He let her go and stood up.
He wanted to hold out a hand to help her to her feet, but he knew he shouldn’t.
Niamh slowly stood on shaky legs, looking exhausted.
“Well?” he repeated impatiently.
She looked at him steadily. “What are you, Kiyo?”
He blinked at the abrupt question. “What?”
“I know you’re not an ordinary werewolf. Tell me what you are and why Fionn sent you, of all people?”
Wondering if she’d seen something about him again, he took a step toward her. “What did you see in your vision?”
Niamh lifted her chin, a stubborn glint in her eyes. “First, tell me what you are.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” It was his rote answer. The one he gave anyone who got suspicious about him. “I’m a werewolf. An alpha. Stronger and faster than most … now tell me what you saw.”
Niamh stared blankly at him for longer than made him comfortable and then she sighed. “It was the same. Fate is impatient for us to get to Tokyo. I know the vision is about you … I just don’t know why. And it looks like I’m not going to get the answers from you.” She picked up the clothes from Bran. “Can I count on you to wake me in the morning?”
He swallowed hard against the frustration choking him. “Yeah. I’ll wake you at five.”
She gave him a nod without meeting his eyes and slipped out of the room.
Kiyo sank with exhaustion onto the bed, staring at the door.
It didn’t sit well with him, hurting Niamh’s feelings, but the sooner she realized he was just here to do a job, the better.
For them both.8Niamh had made her decision. In that moment, when Kiyo once again refused to divulge anything personal about himself, anything that would prove that he trusted her at least a little, she’d made up her mind to leave him behind.
It had been shockingly easy to slip out of the hotel undetected. Kiyo was exhausted from the last few days of constant activity and stress. She’d heard his soft snoring behind the door of his hotel room and known he was out for the count. Which was good because she didn’t really want to break his neck again to get away from him.
The latest vision hadn’t been about the fae or Tokyo.
She’d lied.
To her disbelief, the vision had been about an O’Connor witch.
The O’Connors were the Dublin coven Rose was born into, but after her parents died, the coven decided Rose’s existence was too dangerous. To stop the chance of her ever opening the gate, they planned to kill her. However, her aunt and uncle stole her away to the States and changed their identities so they couldn’t be found. When Rose was finally awakened to what she really was, the O’Connors learned of her whereabouts and went after her.
Unfortunately, Niamh and Ronan were there when she did.
Niamh’s pulse raced as her mind took her back to the memories she’d tried so hard to bury.
The coven had killed her brother.
Stolen Ronan’s life force to power themselves against her and Rose. It was a pointless, mindless death because his life energy was not enough. While she’d tried desperately to save him, Rose and Fionn had decimated the coven.
All but one.
At the beginning of the fight, Niamh had fought a witch and used her magic to throw her out the window of the apartment they were in.
According to this latest vision, that witch, Meghan O’Connor, was alive and hiding out in Paris.
The only thing that had kept Niamh from losing her mind when Ronan died was the knowledge that the coven had paid for what they’d done.
But they hadn’t.
One of their attackers still lived.
And vengeance like nothing Niamh had ever felt or ever believed herself capable of pumped black in her blood.
There had been a tiny part of her that had hoped Kiyo would trust her and in turn, she could trust him with the truth, that maybe he’d come with her while she dealt with the O’Connor witch.
Yet he was closed up tighter than a clamshell. Any illusions of feeling she felt between them were just that—the imaginings of a silly woman with a crush.
No, Niamh would deal with this alone. As she would deal with everything. The vision of the four stones, the four fae … the one who was supposed to be dead but wasn’t. Niamh would deal with it all because it was her job. Kiyo was just a well-paid guard. Nothing more. She couldn’t entrust him with the important knowledge she had.
Using the shadows to cloak herself as she moved through the tight, narrow, dark streets of Kalmar town, Niamh was a blur. Her first stop was an ATM. She pressed a hand to the machine and forced it to open its mouth and spew out cash. She slipped the money into her bag and then used her fae speed to arrive at the bus terminal. It took her about thirty seconds, what was otherwise a four-minute walk for a human.