Invision - Sherrilyn Kenyon Page 0,71
let the very one who hurt you the most, who cut you deeper than anyone ever had, back into your life to do it again.
That blind, stupid trust was what he hated most.
For his sons, alone, he was willing to be the greatest fool ever spawned.
Even when they hated him.
I am pathetic slug.
Sighing, he headed for the cell most likely to contain Noir’s latest catch.
Kaziel veered off unexpectedly.
“What are you doing?” Jaden asked between clenched teeth.
He shot fire from his snout as he lifted it to sniff at the air.
Bemused, Jaden watched as the wolf turned around to sniff at several different corridors. “Kaziel?”
Aeron isn’t here alone.
Those whispered words in his head gave him pause. “What do you mean? Are you talking about Zavid or Menyara?”
He shook his head.
Too late, Jaden realized who else was here …
Gwrach y Rhibyn—the hag of the robin. Better known as Noir’s alarm system. His number-one tattletale who lived to report everything to the old bastard.
Crap!
Tall and thin, she was a ghostlike wraith who functioned like an Irish bean-sidhe. Dressed in black rags, she had long, stringy red hair and dark eyes and lips. As with Kaziel, she had a tattoo in the center of her forehead, only hers was more of a dark, elongated star than the open sun symbol that marked his brow.
And just as she opened her mouth to let fly her banshee scream, Kaziel launched himself at her, transforming from wolf to man. He wrapped his arms around her and slapped his hand over her mouth to keep her from making that horrendous sound she was known for.
“Shh.” He breathed calmly in her ear to hold her tight against his chest. “You let fly yours, love. I’ll let fly mine and we’ll both have bleeding ears. And I know you don’t be wanting any of that, now do you?”
“Kaziel?” she whispered in her deep husky voice.
“Aye.”
“What the bloody cythral are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to fetch Aeron. You’re not going to be getting in me way now are you, boyo? I’d hate to be hurting you after what all we’ve been through together, like. But I won’t be letting sentimentals stop me from protecting me penlord. You get me way, like, and I will be hurting you. Friendship be damned.”
“Aeron here? Are you moithered or drunk?”
“Neither.”
Jaden was having the hardest time following this bizarre exchange. Never mind the fact that their Welsh accents were thick, and they were technically speaking English, which up until now he would have sworn he was fluent in.
But …
“You two know each other?”
And that got Rhibyn’s attention on him, which turned out to be a bad, bad thing as she started for him like Cujo after fresh meat.
Kaziel picked her up and swung her about. “None of that. He be friendly, like.”
“Now you’re all coggy-headed, for sure! You’re as addled as me da, after Cordelia’s feast! Now put me down, you brute, or I’ll take from your hide and be making meself new white, furry boots.”
“Nae, I won’t having none of it, now. Stop your fussing, Vawn! I mean it!”
Rhibyn bared her jagged gray, bony fangs.
“Really?” Kaziel laughed in a mocking tone. “You think to be scaring me with that patheticness o’yours? What? You going to wash your clothes at the creek, now, and cry ’bout it, too?”
“You’re such a bleeding arse!”
“I come by it honestly, I do.”
Rhibyn pointed at Jaden. “He’ll be the one what turns you in. Mark me words on that. He’s a low-lying, worthless piece-o-work what can’t be trusted no further than what you can toss him, and you can’t even pick his giant arse up.”
“Be that as it may, I was sent here to protect him, and you know I will.”
“Och, Duw! You were ever half-soaked, boyo! From your first breath to your last. Never be changing your ways.”
“Most likely not. Now will you be helping or are we to keep talking?”
She spoke in fast, furious, demonic Welsh that questioned Jaden’s parentage, as well as Kaziel’s, and all his sense, both common and otherwise.
Finally, Rhibyn calmed. “Of course, I’ll be helping you. What kind of monster do you be thinking I am? But swear you’ll be getting me out of here, too.”
Kaziel scowled. “How is it you’re here, even?”
“Was captured and traded.”
Tilting his head, Kaziel looked at Jaden. “Can I be taking him from here? Would that be allowed?”
“Why do you keep calling her a him?”
He looked at Jaden as if he were the daft one. “What are you? Blind? Rhibyn’s