Anelisse and Gandriel had searched all the possible meeting spots for Danna and the others, confused and concerned that they hadn't found anyone anywhere.
The longer they lingered the more Anelisse was starting to think that Avi's hunch had been correct.
But had they really managed to rout out all of them?
She sincerely hoped they'd had enough warning to merely make themselves scarce, likely heading for Portmouth to rendezvous with the ships.
Well all of them except Isabelle, who couldn't leave with her indentured status with the brothel…
Anelisse took a long sip from the glass of wine Gandriel had passed her, said male still chatting up a couple old acquaintances to see if they had any ideas where their missing spies may have gone.
She sat in silence while he spoke, barely hearing his words, her mind trickling back the conversation they'd shared quietly on the streets outside of the inn.
He'd promised to protect her sister, always, had promised to keep her safe when she no longer could.
And from Gandriel, from those full lips that spilled nothing but kindness, from that heart whose softness was nearly fabled . . . she knew he spoke the truth.
He would never let an ounce of harm come to the person she loved the most.
It had meant everything to her.
She took another long sip from her wine, feeling the reverberations of his voice echoing from where she sat pressed against him, his bulk and warmth a comfort. But also a damning distraction.
Her core heated, the sensation amplified by the wine trickling into her stomach. He'd certainly be getting a reward that evening when they got back to the ship.
Not that she was going to mention it would be as much for her as it would be for him.
"I understand, thank you both." Gandriel shook the males hands and bid them farewell, something like exhausting trickling over his features.
"Nothing?" she questioned, watching as the males sauntered out the door.
"Were you not listening?"
She smiled sheepishly at him.
"Maybe you shouldn't be drinking on the job." He let out a low chuckle. "We should head to the rendezvous point to meet Celeste, hopefully she's gotten some information from Isabelle."
"You're one to talk," Anelisse nodded to the nearly empty tankard in front of him, noting the sweet smell of mead. "But yes, we should go, and soon."
Gandriel lifted his tankard to his lips to finish his drink when the door of the Heron tore open, a dreadful heaviness settling in the air as Celeste stalked in, flanked by a quiet and pale Nima.
Anelisse rose from her seat at the same time as Gandriel.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
The din of chattering stopped, all eyes turning toward her hooded sister.
"It would be in all of your interests to vacate the premises now," Celeste's voice had dropped into a low guttered hiss, her eyes burning like coals beneath her mask. "I will not ask twice."
Patrons shared concerned looks before immediately rising and rushing out, mugs of beer and half eaten plates of food abandoned. They all skirted past Celeste, looking as though she might very well kill them all, and for all they knew she was likely to.
Only one person remained, a broad-faced demi-fae with a nose piercing, his auburn hair slicked back from his face and a nasty snarl forming on his features. Jasper, the Heron's owner.
They'd had a few run-ins with the male in the past, due to his lack of fondness for either resistance or slaving forces frequenting his establishment.
Probably because "frequenting" generally meant "breaking".
Anelisse wasn't certain he'd ever forgive her sister entirely for the bump that sat on the bridge of his nose, courtesy of a discussion they'd shared one night that had ended in Celeste throwing him out into the alley.
"What in the hell do you think you're doing, Lily?" he snapped at her from behind the bar, slamming down the glass he'd been cleaning. "The lost revenue from this is coming out of your hide."
Celeste didn't say a word as she stalked to the bar and simply reached a hand over it before lifting the male up and over it and tossing him across the length of the room, his body slamming painfully into one of the tables, crumpling it beneath his weight.
She slowly stalked to him, her knives flashing in the low lantern light as she released them from their sheaths.
Anelisse and Gandriel had barely made it to Celeste's side before she'd once again lifted Jasper and slammed him into the wall, blood trickling from where his head crashed against the wood.
"Where the hell are they, Jasper?" Celeste's nails dug into the male's neck, his face turning blue as she cut off his air supply. "You tell me or you die."
No room for argument, not an ounce of leeway.
A pulsing energy crackled through the room, shadows beginning to accumulate around its edges.
"Celeste, what is going on?" Gandriel questioned, eyes roving between her and the male she had pinned against the wall, looking torn between pulling her off the inkeep and leaving her to her devices. "Why are you trying to strangle Jasper? Not that he doesn't deserve it, but-"
"Isabelle is dead."
Anelisse's jaw went slack as horror shattered in mind, the thought of her lovely blue-eyed friend who had so resembled her sister lingering.
