Betrayed by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #5)(34)

“Absolutely.” Rylan snapped his heels and saluted me. I bared my teeth at him, but he ignored me as he flashed another grin, looking around at everyone in the group. “So do we have a game plan, or what?”





15





We waited until sunset before Elnos and I snuck over to a spot about a mile down the main road, sticking to the trees for cover so that we wouldn’t be ambushed.

“Are you sure you’ve got the timing right?” I muttered as I crouched behind a bush. Even with the foliage to shield us, I had to shade my eyes with my hand against the brilliant sunset painting the sky in streaks of red and gold.

“I’ve been here long enough to memorize the watch schedule.” The grass beneath Elnos’ feet rustled as he tried to make himself comfortable. “The captain of the night guard spends his days with a woman in town. He should come by in the next ten minutes.”

We settled in to wait for the captain to show up. My eyes were trained on the dirt road, but my thoughts were elsewhere—on Rylan, specifically. I still couldn’t believe Iannis had sent for him to help us, knowing how I felt about him. Rylan had done the unthinkable—he’d hired a witch to put a spell on me. Such a thing just wasn’t done in the shifter community. If someone had a problem with another shifter, they handled it according to clan customs. Using a charm or hex or other magical device on another shifter was dishonorable, and most clans considered it a punishable offense. The only acceptable excuse was if magic were required to save a life, but since shifters healed so quickly and we were immune to most diseases, such an event was extremely rare.

Maybe Rylan figured the exception applied, since in his mind, he was saving your life, a voice in my head pointed out.

I gritted my teeth at that. It would be exactly like Rylan to convolute the situation in just that way in order to justify what he had done. But by making me forget to warn Iannis, he’d ended up putting me in danger anyway. Rylan knew me better than anyone else in the Jaguar Clan—he should have known I would go after Iannis. Doing so had involved infiltrating a Resistance camp and thwarting a plot to assassinate the Minister, and shortly after that, the Resistance had put a price on my head.

So in the end, Rylan had only created more danger for me, and helped plunge all of Solantha into a terrible civil war the moment Iannis was gone from the scene.

“Sunaya,” Elnos hissed, nudging my arm. Blinking, I cleared my thoughts, then caught the whistle of a steamcar coming from around the bend. “Are you ready?”

“Yep.” Tensing, I watched Elnos lift his hand. In it, he held a tiny metal spike. The car came chugging around the bend, a shiny, maroon-colored vehicle that looked brand new. Clearly, the captain was being paid well—or perhaps he was skimming profits from the factory somehow.

Elnos spoke a Word, and the spike shot from his hand and into the captain’s front tire. It ripped through the rubber, causing the tire to deflate instantly, with a loud hiss.

“Dammit!” the captain shouted as he pulled the car over, conveniently to our side of the road rather than his. I sprang out from beneath the cover of the trees, landing directly in the passenger seat—the fool had put the top down on his car. Stupid, since it left him more open to attack, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“W-what is the meaning of this?” the captain stuttered, his eyes widening with outrage. He was a tall, bulky man with thick brown hair and a mustache, bright red thread embroidering his dark blue uniform. “Who are you?”

“A good guy,” I said, clapping a hand over his mouth. He tried to struggle as I spoke the Words to the sleep spell Fenris had taught me, but he was no match for my shifter strength. The struggle lasted about three seconds, and then he was snoring in my arms.

“Great job,” Elnos said, emerging from the foliage. I hopped out of the car and walked around to the driver’s side, then hefted the man out of the car. Elnos helped get him onto my back, draping his arms across my shoulders while I held his legs, piggyback style. “Give me a second to hide the vehicle, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“No way.” I swiped at a bit of drool that dribbled onto my shoulder from the sleeping guy on my back and grimaced. “I’m not carrying this guy around for a second longer than I have to. I’ll meet you back at camp.”

Elnos rolled his eyes, but he let me go on my way as he put an illusion spell on the car to hide it from human eyes. It would have served the owner right for us to just destroy it, but Rylan was going to need it if he hoped to pass himself off as the man I’d just knocked out cold.

Elnos caught up with me just as I reached the camp. Iannis, Fenris, and Rylan were sitting on logs around the fire pit in the center of the encampment discussing the next phase of our operation, and they all looked up as I arrived.

“That’s a big one you caught there, cousin,” Rylan said, coming over to me. “Want some help?”

“No.” I rolled my shoulder to the side and dumped the man onto the ground. He grunted a little as he hit the dirt, then rolled onto his side and immediately continued snoring.

“Damn. That sleep spell really is effective. How long do you think he’ll be out?” Rylan asked me.

“Only a few hours,” Iannis said, coming up from behind him. He touched my shoulder briefly. “Did everything go as planned?”