Wraithforged (The Wraithblade Saga Book 2), page 22
His blades hovered just beneath his skin, aching to break free, but nothing happened. No pain shot through his body. The brief jolt of energy slowly faded, and the muscle in his forearm flexed beneath her touch.
The two of them froze in place, her fingers wrapped around his wrist and their eyes locked as each dared the other to do something stupid.
He looped his finger underneath the broken collar and slipped it off her neck with a gentle tug. The iron circlet landed in his palm, and she tensed. Though her eyes darted toward the collar in his hand, he never looked away.
Caught, the wraith said.
To her credit, she waited patiently for him to move. Her grip on his wrist loosened, and he tossed the enchanted shackle aside. It landed with a thud in the grass, and he crossed his arms again as he studied her.
“Noted,” she said stiffly. “Are you going to keep threatening me, outlaw, or do I finally get to hear your terms?”
He flashed a mischievous smile. This was his chance to raid the coffers, and after what she had put them through so far, he intended to milk this for everything it was worth.
However, he still had to be careful about how he worded his demands. Though she needed to know what he wanted, she didn’t need to know how he planned to use it.
“Well, outlaw?” She prompted with an irritated twitch of her eyebrow. “What do you want?”
“A lot,” he admitted.
Murdoc chuckled. “You might need to write this down.”
Her hazel eyes darted toward him, but she didn’t reply.
“A master augmentor.” Connor raised one finger as he began to count each of his demands on his hand. “A potion master. A Hackamore for you to take when I tell you to.”
She frowned.
“Access to bloody beauties,” he continued, still listing off his demands. “The Deathdread. Safe passage into and out of Freymoor.”
“Freymoor?” Murdoc whispered under his breath. “Captain, what’s in—”
“Later,” Connor said quietly.
The former Blackguard gave him a rigid nod, but didn’t comment. After Connor’s visit into the bowels of the Black Keep Mountains, they had quite a bit to discuss.
“And lastly, you’re going to help me find Otmund.” Connor stood a little taller, knowing full well she would resist this one.
Quinn stiffened, and though she didn’t reply, a small dimple appeared in her cheek as she pursed her lips. As far as he could tell, she didn’t know anything about the Bloodbane daggers, nor did she realize Otmund had one. Without question, however, she could guess what would happen to Otmund after Connor found him.
He was asking her to help him kill a nobleman, and she damn well knew it.
Though he had already asked for a lot, most of his requests had gone unspoken. The potions master would craft the Hackamore and whatever other potions Sophia needed to refill her stores. The master augmentor, along with the bloody beauties, would both heal her and create the telepathic augmentation he needed for Nocturne.
“Alright,” she said calmly.
Connor’s brows rose in surprise. He hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “You can get all of it?”
“Maybe.” She crossed her arms. “At a minimum, I know someone who can get you most of your list.”
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I think we’re going to need some collateral to ensure you don’t lead us into a trap.”
She frowned. “Such as?”
“Your vougel.”
Quinn had one known weakness—her tiger-bird. If the vougel remained here, Connor had a much better chance of keeping her in line.
“Never in a million—”
“You don’t get a say in this.” He pointed at the broken circlet lying in the grass at their feet to remind her of just how little he trusted her. “If you think I’m going to let you roam free with your mount and your magic, then you’re out of your Fates-damn mind. The tiger-bird stays, and that’s final.”
She curled her fingers so tightly that her knuckles cracked, but she nodded stiffly in surrender. “If anything happens to him—”
“Blood,” Sophia interrupted with an eyeroll. “Murder.”
“Chaos and death, right.” Murdoc waved away the Starling’s threat. “We know.”
“Does that change who you’re planning on taking us to?” Connor asked, his gaze still focused on their prisoner.
She let out an irritated sigh. “No, it doesn’t. I’m taking you to the only person I trust with my augmentations. She’s a master augmentor and potion master, so that takes care of two items on your wish list.” Quinn’s gaze shifted to Sophia. “Let me guess. You’re the one who needs bloody beauties, aren’t you? You think it’ll cure whatever illness you have?”
“It’s adorable that you think we’re going to answer,” he quipped.
“How many?” the Starling warrior asked, ignoring him.
“Twenty,” Sophia answered.
Quinn laughed. The skin around her eyes crinkled with joy, and she buried her face in her hand as her shoulders shook with laughter.
With their prisoner distracted, Connor glared at Sophia through the corner of his eye. The sharp look said everything he needed her to know, all without him speaking a single word.
Stop being greedy.
“Fine.” Sophia grumbled under her breath. “Five, with roots.”
“That’s better.” Quinn wiped a tear from her eye. “It’ll still cost you a fortune.”
“I think you mean it’ll cost you a fortune,” Connor corrected.
She frowned. “I can help, but this is going to fall on you. Your list is long enough without asking me to front that kind of coin,” she added with a nod to Sophia.
“That depends,” he countered.
“On what?”
“On how many other items on my list you can get me.”
In a negotiation, every concession had to come with a cost, and he wouldn’t let Quinn walk out of this with a good deal.