No.
They'd been too late, unable to save her-
Celeste tightened her grip, pressing the male harder into the wood, blood now beginning to drip down the wall behind him. "They're all dead, all of my informants. Sliced to pieces and burned in Isabelle's chambers. And you," she snarled at Jasper, "know exactly where they went. So," she drew the knife across his cheek, a shallow cut but enough to send panic into his eyes, before she released him and let him plummet to the floor. "Talk."
"Bitch," he hissed as he gasped for air, coughs wracking his body as he tried to roll away from her. "I will call the authorities on you—"
Celeste stomped her foot down onto his hand, bones crunching beneath it as he howled in pain.
Gandriel protectively inched closer to Anelisse, tears beginning to trickle down his cheeks, no doubt for his lost friend.
"I found your seal inside the room, a promissory note for the safe passage of four males in exchange for a thousand gold pieces." She kicked Jasper back, her knife flashing as she pressed it flush against his chest. "Four males who were ordered to kill my friend. I'm sure the authorities would love to know you're working in tandem with the slavers."
All of them gone, and what Celeste must have seen in Isabelle's room . . .
Anelisse pressed a hand over her wobbling mouth.
"I didn't know! I swear it!" Tears were streaming down Jasper's face as he sobbed to Celeste, a wet spot forming on his pants, showing his cowardice like a brand. "All they asked for was subtlety and safe passage! How was I to know they were planning to kill that whore—"
Celeste smashed his other hand, another piercing scream echoing.
"She was my friend," she hissed, digging the tip of her knife into Jasper's chest, a small dribble of blood welling up, "and you're the reason she's dead. Either speak up or let me be done with this." She pressed harder onto the blade, driving it down.
Jasper squealed his objections. "Wait! Wait! I'll tell you everything, anything you want to know, please just don't kill me."
"Then speak."
"Ce-Lily, Lily, Lily," Gandriel chanted as he chased after his captain, her footsteps easily outpacing Nima and Anelisse as she stomped away from where they'd winnowed to in Portsmouth, toward the warehouse on the docks that Jasper had marked on the map, his mind still reeling from the news of Isabelle's death. His heart had torn down its seams at the loss of the beautiful woman who'd always indulged his nonsense. They'd need to set up a memorial for her, find a way to give her a proper burial and not some mass grave nonsense because she was deemed a lesser citizen . . .
"Do you really think we should just burst in there, knives brandished, without a plan?" Or without backup?
What if Jasper had been lying? Had sent them straight into a trap that would not only have resulted in Isabelle's and their spies' deaths but their own as well?
The sight of Celeste viciously tearing out the tavern owner's throat was still bright in his mind, the emptiness that had entered her gaze as she'd done it.
Not that he wasn't furious, wasn't absolutely saturated with rage. But to foolishly burst in without any information, with only a handful of knives and their wit . . .
By the Mother, he was the only one making sense this time. The world had gone completely mad.
"Lily, for the love of all things good, listen to me!"
She said nothing, her eyes still fixed forward, a muscle feathering in her jaw. She was out for blood, dropped into a furious haze that even Anelisse hadn't been able to break though. Not that she'd really tried.
Celeste was going to kill every last one of them.
He was starting to see where her Night Court heritage came in.
They'd hit the docks by the time he finally caught up to her, her feet thudding across the swollen wood to the old, dilapidated warehouse full of fishing line and the supposed location of the bastards who had cut Isabelle down.
Seeing he would not be able to speak reason into her, he turned back to Anelisse and Nima, both out of breath as they raced to close the distance between them. "Stay here," he hissed, nodding at a stack of old barrels nearby. "Go hide over there. I'll come find you when we get this solved." If we don't walk straight into a trap and die first, he thought a bit sourly.
Anelisse opened her mouth to bark a protest but was interrupted by the sound of a door crashing and the surprised cries of unsuspecting males.
Celeste had already reached them.
Gandriel hoped there were indeed only four.
Honing in on his power he folded himself into nothingness, aiming directly for the ramshackle building. Dancing through space, he quickly reappeared just in time for blood to splatter him across the face as Celeste tore the throat out of one of the males, two others prone on the floor in still-pooling puddles of blood as another moaned in pain against the wall, his shoulder at an odd angle.
Celeste dropped the dead slaver to the floor with a sickening thud, blood smeared across her face as she stared blankly down at the body, something monstrous warping her features.
