Bright hair, as brilliant as the raging fire, spread out like spilled blood near the stables. The body is face down, but I know it’s him.
I’m running before my mind can process what’s happening, my feet slipping, my heart thundering in my ears, panic rising, rising. I drop to my knees, skidding in the mud, sobbing.
“Samson!”
My hands shake as I reach for him, but I can’t force myself to touch him. Because the fire issohot, this entire courtyard is sweltering now, and I cannot…Icannotfeel his skin to know if it is cold.
His body is eerily still.
My eyes stream with water, irritated by both the smoke and my own boiling emotions. But through the haze, I see…
His aura wafting around him, red and gold and glittering orange.
He’s alive.
“Samson!” I shout again, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him, trying to turn him around.
He coughs, his body bending in half, soot smeared over his face, but when he catches his ragged breath and opens his eyes, my heart finally, finally eases—he’s alive.
He blinks.
His eyes are hollow.
The stress of the day, the terror of it all, the violence of the explosion…
The Red Cap delirium is taking him. Even as I watch, the vividcolors of his aura grow paler, fading to nothing.
For a split second, adrenaline surges through my body, begging me to flee. The shallow cut on my chest aches, reminding me of just how close he came to killing me before.RUN!my hammering heart screams.
No.
Not from him.
“Fight it,” I whisper, grabbing his doublet and forcing him to focus on me. His head listlessly turns to me, as if he’s lost in a fever. “I know you’re not a monster, Samson Calthorpe, and you are not a mindless murderer, and you—you—are still inside that body of yours, and right now we don’t have time for you to do anything but be yourself, and you are going to fight it.”
His aura faintly swirls around him, the red washing up, the gold pushing back, a swirl of black drifting through it all.
Already, I can feel the tug of my oath, reminding me of my vow.
I swear it. If you become a danger, I will ensure you are taken care of.
If he can fight his nature, I can fight mine.
My hands bunch into fists, the promise tugging at me, my whole body telling me that I know what I need to do, that Ihaveto do it.
I wait for him to come back.
Because if he doesn’t, that rage is going to turn right back around onto me.
Unless I kill him first.
34
Samson
There was an explosion. I know that much. Not outside only—inme, an iron box locked in my chest gone to bits and rubble, and out of that box comes the rampaging monster that overtook me at Stirling when I attacked Alyth. The one I’ve fought every moment of my life, even when I didn’t know what I was fighting.
But my body’s all pain, riddled with injuries. My instinct’s wild in the aftermath—protect, fight, defend—because there’s an enemy somewhere, only I can’t see it, so I’m on alert, veins surging with blood gone to boiling, heart hammering a death march that rocks through my whole body.