“My contact can get five. She’s a professional.” Her cold gaze shifted to Sophia. “No matter what you screwed up, she can fix it.”
The necromancer bristled. “Listen to me, you infuriating—”
“Enough,” Connor said gently.
Sophia let out a strangled scream of frustration and stalked off toward the burned out firepit.
Connor sighed and leaned toward Murdoc, speaking in a hushed tone. “Keep an eye on her, will you?”
“Already on it, Captain.” Murdoc nodded and jogged off after the necromancer.
“Though I must eat soon, I will remain for now,” Nocturne announced. A hot breath shot through his nose, and he laid on the ground beside Connor. A tremor shot through the earth as he settled on the grass. Quinn’s vougel flapped his wings to retain his balance as the dirt shook beneath them all.
When Sophia and Murdoc had jogged out of earshot, Connor fired a withering glare at Quinn. “Stop antagonizing her.”
“She makes it too easy.”
“I mean it.” His eyes narrowed in warning. “As for the other items on my list—”
“There are conditions.” She held up her finger, as if to tell him not to get excited. “For starters, I won’t get you the Deathdread.”
“You’re not in a position to—”
“I am,” she interrupted. “Since you’re holding my vougel hostage to ensure I don’t betray you, I’m in a bind. It means I need you alive to get him back, and we would all be walking into a deathtrap if we headed for the Mountains of the Unwanted. I wouldn’t be allowed past the Hazeltide sentries without a Regent. I don’t have clearance.”
“But you’re a Starling.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “I’m still not a Regent.”
Damn it.
Fine. He would have to find another way in, and he could question her about it along their route.
“You said conditions.” He glanced her up and down. “Plural.”
“I did. My other condition is that I won’t help you kill Otmund.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
She barely restrained an eyeroll. “Right. Because you’re just going to have tea with the man who sent the Lightseers after you.”
“Why do you care what happens to him?”
“He’s a Lightseer Regent,” she said bluntly, as though it were obvious.
The thin vein in her temple pulsed again, and her eyes twitched—subtly, almost imperceptibly, but he saw it nonetheless.
Another lie—albeit, a white one.
“She is protective.” Nocturne tilted his head in curiosity, examining her with that overwhelming gaze. “But also angry. He is like family, yet he has betrayed her.”
Quinn sucked in a breath through her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. “I hate it when you do that.”
Nocturne’s eyes narrowed. A low growl rumbled through the meadow, and a soft tremor vibrated through the ground beneath their feet. “You are not exempt from the honesty you demand of others.”
Her lips parted in surprise, but she didn’t respond.
Connor set his hands on his waist as he stared her down. “You should be more worried about the company you keep, princess, than you are about my intentions.”
That snapped her out of her daze, and her nose wrinkled with disdain. “And what do you know about the company I keep?”
“I know Otmund’s a coward.” A buzzing energy shot through him as he relived the night he’d fused with the wraith. Connor paced the small stretch of flattened grass by her log, unable to stand still any longer. “What do you know about the night he tried to kill me, Quinn?”
She didn’t flinch. “You murdered ten soldiers, and then you tried to stab him in the heart.”
“Wrong.” Connor jabbed his finger in the air to punctuate the word. “They tried to kill an innocent woman and her daughters, and I intervened. Besides, I killed nine soldiers, not ten. How do you think Otmund opened that Rift to limp back home with his tail between his legs?”
He let his question linger in the silence that followed.
She scowled, even as she pieced it together. “You’re lying.”
Connor looked at the dragon. “Am I?”
“He is not.”
“Huh,” Connor said sarcastically as he returned his attention to Quinn. “Go figure.”
“Otmund is a scholar,” Quinn said fiercely. “He doesn’t have it in him to kill someone.”
Connor laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Princess, I watched him slit that last soldier’s throat. The man had a patch on his eye. Otmund stayed in his blind spot until it was too late, and he dragged that dying man onto the Rift. I was broken, nearly dead, and I couldn’t move fast enough to stop him.”
Quinn didn’t reply. The muscles in her neck tightened, and her eyes slipped out of focus as she sat with everything he had said.
“Think long and hard about who you’re protecting,” he warned, his voice gravely and low. “Think about who you are at your core, and how noble these so-called allies of yours really are. Because I’ll take that into account when I decide where you fall on my list of enemies.”
Her cold eyes darted toward him as she met his warning with a silent one of her own.
“You sit with that,” he ordered. “And we can discuss Otmund another day.”
“Fine,” she said dryly. “Are we done?”
“Not quite. Tell me what you know about Freymoor.”
“It’s the oldest city in Saldia.” She set her hands on her hips and tilted her head impatiently. “There are literal libraries filled with its history, so you’re going to have to be more specific.”
“The former princess, then. Is there anything she wants?”
“Ah.” A knowing smile spread across the Starling warrior’s face. “You want one of her artifacts for yourself?”
“Answer the question,” he said curtly.
“She won’t cooperate,” Quinn warned. “King Henry spent years trying to force her to reveal what’s in the Blood Bogs, but he never got anywhere. Freymoor and its people are clever, outlaw. Cleverer than you.”
I truly hate this woman, the wraith interceded. But she’s right about Freymoor’s fallen princess.
