Page 40 of The Marked and the Broken
I take a deep breath. “Me.”
The word is barely out of my mouth before the whole room explodes with arguing. I wait silently as they fling their objections my way. But their promises that we’ll find another way, or the reasons they have for why it’s a bad idea, slide right off of me as I watch the crystal-blue eyes that are watching me.
“Your friends are the only leverage Adriel has right now. He would say he’d exchange them, but he won’t. He’ll use it as a way to lure you out, take you, and then use them against you. Even if they managed to escape somehow, he’ll hunt anyone and everyone you’ve ever known. He’ll dangle each and every one of them in front of you until they’re dead or he gets what he wants.”
“Fucking hell,” Knox breathes out, and the frustration in his words tickles my ear as it passes by.
I watch Siah as I mentally flip through the options for other plans of attack. Violet magic sparks on my hands, and I mentally curse it and shake them until the flashes sputter out. Ryker gives me a questioning raised eyebrow, and I huff out a breath and shake my head.
“We’ll talk about that later,” I tell him, and he snorts out an exasperated breath of his own.
Keep the flirting and the Chosen marking to yourself, magic. We’ve got enough shit to deal with right now; you and your hoarding can just fucking wait,I scold, and then once again feel like a dumbass for lecturing something that’s essentially me. Although I swear it has to have a mind of its own.
“So what if we attack from all angles?” Kallan asks absently, and all eyes in the room move to him.
“Meaning?” Valen asks.
“Meaning, what if Vinna gives herself up—” The rest of Kallan’s words are swallowed up by shouting. Everyone starts to square off, and I begin to feel like the aggression in the room is about to boil me alive. I push out of Knox’s arms, which isn’t hard to do because he wants in on the beat down that sits like a promise in the eyes of all of my Chosen.
“Stop!” I yell out, and the command is punctuated by a pulse of Sentinel magic that shoots out in a purple arc that slams into everyone. Enoch, Nash, and Kallan drop to their knees, and everyone else in the room hisses as the magic rushes through them and out through the walls. I look down at my hands, a little surprised by what just happened.
Well, fuck.
Looks like my magic is done messing around. I brush off my surprise and try to adopt aI totally meant to do thatmien. Based on Torrez and Knox’s snickers, I’m not pulling it off as well as I was hoping for. I shoot them both a look and then focus on Kallan. He struggles to look up at me.
“Uh, are you okay?” I ask warily, completely shattering any illusion that I know what I’m doing. I offer him a hand, and as soon as I do, it’s like whatever hold was keeping Kallan and his coven on the ground breaks. They all get up, their eyes bouncing from their limbs to me like they can’t figure out who or what betrayed them.
“What were you saying before about attacking from all angles?” I ask before the room can break out in another yelling match now that the effects of my magical bitch slap seem to have worn off.
“I was saying, if you give yourself to Adriel, that means we have you, Lachlan, and Keegan on the inside.” Kallan points to Siah. “Ifhecan gather the lamia who want out from underneath Adriel’s thumb, then we’d have another group on the inside too. If we could coordinate something with us on the outside and you all on the inside, we could attack from all angles.”
“Has anyone ever done that before?” I turn and ask Siah.
“No, at least not like how he’s suggesting. When your mother escaped, the prisoners were capitalizing on an attack that was happening, but the attacking group and the escaping group weren’t working together.”
“Do you think you could get other lamia to join in the fight against Adriel?” Aydin asks.
Siah shrugs. “There are some I know that would, but it’s hard to say how many would actually fight other members of the nest. It would also be very tricky to try to more or less plan a rebellion without it being whispered into the wrong ears or brought to light by a weaker member wanting to win favor with Adriel.”
I nod my head in understanding and lose myself in thought for a moment. “Wolf?” Torrez’s eyes move from Siah to me, and I see a hint of something I can’t identify in his gaze. “Do you think you could convince the Volkovs and any other packs they know to fight with us?”
“I don’t think they’d take much convincing,” he tells me with a grin. I smile and nod back at him, they were pretty amped for a good fight.
“How many lamia are in Adriel’s nest?” Enoch asks Siah.
“About two hundred and fifty, give or take. A third of that number is actually skilled fighters. He sends out hunting parties all of the time, so there could be anywhere from ten to sixty battle-ready lamia gone at any given time.”
I look around the room as Siah talks about the size of the nest. There are fourteen of us. How the fuck are we going to take on those numbers in a head-to-head fight? Kallan’s suggestion just became the best shot we’ve got. If we can get the Volkov pack to fight with us, then we’d be a hell of a lot more evenly matched.
“Is the nest predominantly male?” Valen queries, and I can see the spark of calculation in his eyes.
“The ratio is about seventy-thirty, but the females are just as deadly as the males, if not more so. It can be hard for other supes to kill women, and female lamia will use that to their advantage.”
I look around the room. “Anyone else have a better plan?” I ask, meeting each of their eyes in turn. Every single one of them hesitantly shake their heads slowly or answer no after a beat or two.
“Then, let’s do this.”
17
