“What better way to get information from you than send in someone you trust. Especially feeling guilty for leaving him to die.” He patted Tracker’s arm. “Tracker here has been quite an asset to HDF. Though he hasn’t been with us long, his initiative and devotion to the cause have made him one of my most valuable soldiers.” Istvan’s words had Tracker beaming with pride. “It was his idea to be put in here and in the hole with you, to get all the information he could. It was his idea to look authentic.” Istvan nodded to Tracker’s bruised eye.
My attention darted to Tracker as he self-righteously smiled down at me. Little moments came back to me, like the guard calling him by his first name. They didn’t usually do that, especially with someone like Tracker. He’d only be known by his number. And how he suddenly needed to go to the bathroom.
“What’s strange, besides the bizarre dreams of being in some water tank, is waking from my coma. I’ve never felt better in my life.” I had never caught on. Only the rich were put into the tanks. Especially not some ex-Povstat elite, unless Istvan had plans for him. Hanna didn’t even get that treatment.
“Friends are never as faithful as a person whose whole world is in your hands.”
My lids shut for a moment, going back to the moment he stepped into this prison. It had all been a lie. A setup. Every conversation had been to get information from me. He had been a spy for Istvan all along. Tracker was a prime candidate to flip—arrogant, angry, inferiority complex, lost, and feeling betrayed. Istvan swept in and preyed upon that, giving him a leader to follow. A reason to blame and a reason to worship and be indebted to him. He made him equal to fae.
I had walked right into it, believing he was still loyal to Mykel.
“Zrádce!” Traitor! Lukas screamed in Czech. “You piece of shit! I’m gonna fucking kill you!” Lukas raged, Ash and Kek holding him back.
“I was shown the way. Awoken to the truth,” Tracker snapped back at Lukas. “Even your mother and brother see the truth. Maybe it’s you who is the traitor.”
“It didn’t take you long to be brainwashed. Though I’m not surprised, not like you were robust in that department anyway.” Kek jeered, her eyebrow cocking up in a knowing expression. “Upstairs or downstairs.”
Lukas and I both swung to look at her, and she shrugged one shoulder.
Oh, gods, I didn’t want to know.
“Shut the fuck up, demon,” Tracker snarled, ramming his body against the railing. Istvan put a hand up, and Tracker instantly stepped back, quickly obeying his new master.
“Tracker quickly saw how manipulated he had been before, saw the error of his ways, believing the false lies fae spouted about us all being equal as they murdered us in droves,” Istvan spoke down to us. “After his own group turned their backs on him, left him for dead in the streets, choosing fae over him, he now sees where his loyalties lie.”
“What about Ava? Didn’t you care about her? Sab? Blade? Jak and Lea?” Lukas listed off his comrades in the Povstat’s first unit. “Were we not your friends?”
“Friends?” Tracker huffed. “No. I realized we were never friends. And it didn’t go above my notice to see I was the only human in the entire squad. Mykel’s preference was very clear. And the only reason I was there was because I was the best out of all of you.”
“Now you are even better.” Istvan nodded at him, the same look on his face I recalled when he was pleased with Caden, making a bad taste slide down the back of my throat.
“It wouldn’t have been long before Mykel replaced me with more fae.” Tracker hissed out the final word like it was a foul taste on his tongue.
Tracker’s ego and sense of entitlement were prime for Istvan to warp and control. A perfect candidate to bend and mold. Shape into the image you wanted.
I would never bend.
“If you hate fae so much, why were you so willing to become one?” I fired at him.
“I will be even more powerful.” His chilling confidence prickled at my skin.
“That you will.” Istvan shared a knowing grin with him, and my stomach sank. “Great things are ahead of you.”
“Istvan, what is going on?” Leon shuffled, both he and Alexandru grouping together, unsettled by the shift in the atmosphere.
“Leon, why don’t you shut the fuck up and hide behind your fae mistress as you normally do?” Istvan dismissed him.
Leon’s eyes went wide with shock, his mouth puffing, his cheeks ruddy with embarrassment and anger. “How dare you!”
