“Holy shit,” Adrian breathed as he slid to a halt next to Caelan.
“We need to hurry. Reinforcements will be coming soon.”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” Adrian muttered and shouted at the others. There were some more mumbled words, mostly from Jasper Feroz, but Caelan didn’t listen to them. He stared at the dead he’d created. There was no guilt or sorrow over what he’d done.
No, there was only rage.
Emperor Naram Suen had brought them to this point. Safa had created this mess. Possibly even Prime Minister Jasper Feroz had a hand in this as well. New Rosanthe had no business in Ilon. They had no business making deals with someone who was trying to free the Goddess of the Hunt. If not for them, these men could have gone on to live happy, normal lives in their homes.
Instead, they died in a foreign country, leaving behind loved ones who might never fully understand why they had to die.
Caelan brought up the rear of the group. He slammed the double doors shut behind him just as Feroz let out a loud gasp.
“The secret passage has already been opened!”
They all turned to stare at a dark doorway in between two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
“Shit!” Drayce snarled. “Do you think it was Safa?”
“I’m sure it was,” Caelan grumbled. He shoved away from the doors and motioned toward them. “Blockade the doors so the Empire can’t follow us.”
Eno, Drayce, and Adrian immediately grabbed up the sofa, chairs, a coffee table, and even a couple of filing cabinets, stacking them in front of the doors. New Rosanthe soldiers would eventually be able to break through, but it would take them time. Caelan wanted to get as big a head start on them as he could possibly get. Particularly now that it looked like Safa was racing ahead of them.
Caelan glanced around the office. Only one emergency light burned in the large room and it was above the doors, leaving most of the space in deep shadow. Papers were spread everywhere, and books were pulled down off the shelves. The computer monitor had even been shoved to the floor.
“Did you tell Safa of the doorway in your office?” Caelan narrowed his eyes on Jasper as he backpedaled. He moved behind his desk as if the hunk of wood could potentially protect him from Caelan’s anger.
“Wh-what? How could I have done that? I’ve never spoken to her,” the prime minister stammered.
“There have been plenty of opportunities for you to pass messages to her in the past several weeks. Maybe even before New Rosanthe arrived in Brightspire.”
“I am no traitor to my people!” Jasper shouted.
“No, just a traitor to all the other countries who viewed you as a friend,” Rayne murmured. His advisor had a knife clenched in one fist as he edged closer to the secret passage and peered into the darkness.
To Caelan’s shock, Jasper huffed out a low laugh and shook his head. “Never gonna let that go, are you?”
“How could we?” Rayne snapped. “You stole our children for your own purposes. You betrayed Erya after centuries of trust.”
Jasper chuckled again while sliding open one of the drawers in his desk. A second later, he lifted a handgun and slowly pointed it around the room. Caelan froze, his eyes following the pistol while being painfully conscious of how close Rayne was to the weapon. He started to pull together Tula’s power to place a protection spell over Rayne, praying that it would hold under such close range.
“Trust is a thing so easily shattered,” Feroz murmured. “I wish I could be there to see how you explain this to world, but then you’ll never survive your encounter with Safa. Glory to the Goddess.”
Before Caelan could draw a breath to shout, Jasper lifted the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Caelan Talos
“What the fuck!” Drayce shouted.
Caelan couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even think. Rayne was even standing frozen with his back pressed to the bookshelf and blood splattered across his face.
Adrian and Eno gathered themselves first and raced to the prime minister’s side. They both kneeled, but they didn’t stay there long.
Eno stood, shaking his head. “Dead.”
Yeah, Caelan wasn’t surprised. The man had just shot his brains out. Why…why would he fucking do that? Was suicide really better than facing the anger of the world when it was revealed what Ilon had done? It wasn’t as if he alone was going to be held accountable. Caelan couldn’t say that with any kind of certainty, though. He had no idea what was going to happen when all of Thia discovered Ilon had been kidnapping children.