“I don’t know what you want,” I snarled, black fire flickering hotter under my skin. “So either take me to whoever the hell you answer to, or?—”
“I’m not taking you anywhere.”
I stared at him.
Merrick’s mouth curved into something that might have been a smile if smiles could be weapons. “In fact, that’s precisely what I’m trying to prevent.”
My brain stuttered, trying to reconcile the massacre around us with the words coming out of his mouth. “You just murdered a dozen of your own men.”
“Who were under orders to bring you back should we find you.” His expression didn’t change, lightning crackling lazily across his shoulders. “Dead soldiers can’t report what they’vefound. Can’t tell anyone that I located the mysterious human and then inexplicably let her walk away.”
The world tilted.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m really not.” That smile again, sharp enough to cut. “Though I understand why you’d think so.”
Blood roared in my ears. Nothing made sense. This male had just killed his entire squad, knocked out everyone I’d come here to protect, and now he was standing there acting like—like what? My fucking ally?
I crossed the scorched ground on legs that shouldn't have been steady, dropping to my knees beside Cindrissian. Blood painted the side of his face in ribbons, stark against pale skin. His breathing was shallow but there—there—and I pressed shaking fingers to his throat, counting the pulse that drummed against my palm like proof of life.
“He'll live.”
Merrick's voice came from too close behind me, and I whipped around, putting myself between him and Cindrissian's unconscious form like I could do a damn thing if he decided to finish what he'd started.
But something flickered across his face. Something that looked almost like guilt before he smoothed it away beneath that insufferable neutrality.
“I know how to hit,” he continued, lightning dimming to a low crackle across his shoulders. “How to make it hurt without making it permanent. He'll wake with the mother of all headaches, but he'll wake.”
Cindrissian stirred beneath my hand, a low groan escaping his lips. His eyes moved beneath closed lids, rapid and unfocused, like he was chasing something in the dark.
“Rain...” The word came out slurred, barely coherent. His head turned against the stone, fingers twitching. “The rain... it's—Ryn...”
His breathing hitched, fingers curling against the stone like he was trying to hold onto something that kept slipping through. “The rain... I’m sorry...”
Behind me, I could feel Merrick's attention like a physical weight, watching this moment with the clinical detachment of someone cataloguing weaknesses.
I bared my teeth at him without turning around. “What did you do to him?”
“Lightning scrambles the mind for a bit.” Still that infuriatingly calm tone. “Makes everything blur together. Memories, dreams, reality—they all bleed into one another until the brain sorts itself out.”
“How considerate of you.”
“Would you have preferred I killed them?” The question came sharp, edged with something that might have been irritation. “Because that was the alternative. Dead, or temporarily unconscious with minimal lasting damage. I chose the option that left them breathing.”
“Why?” The word tore out of me, raw and desperate. “Why would you?—”
“Because whatever Varyth is telling you about why you’re so valuable, about why the courts want you?” Merrick’s gaze locked onto mine. “He’s not giving you the full picture. And you deserve to know what you’re caught in the middle of before you make any irreversible choices.”
“Stop talking in riddles and just tell me.”
“Varyth isn’t who he seems.” The words landed quiet, deliberate. “And the sooner you figure that out, the better chance you have of surviving what’s coming.”
Behind me, I heard movement. A groan.
Varyth.
“I need to go.” Merrick looked to Cindrissian one last time, and there it was again, that flicker of something that looked horrifyingly like grief. “They’ll all live. The lightning wasn’t meant to kill. Just incapacitate.”
