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Naturally Prince Caonabo had too much dignity to respond to this rude outburst.
But I didn’t!
“James Drake! Why are you standing here waiting for me like a lovesick but rejected suitor?”
The general pulled firmly on the rope to keep me on the seat. “Don’t be rash, Cat,” he murmured. “This is not the place or time for a pissing match.”
“I wasn’t waiting because I want you!” Drake’s gaze flicked around the crowd: the Taino soldiers, the crowd held at a prudent distance by wardens, Camjiata’s retinue of veterans, and the guards stationed at the Council Hall doors. He pitched his voice louder. “I hope you finally understand that I slept with you only to show the cold mage he wasn’t so high and mighty as he thought he was. Because there’s really nothing a man hates more than knowing his wife is a whore.”
The word stung. “You lied to me and got me drunk.”
“The ease with which I got you to have sex ought to give any man pause, knowing how easy it was to tip rum down your throat and coax the clothes off your admittedly attractive body. Still, it scarcely matters now. I’m a magnanimous man. I’d never turn away a pretty girl like you if you offered to warm my bed in exchange for better treatment after the standing inquiry condemns you as a murderer.”
My face was burning, and my heart was pounding. “Fortunately, I only had sexual congress with you twice. That’s all I needed, to know I needn’t bother if I want to take any pleasure from the act.”
People in the crowd sniggered.
The prince was literally blinking in astonishment, mouth agape.
Drake laughed derisively, but anyone could see he was furious. “You keep ruining the impression of your pretty face with that crass mouth of yours. Now that you’re an accused murderer, I’d be careful about antagonizing the only person in this city who might be persuaded to make your life more pleasant than it will be in the cane fields.”
When I shifted forward with fist cocked, the general tugged on the rope to pull me up short.
“I’d have to be dead before I’d let you touch me,” I said as the hemp scraped my neck.
“Strange you should phrase it in quite that way.” Drake smiled as might a man who is waiting to see your reaction when you realize the trap has closed over your foot.
“James, that is really enough,” Camjiata said without raising his voice.
“I will tell you what is enough! Enough is that my noble kinfolk stole my birthright and inheritance, and I let them because I was too young and powerless to fight. But I’m not powerless now. I want her as my catch-fire, so I’ll cursed well get her as my catch-fire. I’ll have the last word after all, won’t I?”
“You sound like a man who can’t let go of the knowledge that he lost and his rival succeeded. As for you, Cat, this childish bickering insults His Noble Highness the prince and indeed all of us forced to listen to it.”
Drake was livid. “I did not lose to him!”
Drake had the power to immolate me, but in doing so, he would burn himself up as well. Unlike Prince Caonabo, he had no catch-fires to spill away the backlash of his magic. I couldn’t help myself. I had to keep poking.
“Really? It’s never bothered you that you couldn’t spoil his love for me because he’s a better man than you’ll ever be? That the moment I found him I never thought of you again? That he’s killed your fire magic more than once and can do it again?”
Light pulsed as the forecourt’s gas lamps flared. A mist-like glamour writhed around Drake’s body. “When next I meet Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, he will crawl at my feet and admit I am stronger than he is. Fire always defeats ice in the end.”
Prince Caonabo spoke sharp words in Taino. Soldiers raised rifles. The murmuring crowd pushed back, for no one wanted to stand close when a fire mage went rogue.
“I said enough!” snapped the general. “James, go back to the house.”
“Enough is right! I’ve had enough of this bitch!” His bright blue eyes really did seem to blaze.
Heat flared in my chest, like fire kindling. I lunged, but the general yanked me down so hard I hit my shoulder and banged a knee. In that eyeblink during which I was too stunned to move, I saw what would happen by the stiffening of Rory’s shoulders, the tremor in his eyes. Like me he thought with his body. He reacted to danger in an entirely predictable way.
Rory changed as thoroughly as if the tide of a dragon’s dream washed over him to dissolve him into his true form. His body melted and flowed, clothes ripping at the seams as his shape shifted. A huge black saber-toothed cat leaped.
Reports rang out, guns going off, and the big cat stumbled and went down.
5
Heedless of claws and teeth, Luce threw her body across the thrashing cat. That was the only reason the Taino soldiers did not finish him off.
I ripped the rope out of the general’s grasp and jumped from the carriage, brandishing my cane as I ran to Rory’s side. “Call them off!”
