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This was someone else entirely. Someone she didn’t understand.
Damn him. It fucking hurt.
Fern put some distance between them, her wings brushing the stone wall behind her. Re-brandishing her mace, she set the point of it right against his nose and quietly said, “The only thing I need is for you to wipe that asinine look off your face, un-stuff the ripe fucking pixie shit from your ears, and listen to me before I shove this so far up your arsehole that you’ll be chewing on it for the rest of your cunting life.”
His jaw ticked as he ground his teeth together, one half of a conversation reaching her ears.
—Ach, I think she’s more than serious, lad… Aye, she’s wee, but she’s got that look in her bonny eyes… I never said that… Now you’re just being difficult for the sake of it… Come off it, you know well what she is!—
To be reminded that Magnus might know more than she did about who and what she was…
Fuck, she hated it.
Fern plastered a smile on. “Listen to Pet, Mag,” she crooned, thrilled when his eyes widened. “Between the two of you, he seems to be the only one with any fucking brains.”
“That’s enough,” he sneered.
She agreed. Every second they spent arguing was another that Lunara might be in danger.
“Are you ready to fetch Araxis, then?”
“No. I will not get dressed, leave Brand, and fetch someone Lunara is actively avoiding for several personal reasons because a crazed Fae commanded me to do so. One who, I might add, hasn’t even checked all the logical places. And even if it wasn’t nonsense, I’m a damned Imperial Son. No one tells me what to do.”
What. A. Wankstain.
Fine. She’d go herself. Right after she skinned his hide for being an impossible, arrogant fucking pissbag.
—Ah, shite. You just couldn’t listen—
Fern almost felt bad when she bowed back, braced herself against the wall, and kicked both feet out. When she connected with the center of Mag’s chest and sent him flying into the opposite wall on a bellow. When she tackled him to the ground before he could recover.
It wasn’t Pet’s fault his lord was being a massive piece of shit.
“I don’t care whose son you are,” she hissed, straddling him. “You’re being fucking stubborn, and I won’t let Lunara suffer for it.”
Fern dropped her mace and unleashed her fists. She wasn’t really going to kill him, after all.
This time.
“You’d…better hope…that she…is…fine,” she grunted, hammering blows punctuating each word.
When his head lolled, she gripped his hair, yanking him upright to bring them nose-to-nose. Blood trickled from a cut in his lower lip and stained his teeth, the rest of his pretty face a mottled mess. He didn’t fight back, which she found oddly unsettling. Ignoring the twist in her gut, she shook him until he focused, an emotion she couldn’t discern in his gaze as his breaths sawed in and out of him.
“Last chance. You could’ve been to Nachthelliae and back by now. So—Araxis, or no?”
“No,” he ground out.
“Why’d you have to go and be a fucking arsehole, Magnus?” With that, she dropped his head and stood over him. “If anything happens to her, I will never let you forget it and I will never forgive you.”
Fern would never admit it, but she spent a large part of the last couple months spying on Magnus whenever she could. Something about slinking through the shadows after him felt…right.
And it meant she knew where he kept his portal tolls.
She grabbed her mace and left him on the landing, flying into the chamber and to the overstuffed chair by the door where he always left his robe before shifting.
Tossing it aside, she snatched up the belt tucked beneath. The leather was absurdly supple, and a dead match for the deep fawn color of her favorite borrowed boots. She spared half a second to run her fingers over its black embroidery before deciding it was now hers. Besides, she didn’t have any other way to hold the small sack attached to it.
Electric tingles skittered down her spine and she stilled, her pointed ears twitching. She had to give him credit—his steps were silent despite his size. A seasoned predator, through and through.
