Rynn stayed back at the inn that night instead of going to the Chaotica match at the Briarblood Stadium. Gray left with the rest of the squad but soon turned back around. Settie wasn’t happy, but Gray didn’t care.

  He found her in their room, sitting on the bed, staring out the window at the mauve wall.

  She glanced over at him but didn’t say anything.

  He pulled up a chair. “It was probably a bad idea to scrimmage Pinch and those fuckers. I’m so sorry. Ames said there was going to be blood, and there was.”

  Rynn still wasn’t speaking.

  Gray had seen her like this before, and it had been when she’d decided not to follow him into Old Town to live at Ruin Manor. He’d never forget how she’d looked the next morning, sitting in the alley with her back up against the wall. She’d waited all night for him. She’d run away from First Field because Pinch had bullied her.

  “Talk to me, Mrs. Yes,” Gray said in a low voice.

  “No. I just…” she closed her eyes. “I just need to be alone. It’s why I didn’t go. Could you give me some time?”

  He nodded, but he was so worried, he couldn’t help but peek at her core. There wasn’t much mana there, and she was absorbing any. That worried him more than anything, but he couldn’t say anything. For one, it was violation of her privacy. For another, he wasn’t sure if anyone else saw mana like he did.

  “I’ll go.” He left the chair but stopped at the door. “But it’s too late for me to go to the match. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

  She managed a smile. “Thank you. You didn’t need to tell me. I would’ve felt it.”

  “Then you can also feel how much I love you.”

  That sent a tear trickling down her face.

  He went down the steps and into the main room. Because of the match, the place was empty. Bonny brought him a glass of mulled wine, manafied of course, and he sipped it. He wasn’t looking forward to his dose of redbush tea that night. He wanted to be in his right mind, so he could figure out a way forward. The manafied wine was bad enough, and he was careful. His fingers and toes tingled from the mana. It was better than what he’d been feeling before, but he still was a long way from powering his meridians.

  Ames came through the front door with rainwater streaming off her coat. There was a rack there and she hung up her coat. A second later, it was perfectly dry. Just another bit of enchantment to make life better.

  Ames came over and sat down. “I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “It’s my fault. I should’ve warned you all about Pinch. She is the ice, but that’s clear right? If you look into her eyes, you just see frost.”

  Gray wasn’t sure he was in the mood to try and figure out Ames speak, or that was how Tomii sometimes referred to how Ames talked. He tried to get her to speak clearly. “Did you see Rynn bleeding?”

  Ames closed her eyes. “It’s not that simple. There’s a feeling I have, and then there are the words, and then, I have dreams. But sometimes I can’t remember if it’s a dream, or a memory, or a vision. I saw Rynn’s face covered with blood. I saw Pinch kiss you. Did she kiss you?”

  “No,” Gray said.

  He went to sip his wine, but Ames was faster. She picked it up and gulped half of it down. “What if I would’ve warned you that Pinch would kiss you, and Rynn would be upset, and then, I would hold her while she wept?”

  Gray nodded. “I see your point. How can you warn us about things when you don’t know if they are part of your vision or not.”

  Ames set the cup down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t ask. Or did I ask? If I would’ve asked, would you have let me drink your wine?”

  “Yes,” Gray said with a little laugh. “I appreciate your help with the stuff. It’s a bit too strong for me, and I didn’t want to spend the night getting drunk. I’m taking drugs before I go to bed. Well, it’s tea, but there’s petal milk.”

  “Petal milk is wonderful,” Ames said. “Father would give it to me when…when the pain didn’t stop After the burning. The burning hurt, but hours and hours after, that was even worse in some ways. Because you knew it would be hours and hours. Sometimes I liked the pain. To get the petal milk. Because it took me away from myself far better than wine.”

  “Sometimes wonderful things become a cage. I’ve seen it before. The poor, the desperate, the damaged…they think they can find paradise in a bottle. Maybe they can for a while, but it always ends and you are left with yourself.”

  “I hate being myself,” Ames whispered. “I want to be someone else.”

  Gray sipped his wine. “I’ve felt like that before. And then, one day, I was given a new heart, but I had the same mind. It’s the same old fight because even with magic, I’m the same. It’s the great goal of my life to be comfortable in my own skin. Sometimes, I am. And it is a great joy.”

  While he talked, Ames watched his face. She then smiled sadly. “My great joy is seeing your joy and strength. Being with you all, I can forget about myself. You laugh, and I laugh. You cry, and I cry. But I’m sorry for Rynn. And I’m kind of sorry for Pinch.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  That surprised Gray. “Why are you feeling sorry for Pinch?”

  “Because you all hate her now, more than ever. What she did to Rynn is unforgiveable. She will be alone forever, and the ice will remain ice. She will not be fire now. The ice has been submerged in blood.”

  Gray was feeling drunk enough to curse. “Fuck, Ames, there. Right there. What does all that mean?”

  Ames frowned. “You asked me to speak clearly, and I’ve tried. It’s just…the words get in the way. Pinch is ice, but she wants to be fire—she wants lust with you. You have captured her attention, but you’re already bonded. Sometimes that makes her even colder, because she’d given up completely. And sometimes it makes the hotter. Now, it doesn’t matter because she has Rynn’s blood on her hands. That is what I mean.” Her frown turned into a smile. “It took a long time to explain that. It would be better if you just could look into my heart and know me without all these words.”

  Gray laughed. “I suppose on some level, I didn’t need the words. I’ve seen how Pinch looks at me, and there is this connection we have. As for her beating up Rynn, it wasn’t too long ago she was spilling my blood on a daily basis. But I got to hit her as well. There is no love between us and Pinch and the rest of those fucking fae assholes. We hate the Winners.”