“I said shut up!” Istvan’s voice cut through the space. “Both of you have been nothing but a nuisance to me. And now I no longer have to play nice.”
Ivanenko and his daughter peered at each other haughtily, and I understood a great shift was happening.
“I do not have to stand here and be disrespected like this.” Lazar huffed, ire creasing his features.
“You do, and you will, Alexandru.” Istvan gleamed with power. Every word to these men was said with dominance. He seemed relieved he could finally pull down the veil of pleasantries. “Things have changed.”
Tracker retrieved something from a messenger bag, lifting it up into view.
My entire universe stopped, oxygen seizing in my lungs.
In his hands was a box, singed and burnt on the corners and across the lid. I recognized every mark as if it were a tattoo on my skin. I knew they had it, could feel it, but seeing Tracker place the nectar in Istvan’s hands... Reality slammed into me like a tsunami. Terror churned and swallowed me whole. Taking no prisoners. Perception of time and space blinked out of existence, my brain not computing the certainty of this moment.
Istvan had the nectar.
He had his men walk in and take it because of one single flaw I let slip out to the wrong person. One of the most powerful substances in the world was now in the hands of the most narcissistic, psychotic, evil asshole because of me.
“What is that?” Leon huffed, though Sonya stood stock-still, her eyes locked on the box. “I’ve had enough of your games, Markos.” Leon turned for the exit. Sergiu tapped at his father, wanting to follow, but Lazar stopped him, his head shaking.
“Take another step, Leon, and it will be your last.” Istvan’s focus stayed on the box in Tracker’s hands as he spoke.
Leon’s eyebrows pushed together, glancing at everyone else as if he were saying, are you going to put up with this? The rest didn’t move as if they sensed what Istvan held, could feel its magic, whether they were human or not.
“This is ridiculous!”
“For once, just shut up and listen before you open your trap,” Sonya spat, irritation and disgust on her face, like she also no longer had to play nice to him.
He went still, shocked by her reaction, taking in Lazar’s and Sonya’s tense figures.
But they no longer mattered to me; all I saw was the object in Istvan’s hands.
I could feel it calling to me. The possessiveness of someone taking part of you—it was violating and wrong. The power thrummed from the box, a drumbeat in sync with my pulse. It wanted me to seize it back. To have what was rightfully mine. It went past ownership, a magic significant to only me. Oxygen heaved from my lungs, a growl slipping through my gritted teeth. I felt and saw nothing else.
“Kovacs,” Warwick called my name, the feel of him skimming over my skin, dipping beneath. His real hand tried to pry mine open. Peering down, I noticed blood dripping into the dirt from my hand, my nails slicing deep into my palm from my grip.
“It’s mine.” The force with which it called to me, the need to take it and protect it from anyone else who wanted to touch it, trembled my muscles.
“I know,” Warwick replied evenly, his deep voice keeping me from actually leaping up to the balcony. “We will get it back.”
Istvan’s fingers clutched the lid, slowly opening the box, his eyes scanning over the object inside. A smile curled his lips, his eyes flashing, the shine of greed and power glowing on his face. His shoulders were set back, his spine straightening; his confidence created the impression he was getting taller. Arrogance and superiority filled the space around him.
“What is that?” Leon looked in the box, his nose wrinkling up, his overconfidence ramming up against the tension growing among them. I was starting to think Sonya pulled the strings behind the scenes, giving Leon his ruthless reputation. I didn’t doubt he was, but his own arrogance had dulled his common sense, made him believe he was untouchable. “This is what you are all trembling over? Some solidified honey or whatever it is.”
“Nectar,” Istvan replied, a giddiness in his tone I had never heard before.
“This is the mythical nectar?” Leon exclaimed before bursting out in a throaty laugh. “You have lost your mind. Not only is it just a fairytale, but you expect me to believe that gross lump of goo is all-powerful? It is sap you probably harvested from a tree—”
“Do you not feel its power, Leon?” Istvan’s hand quaked as he lifted toward the nectar.
I didn’t even realize I had reeled forward until I felt Warwick and Ash both grab my arms.