Vaughn hauled himself to his feet. “I’m sorry, B. I have to go. If I don’t win…” He winced, holding a hand to his side where the wraith had clawed him. “He has my sister, Briana, and I’m the only chance she’s got. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t even get the opportunity to ask who in the hell Vaughn was talking about. Eyeing Nessa, her friend bolted after the Korrigan, leaving her to deal with the wraith on her own.
Lucan had warned her not to count on her friends.
Not the time, she reminded herself, watching Nessa take off after Vaughn. For his sake, he needed to catch up with the Korrigan before the huntress caught up with him.
Between one beat and the next, the wraith lunged forward. Using the door Nessa had thrown, she pivoted and jammed it up between them. Shoving it at him, she spun around to run—and slammed right into Kel.
The dragon’s hands came up to grab her. She was too distracted by the sight of the wraith’s phantom form bleeding through the cell door to fight Kel off. Now he’d have his chance to see her torn apart.
Murderous claws emerged from the shadow bearing down on her.
“Go.” Kel shoved her behind him. “I’ll slow him down.”
She wanted to tell him to stay out of the wraith’s way, but the very real possibility that Kel running interference might be the only thing standing between her and the wraith fulfilling the Korrigan’s command changed her mind.
Sprinting in the opposite direction, she focused on sifting through the scents, isolating the smell of rotting oranges to track the Korrigan. She refused to consider what would happen if her signed death warrant didn’t expire when someone—even Vaughn—caught up with Korrigan and ended the round.
An unholy roar rocked the walls somewhere behind her, but she didn’t dare look back. Didn’t even slow down until a curvy blonde dressed in a leather pants and a long dark jacket, lips stained blood-red, stepped into Briana’s path, stopping her cold.
Sweet Avalon.
Morgana.
Lucan knew Briana wasn’t dead.
He could have hurt her, maybe even killed her, but he hadn’t. She’d gotten away, saved by the last immortal Lucan would have ever expected.
Kel stood opposite him, bleeding all over the courtyard from the wounds the wraith had inflicted in Camelot’s dungeon only moments ago.
“Get out of my way,” Lucan snarled, having no problem taking another chunk out of the dragon he’d been fully prepared to kill the moment they’d been invited to participate in the Gauntlet.
“She’s gone.”
“No!”
Lucan whirled from the wall in the courtyard he’d been prepared to scale if that’s what it took to get back to Camelot. He refused to believe the competition was over, that Briana had been somehow left behind when Vaughn caught up with Treasach’s Moon and ended the round.
He faced Nessa. “We have to go back for her.” Lucan glared at the rest of the immortals watching him, waiting for one of them to so much as twitch…
The homicidal compulsion to kill Briana may have evaporated the moment the round ended, but not the urgency that continued to hammer him. He needed to find Briana. Now.
He thought he’d been prepared for the Korrigan when he stumbled across her cell, but he hadn’t been expecting Nessa. The huntress had been the first to fall prey to the manipulative bitch Morgana had locked in the dungeon. The Korrigan would still be locked up if Lucan had his way—or dead if the wraith had his—but like every other prize they’d retrieved, Treasach’s Moon had disappeared at the end of the round.
Just like Briana.
“You heard what Maeve said,” Nessa added, referring to the god’s dismissal of Briana’s disappearance as an unforeseen complication.
Ignoring the huntress, he stalked toward Vaughn. “You should have stayed with her.”
It took the wolf effort to climb to his feet, his hand still pressed to the wound left from the wraith’s claws. “I’m not the one who tried to kill her.”
The wraith snarled, knowing the gargoyle was right, and that only made the anger eating through Lucan a thousand times worse.
“She might be better off,” Elena began, falling silent the moment Lucan glared at her, unable to suppress the wraith’s certainty that Briana belonged with them. Always.
We promised her.
He shoved his hands through his hair. “There has to be a way.”
“Win the Gauntlet,” Vaughn drawled. “Barter the sword for her freedom.” He sat back down, sucking in a breath as he pulled his shirt away to check his wound.
“He can’t do that,” Nessa interrupted, crossing the courtyard to stand opposite Lucan. “That would mean betraying Arthur. You can’t do it.”
Fuck, they didn’t even know for sure the gods had Excalibur. “So I just leave her there?” Did the huntress even hear what she was saying?
Elena glanced from Vaughn to Lucan. “We freed one prisoner,” the sorceress reminded them. “We could do it again.”
“We?” Vaughn scoffed.
If the dragon hadn’t been between them, Lucan would have slaughtered the wolf.
“Unless Morgana allowed Treasach’s Moon to be taken.” Bran spoke up for the first time, saying what had already occurred to Lucan when he realized there hadn’t been a single guard watching over any of the prisoners.
Even Morgana wasn’t that cocky.
But none of that explained what the hell had happened to Briana. He knew he hadn’t hurt her, and the fact that the dragon had been the one protecting her was all that kept Lucan for lashing out when Kel eased back to lean against the wall and said, “All of this is assuming she’s still alive.”
“She is.” He knew that with a staggering certainty he clung to in the face of what that Korrigan might have compelled him to do. It didn’t even mattered that he hadn’t been with her during the competition. He’d still posed a threat to her.
Would always pose a threat.
Whatever it took, he would find a way to free her from Camelot—and then he’d free her from the mating bond.
He wouldn’t allow her to be hurt again because of him. She wouldn’t have been anywhere near Camelot if he hadn’t talked to her that night at the Wolf’s Den in Vegas. If he hadn’t gotten near the penthouse that night, half hoping for a glimpse of her, she would have escaped the gods notice.
At every turn he’d made the selfish decision where Briana was concerned, stealing another moment, drawing out their time together until she was the one to suffer over and over. He couldn’t do it again. Once freed from the mating bond, she would be happy and safe.
She had to be.
For once the wolf was right. Win the Gauntlet and win the kind of power that he could use to get Briana back.
And it would only cost him everything he’d once believed in.
Lucan eyed the wall again, vaguely aware of the others leaving. Everyone but Kel.
“She wouldn’t want you to risk it.”
The dragon was the last one who should care what happened to him or Briana. What was he after?
“If she’s still alive—”
Lucan snarled.
Kel sighed, pushing away from the wall. “Then it’s for a reason. It’s your job to keep your shit together until you figure out what that reason is.”
If he wasn’t still struggling to deal with the fact that they’d come back without Briana, his head just might have exploded at Kel’s unexpected advice. Lucan had been just as shocked as every other knight and gargoyle on the field the day Kel had deserted them, but he didn’t know what to do with this.