The female he knew wasn't there in that empty stare, only a shadow beast filled with bottomless mania and burning fury, a monster of the night molded into a high fae form.
He was starting to think that maybe he should be pitying Ithaca instead.
"Celeste," he began, taking a tentative step towards her as she tilted her head at him, the preternatural motion immediately dropping his stomach and making his heart thunder in his chest.
She was terrifying in a way he'd never experienced, in a way that made every part of him want to flee.
And her sister wanted him to marry this?
"Pick him up, Gandriel," she stated each word slowly, not even bothering to wipe the blood dripping sluggishly from her face as she gestured to the male with the twisted shoulder. "We're taking him back for questioning."
He barely managed to squeak a "Yes, ma'am."
They hit the deck of the ship with such force that it sent the Loreley rocking, water splashing loudly against the hull. Anelisse nearly lost her balance in the landing, wheeling her arms as she tried to stay upright.
She felt a strong, gentle hand catch her under the arm and straighten her, even as Gandriel's attention was wholly focused on the deadly quiet Celeste. Her sister snapped up the spy by the back of his collar and kicked him forward, the male grunting loudly in pain as her foot connected with his misshapen shoulder.
Celeste didn't seem to notice the noise, though Anelisse was certain some of the sleeping crew had if the grunts of confusion from the dozing night guards were any indication.
"Move," her sister ordered with such iciness that it had goosebumps flecking on her arms. A quick sidelong glance confirmed the same had happened to Gandriel who looked primed to run in the opposite direction of his captain.
Nima, to Anelisse's surprise, seemed rather unfazed, as though her skittish nature didn't include the fear of forces of nature.
Then again, Celeste was a lovely person as long as you weren't the receiving end of her wrath.
"Nima, go get Fallon and the others,"she pried the door into the ship's belly open before shoving the bloodied male inside, her lips curling in an emotionless smile, "and tell them I've brought a gift."
The woman nodded before turning a heel and scampering off into the darkness, her shadow quickly disappearing under the dim lantern light. Anelisse sincerely hoped the redheaded vixen and her fathers weren't inebriated or busy, certain that they wouldn't be spared Celeste's wrath if they showed up in any altered state.
Following on silent feet, she descended down the ships stairs behind the others, the humidity dampening her hair as they dove deeper into the underbelly of the ship, no doubt headed for the rarely used brig.
She'd only been in it once, a place that she was certain had once been reserved not for prisoners but for women who no longer fit the previous captain's fancy.
This place made her skin crawl and oiliness bloom in her belly.
A perfect spot to interrogate a bastard who had killed one of their own.
Perhaps when they were done her sister would let her give the killing blow, a strike for a beautiful woman and a handful of loyal men who had wanted to do nothing more than save the innocent.
She couldn't bring herself to fault her sister's rage. A small, forgotten part of her almost wanted to fan it.
Celeste often forgot they were more alike than she realized. That even a mortal body and petite frame couldn't conceal the vengeance that boiled beneath her own skin.
A faelight flared to life ahead of her, illuminating the claustrophobic room, the oppressive energy leaching as the light reflected off of the black bars of the cells, the shackles that hung open on the walls.
Celeste wasted no time in clamping cuffs around the male's wrists as she shoved him into a chair, a blue sheen reflecting off their surface—
"The faebane you kept," Anelisse noted, a pleasant surprise filling her mind, noting the iridescence was actually small blue crystals hammered into the cuffs. "You knew this would happen."
"You fight fire with fire," her sister muttered, her eyes never leaving the male as she bolted the shackles down, pulling them so tight that their captive couldn't move in any direction, his chest heaving as he glared daggers at all of them.
Anelisse felt a brow shoot up as her sister's hand mindlessly brushed the stone as she finished anchoring him, seemingly unfazed as the male's entire being seemed to cringe away from it.
"How are you touching that?" Gandriel asked nervously, keeping his own distance from the shackles, confusion on his face.
"I've been microdosing it," Celeste answered. "After Dermot decided to spray it in my face I thought it prudent to build a tolerance." She yanked the chain particularly hard, causing a crack to echo as the male gasped, his shoulder twisting further out of socket. "It's coming in handy."
"Bitch," the male hissed, the first words he'd spoken the entire evening.
"Oh, you have absolutely no idea." Without warning Celeste punched him square in the nose, no doubt more for releasing her own fury than anything helpful. The male's body fell limply to the side, his shoulder pulling even more out of socket. From the little Anelisse had picked up about healing such wounds she realized he'd never use it again.
