Chapter 208. Samhain V (Soren)
Soren
Some were still twitching. Others were already still, twisted at unnatural angles beneath chunks of stone and burning wood.
The scent of blood and charred skin clogged my throat. Through the smoke and chaos, I could see rogues pouring in through the gaping hole in the wall. Many of them, too many.
This, was not at all a part of the plan.
A girl was crying for her mother. The alarmed cries crescendoed as the attack began. My ears rang. I couldn’t... couldn’t find my aunt in the crowd.
Couldn’t find Maisie.
This was wrong. Everything was wrong.
A snarl erupted behind me and Mercer tore out from underneath the rubble. Jericho grabbed me, overcoming his fear of fire as he hurled us in a different direction as flames roared to life around us.
Right into the thicket of the attack.
"Fucking move, Black!" he yelled.
My Lycan slammed against my ribs so hard I almost shifted on the spot.
Find her. Find her. Find her.
An Exile lunged at me from the left. I caught him by the throat mid-air with half a thought and slammed him into the ground so hard his spine snapped.
Another came at me with a blade. I twisted, drove my claws into his gut, and ripped upward. Warm blood sprayed across my face. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.
Find her. Find her. Find her. Hurry.
Every swing of my arm, every crack of bone beneath my hands, every wet sound of flesh tearing, it was all for her.
My vision had tunneled to a single, vicious point. Maisie. Her scent. I needed to reach her before the smoke and fire swallowed whatever was left of this fucking hall. Before they got to her.
Before she got hurt.
Quinlan was a blur of motion to my right, moving with that lethality he only showed when he stopped pretending like he actually gave a fuck about appearances.
Jericho was somewhere at my back, cutting down anything that tried to flank us.
Mercer punched through a rogues chest and tore his heart out of his chest. I would wonder later who he was looking for, who he looked more frantic and frightened for. His mother or our mate. But now, all I could think was...
Find her. Find her now!
I tore through three more rogues, barely feeling the blade that sliced across my ribs. The pain was distant. Irrelevant. My Lycan was howling now, frenzied, claws scraping against the inside of my skin like it wanted to rip its way out and hunt her down itself.
Find her. Find her—
A flash of red hair caught my eye through the smoke.
The Braxton girl.
She was slumped against a collapsed pillar near the corridor entrance, coughing violently, blood trickling down the side of her face. But she appeared more disoriented than harmed.
I was on her in two strides.
I grabbed her by the front of her dress and hauled her up, shaking her hard enough that her head snapped back.
"Where is she?" I roared. "Where the fuck is Maisie?"
Regina blinked at me, glassy-eyed and swaying. For a second she just stared, like the words weren’t connecting. Then her lips parted on a slurred breath.
"Lana," she mumbled. "She... she went after Lana..."
I dropped her.
The others were already moving. The smoke masked every scent. Couldn’t smell her anymore. Rage. Panic. Fear. Which was the girl’s room?
"Cole!" we heard come from the burning corridor, the heat growing more intense with every step. Flames licked up the walls. "Cole!"
Standing in the middle of it all, coughing into her sleeve with wide, red-rimmed eyes, was the twin.
Merely seeing her irritated the fuck out of me.
She saw us and froze.
I crossed the distance in three strides and grabbed her by the shoulders, uncaring of the flames searing my skin.
"Where is she?" I demanded, voice raw and vicious.
Lana stared up at me, fear flickering across her face. "S-she left."
I stared at her, chest heaving, the fire roaring around us.
"Left?" Quinlan repeated, the word scraping out of his throat like broken glass. "Left where?"
Lana’s lips trembled. "P-please don’t kill me. S-she asked me to help her get out t-tonight. S-she left through the servant’s passage—"
"Keep talking fucking shit and I’ll feed you your torn out heart," I snarled and she recoiled. "Where. Is. My. Wife?"
The smell of her fear filled my nostrils. And she began to tremble and sob. "I-I don’t know! She said she couldn’t do this anymore. That she was done. She took off before the explosion—"
Mercer lunged forward, his hand shooting out like he was going to drag her toward him.
"Give her to me," he growled. "I’ll rip out that lying tongue—"
It all came from far away.
She wouldn’t leave like that. Not without a word. Not after everything. Had my aunt done something? Had someone else already gotten to her?
We were all thinking it, and it was a waste of time interrogating the spineless little hybrid. We had to find her before something worse happened.
But before any of us could move, a sea of guards poured into the burning passage behind us.
Dozens of them.
The Queen’s personal detail. And mixed among them were my own men. Guards who had served my family for decades. Men I had trusted with my life. With her life.
They moved, surrounding the doorway I front of us and more poured in behind us, weapons raised.
They had guns.
Modified rifles loaded with ash bullets. I could smell the acrid, metallic scent of the ash from where I stood. One shot wouldn’t kill us. But enough of them would. And they had brought more than enough.
At the front of the formation, Gareth stepped forward.
My head of guard. The man who had stood at my back since I was sixteen. His face was carved from stone, but I saw the flicker of something in his eyes. Regret, maybe.
Gareth raised his voice, clear and formal, carrying over the crackle of flames.
"By order of Her Majesty, Queen Lysandra of the Lycan Court, and under the authority of the High Council of the Lycan Queen, Prince Soren Black, Prince Jericho Ivashkov, Prince Mercer Kane, and Prince Quinlan Chastain are hereby placed under arrest."
Under a different circumstance, I might have laughed. But I started to see strings I never saw before. I saw the chess board I had so carefully arranged. And I saw myself on the board being pulled like a fucking pawn.
And I knew then that I hadn’t been playing by my own rules.
My aunt beat me to it. And if I didn’t already know she was behind Maisie’s disappearance, this confirmed it.
"For the confirmed conspiracy in the attempted assassination of the Queen, the reckless endangerment of innocent lives, and the act of high treason against the Crown." Gareth’s finger curved over the trigger. "You will come peacefully to be tried before the court. Any resistance will be met with force."