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It was far nicer than the bedroom they’d entered to get here, and Fey whispered a silent thanks to the Goddess that either Dameon or the Queen had a preference for four poster beds. The thick, crimson drapery half obscured her view, but it did a good job of hiding her if someone inside were to glance at the window.
Dameon and the Shifter were already inside, and the Shifter set something down heavily on Dameon’s desk. His body blocked whatever it was. It wasn’t until he moved aside, to let Dameon by, that she saw it.
A single wooden crate. One she immediately recognized.
Fey’s heart plummeted and she knew what was inside that crate even before Dameon crossed the room and flipped the lid open. Knew what was inside even before he pulled a single small bottle from within.
When he held it up to the light, the golden liquid inside swirled and glittered, like it contained a galaxy of trapped stars.
No. No, no, no.
“This is the last of it?” Dameon asked, examining the bottle before slipping it back inside the crate with the others.
The Shifter nodded. “That’s all that’s left. Everything else was destroyed—either by us or by your pets, I guess.”
Fey felt Alastair tense at the term, but she was past caring what some Shifter called her, past caring about anything. Her head was reeling, as she started to piece it together.
It was Dameon.
It had been Dameon all along.
Dameon had sent Willow on the assignation to kill Professor Phillip Danvers, the one person who could have told them what Alice had been up to. Who might have known what this golden elixir was.
Dameon knew the locations of their safe houses.
Dameon knew the keycodes that would prevent Joy’s alarms from being triggered.
It was Dameon who set the plastic explosives that destroyed Alice’s apartment.
It was Dameon who’d killed Alice.
It all made sense. Alice had been investigating something, something about this golden elixir, and Dameon had killed her for it. Killed her and used Fey and her sisters to cover it up.
Fey couldn’t breathe, and her pulse was thundering in her ears. Alastair’s hand on the small of her back was the only thing keeping her tethered, the only thing that kept her listening to what was happening in the room.
“Why didn’t you destroy this one?” Dameon asked. He sounded only mildly curious, bored, even.
The Shifter shrugged a massive shoulder. “Figured the Queen could use it, you know? It must be something important, right? For you to want to get rid of it so bad.”
Dameon’s laugh in response was cruel. He took a few steps toward the Shifter, shaking his head in amusement. “If I sent you to get rid of it, why in the name of the Goddess would you think I wanted any of it?”
The Shifter shrugged again. “I just thought?—”
But Dameon was already in motion, and in the space of a single breath Dameon’s sword sang through the air, slicing through the Shifter’s neck and cutting him off midsentence. The male’s head tilted grotesquely on his shoulders, before falling to the ground with a wet thud.
“See, that’s the problem with you Shifters,” Dameon sighed, as the Shifter’s headless body slumped forward onto its knees and then collapsed to the floor. “You don’t think.”
Dameon crouched to wipe his blade on the Shifter’s clothes when a voice from the doorway behind him made him turn.
“Dameon?” Willow asked. She stepped into the room cautiously, her eyes going from Dameon to the body on the ground, blood still flowing from the open wound on the Shifter’s neck and onto the ornamental carpet.
No, Fey pleaded, terror filling her. No, Willow, get out of here.
“The Queen was asking about you, she…she sent me to find you. What’s going on here, Dameon? Who is that?” Willow asked.
“An intruder,” Dameon lied. He stood, and Fey noticed he hadn’t bothered to clean his sword, after all. Angry red drops of blood dripped onto the carpet. “Go find your sisters. There could be more of them in the palace.”
But Willow wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes had settled on the open crate before he’d even started speaking. On the bottles inside.
