“I should’ve heard them.” Her mouth flattening, she shook her head. “I don’t know how I didn’t.”
“They were quiet. I barely heard them, and that was only because they must’ve scraped against the window frame on their way in.”
She made that same sound again. Subdued, hesitant. Bel—who was never at a loss for words. Gods, usually he couldn’t get a moment’s peace around her, and now, all he wanted her to do wastalk.
The man he’d been just days ago mocked him, and a grim smile pulled at his mouth.
Bel glanced around the moonlit room, taking in the headless bodies with their taloned feet and metal-feathered wings. Carver looked at her. He couldn’t stop.
She eventually turned back to him, her face curiously blank. Shock, he realized. Fear. Doubt. Everything she didn’t want toshow was so much more obvious to him when she tried to hide it. She should never have to hide anything from him.
“We’ll nevernotfind a way to win,” he told her. “I swear it.”
Her eyes widened, enlivening her features again. “Promises are a dangerous thing.”
He nodded. They were. Magoi couldn’t make a binding vow and not keep it. Horrible pain made it physically impossible. He didn’t have that limitation, but he still believed his words. “I swear it,” he repeated firmly.
Bel inhaled sharply. Carver couldn’t resist the impulse to reach out. Their hands brushed, two hot shocks of skin on the night-cool floor. Bel’s finger twitched, but she didn’t pull away, and the contact centered him, just like when he gripped his sword.
He drank in the sight of her. Luminous blue-green eyes that matched the water off their island shores to perfection. Skin like the inside of an oyster shell. Hair the colors of the brightest, boldest sunsets over the ocean basin. Some locks rippled with inner fire, illuminating the hollow of her throat, the curve of her lips, the near-translucent shell of her ear…
Carver didn’t do anything more than leave his hand beside hers, but as he lay there on the floor, his insides grew taut with a pressure he never imagined feeling again. He wanted to be surprised by the force of it, the clarity, but couldn’t muster the strength to lie to himself anymore.
“I couldn’t burn them,” she murmured. He saw her swallow as she paused, then her eyes found his. “Thank you.”
Her thank-you seemed heavy with more than just tonight. His heart squeezed, and for the first time, he was sure she was glad he’d followed her through the portal to Atlantis.
“You never have to thank me for helping you.” Whatever came for her, he would stop it. Whoever tried to hurt her, he’dhurt them ten times worse. He would kill anything that threatened her—man, monster, or god.
Carver drew his hand back from hers. Gathering his strength, he heaved himself off the floor. Every muscle protested, but now wasn’t the time for rest. He was a half-decent Hoi Polloi healer, thanks to listening to his mother and sister talk about treatments and herbs.
He quickly cut off the thought of never seeing his family again, but it was too late to stop that shock in his chest that always struck like a battering ram. Nodding toward their living room, he gruffly said, “Let’s go take care of those wrists.” Bel was his family now, and that was real enough for him.
Chapter 9
It was all Bellanca could do not to shake as she stood next to Carver in her ravaged bedroom. The near-tremble didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t shake. She didn’t cry, and yet her eyes burned. She’d thought the different, softer Bellanca was limited to Spiro’s and the character she’d made up for herself in her new role—one out of a comedy instead of a tragedy. Prophecies were one thing. She’d heard some and even seen some come true, butself-fulfilling propheciesweren’t supposed to sneak up on a woman from out of the blue.
Fresh panic hit. What if her made-up persona had somehow becomereal?
In shock, she didn’t move.No.She could never change that much, but parts of it were starting to feel like the truth.
“It’s a miracle no one from downstairs woke up.” Carver laid a hand on the small of her back and propelled her toward the living room.
She let out a low grunt of agreement and shuffled forward. She hadn’t heard a peep from Dione’s, even after the racket they’d made fighting the automatons.
Carver’s hand stayed on her back all the way to the table, warm without being hot and big without being a monster’s paw. He barely exerted any pressure, but Carver touching her like this was new, too. Since when did he simply reach out so naturally? And since when did the warmth of his hand feel so steadying and good?
She glanced at her blistering wrists, seeing them as though from afar. The pain was harder to keep at a distance. Too present. Too strong. Carver pulled out a chair for her, his bare torso brushing her arm. She felt the stupidest urge to turn into him but didn’t. She was all thorns and flames. Closeness and comfort-seeking weren’t in her nature even if the tiniest bit of temptation stirred inside her and almost made her want to try.
She took a steadying breath. The fight was still too fresh. So was the fear. Both would pass and so would impulses she’d never had before.
She sat as Carver lit an oil lamp and then went to find another. She turned her wrists over and back, the glaring red handprints making her think about all the enemies she’d thrown fire at without a second thought. Until tonight, she’d barely remembered what a good, deep scorch-to-the-skin felt like, but now, Mommy Dearest’s lessons came back with a hot ache that traveled up her arms. Daddy Dearest hadn’t been much better, though he’d preferred emotional torture to the physical kind.
Thankfully, they were both dead. But so were two older sisters, one good and one bad. And Bellanca had killed her own brother, who’d been even worse than their parents. Now, there was just her. And Lystra. But her younger sister was a world away and—gods!Were thoseactualtears?
Inhaling raggedly, she burned the wet sting away from the inside, her blood always halfway to being on fire. As Carver adjusted the wick on the second lamp, offering them more light, she turned her focus to giving the throbbing burn in her wrists a brutal mental kick. The pain seemed to diminish, reinforcing her firm belief in mind over matter. The strongest survived because they believed theycould.
Carver stood across from her looking more composed than she felt despite her little victory over the worst of the pain.Then again, he was good at hiding his feelings—a lot better than she was.
