Anna stood alone, gaze cloudy as she stripped off her leather guards. Holding up a staying finger toward Cathaire, Sean approached her. “What happened?”
She looked toward David’s retreat. “Honestly? I don’t know.”
Sean frowned, trying to understand this nagging pain inside him. “He’s…hurt or something.”
“Hurt?” Anna’s tone was puzzled.
It was pinching. Sharp. Like a nail driven between two ribs.
But it wasn’t his own. Suspicion brewed like a thunderstorm in his chest.
“Hold up!” Sean shouted, starting toward David.
In the distant recesses of his awareness, he sensed Cathaire’s incredulous orders to return, recognized Anna’s footsteps in his wake, felt Isobel rise to follow, but he couldn’t respond to any of it—even when people bowed as he passed through the milling crowds. Across the bridge, David turned, gaze finding Sean’s, all hints of feeling padlocked behind a blank wall.
Sean slowed. “What’s wrong?”
A golden eyebrow lifted. David looked at the gash in Sean’s lip and rubbed his thumb over his own mouth. “Don’t you have a magic girlfriend who follows you around to keep you from bleeding?”
Right on cue, Isobel reached his side, followed closely by Anna.
Sean touched the cut, making it sting. The slightest wince narrowed the space between David’s brows.
Such a small reaction. Tiny. Infinitesimal.
But Sean saw it. The suspicion gathered speed, whirling through him with hurricane force. For weeks now he’d sensed something different, a thread inside himself that didn’t belong, that hurt in ways he didn’t hurt and breathed in when he was breathing out. He could see it now, mirrored in David, in this man who had hated him the very moment they met.
The ground beneath Sean’s feet disappeared. “Something’s different,” he whispered.
David’s expression didn’t change. His eyes stayed caged and cold, but the disquiet practically screamed. Sean bent to unsheathe the dagger he now kept at his ankle. Before he could rethink it, he pulled the blade across the skin inside his forearm.
Beside him, Isobel gasped. David’s hand clenched. He stared at his arm—bloodless and uninjured.
Sean’s breath vanished. “You feel that?”
“Yeah,” David said, tone flat. “I feel it.”
“Sean,” Isobel said, glancing all around. “This isn’t the place?—”
“What the fuck is going on?” he asked, zeroing in on her.
They could feel each other’s pain. Sean could sense David’s feelings. The hate between them was gone as if it had never been. Only one person had feared that hate enough to do something irrational.
Sean pointed the bloody knife at Isobel. “What did you do?”
Taken aback, her eyes widened. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Anna gripped Sean’s wrist holding the knife, and sparks lanced from her touch, scintillating over his nerves like they had earlier. She wrestled the knife from his grasp. Her network connected to his and her voice whispered through it.Calm down. People are staring.
Bel stepped toward him. “Sean, you’re bleeding.”
“Don’ttouchme.”
She stopped in her tracks.
Anna made short work of slipping off her training tunic and wrapping it around his arm, leaving her in a short-sleeved cotton thing too thin for the chilly air.
Her fingers dug into his biceps. “Come on.” She dragged him down the path toward the Tree, grabbing David’s arm as they passed.
