Page 4 of Prince of Night and Storm
My fingers clench. My heart rate trips, then lunges into a gallop as every fear I've nursed for the last several years floods my mind.
I push to my feet, and run.
Something is awake.
I think…it was triggered by my prayer.
Faronne’s cemetery is in the heart of our District, and it's a swift jog through the misty night to the rendezvous point, my feet silent on cobblestone streets. No one's out. Wooden shutters are tightly latched on the stone rowhouses, which tells me I hallucinated nothing.
“Aerinne!”
Juliette's hawk-eyed gaze zeros in on me when I arrive at the basement op room of a small safehouse where an eight-person unit gathers for tonight's strike.
Numair and Juliette, Lela and Murungaru among them, all Knights of my House. Faronne’s Commander should arrive soon along with his mate.
Juliette wears black molded leather armor, blade-resistant pants, and a long-sleeved shirt like the rest of us, blades at her back and side, her honey-blonde braid draped over her shoulder.
She strides forward with her usual edgy energy and grabs my bicep. “Did you feel the power concussion?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Every Fae with any power will have felt it.
Numair approaches more slowly. A familiar pang assaults me. There'd been a third once, but she languishes in the palace dungeons.
“I felt it,” I say.
“So did I,” Murungaru says, dark eyes serious as the team gathers around. My father's nephew, despite his witch blood he shouldn't have noticed the magical signature of a psychic Fae attack.
Now I understand the grim faces. Ahumanfelt the silent blast. If I had doubts before, I have none now. “Have any injuries been reported?”
Juliette shakes her head.
I turn east in the direction of the palace. “It’s him.”
Fae don't have true deities. We have our Ancients, so old and powerful that to retain shreds of sanity they mentally retreat from life, maintaining brain activity by drifting on several planes of consciousness.
We also have the Old Ones.
Édouard, Commander of House Faronne, enters the room, his mate Tereille at his side. Tereille greets each person, his easy smile and affectionate manner decreasing the tension several notches.
Ash-blond hair falls loosely over Édouard's shoulders, but the romantic waves do nothing to soften the harsh angles of his face and his perpetual scowl, or the agate hardness of his black eyes.
Even as an older cousin, he technically doesn't outrank my status as presumptive Heir.
“Why now?” Lela is asking.
“Because he's finally aware of what Aerinne did,” Édouard says.
Several piercing gazes turn on me.
Juliette explodes first. “What did you say?”
Annoyance edges Édouard's flinty gaze as he stares atJuliette. “You heard me. But since I doubt your ability to comprehend simple sentence structure, I'm happy to repeat myself if you ask nicely. I’ll wait.”
I curl my hand into a fist but remain silent. I can't fight with my own Commander and expect cohesion in the ranks.
Juliette bares her teeth. “Maybe he's waking because you're an ass, and your attitude stinks all the way to the palace right up into his nostrils.”
“Or I'm right, and her childish temper put our entire House in jeopardy. What was the one rule? Don't wake the fucking Prince. What did she do? The one action, that, above all others, was guaranteed to wake the fucking Prince.”
