Page 97 of The Duchess Curse

One of the men screamed. “It’s a ghost!” He staggered away from him.

But she lunged for the man’s gun.

He must have realized she wasn’t a ghost because he wasn’t trembling anymore.

Bran fought his own fight, holding the gun he’d taken from the other attacker above his head. The man shoved him against the wall. He couldn’t throw the gun in his hand away. Who knew where an accidental firing would send a bullet. So he brought his knee up into the man’s balls, dropping him like a dead man.

Bran trained the gun in his hands on the other attacker. “Drop it.”

“Do as he says.” Guin held her cane sword at the ready. “Hand over the pistol.”

“Yer her,” the attacker sneered.

“And your eyes are red,” Guin said. “But just because you’re immune to pain doesn’t mean it can’t kill you.” Guin sliced her dagger at him, a movement so quick Bran saw nothing but the flash of silver in the orb’s golden light.

And he saw the twitch of the man’s hand, too.

Bran dove.

Just before the gun went off.

The bullet tore into his shoulder and out, his only thought before hitting the ground was a wild fear the same bullet that hit him might have hit Guin too.

“Fuck!” The attacker stepped away from Bran. “I hit the duke! Run!” He took off, and the man moaning on the ground stumbled to his feet and limped after him.

They met Hesperus at the alley’s end.

“Good evening, gents,” Hesperus said. “You can climb up into that coach under your own power or I’ll help you.”

The men obliged him, and Hesperus slammed the door shut. His hand glowed over the mechanism that kept the door closed, melting it, locking them in. “Got ’em all, duke.”

“Bran!” Guin hit the ground beside him as he pushed upright, the world still ringing and muffled in his ears, and a pain burning in his shoulder like hellfire.

He was dizzy, but he tried to push to his feet. “I’m fine. Just a scratch.”

“It went right though!” She pulled him back down into her lap. Not a bad place to be, even with her face pale and frantic, even as she tore at her skirts. “You’re bleeding from both sides! Be still. We have to stop it.” Her words were frantic, too, cracking and breaking like ice on a lake during the first spring thaw.

“I’m fine.”

“Hesperus! He’s losing so much blood. We need to get him home!”

Something hit his cheek. A raindrop. Then another. No, her tears, coming steady now, though she tried to wipe them away.

“I think the bullet was doused in our poison. The one that keeps a wound open unless you have the antidote. The hole is so small, but there’s too much blood.”

He was dizzy.

She bunched her ripped skirts up and pressed them hard into his wound. He hissed, and she cried, and he lifted a heavy arm to comfort her.

Hesperus hit his knees on Bran’s other side. “Good God.”

“I think it’s a poison. I don’t have an antidote with me. I haven’t needed it—” The attacks had stopped. Her senses had dulled, her precautions dwindling as she’d grown confident in her safety with her mighty Shadow at her back. “We have to get him to Mayfair alive.”

“Give him to me.” Hesperus lifted Bran in his arms and carried him.

“Humiliating,” Bran mumbled, his lips cold.

Guin held his hand, running beside them, and she stayed with him when Hesperus flung him like a sack of flour over a horse’s back. Pain tore through Bran’s shoulder, down his torso and arm. He hated guns.