Cahir strode right for me, reaching for my arm, his expression tightening as he examined the wound, mouth curling in something close to disgust. “Did you bite yourself?” he asked, incredulous. “Why?”
I grasped at a lie. “I have panic episodes,” I said quietly, feeling my access stir, my anger coating my tongue. “It’s none of your business.”
He glowered. “It is my business because this will make you weaker. You’re meant to be resting so you can give us more information. You’re finally becoming useful.”
I wrenched my arm free and slid along the wall, drawing his gaze away from the back of the door. “I can’t help it,” I ground out. “I’ll sleep now. Just leave me alone.”
Cahir studied me for a long, terrifying moment, his gaze tracking the blood streaking the floor, running down my arms, staining my bare stomach.
Something shifted in his expression, his brows turning flat, the concern giving space to something colder.
“You know,” he said coolly, sending a chill across my skin, “I’ve been thinking about the last time you bled in here. When the human came in and drove a blade into you.”
He took a step closer. I slipped past the bed, putting my back to the wall.
“I asked myself how a human could stab you without alerting your Lord, when you claimed that touching you would do it.” He tilted his head, studying me. “Is he so possessive,” Cahir went on, advancing, “that he wards you against a warm body but not a knife?” A thin smile curved his mouth. “I don’t think so. I think you were playing me.”
I said nothing. His gaze dropped past my neck.
Inside my head, my bird screamed a piercing call, wings thrashing, claws tearing at empty air. Rage coiled tight and bright.
He closed the last of the distance, fingers brushing my neck. I lowered my gaze, forcing myself to wait.
“You didn’t have to lie,” he murmured. “I’m not an animal. I’d make it good for you. Just like your Lord.”
My fists clenched, nails biting deep, but I couldn’t even feel it. That civility they pretended to have was as insincere as it was disgusting.
My bird shrieked again. I drew a slow breath, bracing myself.
“The prized possession of a Mage Lord,” he whispered, leaning closer. “He doesn’t strike me as gentle. And you’re feisty. You like it when he’s rough, don’t you?”
I let him lean in. Let his mouth brush my neck as I exhaled.
“You should run,” I warned, my voice as low as a whisper.
Cahir gave a low laugh.
Remembering what they had taught me, I drove my knee up hard between his legs, feeding all my rage and urgency into it, and followed through with the heel of my palm to his chin.
Cahir grunted and staggered back.
I moved, circling him, snatching my torn sleeve from the floor. I shoved it against the lock and slammed the door shut, sealing us both inside. The frame flared again, brighter this time.
A curse echoed behind me as I focused on the damp sleeve wedged inside the lock, willing it to shift.
But hands tangled in my hair, ripping me back.
Chapter 64
Reagan
The sky beyond the Hall’s post had shifted from orange to indigo hours ago. Reagan hadn’t moved an inch in the last hour, his eyes trained on the sigils Heil had drawn on the first door of the barracks building. He stared at those markings, the ones meant to answer the codes Jane would write, wherever she was.
Back in the alley, she’d asked for a secure location in Mountheim to anchor the destination of a portal that would allow them to slip through and stage an ambush. He’d decided the barracks would be the best place to draw the responding sigils and open the passage for her.
Yesterday, Reagan hadn’t wasted a moment after returning from the human town. He had immediately summoned the Captain of the Guard, who knew a lot more than him about the mechanisms required to create inter-estate portals.
Now, black-stitched leather dominated the field behind him. Five dozen battle mages in uniform waited in near formation. Some had swapped shifts during the long hours Reagan had stood vigil. Every able body that could be spared without weakening the borders stood ready for that door to open,including those who had finished their shifts but remained to rescue their soon-to-be Lady.
