Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,142
my wrist, her nails biting into my flesh, drawing my gaze to her stricken face. I covered her hand with my free one. “I’m sure they’re only in town to stir up trouble, but we both know that their problems have already been taken care of.”
She nodded stiffly, forcing out a breath, but her grip didn’t immediately ease on my wrist. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to relax until she knew the Svartálfar had left the area or that the throne of the Summer Court was secure. With any luck, the queen and king were already working on that.
“Was he tracking the one who has the information?” Trixie inquired. I nodded.
“Reave?” Bronx’s deep voice swept through the room. He was frowning, a look of worry in his eyes.
I nodded. “He was using my brother as a delivery boy for the info, but I made a slight change of plans in hopes of protecting him. I’m going after Reave next.”
“What do you mean you’re going after him?” Trixie snapped. Using her grip on my wrist, she pulled me so that I was forced to turn and look at her. Fear clouded her lovely eyes and cut lines of worry around her mouth. “If you know where he’s at, can’t you send some message to the Towers telling them? Let them handle it.”
“You know that won’t work. Do you think the Towers would bother to sort out who knew what? No. They’d exterminate every dark elf in the area.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she said in a low, hard voice.
“You don’t mean that.” She looked away from me, but I put my hand against her cheek and turned her face back to me. “I won’t let them exterminate another group. And even if they did, it wouldn’t stop them from coming after me later. I need to deliver Reave to the Towers personally.”
“You’re going back?” She whispered her question so softly that I barely heard it, but there was no missing the horror in her expression. “You can’t go back. They’ll kill you. There has to be another way.”
“If I don’t go, they’ll kill me. They’re going to question Reave before he’s killed. My name and my brother’s are going to come up. I have to try to control the damage if I’m going to have any chance of saving either of our lives. I have to go,” I said, hating myself for the pain I was causing her.
Her voice drifted to me, weak and thready. “There has to be another way.” She sounded as if she were being haunted by visions of my dead body. Unfortunately, she had already seen that once. I’d prefer it if she’d never have to repeat that experience.
“There’s not,” I said firmly, then looked up at Bronx, who was watching with his usual unreadable, stoic expression. “If things go badly and I don’t come back right away, I’ve left a copy of my will in the back room. It can’t be executed until I’ve been missing for eighteen months, but it contains all the information and passwords you might need to keep the shop going. I’m leaving everything to you and Trixie.”
Pain exploded across my cheek, jerking my head around to look down at Trixie’s tear-streaked face. “How can you talk so calmly of dying? If you go after Reave, I’m not sticking around here, waiting to hear whether you’ve been killed or not. I can’t do it.”
The pain tearing through my heart was infinitely worse than the temporary pain in my cheek. But I pushed it back, keeping my tone hard and even. “That’s fine. You’ve got somewhere safe to go now.”
She gasped, taking an unsteady step away from me. “You’ve planned this all along. It’s the reason you’ve helped the elves.”
“When I started, it was about making sure you could stay here with me, but recently, yes, I needed somewhere you could hide safely if I failed.”
A bitter smile twisted on her mouth. “Well, you succeeded in that, because I’m not waiting here for news of your death. I can’t. Not again.” Trixie turned sharply on her heel and stalked out of the room, sliding past Bronx and into the back. I could hear her heels pounding on the floor until she reached the back room and slammed the door behind her. Duff stood and glared at me for a second before shape-shifting into a pixie so that he could easily dart off through the parlor after Trixie.