  “Maybe,” Ames said. “Or maybe the ice will melt. I see Pinch saving you, from a demon, in Old Town. I see you getting the mana and putting it in your stick. You and Settie fight about it, but then, you fix your meridians. If we go tonight, right now, we won’t get caught. The rain and the night will hide us. The rest of the squad is at the match. I know the way. Pinch told me, but she won’t be there. I saw her and the Winners in the crowd, on their way to Briarblood Stadium. We would need Rynn, but maybe…maybe she isn’t up for it. If she says no, we shouldn’t go. But you call her Mrs. Yes for a reason.”

  “Stay here,” Gray said. “And I’ll go and ask her.”

  His head was spinning, but after the scrimmage, when the fae had scored goal after goal, he’d felt so powerless. It was time to go all in, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t risked before. But they had to hurry. They didn’t have much time, and if they weren’t back at the Breezelock Inn when Settie returned, she would move heaven and earth to find them.

  He didn’t even knock when Rynn called to him. “Come in, Gray.”

  He pushed the door open and then closed it behind him. He went to her and sat on the bed and took her hand. “Tonight, let’s go to Old Town, you, me, and Ames. Let’s get the demon mana we need to fix my meridians. What do you say?”

  Rynn sighed. “We have to go, don’t we? You’re going to get us in so much trouble. If we’re caught poaching, we could be executed.”

  “I find that hard to believe, but we won’t get caught. Ames has these visions. It’s a long story. I vote we go, but I don’t want to go without you.”

  Rynn shook her head. “But what if…what if I can’t fight?”

  He took her hand. “You are very good at fighting. You’ve trained your entire life to fight, to get on a good kill squad, and to hunt demons. What happened today with Pinch is just part of the game. I’ve seen it a thousand times in the arena. A gladiator would simply have a bad day.” He had to laugh. “Sometimes, that was the last bad day of their lives because they didn’t get more days. But most of the time, they would simply have to shake it off. It’s how we deal with our failures that define us. Don’t let today define you.”

  Rynn squeezed her eyes shut. “Ugh, you certainly don’t make things easy for me, Grayson Fade. First, we have to defy Captain Sevanya and now you want me to go poaching with you, on one of the worst days of my life.”

  “What would Aunt Florence say?” he asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Try me,” Gray pressed.

  Rynn stood up abruptly. “She would say that men are trouble, and more you love them, the more trouble they are. You are the biggest trouble of my life. The very biggest. But fine, let’s go do illegal things and risk our lives. Why not?”

  Rynn took her sword as did Gray, but he would also be bringing his stick. If things went well, they would be filling it with mana.

  They hurried down the steps, and Ames was already putting on her coat. She had her own sword as well, hanging from a sheath on her hip. She must’ve gone up to her room while they talked.

  Ames went and took Rynn and held her, petting her hair. “I’m sorry, Rynnanatha. I’m so sorry. I should’ve warned you. I will, from now on. If I see something, I’ll tell you. Like I see Pinch saving us. But not tonight. She’s at the match.”

  Rynn gently eased Ames back. “Good. If I never see that fucking fairy bitch again, it will be too soon.”

  Gray was taken back by the hate in her voice. It broke his heart a little. Yes, they didn’t like Pinch and her squad, and he’d hated them, but Rynn had always tried to be more understanding of them. Those sentiments seemed gone for good.

  Before they left the inn, he took Rynn’s hand and gave her mana.

  She swallowed hard. “Thank you. I can’t stop thinking about her hitting me. And I didn’t defend myself. Why didn’t I defend myself?”

  “She surprised you,” Gray said. “And she got herself ejected. The minute you dropped the ball, you should’ve been safe.”

  Rynn’s face was still so very dark.

  But they didn’t have time to really talk more.

  The clock was ticking, and they had poaching to do.

  Ames led them through the rain, down the main street, and then to an alley, going away from the stadium, which lit up that part of the city. It was right under the tall Lust Tower, which rose up into the clouds. One side of the tower was lit up while the other was completely black.

  Then they were lost in back alleys, but Ames led them through the maze of streets and right to a door made from gray wood, hanging on rotting leather hinges. It was like she’d lived in Lust City all of her life. She pushed the door. which she pushed through to reveal a corridor of stacked stone. There wasn’t mortar and the ceiling was more gray wood.

  It led to a hole in the cobblestones. The smell was rank.

  Rynn wrinkled her nose. “Was this a toilet?”

  Ames didn’t respond. She channeled mana into her sword, and it glowed with a golden light. “It’s down the hole. It goes under the Hellbinder. We have to hurry.”

  Gray wasn’t too excited about going down a toilet hole, but it turned out to have a rusted metal ladder hammered into the rock. They scrambled down, and then, they had to crouch as they followed Ames and her glowing sword.

  Walking under the Hellbinder, the air turned chill, and they felt the unbearable pressure. It was bad, but the pushed through. This wasn’t warded like Settie’s secret passage, and that made it better and worse.

  Climbing up through another hole, they emerged at a dead end, on the other side of the barrier that held kept the demons penned in.

  But this was a whole new section of Old Town, unknown and unbelievably dangerous.

  And different. Unlike around Ruin Manor, where there were mostly houses, this section of Old Town was an obvious cemetery with massive crypts, gravestones, and other markers.

  Since Tomi wasn’t around, Gray had to be the one to make a joke. “Well, we found a bunch of dead people, so the demons must be around here somewhere.”

  Ames giggled unexpectedly.

  Rynn frowned. “This was not how I thought my first hunt would be.”

  “Let’s just make sure it’s not our last,” Gray said.

  And then they started forward through the necropolis as more cold rain fell from the black sky.