Page 70 of City of the Lost
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“Valance. I need Valance.”
“Wila, slow down. You need to slow down,” Gilbert instructed.
Anger bubbled up and exploded from my lips. “Why didn’t you help him instead of trying to stop me? We could have saved him. We could have ...” My lungs constricted, and I slumped onto the step, hand on the banister, pain in my heart. “She has him, she has him. Oh, God. You don’t understand.” Too much, it was too much.MyAzren. Elora had my Azren.
“He made me swear,” Gilbert said. “He made me swear that if they came for him, I was to protect you.”
My head jerked up. “He knew she’d come for him?”
“He suspected.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to hurt, to clear my mind. “Valance will know what to do.” I pulled myself up. “Help me get to my room. I need to summon him.”
Gilbert and Hound propelled me up the steps and onto the third floor. There was no time to dwell on the stabbing pain in my abdomen, no time to sit and breathe. The ring was in my bedside drawer. I slipped it on, pushing hard to get it onto my pinky, and then twisted it, biting back a yelp as it scraped against my skin—way too tight.
He’d be here. He’d be here in a moment.
Long seconds ticked by and nothing happened.
I tried again and again, but nothing.
“Wila ...” Gilbert patted my back.
I shrugged him off. “No. This has to work. It ...” The word was swallowed by a sob. “Fuck this. Fuck this shit.” I grabbed my phone and speed dialed Noir. It went straight to voicemail. “Argh!” My shoulders shook with frustrated sobs.
“Wila!” Taylem’s bellow carried up the stairs and then the thud of his boots followed as he took the stairs two at a time. He burst into my room, blinking at the overload of pink, and then zeroed in on me. “What the fuck happened?” He fell to his knees beside me. His large, warm hands wiped at the tears on my cheeks. “Wila, talk to me. Are you hurt?”
“They took him, Tay. Elora sent them to take him. They took Azren.”
Tay’s tawny gaze darkened. “Fuck! I knew I should have stuck around. He was worried they’d find a way to get into the city.”
“They had transponders.”
A storm cloud passed across Tay’s face. “They broke the Treaty.”
“But who the fuck is gonna believe us? Who is going to care?”
With the contract destroyed, Azren shouldn’t even have been here. I was planning on speaking to Loraine, offering to work for The Collective to get him an exemption allowing him to live here. We were going to find the rogues. We were going to make Elora pay for the lies, and now ... now he was gone. The tears were back, stinging my eyes, choking me as a tide of sorrow swelled in my chest, because she’d make him pay. She’d hurt him because she could.
My nails dug into the duvet, and then Tay made a strangled sound. He gently gripped my wrist and lifted it up. The duvet rose with it, attached to my hand by the talons that had punctured it.
I stared at them now—stupid fucking things. Where had they been when I needed them?
“Wila, what the fuck?” Tay asked.
A wave of nausea assaulted me as the adrenaline that had been coursing through me dissipated. I slipped to the floor, knees hitting the rug, and wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me back, stroking my hair, his chest rumbling with soothing sounds. We remained like that for long minutes and then slowly, carefully, he pulled away, pushing me back so he could look down into my face. His eyes were brimming with compassion, but his mouth was a harsh line.
“I want to help, but you need to tell me everything.” His head whipped up at the sound of more footsteps coming up the stairs.
Noir entered the room, bringing the scent of fresh rain with him. His golden hair was plastered to his scalp, his fancy clothes dripping wet.
“Wila ...”
The tight knot in my chest loosened a fraction.
I held out my hand to him. “We need to help him. We need to get Azren back.”
