The fight, if you can call it that, lasts about forty-five seconds. Hex is not playing. He’s not warming up or testing or feeling out his opponent. He hits like someone who has been fighting things like Wraith since before my grandparents were born, with the grim efficiency of someone who has deeply seated beliefs about finishing things quickly. It’s almost clinical.
Wraith screeches once, a sound that goes directly through my back teeth, and then he comes apart at the edges and disperses, shadows dissolving into nothing.
He’s gone.
The remaining crows flap to the broken window. They file out through it with a ragged dignity, the last one pausing on the sill for a moment, almost seeming to look back, before following the others into the grey Bristol sky.
The silence is absolute.
I am standing in the corner of my living room. Naked. Covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat, my hair plastered to my head from the shower I didn’t finish. My books are all over the floor. There’s a crack in the wall. The window is broken and admitting cold air. The door is off its hinges.
Hex is standing where the door used to be, red eyes moving slowly around the room.
They land on the circle.
On Dis, standing in the centre of it, still coiled and ready, his shadows not quite settled.
On the runes that are no longer visible but are absolutely, undeniably present, humming with the particular frequency of a binding that has been active for weeks.
On me.
The silence stretches. I am aware of my own nakedness with a completeness that is almost meditative. There is nowhere to go. There is nothing to say. The evidence is comprehensive and Hex is one of the most perceptive beings I’ve ever met and he’s looked at the room for approximately thirty seconds and that would have been long enough for him to understand everything, but I can see from his face that he’s not at all surprised and now my stomach is sinking with the certainty that he already knew.
Dis has not moved. He’s watching Hex with the careful stillness of someone who has just been unexpectedly rescued and hasn’t yet determined what it costs.
I look at the floor. At the books. At the crack in the wall.
At the towel, which is very far away.
“We need to talk,” Hex says.
Chapter 21
Some Explaining to Do
“Weneedtotalk.”The words echo in my soul.
Nobody moves for a moment. Then Hex steps further into the wrecked living room, his red eyes sweeping over the circle, over Dis, over me standing there with my towel very much not on me.
“Felix,” he says, with the particular gentleness of someone trying not to add to an already catastrophic morning, “you may want clothes.”
Right. Yes. Clothes.
I’m aware of Hex giving me the privacy of looking elsewhere while I walk out of the room, which I appreciate more than I have words for right now.
I find clothes. It takes longer than it should, my hands not quite steady yet, and When I come back into the living room in jeans and a jumper that I’ve put on slightly wrong, Hex is surveying the broken window with the focused attention of someone assessing the most easily fixed problem they’ve been confronted with. Can’t say I blame him.
“There is a roll of bin bags under your sink,” he says. “And tape, in the kitchen drawer. It will hold until something better can be arranged.”
We patch the window together, wordlessly, black plastic and too much tape, while Dis watches from the circle with an expression I don’t have the energy to interpret yet.
Hex and I start sweeping up the glass. The prince is surprisingly diligent, muttering something about how easily humans leak.
We’ve barely finished when the door bursts open.
Adam is breathless, his bike helmet still on, his face the particular shade of panic that comes from cycling somewhere as fast as humanly possible while not knowing what you’re cycling toward. His eyes do a frantic sweep of the room, taking in the broken window, the wrecked furniture, the crack in the wall, me standing there looking like I’ve been through something.
Then he sees Dis.
