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She frowned and then said imperiously, “Show me your palms.”
“What? Why?” I feigned confusion even as my heart began to beat a little faster. While I was aware the scrapes had healed, I had no idea if the skin was still pink or not.
“Show me your palms,” she repeated, voice flat and holding an edge. “Immediately.”
“Karlinda, is all this really—” Charles began, only to stop when she cast him a steely look.
“Why?” I said, even as I held out my hands, palms up. The skin wasn’t pink, but I batted down the quick stab of relief. I wasn’t out of the woods just yet. She grabbed my hand and quickly ran her fingers across not only the newer skin but also the old. Looking for callouses, I realized, because the woman I was pretending to be certainly wouldn’t have them.
Thankfully, my skin was baby smooth. It might have been a long ago since I’d been a lure in enemy encampments, but both the training and the instinct for self-preservation was very, very ingrained, even when it came to such a tiny detail. My strength level had to be very, very low for it to be otherwise.
But while my hands had healed without scarring, I couldn’t be so sure that the same could be said about the rest of my wounds—especially the one caused by Branna’s wooden bullet.
Dream released me, and it took every ounce of control to not wipe away the feel of her touch on my nightdress.
“You didn’t answer my question, Chancellor,” I said. “Why did you want to look at my hands?”
I was well aware of the why—she’d found the spot where her magic had snapped and I’d scraped my hands open on the sidewalk. But it was an obvious question to ask, and it would be damn dangerous to do anything other than the obvious right now. Especially when the soldier hadn’t yet relaxed his stance.
She waved a hand, but this time it was a mere gesture rather than an indication of another spell being aimed my way. “It was merely a precaution.”
“As the man with the gun still aimed at my face is a precaution?” I bit back. “I don’t like what you’re implying, Chancellor—”
“Please,” she said. “Mistakes do occasionally happen in the quest to make this city safe, and this is obviously one of them. I sincerely apologize for the stress we have caused you.”
Her apology was many things, but it certainly wasn’t sincere. But I bit down on my instinctive reply and watched as she nodded at the guard. He immediately spun around and walked out. It didn’t make me feel any safer. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect, if only because her suspicion still spun around me, as sharp as her energy.
“I shall leave you and Charles to talk over—”
“No, you won’t,” I said calmly. “You can take dear Charles with you. I have no desire to be in his presence right now.”
“Catherine, please,” he said. “My actions were born out of a desire to see you safe—”
“That does not excuse you all breaking into my apartment and treating me like a common criminal,” I said. “So you can see yourself out of here, and I might—might—consider talking to you tomorrow, once I have calmed down.”
He didn’t look happy, but he nevertheless turned and walked toward the door. I followed; a quick glance at the scanner showed that it hadn’t been damaged in any way. They’d obviously used some sort of override key to get in.
I nevertheless asked, “Am I still able to lock my door? Or does whatever method you used to get in mean I now have to seek out someone to repair it?”
Dream glanced over her shoulder. Though her expression gave away little, her eyes glittered with suspicion. I may have been unaffected by her magic and passed the touch test, but she still wasn’t convinced about my identity. And that meant she’d be keeping a close eye on my movements from here on in.
“The door wasn’t broken,” she said, but didn’t bother explaining why. She continued down the hall into the waiting elevator.
Charles paused and said, “I’ll ring tomorrow, then?”
“You can certainly try.”
With that, I hit the door release to cut off any reply he might have made. Then I took a deep breath and leaned my forehead against the door. Damn, that was altogether too close.
But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Not when Dream was so suspicious of me.
I took another deep breath and called Cat and Bear. I couldn’t make any untoward moves for the next twenty-four hours at least, but Nuri and Jonas needed to know that Dream was impersonating the chancellor on either a full-time or part-time basis. And while she was here in that guise, where was the real chancellor? Was she dead, or merely knocked out?
And did that mean Jonas was also right—that Dream was impersonating Hedda Lang only part of the time? But how could a situation like that even work on any sort of long-term basis?
I scrubbed a hand across my eyes. There were so many damn questions, and in reality, we were still no closer to getting those answers or stopping the bitch.
My two ghosts appeared. They buzzed around me, their excitement levels high, both of them speaking at the same time and so fast that I had no idea what they were actually saying.
