Chapter 217: Never Back Down

Mackenzie didn’t put up a fight, though he knew he was as likely to receive death as he was answers. He recognized the sentries by their worn weapons and their fluid, precise movements. He’d never forget those details, not after he’d spent a day being held prisoner in a warehouse by them—and witnessed Jane cut through them as though they were stalks of wheat. They’d never known that it had been their lost queen who came to slaughter them.

The sentries forced him to his knees in an empty room that smelled of old hay. Mackenzie found Aedion and a familiar-looking old man staring down at him. The one who had begged Jane to stop that night in the warehouse. There was nothing remarkable about the old man; his worn clothes were ordinary, his body lean but not yet withered. Beside him stood a young man Mackenzie knew by his soft, vicious laugh: the guard who had taunted him when he’d been held prisoner. Shoulder-length dark hair hung loose around a face that was more cruel than handsome, es