Rosalind gave Fuery a pointed look. “Surely you have an opinion on this? Your guyfriend is trying to get himself killed. I don’t know why I bothered patching you up. Wait!”
Her eyes widened.
“Was Grave the one who tried to turn you into a shish kebab?”
Hartt had no idea what one of those was, but he presumed it involved being skewered many times over. “No. It was not the vampire.”
“It was the assassin.” Vail’s voice held a calculating note, and his expression did too as Hartt glanced at him. “She is exceptionally skilled?”
“No. Yes.” He grimaced and rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb. “Look… I was… The darkness took control. I wasn’t trying to kill her.”
“You weren’t?” Fuery sounded horrified.
Looked it too when Hartt risked a glance at him.
“I was… I don’t know. Just… I don’t want to talk about it.” Hartt knew he couldn’t leave it at that. All three occupants of the room had leaned towards him, curiosity rising in their eyes to warn him they were going to keep probing about Mackenzie until he cracked. He gritted his teeth, sucked a breath through them and then closed his eyes and clenched his fists in his lap. “I wanted to convince her to drop the contract.”
He writhed inside as he waited for someone to break the silence that followed, dreamed up a million responses from each of them and feared which one would come true.
In the end, it was Rosalind who spoke.
“Is she pretty? I bet she’s pretty. It’s always the same with you elves. See a pretty face and you want to save them.”
Vail loosed a long, weary sigh. “I saved you because you are my mate, little wild rose, not because I thought you beautiful.”
She gasped. “You don’t think I’m beautiful.”
Vail’s sigh was exasperated this time. “Rosalind.”
“Sheesh, he called me by my name. I’m in trouble. Moving on.” For a female who believed herself in trouble with her mate, she certainly sounded bright and amused. “Um… searching for a suggestion… searching… still searching… oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you just ask Grave about the client? If it’s someone he’s wronged, well, the list is probably as long as my mate’s—”
Vail growled.
She cleared her throat. “I meant to say arm. I was going to say arm.”
She most certainly had not intended to say arm. Not judging by the rosy hue on her cheeks or the heat in her eyes.
She tipped her chin up in a way that reminded him painfully of Mackenzie.
“The list of people Grave has wronged is probably rather long, but it’s worth a shot.”
Hartt didn’t think it was. “Your plan is that I discover whether my client is a witch by asking my mark about him? I have a mission—kill the King of Death. That is what I intend to do.”
“I do not like this,” Fuery put in. “Something about it just does not seem right and it never has.”
They’d had witch clients in the past and there was no reason for him to feel suspicious about this one. His friend was just being jittery and was upset because Hartt had taken on the client while he had been away.
Fuery placed a hand on his left knee, his violet gaze imploring Hartt, silently begging him to listen to Rosalind. Hartt’s gaze shifted to her and then her mate, and then drifted back to Fuery, an unsettling feeling growing inside him too as he considered the possibility that the male he had met might have been a witch.
The witch.
Chapter 9
Mackenzie sagged against the ground, her left cheek pressing to the black grit as she released the breath she had been holding. Her left leg ached, her hip on that side throbbing madly from the blow Hartt had delivered to it, and her nose was sore, stuffy with blood. Those weren’t her only injuries. She stared at the nasty gash on her right forearm, but her focus was elsewhere, on the burning grooves carved across that side of her chest.
Four long streaks.
Made by claws.
His claws.
A wave of fear washed over her, had her heart pumping harder even though she was alone now and she was sure he wouldn’t come back. That other elf had taken him, disappearing in jagged black lines that had streaked the air long after he was gone.
An elf who had looked as if he had wanted to do more than maim her. He had wanted to murder her, and in the pit of her soul, she felt certain he would have if Hartt hadn’t stopped him.
She remained where she was on the ground outside the town as she pondered that, as she tried to piece together the puzzle that was Hartt and failed dismally. She never had been good at that sort of shit, but she was sure this time her failure was because Hartt was missing a few pieces.
His sanity being one of them.
She had seen the heat of battle overcome more than one warrior in her time, had witnessed instincts kick in to protect someone when the chips were down, but she had never seen anything like Hartt.
One moment he had been the epitome of a warrior—calm, in control, calculating every move he could make before he made it, and a match for her in ways she didn’t want to examine too closely.
The next, he had been something straight out of a nightmare.
She hadn’t expected to land the blow on him. Part of her had believed he would block it, and when she had plunged the dagger into his chest, she had been as shocked as him.
And then he had transformed before her eyes.
Starting with his irises.
Onyx had devoured the violet, leaving only a tiny flare of it around his pupils, and his fangs had punched long from his gums, white daggers he had tried to sink into her more than once as he had fought her. Clawed her. A savage, wild, and terrifying beast.
She had been so confused as she had tried to defend herself, as she had tried to reach him, some foolish part of her believing that she could talk reason into him and save herself.
Or at least coax him back from whatever darkness had taken command of him.
Mackenzie pushed herself up, a muffled grunt falling from between her gritted teeth as pain blazed across her arm and chest. She sank back onto her ass and breathed through the agony that seared her, waiting for it to fade to a more manageable level. She had heard rumours about elves, that some of them had a darker side that could put even the demons of the Devil’s realm to shame.
She had always wanted to laugh at anyone who said such things and point them in the direction of her friend and fellow assassin, Jasynder. Syn was darkness incarnate, as unpredictable as the weather in the mortal realm. She changed in the blink of an eye, going from quirky and upbeat with a dash of crazy, to rip-your-balls-off and wear them while I decimate an entire legion of enemies mad.
Hartt had clearly taken a page out of Syn’s book.
There was the assassin who was calculating and controlled, who had actually tried to convince her to let him pay her off, and had looked as if he didn’t want to hurt her.
And then there was the monster who had been wild and powerful, dangerous and deadly, and unrelenting in his pursuit of butchering her alive.
Mackenzie fumbled in the right pocket of her burgundy leathers with her left hand, stifling a cry as her chest ached, white-hot fire blazing across it again. She sagged and breathed hard as she managed to wrangle her phone free. She had purchased it in the fae town in Scotland a few weeks ago and had brought one for Jasynder too, blowing most of their monthly budget.