Not that that would matter much once they were done.
"You're telling me," Gandriel said, flinching as he eyed the break, "that you've been willingly eating faebane?"
"Yes."
Anelisse had to resist the urge to clap, pride swelling in her chest at her sister's ingenuity. Count on Celeste to take a poison in small doses on the off chance she'd build an immunity, even if the thought of her sister willing putting herself in such a harmful situation nearly made her heart stop in her chest.
"You're absolutely mad," Gandriel breathed, even as awe filtered across his features, "why didn't you mention it to me? If I could build a tolerance as well-"
"I tried dosing your food months ago," Celeste answered flatly. "You spent three days hurling your guts up. I didn't think you would benefit from further testing."
"You . . . fed me faebane?"
Celeste didn't bother responding.
Gandriel rubbed his brow. "Of course you fed me faebane. And here I was thinking I'd eaten something rotten."
"Ream me about it later," Celeste murmured, her eyes going distant as the energy around them seemed to pull taut. "We have things to finish."
A coldness whipped through the air, biting at Anelisse's skin. She tugged her shirt closer.
"What are you doing?"
"Giving orders."
It took only a moment before Ithaca appeared from nothing, her face warped in fury as she turned on Celeste and snarled, "What the hell do you want? I'm already hunting for your stupid little ships—"
Celeste grabbed Ithaca by her arm and turned her, pointing a single finger at the unconscious spy in the chair. "If you get the truth out of him regarding Dermot's location I will give you my hair, no questions asked."
Ithaca froze in her rage, confusion flickering across her face. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
Ithaca shook out of Celeste's grip, eyeing her as she stepped away, no doubt suspicious of the female who had out-bargained her already.
Anelisse had warned the woman that her sister was far more competent than she gave her credit for.
"And you think I can do this . . . why?" She peered down at her nails, lip curling back in disgust. "I'm not your one stop shop for all of your supernatural needs."
"Because I've watched you bargain." Celeste's patience was wearing thin, her voice sharp. "Do we, or do we not have a deal?"
She offered out a palm.
Anelisse almost barked at her sister to take it back, that there were other means of getting the information from the male, but the warpath she was on . . . she wasn't thinking about anything other than revenge.
Everything else be damned.
Ithaca seemed to realize it too as she eyed Celeste's palm before sighing and side-stepping the outreached hand. Astonishment flicked through Anelisse.
She wasn't sealing the bargain.
Instead, Ithaca crossed her arms over her chest, irritation marring her features as she conceded. "Fine," she turned her depthless gaze to the male, limp in the chair, "Dermot is the little puppeteer to this whole fiasco, is he not?"
And the way Ithaca said it . . . something in her tone told Anelisse she'd seen more than she'd bargained for. That even this immortal being of darkness had been . . . twisted, irked by something.
Something had pissed Ithaca off, royally. So much so that she wasn't vying for Celeste's throat, but rather the slavers before her. She'd spoken with the woman enough to know a few of her tells and this . . . this was one.
"He is, and he had our friends murdered," Gandriel added, gritting his teeth as he gestured to the slumped figure, "by this male here."
Ithaca looked down her nose at the male, no doubt evaluating him, reading things about him that even a high fae could not gather. She'd once told Anelisse it was something she could do, could gather information from the very life force of the person she read.
"Very well," Ithaca mused, cracking her neck before reaching out a spidery hand and touching the male's brow, instantly bringing him to consciousness. "Let's see what the little bastard is hiding."
"Where is Dermot?" Celeste asked again, a steeliness making her spine rigid as she addressed the male, his dark eyes hooded as he watched her. She'd been questioning him for nearly half an hour, and had gotten nothing from him, not even Ithaca's attempts breaking him.
She heard Avi shift behind her, the selkie lord and his lover having entered quietly into the room earlier with Nima, their eyes heavily shadowed from the news they'd no doubt received.
Her fellow captain, as expected, was nowhere to be found.
She heard the crunch before she even saw Ithaca move, the male's wrist twisting unnaturally.
He only let out a hiss of pain, his features contorting in agony. How many bones had they broken now? Though they hadn't run out of ones to snap yet.
"Where is Dermot?" She was met with silence once more, his features almost bored even as he heaved around the pain, staring blankly at the form Ithaca had taken before him.
Once again a dark-haired male with tanned skin stood before Celeste, but she knew that wasn't the form the male saw, Ithaca's dark magic no doubt conjuring something that catered to his preferences and desires.
