Reagan cocked his head, eyes assessing. “Because I remember what happened.”
“I couldn’t have done that,” she gritted out, staring at her plate. “You’re trying to blame me for killing one of your monsters.”
“Maybe we should ask your father when he wakes,” Reagan replied, deceptively calm. “He’ll remember how you nearly took us all out. Including him.”
My head whipped toward him, but he ignored my frown. His gaze had fixed squarely on Joy.
“That’s not true,” she murmured.
“But it is.” Reagan leaned forward, deliberately. “You almost killed your father, Joy.”
“That’s enough,” I hissed.
“If I hadn’t stopped you, you would have. And if we don’t test you, you’ll become as dangerous to others as you are to yourself.”
I dug my nails into his forearm. “Stop talking.”
His obnoxious way was flaring to life together with my urge to throttle him.
Suddenly, my chair screeched across the floor as a gust tore through the windows. The silverware rattled on the table.
A puff of white curled from my lips as the temperature plunged. Frost unfurled across every surface of the room. Half the table glistened under a thin shell of ice that had crept over plates and glass, swallowing the steam rising from the food.
Something had shoved me back behind a ward that shimmered up to the ceiling.
My thoughts scattered as I staggered upright, facing a wall of black fabric.
Reagan was standing in front of me. He’d placed himself between me and Joy, his power thrumming faintly at his fingertips. When he lowered his hand, the ward dissolved.
Moving around him and evading his arm, I found Joy. Her cheeks were flushed, fingers trembling and rimmed with frost.
She was breathing hard.
I cursed and lunged forward, and at the same instant, Joy grunted. There wasn’t time to stop her. Before I reached her, she had crossed her arm over her mouth, sinking her teeth into the skin.
Another muffled grunt rumbled from her as she pressed her mouth harder. I schooled my expression, forcing her face toward mine.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, cupping her shoulders, striving to mask the worry as I noted the depth of the bite. “Look at me. Breathe with me.”
She grunted again, still clinging to her arm, and a single tear trailed down her cheek. Her eyes flickered unfocused, her chest heaving in ragged bursts.
I reached gently for her arm, drawing it away from her mouth. It was stiff, but the bite mark hadn’t broken the skin. I held her hands between my own, holding back a hiss at the biting cold.
Frost glazed the plates, the floor, the very air around her. The corners of the room shimmered with thin ice. My mind scrambled to understand what I was seeing.
What she’d done.
“Breathe,” I whispered, inhaling deeply, waiting until her breaths matched mine.
She followed, albeit shakily. Her lashes fluttered. Her throat moved with a hard swallow.
Behind her, Finn leaned forward, his eyes wide with something like regret, and set a ring upon the ice table.
Joy’s ring. The one he had slipped from her finger while we argued, so deftly she had never noticed.
“I suppose that’s your proof,” Gwinifer said.
Chapter 4
