Maybe Gabriel had done a flyover for recon on the army; he’d know the lay of the land across the river. We could plot a mission.
“Start planning?” Selena sneered. “You don’t have a plan? You’ve got some nerve to show up here with no answers and no payment, sauntering in with your fancy new clothes, looking like you haven’t missed a meal.”
Exactly the way she’d looked when I’d first met her.
“Because of you, J.D. is suffering right now.” Voice rising with each word, she said, “You should have paid the Tower!” With her supernatural speed, she leapt from the cot, lunging to attack.
3
Selena’s good hand was in the air, poised to backhand me; instinctively my thorn claws shot out—
“Gamekeeper’s blood!” Matthew cried.
Selena and I both screamed in pain, matching red lines glowing across our hands.
Cyclops sprang inside the tent, baring his monstrous fangs at her. I used Selena’s moment of shock to scramble back.
Tess whimpered and shrank away from the beast; Gabriel flared his wings.
“Th-that wolf was dead!” Finn sputtered from his cot. “The cannibals killed all of Lark’s war wolves.”
Joules opened his palm upright; a silver baton materialized out of thin air—one of his lightning javelins. In a blur, it extended to its full length. “My bolt once fried that very beast!”
Which was why Cyclops’s fur was frizzy. “Lark’s familiars are . . . hardy.” I withheld the full truth: her three wolves were undying—as long as Lark lived.
“It’s protecting you?” Selena looked aghast.
“He won’t hurt anyone unless I’m in danger.”
“You’re allied with Lark now?” Finn’s gaze darted from me to Matthew, as if the Fool should’ve told them this. “Even after she sold us out?”
Matthew rocked back and forth on the bench.
“Lark didn’t know us when she made the pact to hand us over to Death,” I explained. “For all she knew, we could’ve been cannibals like the Hierophant’s followers.”
Finn peered at Cyclops. “But then she did get to know us,” he said to the wolf.
Hoping Lark was listening through her familiar?
“And she still betrayed us. Me. For days, we were down there in the pitch dark because of her, and the water kept rising, about to drown us.” He visibly shook from the memory, and a soft whine came from the wolf’s chest. “When I realized she’d played me, it—laid—me—out.”
“If the Empress is allied with Lark, then she’s allied with Death,” Joules said. “She might be here to open the gates for them while we sleep.”
I rubbed my still burning hand. “We don’t have time for this!”
“You have no idea what we went through over these months.” Selena sank down on her cot, adjusting her arm sling. “And it was all to save you from Death!”
Finn tucked his dirty-blond hair behind his ears. “While you were getting chummy with our enemies, we took a cruise through hell.”
They made it sound like I’d waltzed over to the other side without a care. “Enough! You all went through hardships, but so have I.”
Selena cast me a bitch, please look, goading me to say more.
“A cruise through hell is when a cloven-footed monster tells you he’s about to feast on your bones—and you believe him.” I let that sink in. “Lark stayed by my side to fight Ogen—even as he grew three stories tall! Because of her loyalty to me, she lies in a bed with broken bones.”
Finn winced at that. He wasn’t over the girl by a long shot.
“I’d be dead if not for her and those wolves.” When I gestured at Cyclops, he lay down, sphinxlike and regal. The effect was offset by the finger he still wore in his scruff.
“We heard when Ogen got capped.” Joules used the tail of his coat to polish that lethal spear. Cryptic symbols adorned the already gleaming metal. “Didn’t quite believe who did the deed.”
“It was Death. To save me and Lark.”
Excitement shone in Joules’s gaze. “He eliminated one from his own alliance. He’ll be weaker now. Unless you really are Ogen’s replacement?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, accepting I’d never get through to these people about Aric. And could I truly vouch for him anyway? “Joules, will you help me rescue Jack?”
“For all we know, you’ll go get cozy with Vincent and Violet, just like you did with Death and Lark. My alliance won’t touch this. We came here to do a job. Job got canceled. We leave tomorrow.”
Though Gabriel and Tess hadn’t said a word, I sensed they wanted to help. But Joules was like their all-powerful labor leader.
“If you’re a mercenary, then what else can I pay you?” I studied his face, trying to gauge my opponent and gain an advantage—like perceptive Jack often did. “Come on, Joules. Everybody wants something.”
Death had desired me in his bed; Selena desired Jack. Lark longed to live past her teens. Ogen had hungered for sacrifices on an altar.
Joules was impossible to read, like a bubbling cauldron. Tess was an open book, but I saw nothing for me to use. Mysterious Gabriel had a poker face.
“All I want is Death’s head.” Because Aric had killed Joules’s girlfriend (in self-defense). “Seems I might get it anyway. He’ll be comin’ after you. Just like the other games.”