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Kate deliberately took her time getting through the door, putting her sunglasses away, running lip gloss over her lips in front of the mirror in the front hall.
She gasped when Silver grabbed her arm and spun her around.
“Did he agree?” he said evenly.
“Let me go.”
“Answer me.”
“Yeah, he agreed. Now let me go, before I make you.”
Silver half smiled. “Now I’m curious. Make me.”
She didn’t hesitate—just swung a fist into his midsection.
He blocked, of course. She was ready for it, using his momentum to throw an elbow into his groin.
She wasn’t ready for his fist to smack into the side of her face. She wasn’t ready for the room to go sideways.
Thank god the front hallway was carpeted.
Silver left her there. “The problem, Kathryn, is that you assume people won’t want to hit that pretty face.”
No, the problem was that she’d assumed Silver wouldn’t hurt her. That he’d play, the way Hunter had at the carnival.
Stupid.
She tried to convince her joints to work. Her head was still spinning, and for an instant, she couldn’t figure out which stretch of drywall was supposed to be the ceiling.
Her cheek ached. “I could stab you in your sleep,” she said.
“You could try. I feel rather certain that you’d find a similar result.”
Tears were burning at her eyes, and she told them to go away. Silver could probably sense the water threatening to spill over her cheeks anyway.
Hunter was supposed to be her enemy, but she couldn’t ever imagine him doing that.
She thought of the way he’d warned his friend about those bullies at the carnival last night, the way Gabriel Merrick had gone storming across the fairgrounds to confront them.
Or how Nick Merrick had invited her to sit with him at lunch.
Silver had chastised her for letting those people off the Ferris wheel. The ends justify the means.
She needed to get off the floor. She fought for balance and remembered the confrontation with the Water Elemental that had led to her mother’s death.
Keep that memory fresh.
But there were other memories, later ones, that threatened to cloud her judgment.
She needed to remember the moment her mother had died, everything that had gone wrong that night.
The Merricks might not have been evil, but they weren’t all good, either. They couldn’t be. She’d spent her life hearing about the dangers of full Elementals.
She dropped into the chair at the table, where Silver had gone back to checking his weapons. She didn’t really want to be sitting here with him, but she wasn’t entirely sure she could manage the walk to her bedroom.
She gingerly moved her jaw and didn’t think it was broken.
Even if it were, she’d never in a million years ask Silver to use power to heal it for her.
