And in a battle of wills, she had a feeling hers would win. He met her stare, holding on longer than anyone else might have.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” she said through her teeth. There was nothing he could say that would stop her. She was not going to leave him,again, to fend for himself. Not when she could help.
He hung his head. “You are going to be the death of me.”
She brightened, fluttering her lashes coyly. “Promise?”
“This is not a time for jokes, Miranda. These are likely Graves’s assassins here to kill me. And you’re begging to be in the crossfire.”
“I know,” she snapped, shaking her head. “If you just shut up and let me help you, we might have already finished this.”
“No, no, sweetheart.” He held up a finger. “We are not finished. Not in the slightest. As soon as this is over, we’re having a long chat about needless heroism and you thinking you’re in charge of every waking moment when, in the real world, you control very little.”
She rolled her eyes and that made him seethe, his jaw clenched so tight she heard his teeth grinding. “If you’re done lecturing me, can we just do this?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck.” He closed his eyes for a moment, possibly trying to recover some of his composure. He rounded on her with force, adding, “Swear that if anything happens to me, you’ll get out of there. Immediately. Don’t worry about the damn building or saving me or getting even. You get out of there.”
She locked gazes with him again. This time, she was the one who retreated. It was a fair enough request, since she didn’t plan on allowing that to happen. “Fine. I promise.” She pushed past him and out the door that connected his apartment to the club.
“No, please, after you,” she heard him grumble as he followed her.
They entered a room where people dressed in black continued to destroy and smash everything they could see. Miranda’s heartstopped at the destruction and chaos. This was a message. They’d gotten too close to Graves.
Devin followed Miranda into mayhem. The door led to the gaming room, where he first saw Miranda days ago—had it only been days?—most of the sturdy, green felted tables were destroyed. The chairs tossed about like a child’s toys.
Clothed in black, their faces covered, Graves’s enforcers tore apart everything. At least a dozen, if not more if the noise from the other room was any indication. Devin’s home, the one thing he had built for himself or took any pride in, was being ripped to pieces.
He must have stood silent much longer than he realized, because the next thing he knew Miranda had yanked him from the path of flying debris.
While Devin found his footing, Miranda rushed forward without a thought or care, brazenly approaching one of the masked enforcers and punching them square in the face.
Devin shook off his stupor and focused on the enemy. Focused on stopping them from doing further damage, instead of fixating on what was already too late to save. He unsheathed a knife from his boot as he ran for Miranda, enforcers converging on her.
“Your left,” he said, swinging the knife. Miranda slipped out of range and Devin caught an incoming punch with the blade. It slipped between the fingers of the enforcer’s fist and out the back of their hand. They screamed. Blood sprayed. They took the damn knife with them as they jerked away.
Miranda was grinning, her cheeks flushed. She wiped at a bloody lip.
“They’re strong,” she said, dropping low and sweeping her leg out to knock another enforcer to the floor. Once their face was at the right height, Devin kicked straight into it, bone crunching under his heel. “Very, unnaturally strong,” she finished.
She shared a look with him that he understood. These were Graves’s new soldiers. The experimented fae who were now fueled by the blood of the Divine. And if the Divine's blood made humans equal to fae when they created the guardian subrace, then these fae were currently the most powerful beings in the city. He must have been further along in his research than the note suggested.
A pair of enforcers charged. Miranda used her foot to flick a fractured chair into her hands like a shield and rammed it forward into the attacker so the fragmented legs pierced the enforcer’s chest with a sickening squelch. Blood dribbled from their nose as they slumped to the ground.
“Strong, but untrained,” she commented as she tossed the skewered enforcer aside.
Devin had used the other enforcer’s momentum to thrust them up and over, landing them on the last intact table. He winced at the destruction to his property. Things that had taken months to procure all destroyed in a moment.
“Behind you,” Miranda shouted.
Devin side-stepped and caught an arm with an incoming blade—hisblade—and with a slight twist he brought the arm down on his shoulder, breaking it at the elbow.
Miranda dove in front of him. Caught the blade as it fell and twisted into the slide until she was on her feet to thrust it into the eye of another.
Devin straightened his shirt as, for now, there were no new enemies to dispatch. “We seem to work well together, Mira.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.” She grinned, twirling his knife in her skilled hands and his thoughts drifted toward a better use for those skills.
He swallowed.
