But she wasn’t ashamed, she was exuberant. Blue ash covered the iron floor where he had stood and tormented her, and she wondered for a moment if his blood had been blue, and then incongruously, Frankie grinned.
But she had to tend to Jazz.
Jazz who was chained so close to her, but unconscious. She had to wake her, and tried shouting her name, “Jazz…Jazz…are ye okay? Wake up, Jazz.”
But Jazz, like Crystal was unconscious, deaf to all.
Frankie knew it had taken everything she had left to get her fireball to such power. She felt the pain rack her body again, and just as she felt herself slipping into a star filled black sky, she heard, Whisper Dust, Whisper Dust, Whisper Dust.
All at once, she could hold on no longer, Frankie’s world went dark.
* * *
Darmon knew he had to do something to help Essie. If she didn’t confess to him, she would live with the guilt of whatever she had done.
This was all Pestale’s fault. If he could just discover what it was that Pestale had asked her to do then perhaps he could prompt her to confess?
He knew Essie needed time to come to the place where she could tell them just what Pestale was up to, but he also knew—they simply did not have time.
Pestale was on the verge of accomplishing his goals. Darmon felt that as a certainty. His wolf’s hackles were up all the time, because he sensed the danger they were all in, although he could not see it.
Life in Conglam as they knew it would come to an end if he and his alpha parents did not do something soon.
It had something to do with the Dark King’s consort, he was certain, for she would not have left them so precipitately. One moment she was there, hearing their concerns and the next she was gone. That was not like the Crystal they had come to know over the years.
What he needed to do was a little reconnaissance. The Dark Fae princes could not see through his Shapeshifter Glamour, or his invisibility.
In wolf form, invisible to all but his own kind, he loped to the castle, and then shifted inside, padding quietly toward the sound of voices. The first voice he heard was Prince Hordly who was complaining.
“I think we gave him too strong a dosage. What if he dies? The Dark King will know it was us. He will know, and he won’t tolerate it. Besides, I wouldn’t like it if Graely dies…he has been with us so long.”
Pestale frowned and put a hand on Hordly’s shoulder but his brother shrugged him off and paced. “I don’t like this, Pestale. If you can kill Graely so easily, what then of me? Will I be next?”
“He won’t die,” Pestale tried to reassure him.
“You can’t know that!” Hordly snapped. “I am bloody hurting just from holding the syringe.”
“Graely won’t die,” Pestale said calmly.
“And what about Crystal? What if father finds her? What if she tells? She will, why wouldn’t she? Or what if she never recovers and dies too soon. We can’t know what the effects of the Dragon’s Breath and the Zolem blood will do to her, can we? She was never in Danu, father brought her straight to the Dark Realm with him, long after Danu was destroyed. She never received the vaccinations. She never had time to develop an immunity to the Zolem, because she was never exposed!” Hordly’s hands raked his hair.
“You are allowing your fears to get the better of you. What if this, what if that. You can’t do that you damned fool. We will handle everything together, just as we have always done. We have always survived. As to Crystal, I never meant her to survive. Sventer doesn’t know it, but I supplied him with a lethal dose of the Zolem. She won’t just be sick, she will die.” He shrugged. “She must, and when our father realizes he will never have her, see her again, he will implode. That is the plan.”
“What if he can see past the iron?” Hordly was not convinced. “You are forgetting what he has become.”
“I haven’t forgotten one damned thing. He will lose his mind when he discovers she is dead. I will put it all at the door of the humans.”
“It won’t work,” Hordly sounded doubtful. “I never thought we would kill her, only get her out of the way until it was too late for her to stop us, only that.”
“He cannot see past the iron. I know because I once tested him, at great pain to myself. I managed to wrap some of the vials he had stored of Zolem in an iron box and he was never able to find it. When Crystal, sentimental fool that she has always been, allowed us to collect our things from the Dark Realm, before coming here, I managed to deposit many items that I had stored in iron lined boxes into the trunk of things we brought with us to Conglam.” Pestale scoffed. “Crystal thought we brought personal, keepsakes of the Dark Realm, of better days. She believed me when I told her I was beginning to see things differently. She was so pleased to hear it that she never looked past my lies.” He sneered, “Fools, betrayed by emotions.”
“Yeah, yeah, but now what?”
“Why all this sudden doubt, Hordly? You knew what we were going to do?” Pestale frowned darkly, suspiciously.
Hordly shrugged, “It was a plan…yes, but you never said anything about killing Crystal or Graely.”
“Did I not? Well, Graely should not have interfered, and Crystal has to die…we don’t have a choice, do we?”