Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
I was in no state, but Timothee appeared sad and shocked, and Errol, shaken.
I couldn’t deal with them now.
I couldn’t deal with anything now.
I turned my face back into Aleksei.
“You’re moving to the Palace,” the king decreed.
“Yes, we are,” Aleksei agreed.
I just kept crying.
The curtains on the windows had been closed, and I was lying in the dark in his bed that was dressed in aubergine velvet, feeling cold through to the bone, but so listless, I didn’t bother dragging the bedclothes over me.
This is how I was when he came to me.
My body was limp as Aleksei adjusted it into the bend of his while he rested against the headboard, his long legs in front of him.
“What do they know?” I mumbled into his shirt.
“Let me get some food in you first.”
I couldn’t eat a thing.
“Please tell me,” I begged.
My torso rose as Aleksei drew in a huge breath.
Then he let it out.
“The team was scattered. Antheme down…”
I closed my eyes tight against the sound of her hitting the pavement assailing me for the millionth time.
“…Diablo and Fannon were on you, Geleena was on your females,” he continued. “Once she got them secured, she gave chase, but it was too late. The killer got away.”
Got away?
I tipped my head up to look at him. “I saw a male lying on the pavement.”
“An innocent bystander, caught in the stream that got Antheme.”
Oh no!
“Did he…?” I couldn’t finish that.
“He passed too, love.”
And it gets worse.
I swallowed my grief for that unknown male.
It didn’t go down easy. Not at all.
“How could he get away? There are cameras all over the city, Aleksei,” I pointed out.
“Yes, and they caught him jumping into a craft that launched without course approval. It also had its tracker disabled, so traffic control couldn’t follow it, it had no identi-tags, and it disappeared before they could lock a trace on it.”
I lifted my head to look at him. “Do you think Anna has gone this far around the bend?”
“No. I think something else is happening, and I thought that before Prince Tanyn commed and asked Father and I for a meeting.”
By Lilith.
“Arnaud?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Tanyn’s flying down tonight. We’re meeting first thing in the morning. Whatever it is, he has something to share, and the timing cannot be coincidental.”
I nodded, because he was correct. Nothing was that coincidental.
“It was a fucked-up thing to say,” he admitted. “That Antheme was a hero to the realm. I just didn’t know what else to say.”
It hit me that he’d known her longer than I had, but it was me who was bringing the drama.
I pulled myself together, doing this the easy way, by cuddling closer to him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said tersely.
He was so not.
“Your creature flew,” I noted carefully.
“When I got the news there’d been another attempt on you, it was a miracle I kept him contained before I heard your voice over comm.”
“Who’s telling her family?”
“They live down in Skull Bay. Set went down to talk to them.”
Not an easy task.
Poor Set.
I nodded again because I didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve talked with Mammon and Tomahs. They’re moving their females to the Palace. Monique is being moved too.”
Tomahs was Gayle’s dad. Her mom, by the way, was named Elayne.
My body went solid at this news. “What? Why?”
“Whoever is behind this is targeting you.”
That was in no doubt.
“Yes.”
“And you’ll be at the Palace until we get to the bottom of this, and the Palace is impenetrable.”
I didn’t like where this was going.
“So, if whoever this is means to hurt me, or hurt you by hurting me, and I’m not available, they might cast a wider net by hurting someone close to me,” I deduced.
He pulled in a sharp breath through his noise, but he didn’t confirm, because I didn’t need him to confirm.
Yep.
I didn’t like this at all.
“Do you think this is Arnaud’s super farged-up way of saying, ‘You’re messing with me having the female I want, so I’m going to take out your female’?”
“Darling— he started, then stopped.
“What?”
“Fuck,” he said under his breath, turning his gaze from mine.
I pressed into his chest with my hand.
“What?” I demanded sharply.
“Fuck,” he repeated. But before I could ask again, he shared, “Fannon saw the shooter.”
“And?”
“He says he could swear he wasn’t aiming at you.”
“So, this was some random shooting on the street? That hasn’t happened since weapons were banned over a hundred years ago,” I said.
“No, he says he thinks the shooter was aiming at Antheme. Geleena didn’t have an open angle, but from what she saw, she shared it looked the same as Fannon claims.”
I blinked. “Why would someone be aiming at Antheme?”
“What I believe, the task force believes, and the agents at the RIC believe is that Arnaud is gearing up to do something. What, we haven’t been able to figure out. But even as insane as he seems to be, no one wants the dragons to fly.”