They were just words—who knew what he’d actually do, if that time came—but no one had ever given her even that much before.
She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t want Silas to die either. Andconsidering that his plan would likely end with two matching blood splatters on the pavement, she needed to come up with something better.
“I have an idea,” Katherine said. “A bad idea, but not quite as bad as yours. Hopefully.” Katherine shifted her hips. “Can you reach into my back pocket and get my caster for me?”
“What are you going to do?”
“A spell, rather than just standing here talking.”
“I suggested spells!”
“Silas. Just do it.”
“Can we just for one second—” A lick of flame came out the window, a few feet away from Silas. “Okay. Fine. Yes.”
Silas moved closer to her, then reached his hand carefully toward the bulge of her caster. She shivered at the light brush of his fingers over her ass—something, she reminded herself, that she shouldn’t be noticing right now. Then, his touch was gone, the caster safely in his grip. He flicked it open for her, and she inched her hand over to grab it, knife edge down. She pressed her hand against the wall, pushing the blade into her palm.
“Adhere,” she whispered. She didn’t need to say the word out loud to bring up the spell, but her brain was incapable of focusing right now, and saying it helped bring up the rune she needed.
“Seriously?” Silas asked. “That’s for when you want to hang up a poster or something. How’s it going to help here?”
Katherine ignored him, repeating the spell again, while jamming her hand harder into the blade. The pain shook her, but she kept going, repeating the motion and the words again and again and again, until she felt it.
She wasn’t gripping the wall anymore. She was sticking to it.
Against her better judgment, she took her right hand off the wall, the motion making a loud squelch. She stuck it back down and her skin was sucked flush to the wall of the building again. The connection felt solid enough to hold her weight.
“You made yourself into tape.”
Katherine grinned at Silas as he stared at her in awe. “Your turn.Use more blood and more magic, and focus your intention heavily on your own body.”
Silas pulled out his caster, following the same motions Katherine had. She noticed, with some satisfaction, that it took him a good thirty seconds longer than it had taken her. Suck on that, fancy Noctis training.
Eventually, though, the tang of magic overtook the smell of smoke in the air and the spell took hold. Silas instantly began to test his newfound stickiness, turning his body around so that his chest was facing the building and he was leaning back, his weight on his hands. “I’m Spider-Man,” he said, and it was such a ridiculous thing to say in this situation that she was able to use it to distract herself for long enough to accomplish the terrifying task of repeating his motion.
“I don’t think Spider-Man wears suit pants,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady against her fear as she leaned back slightly, testing her hands’ hold.
“He would if he worked a nine-to-five.”
“Poor guy doesn’t have the temperament for that.”
A gust of wind blew by them. Katherine’s eyes slammed shut as her body rocked with the breeze, waiting for her hands to be ripped off the wall—but the spell stuck.
“Do you want me to go first?” Silas asked. Katherine didn’t bother fronting, instead nodding her thankfulness. She chanced a glance toward Silas as he started to move, climbing down the building like it was a ladder. Katherine gave herself only a second to steel her nerves before she followed—she had no idea how long this spell would last, and she really wanted to be on the ground before she found out.
It was terrifying. She couldn’t look down if she wanted to maintain her thin grip on sanity, but that meant her eyes were instead locked to the building, to the fire burning behind every window they passed. It was midafternoon on a weekday at a business hotel, and the rooms seemed to be empty. She breathed a sigh of relief, happy that at least they had been given that boon. Maybe this would all be okay—
She slipped.
She screamed as her body tilted to the side, held entirely by her lefthand. The pendulum motion of her swing pulled at the connection point too, and her fingers started to dislodge. She made a mad grab for the wall again, missed—
A strong hand on top of hers, pushing her back into the wall, letting that adhesive she’d turned herself into regrip the concrete.
Her eyes stayed closed, her head pressed to the wall in front of her until she could recover her breath. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She was struck by the power of the panic on Silas’ face when she turned to look at him. His mouth opened then shut again, then opened and shut one more time before he finally spoke. “Anytime.”
He was right at her side for the rest of the climb down, and he kept looking at her, and she kept looking at him, and by the time their feet touched the empty alleyway below, she was so desperate for him to be the thing that grounded her that she bolted into his arms at top speed.
