Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,142

Fintan for who he was, for his humor and his wit, for his bravery and his audacity. The fact that he might be a prince never factored into anything; although Rafe’s poetry had certainly endeared me to him that very first night, and I craved his depth ever since.

Gods help me. This was it. The great stone building swam the longer I stared at it, tears blurring everything, making it so much worse. I’d never see them again. Never touch them, laugh with them, play cards late into the evening and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist—

Why are you accepting this? I faced forward with a frown, that little whisper at the back of my mind sounding more like me than I had felt in months. She was still in there, the confident business witch who had built Café Crowley from the ground up, who had been profitable for years, who loved her staff and spent most of her days smiling. A lonely witch, sure, but that Katja had been braver than the one sitting in the car tonight.

And it wasn’t magic that made her—me—brave. It was gumption and guts. It was taking a risk on a business that could have bankrupted me. It was surviving alone in Seattle, just me and Tully, after the only other member of the Fox coven, the last piece of my heart, was torn away and burned to cinders, Dad’s ashes scattered around the roots of a newly potted fern that thrived on my apartment balcony.

I… I could be her again.

Gumption and guts.

Risk.

I had so much to lose now, a found family stuck inside those stone walls, precarious, trapped under Lloyd Guthrie’s thumb—same as the Fox coven.

No more.

Be brave, kitten. I’d stopped hearing my dad’s voice inside Xargi, but I swore I heard him now, his murmur tickling my ears.

Maybe his spirit had finally come back from the beyond, if only to inspire me to fight, not flee.

And maybe it was just me missing him—missing the woman I had become after his death.

No more letting others decide my destiny.

My fate was my own. Not Elijah’s or Fintan’s or Rafe’s—and it sure as hell didn’t belong to Lloyd Guthrie.

This was my story—and no one was coming to save me.

Time to step up and be the heroine, for my sake, for Tully’s, and for the men I loved.

Even if, in the end, I might not survive it… at least I’d go down swinging.

Refusing to sink into a mental risk-analysis spreadsheet—because that guardhouse was creeping closer and closer with every cycle of the spinning tires below—I hugged Tully tight. Those huge blue eyes blinked at me, bright and annoyed, and I stared into them, hoping he could sense my intention through our bond. His tail stopped swishing. His kneading paws stilled. A flick of my eyebrow had him purring in consent—but that stopped when I glanced pointedly at Lloyd.

We need him, buddy.

Two slashes of his tail, back and forth, to express his discontent.

Then a slow blink, just for me, followed by a flood of warmth I seldom ever felt. After all, Tully hadn’t ever needed to protect me so overtly—not until a bunch of bounty hunters waltzed into my café and shipped me off to Siberia so I could become the plaything of a madman. His reach engulfed me, and as soon as it touched Lloyd, the warlock stuttered, no doubt sensing the shift in the air, the swell of familiar magic. Brows furrowed, his head snapped in my direction, and, grinning, I met his eyes unflinchingly.

Just as he opened his mouth—I let go.

Every ounce of pent-up magic exploded out of me, blowing a hole in the roof, shattering windows, ripping the limo apart from the inside. Red and blue and purple blasts of light melded together, not a single spell uttered, just wild, unfettered magic pulsing out of my hands. Gravel filled the air. The front of the limo exploded, engine overheated and overrun by raw, untapped power. The explosion ripped us from the back seat, flung us through the air, and we landed hard, even inside Tully’s protective bubble, some fifty feet from the totaled vehicle.

With Tully still tucked into my chest, my back took the brunt of the fall. Skidding through rough pebbles and dusty dirt, I grimaced at the pain—which my familiar saw to in an instant, bubble deflating, his focus shifted to my well-being.

And then I felt like I was floating, a strange buoyancy washing over me—yet my feet remained