For the second time that night, Silas went a little crazy. “I know, baby. I know. We’re gonna— I’m going to take you to a healer. You need to just— Don’t move. Let me fix it. I’ll fix it.”
She grabbed his arm. Her big blue eyes, navy in the darkness, shone with tears when she whispered, “I thought it was okay, but I don’t want to die this way. I don’t want to. I just wanted a nice little life, Silas, I really did.” A sob stole her breath and chopped the words into pitiful little pieces. “I’m so sick of being scared all the time. I don’t want to die like my parents. I want to be old someday. I want to have babies. I want to kiss you again. I don’t want to die.Pleasedon’t let me.”
Silas discovered another new emotion:devastation.
Sliding one arm under her back and the other under her knees, Silas climbed to his feet and snarled, “Shut up! You’re not going to fuckin’ die on me, Petra, so don’t even try.”
Her head lolled into the space between his neck and shoulder. Hot tears splashed his skin. “I really like you,” she whimpered. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“You’re not getting rid of me whether you like me or not,” he snapped, aware that he was being unreasonable with her and yet fully unable to control the part of him that had gone senseless with fear.
Si.Tal’s voice rang in his mind. It was unusually strained. Silas turned to find his brother’s shadows crawling out of the stairwell, a huge writhing mass of blackness that seemed somehow less corporeal than normal.I’m blocking the door, butyou won’t be able to get out without being seen. Her assistant is desperate to get through. I think he might have heard the shots.
“Fuck!” Silas clutched Petra tighter, like that would help anything at all. If he could have, he would have absorbed her into his chest and kept her there, locked away from the world that had tried so hard to steal her away. “Can’t you do something? Kill him if you have to. I need to get Petra to a healer.”
“Silas, who are you talking to?”
“No one, baby,” he muttered, unwilling to explain Tal’s existencenowof all times. “I’m just trying to figure out the best way to get rid of your assistant. He’s outside the door and I need to get you to a healer right fuckin’ now.”
Blunt nails curled into his chest. “Margot. Take me to Margot. Don’t kill Robert, please. He’s a good man.” Her voice grew fainter, thinner, and the hands on his chest gradually lost their tension until they slid away.
“I’m not taking you into the damn elvish stronghold to be— Hey!” Wild-eyed, he gave her a tiny shake, not caring if he caused her a little extra pain if it kept her with him. Petra let out an animal sound against his neck. “Damn it, Petra, stay awake or I’ll kill your assistant!”
Her shoulders hunched, turning her into his chest like she, too, wanted to find refuge there. “Don’t. Please.”
And then she went limp.
“Fuck!” Silas rounded on Tal. His mind fractured into a thousand sharp pieces. “I don’t know what happened. The necklace should have— It failed. My wards failed.”
She took a bolt shot from less than ten feet away, Si. Your wards worked. If they didn’t, she’d be dead.
“Then my shadows failed!” he cried, stumbling back a step as his knees weakened. “She’s my mate. My shadows should have protected her. How could they have failed, too?”
Si—
“Everyone was right. I never should have been a mate. I don’t know how to do this. I fucked it up already.”
Silas!Tal’s shadows rippled with agitation. His normally soft voice was hard when he ordered,Get your shit together. That’s your mate. She needs you to focus. Do you want her to live or not?
Desperation made his voice little more than a raw scraping sound when he asked, “What do I do?”
I think you should get Robert’s help,Tal answered, once again calm in the face of Silas’s complete lack of composure,and then you need to get her stable so you can take her home to your dad. That wound isn’t fatal, but only if we act fast.
Tension rippled down his spine. “What if Robert’s part of this?”
Now that he understood the true extent of what Petra was up against, every single member of Glory’s Temple was on notice. No one would be free of his scrutiny, not until he personally uprooted any and all of her enemies with his bare hands.
I’ve watched him for days. I don’t think he is, but I also think this is a risk you have to take. Either way, you have to deal with him.
And Petra had asked Silas not to kill the man, so really there wasn’t much of a choice at all.
Swearing again, he told Tal to let Robert through. The priest burst out of the stairwell in a flurry of robes and strained breathing, his gaze swinging around to take in the table knocked on its side, the demon, and the wounded priestess.
Robert was a middle-aged man with a soft face, balding head, and an unfortunate predisposition to sweating. The look on his face when he saw Petra’s ruined side was one of honest horror — a feeling Silas knew better than almost any.
“W-What happened?”
Silas stalked across the tower to loom over the red-robed man. “Antonin Vanderpoel shot her. I need a way out of this placenow.”
