"I’m sorry," he rumbled as she hung up. "I could overhear your conversation."

"I figured. But where-no. Why?"

Alban didn’t answer until the sharpness of his upward climb leveled off, his concentration solely on reaching the heights above the skyline. "Not for Janx. Not even for you," he admitted in his deep voice. "He’ll destroy them, Margrit. He’ll kill your friend Tony and anyone with him."

Margrit made an abortive move to dial her phone again. Calling would be useless; it wasn’t as though Tony didn’t know raiding a criminal’s lair was dangerous work. He hadn’t gone into policing for the safety or the extravagant benefits. Margrit put her face against Alban’s shoulder, trying to will away fear.

For once, Tony’s Italian good looks stood out clearly in her mind, dark hair and ruddy cheeks and easy white smile. He still seemed overblown and lush compared to Alban’s stark paleness and chiseled features, but remembering his good humor and simple humanity, suddenly so fragile, made Margrit’s heart hurt. Fear for his life made overlooking his flaws easier, though it abruptly seemed unfair to consider his worry for her a flaw. If she could have made him understand that she needed the nightly run in the park as much as he needed the excitement of his job…

Margrit tried to push regret away. The choices had been made on both their parts. Still, the what-if loomed large in the face of never again.

"Are you all right?" Alban’s voice, quiet with concern, cut through the rush of the wind. Margrit nodded against his shoulder, aware it was the first time she’d ever consciously lied to him.

"I’m fine. Just scared."

A hitch came into Alban’s wingbeats. He drew her closer, gentleness and hesitation in the action. "Margrit, I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have brought you."

She stiffened, glowering at his jaw. "Like hell you shouldn’t have. I would’ve just taken myself if you hadn’t."

"It’s going to be dangerous. Your people are so fragile."

"You’ll protect me." She spoke with simple confidence, glad to shuffle off even the smallest deception. "Look at it this way. At least you’ll know where I am if I’m with you."

Alban chuckled, a sound without humor. "Given that I’m likely to be the only thing capable of standing between Janx and the utter destruction of your friends, I’m not sure that’s the reassurance you intended it to be." He tucked her closer, though, and drove forward through the sky, threats to abandon her left behind in the wind.

CHAPTER 34

They hit the House of Card’s rooftop at a run, Alban shifting into human form between one step and the next. A startled guard barked a protest, and Alban hit him in the chest, knocking him against the wall effortlessly. Margrit squeaked, then put on a burst of speed to outpace the gargoyle as they took the stairs down toward Janx’s alcove.

Alban caught her as she crashed through a second door, literally wrapping an arm around her middle and hugging her to a stop. Margrit pinwheeled as he whispered a warning into her hair.

Madness reigned below them. The casino was in an uproar, voices pitched so high in fear and anger Margrit was surprised she hadn’t heard them earlier. Alban, though, must have. Margrit relaxed in his arms as she understood why he hadn’t wanted her to charge in.

Most humans wouldn’t have eyes to see it. Djinns and selkies moved with too-fluid purpose, rousting people toward the streets. Certainty seized Margrit: the Old Races below knew their window of safety had ended. Word had flown ahead of them, warning that Janx had learned of the coup attempt. Humans didn’t belong in the burgeoning frey; they were customers and users, too valuable to waste in a fight between the Old Races.

Angry the mortals fought back, refusing to be assuaged or moved until the warehouse’s front doors blew open. A blast of cooler air rode in, then burned away as Janx stalked into his casino, nearly blazing with fury. Margrit’s breath seized, a too-familiar response to the dragonlord’s presence. Alban’s arms tightened around her reassuringly.

Humans scattered before Janx where they’d stood their ground against the other invaders. Desperate men scraped up poker chips and clutched them as they ran for the doors, only to be repelled by bouncers too savvy to let them escape, even amid chaos. Margrit caught a glimpse of Biali’s thick form and brilliantly white hair among the darker heads below, and wondered which he fought for-his employer or vengeance.

"Malik is nearby." Alban’s voice was low enough to cut through the noise.

Margrit twisted in his arms, looking around. "How can you tell?"

"His cane’s made of corundum." Alban tipped his head as Margrit frowned at him. "Sapphire. My family is sensitive to it, and a piece that large is easy to track."

"That’s a sapphire?" Sheer childish greed rose up in Margrit. "It’s as big as my fist. Where’d he get a stone like that? I thought it was glass. My God. Did he get it from Janx? Does Janx really have a hoard? I want to see it." Below near-hysterical interest lay a bitter awareness that people fought for their lives only a few yards below them. Margrit clenched her teeth, trying to control herself, and hoping it was fear and adrenaline that drove her spate of words rather than a sudden loss of faculties. "Never mind the hoard." She scanned the space below with renewed concern. "Where’d he go? How did he get here so fast?"

Alban gave her a look that bordered on pity and brought confused heat to Margrit’s cheeks. It said too clearly that mere humans could never hope to match the speeds even the slowest of the Old Races could achieve; that questions of locomotion were so basic as to be embarrassing. She remembered, uncomfortably, how Janx’s way of moving often seemed to be a simpled transference of attention, focus flowing from one place to another and drawing his body along with it nearly instantaneously. Lower lip in her teeth, she glanced away. "People are going to start dying down there."

"Then we’d better put a stop to it if we can." Alban finally released her, and Margrit broke into a run again, just as glad to have not encountered the mob unprepared. Alban strong-armed another pair of men, these ones scrambling to escape the fight.

Margrit found a certain reckless satisfaction in bursting into Janx’s office unannounced a few seconds later. The door banged against the wall, steel on steel, and Janx flinched, whipping to face her with his hands clawed, ready for a fight. Margrit skidded on the floor and stopped herself with both hands planted on the cafeteria table he used for a desk. Malik was nowhere to be seen, so she put that aside to blurt, "Cops are coming."

"What?" The startled question was as human and unplanned as his angry flinch had been. "Margrit, I admire your alacrity in arriving, but police? Coming here? I own half the department, my dear. Don’t you think someone might have mentioned an attempt as audacious as…Bother. I can’t think of an alliterative way to end that sentence. Never mind." He fluttered his hand dismissively, with no hint of any emotion beyond his usual lightheartedness. "No one would dare."

"There hasn’t been time for anybody to tell you. Forget the selkies. You’re about to be arrested."

The dragonlord blanched, his skin nearly as white as Alban’s and his fiery hair contrasting to make him look sickly. The green in his eyes was swallowed by rage, leaving nothing but blackness. He leaned forward, fingertips white against the table’s surface. "And you know this how?"

"Tony tipped me off, because he never imagined I’d warn you!"

"The police. So quickly." Janx’s answering whisper bordered between accusation and question. He wrapped his fingers around the edge of the table, as if controlling his anger. "You’ve brought this on me."