A Battle of Blood and Stone (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 4)

When they returned, Carrick gave me a lingering kiss against my temple, saying he’d be back soon. I was surprised he took Zaid with him, but not that he left Maddox behind to guard us.

I could have forced him to tell me where he was going, but I inherently knew it was something dangerous and bold. Perhaps too perilous and I might waste time trying to talk him out of it. Ultimately, I decided it was best not knowing and I’d trust Carrick was making the right move, whatever that might be.

“Where’s Maddox?” Carrick asks as he and Zaid make their way over to the furniture grouping.

Tipping my head to the left, I say, “Kitchen.”

“Maddox,” Carrick calls. “We’re back.”

Within moments, Maddox is in the living room with a beer in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich, so thickly stacked with meats, lettuce, and tomatoes I’m not sure how he ever got his mouth around it without dislocating his jaw, in his other. He has apparently been successful, though, as he is enthusiastically chewing.

Carrick sits in one of the chairs opposite me, and Zaid goes to a love seat. Rainey and Myles are on a couch while Maddox chooses to remain standing.

“I went to see Kymaris tonight,” Carrick said. Out of all the dangerous things I thought he might be out there doing, I never once thought he would do that.

“You what?” I exclaim, straightening in my chair. “Why?”

“Because you wanted me to do something about the human sacrifices,” he reminds me.

Mouth dropping open, I stare at him in a mixture of amazement and guilt. Yes, I’d made him promise he’d do something, but that was in the heat of the moment. I’d been in shock and disgusted by what Boral had said was going on when he called yesterday, and I’d demanded justice, but I hadn’t expected Carrick to move on it so quickly.

“What did you do?” I ask hesitantly.

“Well, to stop the human sacrifices, I blew her house up with TNT,” he says, his eyes twinkling just slightly at making such an ostentatious statement.

“Whoa,” Myles murmurs in appreciation. “Badass.”

“She was in it, along with a daemon, but no humans. She won’t die, but it will slow her down for a few days as she’ll have to find more accommodations.”

“Thank you,” I whisper gratefully.

Carrick’s smile is tender as he regards me from across the table. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

My heart flip-flops and my skin warms at the overt display of love and affection. It feels good that he doesn’t care who is watching or listening.

“There’s something else,” he says, his expression hardening a little bit, and the sweet flutters in my heart stop as my stomach clenches. “I had a talk with Kymaris before we blew the house up.”

“You what?” I exclaim again, shocked he would confront her. “Why?”

“Mainly, I wanted to get in her house and ensure I couldn’t sense any humans there, but I also wanted to see if she’d open up about anything. I was banking on her over-inflated ego wanting to share her plans with me.”

“And did she?” Rainey asks.

Carrick spares her a short glance and nods. “She offered to let me rule by her side, and she very happily told me how she’d take over the world once the veil comes down.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t a tempting offer,” I quip with a mirthless laugh.

Carrick actually cracks a smile. “I have what I want.”

“What else did you learn then?”

A glimmer of anger fires in Carrick’s eyes as his smile disappears. “It appears that Kymaris knows we have the Blood Stone.”

“Shit,” I hiss. I sink back down into the chair, but my eyes dart over to Zaid, who is bent over, elbows to knees and gaze pinned to the floor.

I don’t need to say it out loud. It had to be Boral.

“We have to leave,” Carrick announces, and all our heads except Zaid’s snaps his way. Maddox swallows another bite, then ignores the rest of his sandwich. “Now that she knows we have it, nothing will prevent her from conducting an all-out assault on this condo to get it.”

“But you have protections in place,” Rainey reminds him.

“Good ones, too,” Carrick agrees, but his tone is grim. “But Kymaris is powerful. If she has her Dark Fae—to whom she’s been funneling power—help her, they could bring the protections down. She could use her army of daemons to storm the place. She wouldn’t care about anyone else in this building being collateral damage. She won’t care about revealing herself to the world. The bottom line is that we are not safe here, but we also need to make sure we don’t give her any reason to go public. It would cause panic and chaos.”

“Just like in the Avengers when Loki brought the Chitauri into New York,” Myles says in horror.