Defying the Lycan King

They broke apart slowly, and even then Derek didn’t let go of her face.

His eyes were already moving, dropping from her mouth to her throat to her arms, taking in every inch of her. He turned her wrist over. Found the burns the shadow net had left across her skin and his jaw tightened.

"They hurt you."

"That’s nothing." Kira caught his hand before he could go further. "Derek, look at me. That’s nothing."

He wasn’t listening. His palm settled flat against her stomach, and she felt him go completely still.

"They’re fine," she said quietly.

A sigh went out of him then, and for a second he closed his eyes and simply breathed.

He wanted to pull her into his chest and stay there. He wanted the world to hold still for thirty seconds so he could feel her actually breathing against him, feel her heart going, prove to himself she wasn’t something he’d conjured up out of three days without sleep. He wanted it badly enough that it took real effort not to.

But there was a war going on around them, and the corridor was full of bodies, and none of them had time.

The anger he had carried for days — the fury at her recklessness, the note, the silence — had burned away the moment he saw her.

That didn’t mean he was letting off. He fully intended to have that conversation. What she had done was still reckless, even if it might some day, in history be seen as brave, it had still been the single most careless thing anybody in his life had ever done to him.

But not now. Later, when everything was safe and he could shout at her properly.

"We’re not finished discussing this," he said finally.

"I assumed not."

"Okay, love birds, can someone get me out of these chains?"

They both turned to Nana. Derek crossed the corridor in three strides and dropped to his knees in front of her.

"Nana."

"Well, you took your time."

He didn’t answer. He got both hands round the shackles and pulled, and they didn’t so much as flex. He tried again, harder, and Kira saw his shoulders lock with the effort.

"Move," Kira said gently, kneeling beside him.

She laid two fingers against the band on Nana’s left wrist. The light came up under her skin, faint and gold, and the shackle hissed like water hitting a hot pan and came apart into nothing.

The second one followed.

Nana rubbed at her wrists, and Kira saw the raw rings the chains had burned into them.

"Oh, don’t look at me like that," Nana said, catching her expression. "I’m seventy-four. Everything’s sore. This is simply sore in a more interesting location than usual."

Derek helped her sit forward, and she gripped his forearm hard.

"Can you stand?"

"I imagine so. I’d rather not do it alone."

They got her up between them, one on each side, and she leaned her weight into her grandson and let out a slow breath.

"I’m sorry," Kira said. "For that dining hall. For every word of it."

"Don’t be daft. You bought me three days." Nana’s hand came up to Kira’s cheek. "And I called you a half-blood nobody in front of them, so I’d say we’re square."

Kira let out a wet laugh.

"There’s something you should know," Nana went on. "They talk in front of me like I’m a coat stand. There’s a room below the throne hall Lydia goes into alone. Shelves full of jars. Whatever’s in there matters to her far more than I do."

Kira’s eyes met Derek’s.

"That’s where the essence is."

Derek was already steering Nana towards the storeroom door twenty feet back, stone on three sides, one way in. "Stay here. Bolt it. Connor’s coming down this way."

They went out to the corridor and Kira’s eyes moved past Derek’s shoulder, sweeping the ruined corridor.

The dust was still settling. Umbra bodies lay where they’d dropped, now slowly returning to their human form.

But there was a crack in the wall at the far end where Lydia had hit it, and no Lydia.

Kira’s eyes narrowed. "Where is she?"

Derek turned. "Who?"

"Lydia." She was already moving down the corridor, scanning the rubble, checking behind the fallen stone. "I put her through that wall. I felt her hit it." She spun round. "She is supposed to be unconscious."

***

Two floors above, in a long room lined with jars, Rolf and Jake circled each other. Rolf’s chest heaved, but a hard smile pulled at his mouth. He was winning.

He hadn’t expected to be. That was the thing that kept nagging at him even as his fist connected again and sent Jake staggering back into a shelf, glass smashing and dark liquid pouring out across the floor.

He’d walked into this fight expecting to die. He’d made his peace with it, because he’d decided that a quick death was preferable to spending the rest of his life as the joke of this stronghold, the man they’d all played like a fiddle while he strutted about calling himself a king.

But the Shadow King was on the back foot. The Shadow King was bleeding.

Is it even you? Rolf thought, driving his shoulder into Jake’s chest and putting him through another shelf. Are you the thing itself, or just the jar it’s sitting in?

Because that made sense, didn’t it? Lydia had said the essence needed a vessel. She’d said it couldn’t hold together long without one. Maybe that was the whole trick.

Maybe what was standing in front of him wasn’t a god at all, just a bag of skin with something crammed inside it, and a bag of skin could be torn.

And if it could be torn, it could be taken.

Jake came up off the floor with his eyes burning red, and Rolf met him head on.

They went at each other properly then, no technique left in either of them, just weight and fury and the sound of glass breaking underfoot.

Jake got a hand round his throat and Rolf broke the wrist. Jake caught him across the face with something that felt like a cast iron pan and Rolf spat a tooth onto the floor and came back for more.

He got his opening ten seconds later.

Jake’s foot slipped in the spreading pool of black liquid, only a fraction, only for an instant, and Rolf brought everything he had left down across the side of his head.

Jake crashed to the floor and did not rise.

Rolf stood over him, chest heaving, blood running freely from his nose and his mouth and a cut above his eye, and waited for him to get up.

When he didn’t, Rolf turned, walked out of the room, dragged the heavy door shut behind him and threw the bolt across.

He stood in the corridor for a moment listening to nothing at all, and then he began to laugh, wet and ragged, one hand braced against the wall.

He’d trapped the so-called Shadow King in a cupboard. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and started walking.

He was done with all of them. Lydia, who’d looked him in the eye every day for years while she used him. Jake, who’d sat at his right hand and betrayed him. The council. The whole rotten lot of them, laughing behind their hands at the great Alpha Thornclaw.

And the girl. Above everything, the girl.

Lydia had said it herself, hadn’t she, lying in that bed with her sheets pulled round her.

If she’s killed, her spirit could still do the work. It could, if it were coaxed.

Fine. He’d coax it.

Rolf picked a sword off a wall as he passed, tested the weight of it, and went looking for Kira.

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