Nothing happened.
Forty-four
“Stephen?” Mina’s voice came out hoarse from too much screaming. Her throat hurt now. Most of her body hurt—her wrists and ankles from the rope, her face from Ward’s hand, and the back of her head from the pipe, as well as spots all over her body from throwing herself across the room, grabbing the sorcerer, and then dropping off him again.
Stephen had actually been fighting the half manes, though. Ward had hit him with at least one spell. Mina could see cracked patches of scales on his back and blood oozing from some of them. She wasn’t sure what they’d be when he turned human again, but she was sure they wouldn’t be comfortable.
“Are you all right?”
He only stared at her. In the shadowy room, his eyes shone, bright gold and the size of saucers. Mina bit down on her lip.
“Areyouall right?” Colin asked, turning from his brother. “It looked as though you were in a bit of a tight spot there.”
“Fine,” said Mina, waving off the question. “But is he?” She glanced back over her shoulder at Stephen, who had closed his eyes again. Her stomach dropped. “I need to tell him about Florrie.”
“No, you don’t.”
“But she’s—”
“Under a curse, courtesy of our late friend here. Or was. I’ve taken care of it. Your other sister’s really quite a girl, you know,” he added. His voice wasn’t quite right, and his grin was too flat to be roguish.
He was trying to distract her, Mina realized, and he kept looking back to Stephen while he was talking.
“Whatisit?” Mina asked, and she couldn’t keep her voice steady this time. “Ward’s dead. Florrie’s all right. What’s wrong?”
With a scraping sound that hurt her ears, Stephen’s claws tightened, digging long furrows in the cement floor. He threw his head back and roared, a world of rage and agony in that sound.
“He can’t change back,” said Colin when the roar died away. There was no humor in him now. His voice was flat, and his eyes were like dull coins.
All the blood ran from Mina’s face as she listened. She could do nothing but listen, and Colin’s words battered against the numbness in her mind even as they made too much sense.
“It was the fighting that did it, probably, the influence of the manes and the wounds he took. He’s kept enough of his mind to govern his own actions—but you recall what I told you. He can’t stay in London like this.”
Someofthemgoawaytolive…elsewhere.
As Mina caught her breath, Stephen lowered his head. He’d rid himself of his anger with the roar or had buried it behind a wall of self-control. The huge eyes that met hers were sad but impassive, resigned.
He crouched again, preparing to take to the air.
Mina’s heart tried to beat sideways.
“No,” she said and ran across the floor as quickly as she’d done to tackle Ward.
Stephen didn’t move when she threw herself against his side.
“No,” said Mina again. “Not for me. Not you. Notthis. People need you as a man, Lord MacAlasdair.Ineed you as a man.”
The diary had said that affection for a mortal might be able to reverse the change.
Stephen had never said exactly what he felt for her.
She knew only her own heart. For more than that, she just had to hope.
“If you leave,” she said, and let the tears flow down her cheeks as she spoke, “I’ll come with you—or I’ll find you—unless you tell me you don’t want me. An’ youcan’ttell me without being a man, so you’re bloody well stuck with me. But you don’t have to leave. You don’t have to stay like this.”
The shape against her blurred a little, and her heart lifted—but blurring was as far as it went. Stephen bent his head and looked at her, his form still that of a dragon.
The memory of Stephen’s mouth on hers, of his arms tight around her as he told her to come back to him, drove Mina on.
