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“No. Listen to me. I’m the one who just had my back splayed open, displayed for sport. There was nothing you could have done! So take your own advice here. You told me before, it wasn’t up to me to save Jules.” I stopped suddenly. “Not that I’m suggesting you care about me like—”
His fingers threaded through mine; our palms pressed together. “Partner.” His green eyes blazed, glowing like emeralds. “I care.” His fingers tightened around mine, and he stepped forward, closing the distance between us. “It’s killing me to have to see you get hurt. To not be able to kill every last one of those Moriel-fucking bastards who touch you.”
My stomach tightened at the violence in his words. “When you do get your hands on them, save a punch for me?” I tried to lighten my voice, to make a joke. But the words came out with more violence than I thought myself capable of having. A tear rolled down my cheek.
His shoulders relaxed, the corner of his mouth lifting. He reached forward, brushing the tear away. There was something heartbreakingly kind in the barely-there smile on his lips. “You can have them all if you wish. Just leave some scraps for me to pummel.”
“Deal.”
A shudder ran through him, but his breathing slowed, becoming more relaxed. His thumb rubbed small circles into my skin.
There was a loud knock on our door followed by the sound of it bursting open. Rhyan released my hand at once, moving to the wall away from me. When I turned to see who’d come in, I found Tristan, his head cocked to the side in anger, his hand already drawing the stave from the silver scabbard at his waist.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tristancrossedtheroomin quick, predatory strides, his stave drawn and pointed at Rhyan. He looked just like he did when he was on the hunt, when he’d been informed about a situation. The energy in his aura brought me right back to when he’d moved through the crowd in Urtavia, arresting the Damaran water dancer for visions. He was like a mountain cat prowling—fast, powerful, and deadly. Confident he’d catch and kill his prey. And right then—his prey was Rhyan.
“Tristan!” I yelled. He didn’t hear me. He was too focused on his goal. “Tristan, stop!”
He kept his stave pointed at Rhyan, but his left hand shot out, his palm facing me. A blast of warm air emanated from his hand. It didn’t hurt me, didn’t trap me, but it made moving forward nearly impossible.
Fucking Gods! After he’d bound me, assisting the Imperator in my arrest, I’d pulled his stave on him, making him swear to never use it on me again. He was keeping his promise. But this…this wasn’t much better. It wasn’t the stave that was the problem—it was only a tool after all, a way for him to focus and strengthen his magic—it was the fact that he used magic against me at all; I didn’t care if it was by stave or by hand.
I pushed forward, watching in horror as Rhyan remained in place, holding his ground as Tristan reached him. I couldn’t believe the change in his face, in his expression. Just seconds ago, when we’d been alone, his eyes had been so expressive, so full of emotion, anger warring with his worry for me and his guilt over what had just happened.
Now, Rhyan lifted his good eyebrow, an infuriating smirk on his lips—one that might have fooled even me before I’d gotten the chance to get to know him as well as I did. But I could see through the bravado, see now the way he masked himself so frequently to protect me. I knew the indifference he pranced around with was only to throw off anyone who might suspect how much he cared. But even more than all of that, I knew this look intimately, knew it deep in my soul, because I wore this look, too.
His mask was flawless and cruel. Gone was my kind, caring friend. Now, face to face with Tristan, Rhyan was every bit the evil, murderous, forsworn bastard he was reputed to be, the savage, uncaring future High Lord of an equally savage and brutal country. Here stood the vicious future Imperator he’d been groomed to become. Rhyan was able to perfectly wear the face of the very monster he despised.
“Lord Grey,” he said jovially, eyes darting between Tristan’s sneer and the twisted sun-and-moon wood he held tightly in his grip. “By the looks of that stave in your hand, you must be very happy to see me.”
Said stave was now pointed at Rhyan’s neck, the point poking his skin, yet Rhyan made no move to defend himself or shift his position. Only a slight flex of his fingers and a cool blast of ice from his aura gave away his irritation.
“That’s what you’re going with?” Tristan snarled, his own aura pulsing in response. There was some odd mix to his emotions, but anger was underlying all of it, giving his energy a red, hot feeling that left my skin itchy. Tristan twisted the stave against Rhyan’s throat. “Last time you were cleverer than that.”
“I’ve been busy. But so happy to know I made an impression. If only I could schedule more time between my pushups and face punching, I’d get back to my daily hour of writing insults to you.” He exaggerated the shrug in his shoulders. “But since you obviously came for a show, how about a classic, like the fact that you still don’t have enough faith in the reach of your stave’s magic to actually hold it at a reasonable distance? Which unfortunately only makes me think you don’t have enough faith in the distance—or length, shall we say—of other parts of yourself.”
Tristan’s lips curled, as he pushed the stave harder against Rhyan’s skin—hard enough to leave a bruise.
“Tristan! Stop!” I yelled, still furiously trying to push against his magic.
Rhyan continued to hold his stance strong, his expression defiant. While he didn’t appear to be in danger from Tristan’s magic, the stave on his neck like that could seriously injure him.
“Tristan, stop it,” I said. He was so focused on Rhyan that the air he’d used to hold me back had evaporated, and I stumbled forward with the sudden freedom. “What in Lumeria has gotten into you?”
“What has gotten into me?” Tristan yelled. He held the stave firmly in place, the muscles of his arms flexing through the blue mage tunic he wore. “Lyr, you were lashed!”
My mouth fell open. “I-I know. But—Tristan that’s—Stop it! That’s not Rhyan’s fault.” When he’d arrived at my apartment last night, he’d listened calmly as I’d explained what had happened the night before. He’d asked if I was in pain, and I’d said no. Then he’d asked if I wanted to see a healer, and again I’d said no, I’d already been bandaged. He’d accepted my answer, hugged me gently like everything was fine, and let me fall asleep on his chest to avoid putting pressure on my back. He hadn’t asked to see the wounds. He’d let it go. And this morning, he’d acted calmly, joking with me, walking me to the Academy. If I was being honest, it wasn’t the reaction I’d expected from him at all. But so many things had been warring for attention in my mind, I’d brushed off the interaction.
Some part of me had known he’d been underreacting, but I’d been so relieved, I hadn’t seen it for the warning it was. I hadn’t wanted Tristan to see me hurt, to see my injuries. Partly from instinct—because I never let him see my wounds—and partly because, well, it had all been so public, so humiliating. It was nice to be with someone who hadn’t witnessed it, who hadn’t been able to fully grasp the horror of what had happened. In a way, that had allowed me to pass off the fear and pain of it all as less than it was. To pretend it hadn’t happened. And I was already so used to pretending with Tristan.
But all my pretending had come to a crashing halt when the Bastardmaker had ripped open my tunic and the Imperator had reopened my wounds and torn off the bandage. My back ached fiercely, and though I knew Rhyan had done all he could, my back was irritated with every move I made and every bit of pressure from my tunic against the bandage.
“I was against this from day one,” Tristan said. “You shouldn’t be bound to someone like him. For your sake, I’ve tried to stay quiet, to remain calm. But, Lyr, he let you get hurt on his first test! He was supposed to prepare you, to keep you protected from things like that.” He turned his anger once more toward Rhyan, shoving him back into the wall, nostrils flaring as he released his hold on him. “You failed to protect her.”
“Tristan! No, he—”
“I failed to protect her?” Rhyan spoke casually, but an undercurrent of anger was threaded through his voice. His shoulders tensed. Gods. He really did believe he’d failed me—Tristan was trying to hurt him, but he had no idea how cutting his words were or how much Rhyan was beating himself up for just that.
