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I’m vaguely aware of the tension in his muscles flexing against me as he hurries through the maze of archive rooms to the small one where we usually meet. There, he sets me down in one of the chairs near the desk.
“The others might have some idea how to handle this. Casimir has a little training in healing. Stavros is staff—if anyone can deal with Anya…”
He steps away from me, pulling something from his pocket. My head is swimming too much for me to follow the gesture.
Prickles jab through my lungs again, and I sputter a cough against my hand. Spittle flecks my skin.
I blink and stare at it, half-stunned.
Scarlet swirls in the droplets of spit. I’m coughing up blood.
That’s never happened before. Is my power doing real damage inside me?
I swipe the evidence away against my other palm before Alek can notice. The pressure in my chest seems to have lightened slightly, but my limbs only throb more.
Then Stavros is hurtling into the room through the conjured pathway. “What’s the emergency—” He jars to a halt at the sight of me hunched in the chair. “What happened to Ivy?”
Not him. Nothim.
Of all of them, I can’t let the former general suspect what’s wrong with me.
“I’m not sure,” Alek says miserably. “She told me not to get a medic—maybe we should bring her to the infirmary after all. It doesn’t seem to be getting better.”
I suck in a breath, panic splitting through my pain. “It is. Better. Getting there.”
I will that statement to be true.
As Stavros storms over to me, Casimir arrives, his eyes wide with concern. Alek must have had some way of signaling them to come.
The courtesan takes one look at me and blanches. “Is she wounded?”
“I don’t think so.” Alek gestures wildly. “Anya and a couple of the women she goes around with came over to talk to her in the library. I couldn’t see what exactly they did, but they were obviously hassling her. And then I found her like this.”
Stavros lets out a growl and bends over me. “Which one of them did this?Whatdid they do to you? I’ll make them pay for it myself.”
Casimir is at my other side in an instant, grasping my hand. “Where exactly does it hurt?”
Every-fucking-where. But as the men’s whirlwind of rage and worry distracts me, the pain fades more.
I raise my head, swallowing around a lump in my throat. I hate that they’re seeing me like this.
I have to make sure none of them suspect the real cause. They’d be celebrating my agony if they knew.
“I don’t know if it was Anya and her friends,” I say more steadily. “The pain came out of nowhere. Anyone in the library—it could have been a gift. Maybe someone noticed me paying attention to Ster. Torstem before?”
Stavros glances behind him at Benedikt, who I hadn’t seen coming in. “Have you heard of anyone at the college right now with a pain-provoking gift?” he barks, his stance still tensed as if he’s about to go into battle on my behalf.
Benedikt frowns. “I can’t think of anyone. Someone took a shot at Ivy?”
“Either that, or it was Anya’s bunch putting her in her ‘place,’” Alek says.
My next breaths come more easily. I push myself straighter in the chair, pretending my arms aren’t still tingling with splinters of pain. “It’s passing now. It was just to trip me up, like the drug before. Nothing permanent.”
I hope.
“Was Romild in the library?” Casimir asks, his forehead furrowed. “We weren’t sure if she might have been responsible for the previous incident.”
“I didn’t see her, but it’s a big room.” Better not to eliminate any possible suspects. The more they can spread around the possible blame, the less they can do about it.
