Bounty Hunter (The Rover 1)

He turned, his chest heaving, his eyelids heavy. “Yes. I think that is all for now.”

A pile of men surrounded him like a bunker at the doorway.

I stepped up beside him and motioned at the fallen. “You might have to help me over them if we are going to get out of here.”

When he didn’t start lifting me over the pile of men, I turned to look at him. “What’s happening here? It’s time to go, right?”

“I think we should stay and complete our mission.”

Fairy boy said what?

I blinked twice in an attempt to assimilate what he’d just said with my tired, overly pained brain. “You want to go up against the Black Mage while one of us is incapacitated and you are already tired. Look at you—you’re sweaty and pale. If I didn’t know you were such a stubborn asshole, I’d say you’d tapped yourself out with these guys here.”

He waved at them. “I did this to protect you.”

“I never said, ‘Fin, please magic these boys so I can sit here on my fine ass and rest.’ No. Those words never left my lips. What are you going to do if we run into another group like this, or Esteban himself? He’ll bat us both across the room like flies. If you remember he hasn’t been locked up, beaten, or had to fight for his life yet tonight.”

“Exactly. I think it’s time to change that.”

I shook my head and barely restrained myself from slapping him. “No. If you want to go after him, you do it alone. Without me. I’m leaving.”

I stepped up to the guys and climbed over their mass. It took effort and so much pain to reach the other side. Fin took out probably twenty of them. And not little dudes either.

Fin stayed where I left him. I gave him one last chance to join me so we could go, but he crossed his arms over his chest, and I supposed it was answer enough. So, I turned my back to him and limped toward the staircase. If another group of henchmen came down, I would be toast, but it beat standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who’d already betrayed me once. What kept him from throwing me to the wolves a second time?

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I glanced back one last time. Fin stood staring at me the entire way.

Then he called out to me, “Do you know how a mage gets his power?”

I hesitated, hand on the banister, shaking with the effort to haul myself upward. Fucking hell. While I learned about him, he’d also learned about me, and my insatiable need to know everything. How a mage got his powers had long been a question I’d wanted answered.

I held onto the rail and turned to face him again. “This better not be some damn trick.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “No tricks. If you don’t want to go kill the Black Mage after I explain, then I’ll take you home. Hell, I’ll carry you the entire way.”

I didn’t owe this bastard anything. In fact, if we were keeping score, things were the other way around. Except I really wanted to know the answer.

I let go and limped back toward him. “If I die here because I stayed here for story time, I will haunt your ass until you die. I don’t even care if you live until you’re two hundred.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

I poked his chest. “Yeah, and fifty years ago there was no such thing as fae either.”

He waved at the room and I squeezed past him inside. “Make it fast. I have a date with an entire bottle of your most expensive wine and Holly’s cheesecake.”

He closed the door and stepped closer to me. When he didn’t start speaking right away, I shook my head. Why did I always fall for his shit?

“You’re just fucking with me now.”

As I passed him to leave, he tugged my non-injured arm gently back toward him. “No, please. I’m sorry. It just takes me a second to get it out. I wasn’t sure where to start... to summarize it all.”

“How about you just spit it out? I’m sorry, but I don’t have compassion in me after the night I’ve had.”

He forced air through his nose in a long, loud exhale. Then he met my eyes. “To be succinct, mages get their power from the fae. To become a mage, you must capture a person who carries fae blood in their veins.”

“How does a person know if they have fae blood?”

He shrugged. “There is no way to know unless you already have strong fae magic. Not everyone with fae blood does. Most people’s lineage is so diluted they carry only miniscule amounts.”