Creator’s sweet toes. Back to her original spot.
“Damn it. You’ve got to be in here! If so, then I really need to know.” Ohhh, yes. The underground interloper was female, speaking in a smooth feline alto. “I mean no harm. I promise you, I’m here to help you. I swear it on my maimanne’s memory, may she have ease in the everlasting.”
Jayd had already sworn not to trust this stranger with her pinky finger, let alone the emergence of her whole self from the nook behind the armor, but then the woman husked out the last of her pledge. The answering pangs of Jayd’s heart provided the courage to slip all the way back out.
“I…am sorry about your maimanne.”
The woman turned with grace that matched the purring undertones of her voice. Though the overall action was dancer sleek, her gaze was the exact opposite. She studied Jayd like a creature nearly possessed, her irises swirling with psychedelic shades of purple. Jayd was so fascinated in return, she forgot to be uncomfortable. It was not a wise call. Logic said as much, but she could not stop her innate curiosity.
Who was she?
Instinct supplied key details. If the woman was Arcadian, that would be the shock of the night. Her accent and black battle gear seemed distinctly American, down to the daggers and pistol in custom sheaths at her waist, but her feline movements evoked a European model about to walk a Paris runway.
Complicated. She seemed very complicated—and most unique.
Thoughts that vanished as soon as Jayd spotted the distinct tattoo beneath the stranger’s left ear.
It depicted an eagle in flight, though the bird’s wings transformed into lotus leaves.
It shot instant, enduring pains through her chest.
Horrific nausea through her gut.
Most of all, a thousand layers of disgust at her all-too-trusting heart.
She had been played—by a witch’s awful spell. By a bald, blatant play for her sympathy. Swearing on her mother’s ease in eternity? Who did that?
Monsters who had the Pura emblem tattooed on their necks, of course.
“Yaleur,” she spat, stumbling back. “Liar. Get away from me, Pura scum!”
The woman moaned. The emission sounded…frustrated.
Frustrated?
“Shit.” She smacked a hand over the side of her neck as if merely punishing a mosquito. “Okay, listen to me. This isn’t what you may th—”
“Damn right it is not,” Jayd spewed back. “Nor will it ever be!”
“Your Highness. Jayd. Will you let me expl—”
“I said stay away from me!”
Too late. Sweet Creator, she was too pitifully slow by half, unable to flinch back as Miss Pura Power Ranger caught her by a wrist and held tight, forcing her to stay put. And likely, after this was all over, to relinquish her rights to Ripley in Jagger’s nickname catalogue.
If the Pura would ever let her see Jag again.
“Boopsy girl, we don’t have a lot of time here. You’ve got to grab some chill and let me talk.”
Jayd’s arm went slack. She blink-blinked at the stranger, battling a new and bizarre thought. The woman was being…sarcastic. Puras were allergic to humor. She also used vernacular that Jayd had never heard from a Pura. For that matter, from any Arcadian.
That anomaly explained nothing. The woman still bore the mark of the bonsuns who wanted to rip Arcadia apart. She was still armed and on the loose, sneaking around in tunnels beneath the palais.
And for how long now?
If Power Ranger’s radio had trouble with reception down here, maybe she did not know about Trystan’s capture yet. If she did, would that make a difference? Jayd was disturbingly aware of everything the Pura stood to gain with her in their hold, whether her last name became Carris or not.
The woman seemed to process those details in the same five seconds that Jayd did. ’Twas either that, or she decided to nod knowingly for the twisted fun of it. She added a long sigh while slipping her hand away from her neck. Only then did Jayd notice that there were only three fingers extending from that hand, with long-healed burn tissue where her pinky and ring finger should be protruding. The mottled skin extended up the back of her hand and then disappeared beneath the cuff of her leather jerkin.
“So, you’re on your toes. That’s good. Damn good. And yeah, you have a right to the freak fit about this.” She tapped her forefinger at the tattoo with a swift move that could have been part of a rap video routine. “Felt the same way when those bastards forced it on me three years ago.”
Jayd bugged her gaze. “When…they…”
“Drugged me, strapped me down, and then marked me with this tattoo,” came the unnervingly calm reply. “And yeah, you heard me a hundred percent correctly.”
The woman canted her head, which made a long black braid fall over her shoulder. There were colored ribbons twined with her strands—the red and purple favored by the Pura. But were those also not by the woman’s choice? This was beyond baffling. Jayd’s eyes told her one thing, but her gut clenched with a hideously different truth.
“Boopsy. Highness. I wish I could stand here and be all fair Verona with more of the pertinent back story, but we don’t have that luxury right now. You either believe I’m on your side and have been waiting three damn years for the chance to do so, or you don’t. What’s it going to be?”
So much for wishing her gaze was going to get back to normal.
“Th-Three years?” Jayd blurted, ashamed to be searching—and perhaps wishing—for any glitch in the woman’s composure.
Instead, she got two more layers of unnerving revelation.
“You think the Pura Dumplin’ Gang simply spun up this caper in a few days?” the stranger charged. “Uh-uh. This has been in the works since Rune Kavill started rolling their action.”
“Kavill,” Jayd spat. “Disgusting prispoul.”
“Word, girl. But regrettably, a lot of prispouls are brilliant fuckers too. Kavill wrangled those kittens enough to orchestrate the bigger stunts like kidnapping Princess Brooke and bombing the Grand Bridge. He was also the mastermind behind the effort that nearly doubled their legion in a year.”
Jayd grimaced. “Which still baffles my brothers and the high council. A recruitment like that is absolutely—”
“Impossible?”
“In a word?” She tried to laugh, but it emerged as a bitter huff. “Yes.”
The woman gave up a matching sound, though her sour edge was dusted with something more. Raw virulence. “Because it wasn’t just a recruitment.”
Just six bleak words, in the woman’s dark tone, were the only switches needed to blare Jayd’s mind with comprehension. “It was…an impressment?”
Sharper shards of violet gleamed in Power Ranger’s eyes. “Guess that’s the nice way of putting it.”
Jayd frowned. “What is the not-so-nice way?”
“In my case?” She rubbed her three fingers over her tattoo again. “Being locked in an induced coma and then woken up and told I’d been kept alive only as a bribery tool against my mother.” She blinked a few times, revealing glistening drops along her lush black lashes. “The mother, mind you, who I thought had been dead for years.”
“Wh-What?” Shock turned Jayd’s rasp into a stammer. She and Maimanne had definitely had rough patches over the years, including most of the last ten days, but imagining that she had been lied to about the woman being alive at all…