I blew out a breath. “Fine,” I relented. “But you stay in this section,” I said, motioning to the library’s women’s restroom lounge. The ancient building had the luxury of having bathrooms with an entire sitting area perched out front, complete with a loveseat and coffee table stacked with magazines. I’d never understood why anyone would find it fun to simply lounge in the bathroom, but to each her own.
“Deal,” he said, nodding. “Covers the entry points.”
“Without being gross,” I added, heading through the swinging door to where the stalls rested. I hurried about my business, quickly washing my hands. I couldn’t wait to get home and celebrate my accomplishments with Alek—hopefully all night long.
“Hey, Ransom,” I called as I smoothed my hair back and headed toward the door. A few soft pops sounded from behind it and I wondered if he’d grown so bored he’d resulted to throwing his knives against the wall. “Can we stop and grab some champagne? I’d really love to celebrate with Alek. I know he already has a mountain of alcohol in the house, but I want it to be my treat—”
My words lodged in my throat as I swung open the door to the lounge. Ice splintered across my skin.
Blood.
Ransom lying face down in a pile of it. He had no less than nine bullet holes peppering his back. The smell of blood and something sweeter, cloying almost, curled in the air.
I scanned the room, finding it empty before I sank to my knees, relief coursing through my chest that he was still breathing. His hands twitched on his Glock, and I reached for it—
A blinding, searing pain cracked at the back of my skull.
All the power in my muscles weakened as if someone had hit me with a sleeping spell. I slumped over Ransom, my body giving out as my vision wobbled.
“Get her,” a masculine voice demanded from behind the bathroom door. “Leave the trash.”
I hissed, trying like hell to swing my arms as someone hauled me up and up—
“Hit her with it again,” the voice snapped when I’d managed to kick out and clip someone’s chin. Masks. They all had masks on.
“Cowards,” I spit, my tongue like sandpaper. Black bled along the edges of my vision.
“She’s stronger than we thought,” another voice said.
“You fuc—” A sharp, white-hot pain speared my neck, stealing my words. Acid clawed at my veins, searing and soaring with each beat of my heart. A force yanked me back and back and back until all I could see or think or feel was black.
17
Alek
“Whoever they are, they’re careful.” Lachlan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest as we sat in the war room, going over the intel Ransom had managed to extract from the cell phone.
“It’s like they knew we’d hack into it,” I muttered. Code names. Blocked numbers. GPS disabled. Any other time in my life, I’d almost welcome the challenge of solving this mystery, but not now—not with Lyric in the crosshairs.
“And it’s pretty fucking obvious they’ve got inside information…” Benedict started, but his voice drifted into nothingness as a roar filled my ears.
“Alek?”
A gaping, black hole formed in my chest, sucking in the light I’d come to rely on—the luminescence of my mating bond with— “Lyric,” I whispered, already grasping for the dimming strands of that bond.
“My lord?”
My gaze flashed to Lachlan’s. “Follow.”
I wended to the last traceable location I sensed her at, nearly forgetting to glamour myself as I materialized in the middle of the crowded library. The scent of parchment and dozens of humans filled my nose, but the sweet, unmistakable combination of cinnamon and vanilla made my head whip toward the back of the library. And something else—the tang of metal and pine…
Ransom’s blood.
My heart pounded as I sped past the tables and aisles of books that lined the cavernous space. Something was very, very wrong, and the overwhelming, obvious answer wasn’t something I was willing to even consider.
Lyric. The bond was nothing but a glimmer, and her scent was fading. Shit, both scents stopped here, at the restroom door, as though the barrier was more than simple wood.
I pushed through the heavy door marked ‘Ladies’ as Lachlan and Benedict appeared behind me.
A sickly, saccharine smell filled the air as we entered the space, turning the corner into the open—
“Shit!”
Ransom lay on the ground, surrounded by a pool of his own blood, his cell phone inches from his outstretched hand. Too much blood…
“I’ve got him!” Lachlan dropped beside Ransom’s fallen frame, and I continued on, throwing open the next door that separated the stalls from the powder room.
“Lyric!” The grating sound of metal slamming into metal echoed as I kicked open one stall door after another, confirming what my soul already knew. She wasn’t here, and the bond was fading. Panic took me hostage with an icy grip, making my thoughts trip over one another. If my heart still beat, then hers had to. She couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t possible.
Well, she’s sure as fuck not here.
“Damn it!” I shouted, putting a fist-sized hole in the door of the last stall.
“He’s alive!” Benedict yelled through the entrance.
Lyric was, too. She had to be.
“I found Lyric’s phone.” Benedict tossed the cell at me and held the door as I charged back into the other room, where Olivia now knelt by Ransom’s head, her wrist over his mouth. Her brow furrowed with worry as Ransom’s blood stained her slacks.
“I called Hawke, and she showed up,” Lachlan said in way of explanation, still pocketing his cell.
Lyric’s had a small crack in the screen, but nothing else was out of place.
“Hawke is with your sister,” Olivia said, not even bothering to look in my direction. Avi’s bodyguard had come quickly, I’d give her that, and there would be no one more ruthless about Avianna’s safety than Hawthorne. He saw her as an extension of the crown he was unwaveringly loyal to.
“There’s too much blood,” Benedict muttered, moving to Ransom’s other side. It would take at least two of us to wend him back once he’d taken enough from Olivia.
The blood. I couldn’t scent anything but that thick, disorienting—
Pffft! A battery-operated deodorizer sent another blast of the chemical into the air. There was something horrifyingly familiar about that scent. It danced at the edges of my memories, tantalizing me with yet another key to this puzzle.
“There. He’s fed enough to move him,” Olivia announced.
I yanked the atomizer off the wall, and we wended straight into Gabriel’s infirmary where the surgeon already waited, Julian at his side.
“The queen…” Julian’s gaze darted from Lachlan and Benedict—who were hefting Ransom onto the gurney—and mine. “Oh, no.”
“She’s missing.” The words barely escaped the vise of my throat.
“My lord?” Julian paled as Gabriel and his nurses launched into action, ushering us into the hallway. The glass doors swung shut behind us, and his gaze narrowed on the atomizer. “Where did you get that?”