“He wouldn’t have killed me.”
“You’re a fool if you really think that.”
“And you’re a bastard.”
“Yes, I am, but at least I’m not an idiot, unlike you.”
A sharp pain radiated through my chest, as if my heart was shrinking away, hiding rather than admitting the actual danger I’d been in.
Iwouldn’tadmit it.
But I couldn’t bring myself to keep arguing, either.
My vision blurred. I tucked my head toward my chest, trying to fight off my building nausea.
Lorien loomed over me. “If I’d been a second later, he would have ripped you in half. I could feel the strength of the magic he was wielding, even from a distance. He clearly intended to destroy you.”
I lifted my head, glaring at him until I found the energy to stagger to my feet.
Then I punched him, hitting him squarely in the face with as much strength as I could muster. Blood was streaming from my fist as I pulled it back, the wound Aleks had left aggravated by the strike.
Lorien opened his mouth to speak.
I swung again before he could get another word out.
He caught me by the wrist this time, gripping it so tightly I was certain his next move would be to snap my bones in half.
He brought his other hand up to cover my bloody fist. He glared at me the entire time he was doing it—as if some part of himdidwant to break my bones—but warmth flowed from his palm, soothing away the pain instead of making it worse. A soft glow and a tingling sensation followed.
When he let me go, the bleeding had ceased. My skin had knitted itself back together, leaving only dried blood and a faint scar across the back of my hand as evidence of what Aleks had done.
“Stop it.” I took a step away from Lorien, my entire body trembling. “Stop fuckinghelpingme!”
He glanced at a few of the other scrapes and bruises I’d picked up during the night’s battles, as if he was considering healing those too, just to spite me.
“I will hit you again,” I hissed. “If you touch me again, I swear to the gods I will hit you hard enough to knock you back into Noctaris.”
“Right,” he said. “I’m going to give you a minute to deal with this.” He gestured to my clenched fists and the rest of my furious, trembling body. “Then we need to make a plan.”
“I’m not making anyplanswith you.”
“No? You already have everything all figured out, do you?”
I started to snap out a response, but the words died in my throat.
“That’s what I thought.”
He turned toward the palace, considering it for a moment before letting out a sigh and heading up the cracked and crumbling front steps.
I grabbed him and yanked him back. “We don’t have time to just sit around. We have to go back. My brother, my friends, Aleks?—”
“They’ll survive long enough for us to figure some things out.”
“And if theydon’t?”
“Then it will be less we have to worry about, won’t it?” He pried my fingers from his arm and shoved my grip away with infuriatingly calm precision.
I just stared at him.
