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Kit didn’t answer as he pinned Charles’ arm to the table, and it seemed as if the other man’s struggle was nothing to Kit. He held him down easily, then lifted his other hand.
I took a step forward. I didn’t know what I’d do, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wasn’t sure if it was because I knew Charles, or just that I didn’t want to see anyone hurt, or the hesitation from Kit. Whatever it was, I wanted to stop this, to calm everyone down.
Kit lifted his gaze to me, and the harshness there stopped me. A warning rested in his eyes, one I read easily.
Don’t get involved.
He didn’t need to use his command to make me go still. It was the seriousness on his face, the fear that rushed through me that rooted my feet in place.
The hand not holding Charles shifted, the claws stretching out, and even though I knew what was coming, I couldn’t prepare myself for it. I’d seen him turn things to dust, but never a person, never something alive and afraid.
He set his shifted hand on Charles’s arm, and Charles let out a scream that had me lifting my hands to cover my ears. It was guttural and terrified and full of pain. Before my eyes, Charles’ hand and arm twisted, collapsing in on itself, until it turned to dust just like the flower and the apple had.
I couldn’t watch anymore, couldn’t hear more of that horrible screaming. My stomach rolled, and even with Kit’s gaze locked on me, I bolted from the room. No one got in my way, and I didn’t stop until I collapsed in my room.
Even then, however, the screaming echoed in my head, like a soundtrack to Larkwood I couldn’t ignore anymore.
Chapter Twelve
Hera
I stayed in my room for the rest of the day since I had nothing but the interrogation scheduled. For once, I didn’t welcome the free time.
The more time I spent alone, the more I thought back on what had happened, the angrier I got.
I’d thought I understood Kit better, that he wasn’t the scary thing I’d seen at first. I couldn’t connect the man I’d started to trust with the creature that had just destroyed a man’s arm for a lesson.
The hours passed until it hit midnight, and sleep seemed no closer than it had at the start of the night.
And maybe it was foolish, but I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I’d just watched Kit turn a man’s arm todustin front of me, and yet as I left my room, I headed out to question him.
Even if it was stupid, I had to know. I had to reconcile the two people—the man who had looked outfor me and the creature who had destroyed Charles’ arm. I wouldn’t be able to breathe until I got some understanding of it.
I took the elevator, then the bridge. There weren’t many around—a few of the more nocturnal creatures would spend time out and about at this hour, but there they were rare. That was fine by me—I’d rather not have to deal with anyone else while in this mood.
I took myself all the way to Kit’s office, then to the door in the back—the same layout as Deacon’s. I knocked on the door.
A voice came through. “Go back to your room, Hera.”
I turned the handle of the door as my response, but found it locked.
“This is not the time for us to talk,” Kit went on. “Go to sleep. There’s nothing for either of us to say.”
Once again, if my brain had been working right, I’d have known what a monumentally bad idea this was. I was bothering someone who could and was probably willing to turn me to dust. That didn’t matter, though.
I held my palm in front of the handle and popped the lock using my powers. As soon as the light flashed green and it clicked, I pushed the door open.
Kit stood a few feet away, as if he’d turned his back on me and had planned to leave me standing there as long as I wanted. He turned back toward me and narrowed his black eyes to slits. “Did you really just break into my place?”
I lifted my eyebrows and held out my hands as if to say,and what are you going to do about it?
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wasn’t kidding. We have nothing to discuss, nothing that will do either of us any good right now.”
“Why?”
He didn’t bother to misunderstand the question. “I told you before—I’m as trapped as any other shade here. My cage might look a little nicer, but it is still a cage.”
I clenched my jaw, wishing I could speak, that I could yell at him. Somehow raging at a person didn’t feel nearly as good when done with sign language.“He wasn’t a danger. You hurt a man who wasn’t a threat!”
