“Stay away from him,” Ryan warned her. “I don’t care that you guys have a history of mutually adoring me. You don’t get to touch him.”
“Ha!” I crowed at her. “You don’t get to touch me.”
“Like I would want to,” she snarled at me. “I don’t have a thing for unattractive people.”
“Oooh,” I breathed. “Gary! Did you hear that? You need to bring the pain—oh, wait. They’re not here. Dammit. Why couldn’t we bring Gary and Tiggy again so they could have my back? Oh, right. The Darks would recognize them because of their existence. Dammit. I guess that means Lady Tina can stay.”
She glared at me.
I winked at her.
“Stop flirting,” Ryan growled at me.
“Why is this my life?” Justin asked no one in particular.
SINCE WE couldn’t very well march up to the front gates of Castle Lockes and demand entrance no matter how good our disguises were, we had to come up with another way inside.
Ryan had an alternative. Given his role as the Knight Commander, he had access to a master key that opened most doors in Castle Lockes. Oh, not all, of course, because the King understood the value of privacy, but the necessary doors? All Ryan. And he, aside from the King, was the only one in possession of such a key. I could probably break whatever door we had to get into, but the less magic I used, the better, especially given we didn’t know how far Myrin’s reach extended. I’d felt him before, back in Mashallaha, calling me to him. And now that he’d consumed Morgan’s magic, I needed to do all I could to lie low.
So the front door was out.
But a side entrance? Perhaps one used by the knights to go in and out of the castle on their way to the training fields?
That was possible.
Well. It should have been possible.
Except for the fact that there were four Darks standing in front of it, shooting the shit without a care in the world.
“Dammit,” Ryan whispered as we peered around one of the King’s stables. “There’s too many of them. We can’t risk them raising an alarm. We need to find another—”
“Don’t worry,” I said, eyeing each of the Darks individually. “I got this.”
“What?” Justin hissed. “You can’t just—”
“Babe, tell him how villains love me.”
“He doesn’t need to tell me. Everyone knows about their weird obsession with you. But in case you didn’t know, we’re trying to remain undercover. You can’t just go out there and be gross with them!”
“I’m kind of going to agree with Justin,” Ryan said.
I glared at him. “So this is what betrayal tastes like. Bitter.”
Ryan rolled his eyes.
“And it’s not about Sam of Dragons,” I told Justin. “I just gotta be myself. I can charm the hell out of anyone, even looking like this. I’ll play the role Gary says I was born for, the wide-eyed newbie who stumbles upon a group of rough-and-tumble men and has his innocence devoured in a gangbang—you know what? I really should stop listening to Gary. And I’ll do that. Starting tomorrow. Hey, big fellas!”
“That’s who you chose,” Lady Tina whispered behind me as I stepped out into the open. “Over Justin. Are you kidding me?”
The four Darks turned toward the sound of my voice. I reminded myself that I wasn’t lying, per se, but acting. There was a difference, and this would be the role of my career. There would be stories told of my performance this night, and I would—
“Well, well, well,” Dark One said lecherously, which meant this would go exactly as I expected. He had a mean look on his face and a sloping gut. “What do we have here?”
I could do this. I could so do this. “Well, butter my biscuits and cover me in gravy, I do declare that I’ve found myself lost without an escort.”
Gary would be so proud.
“That right?” Dark Two asked, he of the hairy knuckles and bulbous nose that looked as if it’d been permanently reddened by drink. “All by your lonesome, are we?”