“He said he always gets what he wants.” She shuddered against me.

“This is no longer about you. This is about pride.”

“But he said... he said that…” Isay’s lips trembled.

I hated that she had to go through this. All of it. She didn’t deserve any of it. “He’s not going to get you. We’re almost to the portal.”

Another look through the back window and I knew we wouldn’t make it without taking some serious damage. Six guns pointed out of the windows.

As soon as they were steadily on our tail, they started firing at us.

“Isay, get down!” I released my grip from around her so she could adjust her position. Instead of hanging from my neck, she hid her face in my lap. Any other time, I would’ve expected a dirty joke out of one of our companions, but the car stayed dead serious.

I felt her hands find my wound as she gripped at my shirt.

“Karmuth, you’re bleeding?” she exclaimed, pressing her hand firmer on my wound.

“I’m fine,” I gritted through my teeth. “It went straight through.”

The back window shattered after several well-placed shots  broke through the glass, and I covered Isay with my body.

“Are we fucking there yet?” Sinister finally shouted.

“Hang on!” Hiko yelled back right after, and the car slid off the highway and onto the verge, but not before a bullet whizzed past my cheek, through the headrest and right into Hiko’s neck.

The car skidded through the portal in a bumpy ride that did more damage to the prince, who’d stopped steering. Regar leaned over the centre console to grab the wheel and stop us from rolling into a ditch. We were slowing down. Hiko’s head dropped to his shoulder, and he was clearly not conscious enough to press on the gas. We stopped completely a few metres farther, just as the first sedan drove through the portal.

“Stay here!” I ordered Isay and pushed Sinister out the door he’d clung to to get out after him. We had business to take care of. And they were out of guns.

Chapter 22

ISAY

KARMUTH WAS WOUNDED AND WEAKENED FROM WHAT I’D DONE to him. It was clear by the way he staggered out of the car after Sinister, unsteady on his feet.

Once out, he gripped the roof of the car for balance before pushing himself towards the nine emotion-feeders exiting their own cars.

Nine against two, since Hiko was unconscious in the front seat, and Regar clutched him for dear life, as if that would stop the bleeding. I’d seen him fight against four without breaking a sweat, but he’d been in top form then, not bleeding and drained. If the fae they were facing were half as good as Hiko and his warriors, then we were in big trouble.

With no guns, the Felrothians drew knives. Karmuth had left his sword back in the reservation. I was pretty sure he didn’t carry any other weapons.

When he held his hands up in front of himself, palms open, with a grin spreading on his face, it seemed he didn’t care about his odds. He was either cocky or confident.

Okay, he had reason to be confident in his abilities. He really did; he was an incredible fighter. Him taking down a delther on his own back in the forest proved it more than the showdown on the training field. But he was facing nine unhurt dark fae whose abilities we had yet to see.

I might’ve also given way too little credit to Sinister, despite his frightful looks. I couldn’t stop looking at him like a big cuddly Rottweiler pup after Karmuth’s comment.

While Rottweilers could be pretty darn aggressive, Sinister was always balanced and calm. He did, however, carry a dagger, which gave him an advantage over Karmuth, who’d apparently decided to fight with his fists alone.

Mesmerised, I couldn’t look away as four emotion-feeders crowded around Karmuth, while the other five took their chances with Sinister. In a move I didn’t expect—and neither did the enemy, it seemed—Karmuth latched onto the closest opponent, skin on skin and the fae crumbled into ash within seconds.

Meanwhile Karmuth’s stance grew steadier, and he stopped preferring his left side. The other three fae were more cautious to get closer. Sinister’s opponents had no such qualms.

“Hiko, breathe,” Regar pleaded from the front seat.

I turned around from staring out the broken back window to the sight of him tugging the prince’s seat belt off to get him out of his seat.

All I knew about dangerous wounds was to never move the victim unless you knew exactly what the hell you were doing. My stepbrother had a bullet in his neck, and there was nothing more dangerous than that as far as I could tell. Unless you counted all of the sticky situations I’d been in lately, added them all together into a big pile of danger, then multiplied it by five.

If he died… If prince Hiko died, I would be the one to blame. I would, because there was no way the fae lord would have sent his men after them had he not taken interest in me. If I had stayed behind in the palace like I’d originally intended, Hiko would’ve been fine. This was my fault.

The prince let out a horrible sounding gurgle when Regar hauled him out of his seat and into his lap, pressing on the wound as if that’d keep the blood from seeping out and staining his dark shirt. Hiko’s body shook violently in Regar’s embrace, and then his quiet raspy breathing stopped completely.

“I don’t think you should’ve—” Unhelpful. That was completely unhelpful, and the alarmed expression Regar’s face displayed said as much.

I knew a little first aid, but the prince needed way more than first aid. A strong fae could survive even the most fatal wounds, and I had seen Karmuth shake off his own wound after one feeding.

While there were eight more emotion-feeders outside the car, there was only me and Regar inside, and Regar didn’t count when it came to viable options for Hiko. It was up to me to save the prince, but with my fluctuating abilities I didn’t know if I could do what I did back in the reservation again.

I could just as well accidentally kill the prince with the deadly tentacles inside me rather than offer him my ecos. If he could touch me…

I pulled at the ring on my finger, the only protection I had against the court of death fae, the only thing stopping me from giving up my ecos with a touch. It got stuck on my sweaty kuckle, and I grunted in frustration as Hiko began turning pale. When it finally slid off, I hit my hand against the seat in front of me and lost the grip on the ring.

It fell somewhere under the seat, but that didn’t matter. I slipped to the middle seat and reached across the space between the two front seats to place my hand on my stepbrother’s cheek.

The rush of life leaving my body was as intoxicating as it slamming into me in the club had been. Breathtaking. I held onto the prince for longer than I should’ve with Regar shouting at me, “Isay! Isay!” and likely something more that escaped my notice.

Hiko’s eye-lids fluttered before his eyes flew wide open, staring first at Regar and then at me in astonishment.

That’s when I finally pulled away and hyperventilated my way back to my own seat, too weak to crouch between the seats to look for the ring I’d lost. The darkness within me surfaced, covering my skin in a thick, impenetrable layer. It felt like a delayed reaction to me giving away my life force willingly, like if I’d touch the prince now, the darkness would drain him instead.

“What the fuck, Isay? You could’ve died!” Regar’s words pulled me out of slipping into a deep, dark place that was pulling at me. Within that place I felt the tentacles shift anxiously, displeased with my decision to willingly give away what they’d collected for me.

“I didn’t,” I whispered. My voice was way too quiet.

A wave of nauseousness made me swallow several times and drop my head back against the headrest. When my head still felt way too heavy, I let it roll to my shoulder as I kept taking shaky breaths and stared crookedly at the two males in the front seat.

I said slowly, “Hiko would’ve… died… without a doubt.”

Okay, talking was exhausting. I left my mouth hanging open to gulp more oxygen than my nose managed to supply. It subdued some of the dizziness that I felt. Until I had to swallow again, and my body freaked out and for a moment I forgot how to breathe completely, which left me hyperventilating again after I’d engulfed the spit. I was totally fine.

“How is he?” I whispered through gasps.

“Just peachy,” Hiko rasped the same word Karmuth had described his own weakened state.

I tried to crane my neck to see how he was doing, the sounds of fighting suddenly amplifying in my ears at the thought of him, but moving brought forth another wave of dizziness and nausea.

“Karmuth?” I moaned helplessly.