The warmth left Brother Matthias’s eyes like a switch being flipped, leaving a gaze that was cold and flat. “The contamination is deeper than I thought. We’ll need more intensive intervention—”
He reached for the leather case Cass always avoided looking at, because the tool came from it, and he’d never looked inside because he hated looking at the things that hurt him.
Cass was struggling to pull his robes on with the sling, his hands shaking, when he felt a sharp pain in his thigh. He glanced down, taking a moment to stare at the spot where a needle wassticking out of him, and Brother Matthias’s thumb was pushing down on the plunger. Warmth was already spreading up his leg into his hip. Cass yanked it out as Brother Matthias stood, his hand still on his face, just looking down at him.
“What did you give me?” Cass felt the warmth spreading, moving up into his torso, replacing that cold feeling he had just had. His body knew this feeling from somewhere and the door in the back of his head was shaking.
“I’m not trying to hurt you—”
There was a terrible sound from the front of the house, like wood cracking, and then the bedroom door smashed open so hard the wall cracked.
Riot stood in the doorway, his eyes engulfed in gold light, worse than when he was standing in the road surrounded by pieces of people. He was barefoot, his tunic torn, with his hands at his sides, open, like the hands of someone who hadn’t decided what to do yet and the deciding was about to happen fast.
This is bad. This is very bad.
“Don’t look at him,” Cass said quickly, his face feeling impossibly warm as a sob worked its way up his throat. “Look at me.”
Riot’s eyes snapped to him.
“I’m mad at him and I bit him,” Cass sobbed, still struggling with the robe. He gave up and threw it back to the ground. “I’m mad,Riot. I’m sofucking mad.”
Riot’s eyes dimmed a little and he took a step forward, opening his mouth, but before any words came out, Honey’s voice came from the hall, “Give me that.”
She came through the door, shoving Riot out of the way like she hadn’t stood in this room at the beginning of the day terrified of him, and she froze as her eyes moved over Cass’s body.
“Honey, don’t—” he began. He didn’t want her to see.
She crossed the room faster than Cass had ever seen her move and she kneed Brother Matthias in the groin, caught his shoulders as he hunched over, and threw him to the ground. Before he could get up, she planted her foot on his chest, leaning forward on her knee as she pressed the blade from her hair against the soft skin beside his eye.
“Don’t move,” she snapped, sounding nothing like the woman who arranged fruit by size. “Don’t. Move.”
Chapter forty-three
Reflecting Pools
Cass
“I’mokay,”Casssaid,but his tongue felt thick. “Riot, I’m okay. We need to—”
Riot took in a deep breath, and without a word, moved to Cass and lifted him off the ground, one arm under his knees, one behind his back, pulling him against his chest. Cass’s shoulder protested and the movement opened two of the circles on his ribs.
“You don’t touch him again,” Riot growled, looking down at Cass when he said it, but the words were for Brother Matthias. “You don’t touch him. You don’t look at him. You don’t say his name.”
He carried Cass to the bathroom, kicked the door shut behind them with his heel, and set him down gently on the lid of the toilet seat. His hands stayed on Cass’s waist for a moment, as though he were making sure he was steady, or maybe just not ready to let go—and then he stepped back and looked at him.
Cass watched him look. Riot’s eyes moved over every bandage, like if he could name and count every wound he could hold himself responsible for the precise total. His face was very still, which Cass knew meant underneath it, things were not still at all.
“There was a needle on the ground. Did he—” Riot stopped, cleared his throat, then started again. “What did it feel like?”
“Warm.” Cass pressed his hand flat against his own sternum, trying to feel where the warmth ended and he began, but the edges were harder to find than they should be. “It’s making everything warm. My hands feel—” He looked at his hands. Theylookedlike his hands, but they felt like they belonged to someone else. “Heavy. We need to leave, right now. Someone will have heard—”
“I know.” Riot turned toward the door. “I’m going to get your robes—”
Cass felt it before Riot’s hand reached the handle—the wire between them pulled suddenly taut, vibrating at a frequency that wasn’t sound. Gold and hot and dark. It wanted, and the wanting wasn’t for anything that could be taken back.
“Riot.”
“Just robes.”
