Page 70 of Villains and Vengeance
‘No,’ Maddox growls and the full force of his power makes Jayce drop to his knees. ‘Youcan’t do this. With her? Even if there was a contract, this is so far past … I don’t care if she’s the only female in here. I wouldn’t care if she were the last femaleanywhere! What would Krase say about this?’
‘He’d understand,’ he rasps. ‘She’s—’
Whatever Jayce was going to say is lost as he groans in pain.
‘He would never condone this. Never! Not with her. Your mind isn’t your own. That much is clear.’ Maddox turns his attention to Axel. ‘And you? I can understand Jayce, butyou?’
‘Boss, you don’t underst—’
‘We’ll talk about it in the Cluster,’ Maddox interrupts, raising his hand to stay Axel’s excuses and turning back to Jules. ‘Cover yourself!’ he hisses.
Jules raises her chin defiantly. ‘Of course,’ she says sweetly. ‘Just let me go back and grab my pants. I’ll come straight back. I promise.’
I’m pretty sure Jayce stifles a laugh through his Maddox-induced agony, but he’s still on the ground so I can’t be sure.
‘Get up,’ Maddox barks at him.
Jayce rises to his feet. His eyes move over Jules. He looks almostconcerned. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he says.
She tosses her head and shrugs.
‘I know,’ she says with that confidence that I’d love to beat out of her at this point.
But Jayce frowns. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he says again with more gravitas, like he didn’t just hear her flippant reply.
‘Come on. We’re as exposed out here as she is!’
Maddox nods. ‘You can keep anyone from seeing her, smelling her?’
‘Hell yeah I can!’ I say with a grin, gripping Jules’ arm tighter than I need to and making it happen. The conjure I put around her is so powerful that it even ensures thatwecan’t smell her. We’ll still be able to see her, of course, but no one else here will unless I want them to.
It’s so easy, so simple. I think back to the hours I spent as a child in that shack in the middle of nowheresville Ireland under my grandmother’s tutelage, trying to do these simple conjures and getting absolutely nowhere while she rapped at me with a stick for not focusing. What would Gigi say if she saw me now?
Maddox and Axel start walking down the corridor, Axel tearing at his brown hair, whispering frantically to our leader who’s ignoring him completely. I don’t bother trying to listen either as I fall into step behind them with Jules in front of me, Jayce walking next to her.
I notice with disgust that he’s holding her hand tightly. Daemon sees it too and he yanks Jayce back to walk next to him away from her like a chaperone at a middle school dance. What has she done to them, I wonder as I regard her out of the corner of my eye. For a second I consider that she might have fae blood in her and she’s compelling them somehow. But she definitely doesn’t; I’d have smelt it before now if she did.
Our short walk back to our rooms is uneventful. We see a few other inmates, but no one even gives us a second look thanks to me. We get inside and Daemon closes the curtain. He’s been silent this entire time, but as soon as he turns around, he’s got Jules by the throat and up against the nearest wall.
She’s clawing at his hands, her eyes bulging as he chokes her. Jayce, Axel, and even Maddox are all over him, trying to pull him away from the tiny human, but I just laugh a little. I even give him a few extra seconds of fun before I make him let go.
Jules falls to the ground, choking, clutching her neck and gasping.
Axel has her in his arms like a white knight a second later and the sight fucking sickens me. Axel and I have always been pretty close and she’s clearly done a number on him and Jayce both. The sooner this bitch is in our rearview the better.
Maddox orders Axel to take her into his room, which only has one way out unlike the previous chamber we had her in the last time we captured her that has a ton of holes in the ceiling. We’ll need to be more careful of those now; it looks to me like her arrow wound is healing well by the way she’s moving around. It wouldn’t be too far outside the realms of possibility for her to make it up into the shafts above and disappear before we can stop her.
But Axel hesitates at Maddox’s command and his eyes flick to the exit. Maddox notices his reluctance to follow his directive as well and we share a quick look. Whatever hold Jules has on them is strong, strong enough to override their loyalty to the clan.
This is worse than I thought.
Luckily, Axel thinks better of whatever hairbrained plan he was concocting on the fly and he takes the still-wheezing Jules into Maddox’s room as he’s been told.
Jayce follows them and I let Daemon free from where he’s currently frozen in the middle of the room.
He whirls around, looking pretty fucking angry with me. ‘Fuck you, you fae asshole!’ he says through clenched teeth so no one outside hears.
Clan arguments aren’t for anyone else’s ears. Especially not in the Mountain. To everyone out there, we’re a united front. But in here Daemon would love to beat the shit out of me for what I just did to him.
