this area, and many like it, were blind spots within the Realm. Places elves couldn’t be bothered to have their people patrol.
Emery chewed his lip, his gaze lingering on the tall, thin creature perched on one of the benches. A yellow halo surrounded him.
An actual elf.
Here, in no man’s land.
And not just hanging out here, either. This elf had cared enough to fix the place up. That bespoke someone with power. With clout and the exacting eye that went with it.
Why the hell was a powerful elf stationed at this portal?
Emery shook his head and rolled through his options. No way could he attack an elf. They were intelligent and tenacious, and they looked after their own. If he took this sentry down, the elves’ retaliation would be swift and brutal. Given their money and influence, nothing was out of the scope of possibility. That would put everyone in danger, including Penny and their crazy friend Reagan, who would stupidly march in here and seek vengeance of their own.
No, he had to get to the Brink so he could use his phone. He had to put Devon and his crew on alert and hold off their crossing until he picked out a new spot. An empty one. He might have to get creative, because one thing was infinitely clear—someone had tipped off the elves.
Emery’s questions were: who and what specifically were the elves looking for? Was it Charity, or had poor timing thrown them into the middle of something larger?
Chapter Seven
Charity came to consciousness slowly and through a fog of pain. Her temples pounded in time to her heart and her whole body ached. She felt like a wet rag—one that had been trampled on, thrown in the garbage, then buried in a pile of refuse. She’d never had a magical hangover this severe.
Then again, she’d never been flooded with that much power.
Her stomach turned with guilt at the memory of Devon fighting against the gale to get to her. To protect her from herself.
That shouldn’t be his job. His job as alpha was to protect his pack against outside forces, not against her magic. She was a dangerous distraction.
A voice rose out of her fog of pain. “When you find your true home, you will know it. And with that home you must stay so that others of your kind will stay with you. The future of all the worlds depends on it.”
Karen the Seer had said that. She’d alluded to Charity being royalty among the warrior fae, and Devon being destined for greatness in the shifter world. Given that warrior fae lived in the Flush, a place supposedly ass-deep in the Realm, and shifters worked in the Brink, well…it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. The Seer had been not-so-gently reminding her that while she belonged in the Flush, Devon did not. End of story.
Not for Charity. She’d gotten up and walked away. The worlds could suck it. She’d stay with Devon.
Except now…it was painfully clear that Devon would be better off if he weren’t strapped down by a wobbly magical nutcase toting a whole lot of baggage. She hated to think that Karen was onto something, but…
Charity sighed. Now wasn’t the time to figure it out. The first step was figuring out where she was.
She pushed up to sitting against the ache in her joints and the throbbing of her head. A dingy sort of room crowded in around her. She lay on a bed with a mustard-yellow bedspread and sharp corners that advertised, correctly, how old and hard the mattress was. A dingy white sliding door had been shoved to one side of the empty closet, revealing an open safe at the bottom corner. The inlet to the bathroom ended in a slightly ajar door she couldn’t see past, and there were two sets of drapes for the small window on the other side—a heavy gray one to keep out the sun, and a faded and ripped yellow one to cheer up the room. Only one was working. The glowing red numbers on the nightstand clock read 8:43.
It was clearly a hotel room, and judging by the murmuring behind the slightly cracked open door in front of her, it was a suite.
She hastened off the bed despite her protesting body. A room this small in a suite this dingy was very cheap and probably filthy. She wondered if someone had checked for bedbugs.
Devon looked up as she opened the suite door, and a look