Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,149

. with him.”

The warlock’s eyes darted to Reave, who was starting to sweat despite the chill in the air. “He’s the one?”

“Yeah.”

For a second, rage filled Gideon’s cold, gray eyes but the rest of his face was like stone. He turned those hard eyes on me. “Are you sure?”

He wasn’t asking if I was sure Reave was the culprit. He was wondering about my decision to go before the council. I shrugged. “We both know I don’t have a choice.”

“Do you have your wand on you?”

A sigh escaped me as I looked over my shoulder at the dark woods. I was half tempted to call the broken pieces to me, but there was no point. The magic from the wand had already discharged back into my body. The only thing resting on the forest floor was a pair of broken sticks. “No. No wand.”

“Good.” Gideon reached over and placed a hand on my shoulder, preparing to teleport both me and Reave to whichever Tower was going to hold the meeting. By now, the information would have come back to Gideon. I could have done it myself, but I was afraid that if I announced that I was coming to the Towers, they’d ambush me and kill me on sight.

“Wait!” I shouted, and stepped away from Gideon while staring up at where the king was watching us. “I’m taking Reave and I will be sure the Towers know he acted alone, but . . .” I frowned, feeling helpless. “Well, it’s the Towers we’re talking about. If I were you, I’d move my people tonight.”

The king nodded, then stepped away from the edge of the cliff and disappeared into the shadows of the cave. He would move his people, disappearing deep into the forestlands of the surrounding area to protect them from any potential retaliation from the Towers. I was praying the council would be content with Reave’s life. And potentially mine.

I walked back over to Gideon and nodded. The warlock placed a firm hand on my shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze before the world went dark as we crossed a vast distance in a heartbeat. I said a silent prayer to Lady Luck that she might see me through this nightmare. I was doing the one thing that I swore I would never do. I was willingly walking back into the lion’s den after I’d barely escaped with my life the first time. Letting the Svartálfar kill me was starting to sound pretty damn good right about now.

29

THE WIND WAS bitter cold as it swept across the black field, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if snowflakes started drifting down from the sky. Based on the fact that it was still night and fucking cold, I knew we were standing outside the upstate New York Tower. The gleaming white monolith rose up toward the heavens. It should have looked like a beacon of hope to the world, but the world couldn’t see this structure because of the thick web of protective spells that stretched around the area. Of course, if the world could see the Tower, they would have viewed it as a giant bony middle finger. They would have been right.

Gideon pointed his wand, his face expressionless as he motioned for me to lead the way through the wood-and-iron-banded door in front of me. A giant could have walked through the massive opening without needing to duck his head down. I never understood why they had made it so big since everyone who entered walked on two human feet. I guess it was made to intimidate, but sadly warlocks and witches didn’t intimidate easily.

This was my first visit to the New York Tower, but all the Towers looked the same. The exterior was a mix of white marble and pale granite, while the interior halls were covered in red-veined black marble. The individual rooms were customized to the tastes of the inhabiting witch or warlock, ranging from the spartan to the extravagant.

It was after midnight and the halls of the Tower were nearly silent, but then the Towers were rarely ever noisy, as if idle conversation had been forbidden by the council. A few people paused as they passed through the halls to stop and stare. Lips curled with disgust at the sight of a beaten and bleeding dark elf, but eyes narrowed speculatively when they spotted me. I doubted anyone would recognize me. Oh, all the people of the Towers knew my name, but few had ever