.
Willow wiped Alastair’s blood off her blade. “Fine,” she said. “But we’re bringing the pizzas.”
Chapter 33
Healing was an agonizingly slow process.
Fey was excused from her duties and assignations while she got back into shape, and she saw her sisters less and less as they took up the workload without her. Someone had finally reported Phillip Danvers’s disappearance to the Crown, and seemingly inspired by the fall Fey had taken into the Western River, Dameon announced with sorrow that the professor had fallen to his watery death, his body having been discovered weeks previously but unidentified until just recently. The Crown sent condolences to his husband.
A tragic accident, and one the university and its students would mourn for the proper length of time and then move past.
The day after the news had broken, Dameon had come for a full day of combat training, and Fey had almost asked him about it. Had even opened her mouth the moment she’d seen him, ready to demand answers to the questions that still burned inside her. But Lilith had taken that moment to stomp very deliberately on her foot and shoot her a glare that reminded her just what her sister thought about questioning their orders.
So she’d dropped it. Dropped the questions, dropped the mystery.
She had lived. Lived, but at a heavy cost to her body, and for the next few weeks at least, she needed to focus on rebuilding everything she’d lost.
Instead of following the mysteries further, Fey trained.
From sunrise to sunset, and often even longer, she trained, pushing herself to her limit. She spent entire days in the gym, toning her body and her powers, building her strength and muscles.
It took time, but bit by bit, day by day, Fey began to feel like herself again. The muscles in her arms and legs grew and hardened with use, and her figure filled out once more. Even her powers felt strong, again, and she spent several hours every night drawing on Water and Air, filling herself with the elements available to her and rejoicing in her power.
By the time the Winter Solstice grew near, and planning for the Queen’s Winter Ball was in full swing, Fey was ready to rejoin her sisters and take up her blades again.
The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the lunar year—the point at which the sun is at its furthest point from our world. For the Witches of the realm, it’s a holy day, the first day of Winter, and the day when the Goddess makes Her transition from a giver of life to a destroyer. In the dark months of Winter, She will take more lives than at any other time in the year, and the world will grow as cold and dead as Her heart.
