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Alastair shook his head at her with a sneer and mouthed two words back at her: Fuck. You.
She didn’t have time to argue with him. Scowling, she continued her chase. If the Vampire insisted on accompanying her, he better keep out of her way.
They passed room after room, heading out of the main palace and into the Western Wing. Fey barely had time to resent Alastair’s presence before he made himself useful. They reached a fork in a hallway, a staircase on either side, one leading up and one going down.
Fuck. Fey hadn’t seen which way they’d gone, and she looked frantically between the two options, trying to decide which way was more likely. But it was impossible without knowing where they might be going. She was about to take a chance and just guess when Alastair touched her shoulder lightly, cocking his head to listen for a moment before pointing to the staircase leading up.
Of course. They were far enough away now that Fey couldn’t hear their footsteps, couldn’t make out any sound of their conversation—but Alastair, blessed by the Goddess with preternatural Vampire hearing, could. Nodding, she followed his lead and headed up the stairs.
She wasn’t familiar with the Western Wing of the palace at all, and twice more she had to rely on Alastair to point them in the right direction before she started to recognize where they were. The moment she did, she knew exactly where Dameon was heading.
Abruptly, she took off down a hallway leading away from their prey, nearly at a run. Alastair gestured frantically, pointing back the other way to indicate the way they should be going. Fey caught his eyes and shook her head, mouthing two words back at him, just as he had done to her.
Except the words she mouthed were, trust me.
Alastair nodded and followed.
Dameon had a room in the Western Wing of the palace. Years ago, before he and the Queen had all but given up on hiding their relationship, Fey and her sisters had brought their reports to that room. If he were taking the Shifter there, then she knew exactly how she could keep an eye on him.
Fey slid to a stop in front of a door. The rooms here were almost always unoccupied, but even still she sent a wordless prayer to the Goddess for luck before she quietly opened the door and peeked inside. She must have been listening. The bedroom inside was empty, set aside like so many others in the palace as a place for visiting aristocrats and important Witches from around the realm to stay while visiting the Queen. And, just as she’d guessed, this bedroom was on the Western wall of the palace, with a view of the palace gardens and Solare.
Perfect, Fey thought, slipping into the room and striding straight over to the window.
“Fey, what the fuck are we doing?” Alastair asked, but Fey ignored him, unlatching the window and pushing it up to open it as far as it would go. It wouldn’t be easy to do this, she realized, but she could do it.
“You’re not doing anything,” Fey told Alastair. She leaned herself out the window, sitting on the windowsill to face him with the top half of her body outside and only her legs still in the room. “I’m going to see what Dameon is up to with that Shifter, and you’re going back to the party.”
Not bothering to wait for an answer, Fey swung her legs over the windowsill and dropped.
There was a small ledge that ran along the exterior of the palace—barely two inches deep. They’d seen Merle use it before, walking the thin lip of the ledge to navigate his way around the palace without being seen.
Fey was no Merle, and while she might not have the effortless feline grace that he did, she was fueled by raw determination, and that would have to be enough. If a cat could do it, then so could she.
A gust of Air kept her in place as she balanced on her toes on the ledge, gripping the exterior wall with her fingertips. Slowly, Fey scooted her way down the wall, passing room after blessedly empty room from the outside, making her way down toward Dameon’s old bed chambers.
A scuffing sound on the ledge next to her made Fey jump and almost lose her footing. She turned her head carefully and snarled when she saw Alastair there, balanced on the ledge next to her.
Furious, Fey pointed at him, then at the window they just passed.
Alastair just took one hand away from the wall and raised his middle finger at her.
Fine. If he wanted to get himself killed, so be it. He had no safety net, no power over Air to keep him balanced on the precarious ledge they stood on. Still, he seemed perfectly at ease, and something in the effortless way he maneuvered until he was next to her reminded her of Merle’s feline grace.
Swallowing all the profanities she wanted to scream at him, Fey turned away from Alastair and kept moving.
They arrived at Dameon’s window just as he flipped on the lights.
Fey pulled back immediately, terrified she could have been seen, and the momentum caused her to lose her grip on the wall. Her body tilted back, falling.
Alastair’s hand on the small of her back stopped her fall, and his light push enabled her to regain her footing, her heart hammering in her chest, mouth dry with panic.
She twisted her face to thank him, but the self-satisfied grin on his face and the wink he gave her made her scowl even harder at him, instead.
Aren’t you glad I came? that grin seemed to say.
Asshole.
Taking a deep, calming breath to recenter herself, Fey leaned over the window frame and found herself looking straight into Dameon’s room.
