I stiffened. What the bloody hell was down there? But I held my tongue and trod in silence, boots echoing on the stone floors, barely audible above the din.
Ryodan stopped outside a cell, one with a small window and bars in the door. The baying became deafening then abruptly ceased.
I moved forward to join him, wondering what the bloody hell they were doing with my uncle’s body. Had they fed it to some creature, thinking it might assuage torture beyond imagining? In olden days, the blood and flesh of a druid was considered sacred, reputed to have enormous healing properties, especially the heart.
“Think before you react,” Ryodan warned, stepping aside so I could look in.
I looked.
I blinked and stared.
I shivered and drew thunder from the sky without even thinking. Far above me, it rolled and lightning crashed, followed by screams and something enormous falling, exploding into rubble. I knew it to be a concrete chunk of Chester’s ceiling far above, in one of the many subclubs.
“I said bloody think before you react! If you intend to be allies, get a goddamn grip on yourself,” Ryodan snarled. “And you will fix that later.”
I turned slowly from the door. Feeling carved of marble, as I once had in the icy prison. Feeling a storm brewing in me, a storm that could rip and crack and tear asunder.
But Ryodan was right. I had to think before I reacted. With my power, I always have to think first. I won’t become wanton destruction like my brothers, my dead brothers who will no doubt rise again, inside some other tortured human male. I made that choice on the cliff, dying over and over, carved it into the flesh of my Highlander-druid heart. The heart that I’d refused to let freeze and decay to blackened Unseelie flesh. A heart I’d kept beating with force of will and memory of love. In large part because of the one who lay shuddering beyond the bars of that small window.
With a sigh and enormous inward focus, I filled my veins with the unending summer of the Seelie court. Beckoned into my body a peaceful day, grass rippling, no clouds in the sky.
Not a hint of thunder.
When I had it under control, I opened my eyes and said, “What the bloody hell did you do to my uncle? What is that…thing in there?”
Ryodan said stiffly, “Dageus is one of us now.”
“You fucking turned him into a…what the fuck are you anyway?”
“He was dying. There was no other option. Of all possible future scenarios, if I saved him, fifty-two percent of them were favorable,” Ryodan said.
“Fifty-two bloody percent? And you thought that was good? Forty-eight percent of the outcomes weren’t? Christ, I’d hate to know what a sick fuck like you considers ‘unfavorable.’ ”
“You would,” Ryodan agreed.
“So, what was your plan? Send us home with someone else’s body and never tell us?” I said.
“He will be incapable of speech for some time. No telling how long,” Ryodan said.
“But then—when he could talk—you were going to tell us?”
Ryodan’s gaze was shuttered. “If there had been an opportunity that was…opportune.”
“Christ,” I said again, disgustedly. “You weren’t even going to let us know he was alive. How the bloody hell did you plan to keep Dageus from telling us? Were you planning to keep him caged down here forever?” Thunder began to grow in me again. I inhaled deeply, fisted my hands, exhaled slowly, and opened them.
“We were working on that,” Barrons said.
“Dageus would never give up Chloe,” I said.
I glanced in the door again. Glanced sharply away. My uncle was in the same kind of pain I’d been on those bloody cliffs.
And not human. Not entirely.
Never again entirely.
Changing. Becoming something else. Bile flooded the back of my throat. Now, Dageus, too, was something else, something more. And he’d already been complicated to begin with. “You had no right—”
“Your uncle is alive,” Ryodan snapped. “Would you prefer he wasn’t? Would Chloe prefer he wasn’t? I broke every goddamn code we live by to save that bastard’s life. And will pay an enormous price if I’m betrayed.”
“Good,” I snarled.
“You’re being an ass,” Mac growled. “And you know it. Ryodan saved your uncle’s life. Dageus is here. He’s not the same as he was before and he’s messed up right now, but in time he’ll be just like Barrons and Ryodan.”
“Now there’s a horrible thought,” I said flatly.
She snorted. “That’s not what I meant. He’ll be capable of living again.”
“And what else will he be?” I looked at Ryodan. “What price will he pay for his miraculous second life?”
“He’ll live forever,” Mac said heatedly. “So will you. That means you’ll always have family. That’s priceless.”
“And the other prices? The ones that cut into flesh and bone? I’m not daft, lass. This kind of thing always has consequences. Terrible ones.”
“Perhaps he will choose to discuss them with you. If so, we’ll probably have to kill you,” Ryodan said.
“We made a pact,” I reminded him.
“Does it matter, Christian?” Mac said. “Your uncle isn’t at the bottom of a gorge or buried in the ground. One day you’ll be able to talk to him again. He didn’t die for you. That must be a weight off your shoulders.”
“My clan has the right to know.”
“If you tell your clan, the tribunal will hear of it and you’ll lose him,” Barrons warned.
“What is this tribunal?” I demanded.
Mac perked up beside me, suddenly all ears.
Barrons shot me a look, something ancient and feral moving in his dark eyes. “None of your bloody business. There are terms, Highlander. You may know he’s alive. You may be of help to him through what lies ahead. But no one else may know. If word of his existence gets out, you’ll only be giving him back to your clan to lose him again. Permanently.”
“Our secrets. Yours now. And yours, ours,” Ryodan reminded.
“You don’t know my secrets.”
He smiled faintly. “You might be surprised. We shared blood.” His eyes said he knew what that meant. In a druid sense. And that maybe I didn’t know what that meant in a whatever-the-fuck-he-was sense. That I was as bound to him as he was to me. And I wondered for the second time if he’d not left most of the dungeon unprotected for a reason. If he’d not perhaps arranged this very scenario, wanting me bound to them. What better way to get help with my uncle, draw another Keltar into the fold? Was he that diabolical?