head, Dugan with his blade pressed against Falin’s throat. A twitch from either fae would have been deadly.
“Stop, both of you,” I yelled as I tried to detangle myself from the fallen chair.
They didn’t so much as glance in my direction. Of course, I hadn’t deactivated my spell, so they couldn’t actually hear me. Nor could I hear anything they were saying to each other. That was bad.
I pulled the magic out of my charm, canceling it.
“Drop the sword,” Falin said, keeping his gun trained right between Dugan’s eyes. It didn’t matter how fast the prince might be; at that distance, Falin couldn’t have missed.
“No,” was the shadow fae’s only response. If Falin twitched, Dugan would have sliced through his throat.
“Stop,” I yelled again, finally extracting myself from the chair.
I might as well have left my privacy spell in place for all the attention they paid me.
I didn’t have much in the way of offensive or defensive magic—I possibly could have pulled their weapons through planes of existence and made them inoperable, but I couldn’t have done it quickly. So I went for showy shock value instead.
Dropping my shields, I opened myself to the land of the dead. Every inanimate thing around me decayed—at least in my vision. I wasn’t merging planes, only looking at them, so that was something only I could see. The frigid wind that whipped out from the land of the dead was real enough, though. It tore across the room, causing the small stack of papers on my desk to shuffle across the surface. My curls whipped around my face, stinging my suddenly icy cheeks. No one I’ve met enjoys the clammy touch of the grave. Fae, being long-lived enough to be nigh-immortal, tended to react to the wind extra poorly. It hit the two men at the same time. Both were too well trained to jump, but I saw the tension tighten in Dugan’s back and Falin’s eyes narrow. Both broke their staring match of death to glance at me.
At the edge of my vision, I saw something dark skitter in the corner of the room. Something not in the mortal realm, but one of the others I could touch. I slammed my shields closed again—after all I wasn’t protected by a circle, and besides, the shock value I’d been going for had worked. Now to use the momentary distraction.
“Back off, both of you. No one is killing anyone in my office. Ms. B would have a fit over the mess.”
Dugan blinked at me. Falin almost smiled.
“Now what the hell is going on?” I asked, leaning down to straighten the toppled chair.
“Bodies were found in the frozen halls,” Falin said. He may have glanced at me, but he hadn’t lowered his weapon.
Neither had Dugan.
“And one of them is from the shadow court,” I said, already knowing the answer.
Falin gave the tightest nod. “Pretty convenient timing for the prince to show up here, in the middle of winter territory, with no one sure how he crossed over from Faerie.”
“Believe it or not, I’m actually here trying to prevent war. Not make it,” Dugan said, his sword pressed hard enough against Falin’s throat that the smallest trail of blood had crept down to the collar of his white shirt.
I frowned. “Threatening my friends with decapitation is not a good way to prevent war. Drop the sword.”
“And be dragged before the Winter Queen by this fledgling knight? No.”
They stared at each other. I wanted to scream at both of them. Instead I took a deep breath and let it out before saying in as calm a tone as I could force, “Prince Dugan, to your knowledge, did the fae found in winter’s territory have orders to be there given by you or the king?”
“No.”
“Falin, to your knowledge, did the Winter Queen give orders to have the shadow fae found in her halls brought there and killed?” I didn’t actually know the answer to this one, so it was a gamble, but my gut said that even if she had, he wouldn’t have that information.
He answered without hesitation, though he ground out the word between clenched teeth. “No.”
“So you are trying to kill each other because . . . ?”
“The shadow court has been deemed a potential threat and probable enemy. The prince’s conspicuously convenient timing has made him a suspect, so open roads no longer protects him.”
Great. “Safe passage can be terminated that quickly? He doesn’t even get a chance to get out of a now-hostile territory?”
“Not