"Come now, handsome," Ithaca cooed in that voice that rumbled like the whisper of waters moving over the rocks in a stream, "tell me, and I'll give you all you desire, will let you up from this awful chair and give you a night you won't forget."
Nothing. Not a word.
Celeste gritted her teeth, barely containing her desire to rip her nails down the male's face.
Ithaca smiled charmingly, inching forward so that she nearly sat in the male's lap, her lips puckering in a way that made even Celeste's skin tingle pleasantly.
The male let out a soft chuckle, a heinous sound that made the hair on Celeste's arm rise.
"You're going to have to try harder than that."
"With pleasure." Celeste didn't even flinch as Ithaca's patience broke and she dug a finger into one of his eye sockets, the squish and pop that followed sickening. She felt more than saw Gandriel waver behind them, her friend keeping a firm presence between the killer and her sister.
At least he'd managed to stay conscious through it.
"Whore," the male finally screamed, something in him breaking as the pain finally tore through whatever defenses he'd erected, "conniving, lying succubus-"
"Oh, look at you, how smart." Ithaca rolled her fingers together, the tissue of his eye crumbling away from her fingers. "You can see through my powers then, can you? Now, since you seem so capable, why don't you tell us where your little leader is, and this," she ran the bloody finger down his face, leaving a trail of ichor, "all this can be over."
Nothing, he said nothing.
Celeste had nearly screamed from frustration when he finally piped up through his heaving.
"The form you've taken," he panted, blood leaking down his face, his remaining eye steely, "it's wrong."
Ithaca froze, watching him, gauging.
"Oh?" She rolled her hips, shaking her hair out sensually. "Then tell me," she whispered, "how do I make it to your liking?"
This tango of seduction and cruelty something that Ithaca thrived in, something that seemed to be the very thing she lived and breathed.
Celeste couldn't believe she hadn't pulled the woman into their efforts until this point.
The male smiled monstrously, before whispering to her quietly, "Younger, and much, much smaller."
The implication of his words had every head in the room snapping to him, a wrongness settling in Celeste so foul that she almost became nauseous.
These bastards had been running those shipments, the ones filled to the brim with helpless children-
Behind her, Vaerek swore.
Something in Ithaca shifted.
A darkness materialized around the male, wrapping so densely that Celeste could not discern his features through the shadows. It did nothing to muffle his screams of agony, however.
Beside her, Ithaca slipped back into her usual form, her depthless eyes devouring the light as she reached through her shadows and grabbed the male beneath. His screams of pain turned to shrills of terror as Ithaca's body began to glow a deep red, a bloodthirstiness overcoming her features as she opened her mouth and began devouring the shadows, the wisps of darkness quickly disappearing past Ithaca's dark lips.
The shadows lightened and all that remained where the slaver had sat was a husk. His skin flaked like old paper, a shredded doll composed of only dust and cobwebs, the outline of his scream still imprinted on the shell of his face.
Ithaca let out a little burp.
Flabbergasted, Celeste said, "You ate him."
Had consumed his very essence in its entirety. In all of the books Celeste could recall of her youth she'd seen many creatures that had feasted on the flesh of the living, dissolving and devouring it, but this, an extraction of the life essence itself . . . she'd never once found a manner of creature that could do that.
"How very astute of you," Ithaca mused, her skin somehow smoother, filled with a youthful glow that somehow emphasized her beauty more. She smacked her lips before her features contorted. "Ugh, vile male, he tasted something foul."
Gandriel let out a squeak of concern behind Celeste, followed by a gasp of wonder from her sister. Avi and Vaerek had inched closer towards the door.
"Oh, by the Mother," Gandriel murmured, sounding faint, "that could have been me."
The woman looked over a slender shoulder, quirking a brow at her former slave. "Boy, you forget you were the one doing the consuming."
Gandriel flushed red before his face twisted in disgust. "That's just foul, to bring that up here—"
"To bring what up?" Fallon's chipper voice cut through the brig, her signature plumed purple hat appearing through the doorway, flanked by a quiet Nima. "Sorry I'm late, but I brought dinner, dumplings from the market, I hope you're all hungry . . ." Fallon's voice trailed, her brows shooting up as she took in the husk before her on the chair, watching as the slaver's remains finally collapsed and shattered into dust.
She blinked twice.
"Ithaca's not," Gandriel grumbled, his complexion still a combination of ghastly pale and beet red, "she's already eaten."