Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,131

both died immediately, as Ronan and Lucy swung their swords in nearly identical arcs and separated the creatures’ heads from their bodies.

Ronan confronted me as I emerged from my alcove. “What part of do not use your magic did you not understand?” he demanded.

“The part where you gave me an order.” I knelt as Daisy joined us and checked her side. “You okay, Daisy-dog? Did that mean old troll hurt you?”

“I didn’t want you to waste your magic on this.” Ronan was still pissed. “The more you use, the faster you burn through your reserves of energy, and the more likely you are to draw attention to yourself. The lieutenant and I would have dealt with this.”

Lucy cleaned the blood off her sword and said nothing. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

Daisy seemed fine, so I got to my feet and offered him the leash. “No need to be condescending. I’m very aware of how magic works.”

With a thunderous frown, he took the leash.

“And I didn’t give you permission to invade my thoughts and talk to me in my head,” I added. “Don’t try to make me obey you. I’ve had enough of both of those things.”

“It was for your own good.”

My expression went flat. “I was held prisoner and told it was for my own good. I was tortured, enslaved, and forced to destroy property and kill people, and more than once they told me it was for my own good. Someone manipulated my thoughts and feelings for years because they wanted their own way and tried to tell me it was for my own good. So now the only person who gets to decide what’s for my own good is me, Ronan.”

He slid the loop at the end of Daisy’s leash around his arm and flipped up his hood, his eyes dark with anger and something else—an emotion I couldn’t quite read. “You were cruelly mistreated, but that doesn’t mean everyone who expresses concern for your well-being is doing so to exploit you.”

“You didn’t express concern for my well-being—you gave me an order and a push to obey you and shouted at me in my brain.” My stomach cramped. Blast it, I needed to eat again. “Did these scumbags come after you for the bounty?”

“Yes.”

“So you were recognized by someone. Word does travel fast here. More hunters are probably headed this way. We should get moving. Are we far from the Great Hall?”

His forehead creased. Either he didn’t like that I’d abruptly changed the subject, or the fact he’d been recognized displeased him. “The sisters are not at the Great Hall at present. We’ll find them at their tavern.”

“How do you know?” Lucy asked.

“Just a wild guess.” He turned on his heel and strode away, leaving the bodies of the bounty hunters on the street where they’d fallen.

Lucy and I flipped up our hoods and followed. She kept her sword in her hand. “That’s quite a wild guess,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. He ignored her.

“The Furies run a tavern?” I asked, catching up.

“Doing so suits them,” he said over his shoulder, breaking into a jog. “We have to move fast now. Time’s running out.”

I didn’t ask how he knew; it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. I just ran.

26

How far we ran was difficult to tell, since none of the streets of Edis went in a straight line for more than a hundred feet and my sense of time hadn’t worked right since we got here. We wove through endless winding streets and alleys, making a beeline for a mysterious tavern and its fallen angel owners.

We saw the Great Hall long before we reached it, towering over all of the buildings nearby. Though it resembled a medieval fortress more than any courthouse I’d ever seen, the building was unmistakably the heart of official power in the city. The towers soared well above the height of the city’s walls. Grim and uninviting, its imposing windowless facade loomed over the city. To reach the enormous arched entrance, visitors had to climb steep stairs worn by millennia of use.

“I can’t say I blame them for preferring a tavern,” Lucy muttered. Like Ronan, she was barely winded, despite our long run. “That place creeps me out.”

I was breathing too hard to reply. Note to self: do more cardio training when I get back, I thought.

Ronan led us past the Great Hall and through a narrow alley that opened into a busy side street. To avoid attracting attention