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KADE KEPT HIS SENSES attuned to the listening spell for a couple of hours, but he didn’t hear anything of note. When he suddenly felt the enchantment move somewhere else, he knew the fairy had teleported to another location. He was pleasantly surprised when the listening spell didn’t cut out as he’d expected it to. He had no idea where the fairy was, but he could hear footsteps, then a knock on a door. There was a creak of hinges, then he recognized the voice of the elf who had given him the message and the package to deliver. “Ah, there you are,” the elf said briskly. “Come in, before anyone sees you.”
Locking on to the listening spell, Kade harnessed his power and teleported closer to it. He ended up in the backyard of a mansion and assumed it belonged to the elven guildmember. He sensed the two men climbing up to the third floor and spied a balcony. He teleported up to it, then cloaked himself in shadows.
“Let’s talk in here,” the elf said and opened the door to the room where Kade was hiding on the balcony. The warlock wasn’t sure if it was just luck, or if the magic of Nox was responsible for him choosing the perfect place to spy on them from.
“You’d better cast a ward so no one can hear us,” the fairy suggested.
Kade tensed, then relaxed when the ward settled in place. He could still hear the pair as they took seats on armchairs in front of a fire in the sitting room. The ward hadn’t shorted out his listening spell like the one Onvier had cast in his office. The elf had just erected a shield to prevent new spells from entering the house. It didn’t affect the ones that were already in place.
“What news do you have?” the fairy asked eagerly.
“I’ve finally heard from the person who smuggled the silver tablet into Nox,” the elf replied in a grave tone. “I don’t know who they are, but they passed on the instructions of how to use it to me. They must have somehow slipped it into my pocket when I visited the Magic Guildhall this evening.” He delved into his pocket and took out a sheet of paper.
“I need a copy of those instructions,” Kade murmured as the elf handed it to the fairy.
A sheet of paper and a quill appeared behind the two fae men. The quill rapidly copied the instructions, then vanished. The letter fluttered over to the French doors and slid through the crack between them.
“What was that?” the fairy said, head snapping around suspiciously at the slithering noise.
“I’m not sure,” his colleague said, looking around and seeing nothing. “I doubt it was important,” he said dismissively as the fairy folded the piece of paper and handed it back to him. “We need to decide what to do with this,” he said. “Do we hand it to the rebels, or should we give it to Lord Kreaton to curry favor with him?”
“We’ll need to think on it,” the fairy said with a look of greed on his handsome face. “The entire future of Nox rests on our shoulders,” he added smugly.
“We have the power to decide whether the rebels will overthrow our rulers, or if they will be crushed beneath the heels of the Immortal Triumvirate,” the elf said.
Kade flicked a glower at them as they burst into triumphant laughter, then he scanned the note. The instructions to use the silver tablet were more complex than he’d anticipated. He would need some rare ingredients to be able to unlock its power.
Carefully folding the note in half, Kade dispelled his listening enchantment, then teleported a few blocks away. He walked the rest of the way home and climbed upstairs to his conjuring den. The warlock took the note out and perused the list of ingredients again. After searching through his cupboards and drawers, he found he had most of the components. Only two were missing.
“Damn it,” he said when he saw which ingredients were absent. One was the hair of a unicorn. The other was the heart of an alpha werewolf. He wasn’t sure if there were any unicorns in Nox, but the second item disturbed him more. If they wanted to use the tablet, they were going to have to murder a shifter. Kade’s conscience protested at the thought of stooping so low. He wanted to liberate the City of Night from the evil beings who controlled it. If he killed someone to get his hands on their heart, he would become just as malevolent as their current rulers were.
The warlock placed the collection of ingredients into the cupboard with the other important items he’d collected. He hid them behind an illusion spell, then locked the cupboard door with a spell and headed downstairs to the library. He took a seat on an armchair to brood about his dilemma.
If Kade called a meeting with his allies to discuss the problem, he knew what they would say. The master vampire and demon lord wouldn’t hesitate to end a life to get what they wanted. They’d both probably killed countless beings during their lengthy lives. Kade had never killed anyone. Even if he didn’t murder an alpha werewolf himself, he would still have blood on his hands. He needed to decide if he was willing to pay the price of staining his soul forever to get revenge on his mother’s jailers.
“I need to find out if there are any unicorns in Nox first,” he murmured as a glass of wine appeared on the small table beside him. He picked up the glass and took a sip, pondering on the problem. He would need to search the woods in the Fae District where most of the fae beasts dwelled. The forest was extensive. It could take him several months to locate a unicorn. There had to be a faster way to determine if one was in the city.
Wondering just how strong the magic of Nox was, he put the wine glass down. He used telekinesis to bring a pad of paper and a pen to his hand from his study. “Here goes nothing,” he murmured. “I need to know if there’s a unicorn in Nox,” he said. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then the pen vanished and a quill appeared. It scribbled a word onto the sheet of paper. ‘Yes’, it said.
“Can I obtain some of its hair without harming it?” he asked next.
The quill went into action again and wrote a short message. ‘You will find a unicorn near the base of the largest mountain. You must tell the unicorn your intentions and allow it to decide if it will help you.’
Kade let out a shaky breath and wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his trousers. Unicorns were the purest beings that existed. The beast was magical and he had no idea what it was capable of. He guessed he would find out once he tracked it down and asked it for its assistance. If the creature decided not to help him, he wouldn’t need to worry about finding an alpha werewolf’s heart. He knew deep down that trying to take a unicorn’s hair by force would be a very bad idea.
He picked up his wine again and paused with the glass halfway to his mouth when a thought occurred to him. If the elf and fairy decided to give the instructions to the rebels, Sebastian and Raum would find out about the items he needed. A queasy feeling struck him at the thought of the master vampire or demon lord stealing a hair from a unicorn. They might slaughter the beast to get what they wanted, which was bound to be a disaster. For all he knew, the magical beasts might be helping to keep the City of Night operational. At least, that was what his gut was telling him.
“I hope the fairy and the elf give the instructions to the Immortal Triumvirate,” he said. It would solve his problem if they did. The triumvirate would destroy the instructions and his allies would never learn about the ingredients that he needed. It would be a win-win situation for him.
It wasn’t a good idea to keep secrets from his partners, but Kade didn’t feel like he had a choice. While he was bound to them both, he didn’t fully trust either of them. It was doubtful they trusted him completely either.
Kade decided to keep his mouth shut for now. He now had two tasks to complete. He had to find the unicorn and locate a suitable partner before his time ran out.