Connor’s ear twitched as the wraith spoke up. “Oh?”
“Oh?” Quinn’s frowned with confusion. “What—”
Connor held up one hand to silence her as he waited for the wraith to continue.
Henry left the king’s daughter alive because of the legends around that place, the ghoul explained. He wanted the artifacts her family hid in the bogs, and rumor has it only royalty can access the mists without losing their way. He needed at least one of them alive to get him what he wanted. He figured he could break her over time.
Fantastic. The one person they needed on their side must’ve loathed the Wraith King with every fiber of her being.
I warned him to stay away, the wraith continued. Freymoor is the sort of land that doesn’t stay conquered for long, and it is vengeful against its enemies. He refused to listen. Learn from his mistake, Magnuson.
Interesting. The wraith wasn’t just wary of this place; he feared it.
“What kind of defenses does she have?” Connor asked.
Quinn crossed her arms and let out an impatient sigh. “Are you talking to me now?”
He tilted his head in annoyance and gestured for her to continue.
“You’ve demanded a lot already.” The Lightseer shook her head. “I’m not going to give away state secrets just because you want to know.”
“There’s always the dungeons.”
Nocturne snorted impatiently, and a plume of dark smoke shot out his nose.
“You’re no fun,” Connor muttered to the dragon.
“I am aware.”
“Fine.” He turned his attention back to Quinn. “What will you tell me, then?”
“That you shouldn’t bother.” She shrugged. “Someone has taken over Freymoor, and no one knows who it is. There are rumors, of course, but nothing we can substantiate. Is it her advisor? The former military generals who went missing without a trace? An unknown new player? No one can say, but the former princess isn’t going to give you what you ask for—even if she wants to.”
“How do you know so much about her?”
“Tracking her activities was my first assignment as a Lightseer.”
That piqued Connor’s interest. “So you can get us in.”
“Of course I can.” Quinn crossed her arms. “But it will be a mistake, and it will probably get you killed. Since I want to see Blaze again after this shopping trip of yours, I need you alive.”
More rare reagents grow in Freymoor than anywhere else, except perhaps on Troll Island, the wraith interjected, though he still hadn’t reappeared. Freymoor’s knowledge of potionmaking and magic rivals any master I’ve seen in Oakenglen. If the Starling woman’s augmentor can’t save Sophia, the potion masters in Freymoor can. We must go there, Magnuson. Between the Soulsprite and your fading necromancer, there is simply no other choice.
“We’re going,” he announced. “You’d better find us a safe way in and out, Quinn.”
She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. With the movement, the pendants around her neck slipped out of her shirt, and they hung against her deep neckline—the Starling crest, and a strange golden pendant with spears around its blue stone, like rays of a sun.
The only items they couldn’t confiscate when they’d captured her.
“I don’t know how you broke free,” he said with a nod to the broken collar on the ground. “I figure you won’t tell me, and that’s fine, but you made a mistake. You showed your cards, and I know there’s a weapon on you somewhere right this minute. I’ll be watching you, Quinn. Whatever it is and however it works, I guarantee you don’t want to use it on me.”
“No?” she asked coyly. “Why is that, outlaw?”
He leaned in, until his mouth hovered by her ear, and she stiffened beside him. The scent of jasmine and honeysuckle rolled off her hair, but he saw through her beauty and wealth to the deadly warrior underneath.
“You’re good, Quinn Starling,” he acknowledged. “But I’m better.”
Chapter 23
CONNOR
The hazy blood-orange sun peered through two jet-black peaks as another day in Slaybourne came to a close.
Connor stepped into a sunbeam as he closed the southern-most entrance into the catacombs. He’d hidden Quinn’s weapons and other belongings out here, specifically because he knew she would never find them on her own.
With her pack slung over one shoulder, he took a few unlicensed practice swings of her flawless Firesword. Orange light from the setting sun glinted off its blade, and he marveled at its craftsmanship. Light as a twig and perfectly balanced, the sword sliced through the air with a soft whistle. The glistening green gem in its hilt glowed with the fire of a star. Nearly the size of an eyeball, the stone itself must’ve cost a small fortune to create.
No wonder she wanted it back.
Tell me you’ve thought this through. Black smoke rolled across Connor’s boots as the Wraith King appeared beside him. Returning your enemy’s supplies and her greatest weapon seems more stupid than your plans usually are.
Instead of taking the bait, Connor smirked and swung the sword again. “We might need her potions on our trip. She can have the pack in Slaybourne, but I’ll carry it after we leave. As for the sword, does it matter? She clearly has a powerful weapon on her already. How else could she have broken the collar?”
The wraith grumbled. Fair point.
“If she’s going to betray us, I’d prefer she tried it sooner rather than later.”
A wise choice. Otherwise, you might get attached, like you did with the other two.
Connor’s jaw tensed, and he opted against replying.
A shadow soared over the grass as Connor crested a hill, and he glanced skyward as Nocturne banked on an air current. The dragon’s eyes shut with bliss as he spun on the wind, reconnected with the sky.
Connor took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air, grateful he was able to bring their prince of darkness back from the edge.
